Chapter 164

Yuji manages to locate Hiromi Higuruma, yet cannot persuade him to enter a new rule into the Culling Game. Rather than negotiate, Yuji winds up standing trial against the attorney, and the sentence handed down might just be lethal.

Facing his opponent without flinching, Higuruma is flanked by a shikigami that Yuji notices at once. Aware the lawyer has already taken out at least twenty players, Yuji holds back defensively to read any attack, but Higuruma instantly triggers Domain Expansion: Deadly Sentencing. The domain takes the form of a courtroom with guillotines lining the background, and Yuji senses the danger. He rushes in to strike before the embedded cursed technique can fire, throwing a head kick that halts inches short of its mark; Higuruma reveals the domain bars all violence from both parties and warps Yuji back to his side of the room.

The shikigami Judgeman accuses Yuji of having entered the Maji Vegas Pachinko Parlor in Sendai City on July 16, 2017, while underage. Yuji blanks at first, then recalls the place, and stalls by pretending to still be thinking before he gives himself away. Every detail about everyone within the domain is something Judgeman knows, Higuruma explains, while he himself is shut out from that information and the ruling rests solely on the arguments made in court. Higuruma has also handed Judgeman a piece of evidence, not necessarily conclusive, whose contents Yuji will not be shown. Yuji's task is to plead his case and clear all doubt to secure an innocent verdict.

Recognizing the trial-shaped technique means he is being prosecuted by a genuine lawyer, Yuji recalls Master Tengen's lesson: the absence of a guaranteed hit was once typical, since older sorcerers cast domains merely to force everyone inside under their technique's rules, and weaving in a sure-strike attack demanded enough skill that such users grew rare. Yuji deduces Higuruma's domain is the older type, so it cannot physically harm him and depends on the rules being stated first. Higuruma lays out those rules: each side gets one statement, Yuji going first, followed by the lawyer's rebuttal from the evidence, after which Judgeman rules. Told a denial may include lies, a surprised Yuji asks if lying in court is allowed, and Higuruma notes there would be no trials if everyone told the truth, pressing him to hurry since Judgeman is impatient.

Yuji weighs his defense. He did go in that day and even won, so lying is his only clean exit, though he cannot know the evidence. He runs through silence, denial, and confession one by one and settles on denial, claiming he only entered to use the bathroom. Higuruma counters with a photo of Yuji at a cash exchange inside, arguing that the picture plus Yuji's own admission of entering undercuts the restroom story, and concludes Yuji came to play the machines. Yuji demands to know the law broken; the premises forbid minors, and while no statute punishes minors at entertainment venues, this still counts as unlawful entry. Yuji protests it was a rigged trial with no winning answer, but Higuruma reveals Japan only bars minors from gambling, leaving cash exchanges separate, so Yuji needed only to deny everything by saying he had never seen the parlor. Judgeman rules him guilty and sentences "confiscation." The domain falls, Judgeman vanishes, and Yuji feels nothing changed, until Higuruma hurls his gavel, striking Yuji's arm for outsized damage, then recalls it, pumps cursed energy into the weapon so it swells larger, and crashes it through Yuji's guard. Sent crashing through theater seats, Yuji notes the technique manipulates the gavel and realizes his own control over cursed energy is gone. The lawyer concedes that surviving this far takes real toughness, and the student agrees that toughness is what he has going for him.

Numbered 164 in the manga by Gege Akutami, this nineteen-page Culling Game Arc entry sits in Volume 19 and adapts across anime Episodes 55 and 56. It opens the Yuji Itadori versus Hiromi Higuruma bout and introduces the courtroom rules of Deadly Sentencing alongside the shikigami Judgeman.