Even Pandas

Yaga has long guarded the method for building self-running cursed corpses. Because Panda exists, the jujutsu elders have always wanted that knowledge, and the fallout from Shibuya now gives them the leverage to squeeze him. Out of choices, Masamichi bids his dolls goodbye and sets out for one last reunion with his son.

A flashback shows Yaga jailed shortly after Panda came to be, his hands bound in talismans while Gakuganji questioned him for the higher-ups. Most cursed corpses run on energy fed to them by a user, yet Panda generates his own, and fearing an entire army the elders nearly branded Masamichi special grade for indefinite restraint. Gakuganji demanded to know how Panda was made; Masamichi claimed ignorance.

Now a fugitive hiding in a forest that Master Tengen shields, Masamichi comforts a talkative doll worried by his gloom, telling it he cannot come home soon. He opens a tree-base hatch where his small, harmless dolls live, and they tell him they will miss him. At Jujutsu High's isolation chamber, Panda has been seized as bait to lure Masamichi out; Kusakabe cuts him loose with his katana as a repayment, warning Panda to keep his name out of it. A second flashback explains why: Masamichi once built a cursed corpse carrying the soul data of Kusakabe's nephew so his grieving sister, idle in a wheelchair, could embrace her boy again. She recognized her son's habits and catchphrase instantly and rushed to him, calling the corpse Takeru, though it could not stay with her since Panda did not yet exist and the secret had to hold.

In the present, a scarred masked sorcerer working for the elders intercepts Masamichi, who calmly strips his jacket and states that reaching his son is his only destination. The masked man notes the death sentence hanging over the principal and that confessing the technique is his only escape. Then Gakuganji emerges with his guitar and, after a brief clash, lands a killing blow that opens an x-shaped wound across Masamichi's chest. With his final breath, Masamichi suddenly details the method: soul data copied from physical data and fed into corpse cores holding three compatible souls that must constantly observe one another to stabilize and gain self-awareness. Asked why he reveals it now rather than to save himself, he answers that it is a curse he is passing to Gakuganji, then dies. Panda arrives moments too late, weeps, and refuses to fight, telling Gakuganji that even pandas cry. A moth, drawn to a streetlamp's heat, burns out as a closing image.

Set within the Culling Game Arc, the chapter unfolds in the Tengen-protected forest and Jujutsu High's isolation chamber. Masamichi Yaga, Panda, Gakuganji, Takeru and the other dolls, Kusakabe, his sister, and an unnamed Zenin sorcerer all appear, while Tengen and Gojo are referenced. The story is adapted in Episode 52.