Chapter 169

A quirky comedian bursting with personality interrupts Megumi's fight. Throwing in with Megumi, Fumihiko Takaba lends a hand against the other Culling Game players.

Takaba, thirty-five, decides to help because he reads people as good or bad by their faces; he judges Megumi's to be a bad one yet brushes the whole thing aside as merely "revisionist." When Megumi attempts to hand him the proper term, he quickly clocks Takaba as eccentric, yet because the man shielded him, the young sorcerer is prepared to put some trust in him. Neither Reggie nor Hazenoki recognizes Takaba, and they ask what era he hails from. Takaba cuts Hazenoki off, assuming the question was whether he is funny, and explains his costume is modeled on a comedic superhero as his menace abruptly spikes ahead of a joke. The two brace for an attack, only for Takaba to deliver a joke that lands in dead silence: a groan-worthy line refusing marriage on the grounds that he does not want them as his wi-fi, which not a soul finds funny.

Remarking on the tough crowd, Takaba hypes himself up anyway; stiff audience or not, he will keep doing his thing because he is an entertainer. As he shouts the line, he delivers a vicious flying dropkick that hurls Hazenoki into a building. Reggie clocks how sharply the comedian's cursed energy has surged and realizes the failed performer is genuinely strong. Flipping into a handstand, Takaba describes himself as an old-school, pro-violence performer, buying Megumi time to get set. Megumi attempts a surprise strike on Reggie out of the man's own shadow, yet Reggie leaps clear in time. Megumi proposes they split Hazenoki and Reggie apart, and while explaining Hazenoki's exploding body parts he keeps having to push Takaba back from crowding his face. Using Kogane, Megumi verifies that Rule Ten had been entered by Hiromi Higuruma himself, and reassured that Yuji finished their mission, he announces he is done with this colony and offers Reggie a way out if he stands down; Reggie turns it down, needing to recoup Chizuru Hari's lost points.

Hazenoki recovers from the dropkick and calls out to Takaba, who pays him no mind and instead gives Megumi a proper introduction. The student asks Takaba to take Hazenoki's points if he can, and Takaba agrees so long as he gets to keep entertaining, a condition Megumi accepts provided they come out on top. Pleased, Takaba starts "sparking" as Hazenoki sends an explosive projectile his way; Takaba bats it off with a fan, closes in, and pokes his opponent in the rear as a gag. Enraged, Hazenoki is then blasted through a building by Takaba's powerful kick, and Megumi admits he is glad Takaba is not his enemy. Happy to help, Takaba bids Megumi farewell and urges him not to die. Reggie figures Takaba is finished, certain that all the mockery will push Hazenoki to hold nothing back, but Megumi tells his foe to mind himself. With his objective met, Megumi is free at last to take a single opponent seriously and hold nothing back.

Numbered installment 169 in the Gege Akutami manga, this entry runs twenty-two pages, nineteen in the Volume 19 printing, within the Culling Game Arc and was adapted as anime Episode 57. Its colored cover marks the debut of the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 film, putting Suguru Geto and Yuta Okkotsu front and center, and the chapter opens the Fumihiko Takaba versus Iori Hazenoki fight.