Jujutsu Kaisen‘s creator has opened up about why he decided to delay Yuta Okkotsu’s official debut in the series until much later in the manga despite being the original main character! Yuta Okkotsu is now likely a household name among Jujutsu Kaisen fans as thanks to the successful feature film adaptation of his origin story, Jujutsu Kaisen 0, fans are waiting to see more of him in action in the anime. And as seen with the manga’s latest chapters, he’s now playing a crucial role in the final battles against Sukuna and whatever could be coming before the finale.
Now that Yuta has officially been brought back into both the Jujutsu Kaisen manga and anime with the end of the Shibuya Incident arc, he’s now a prominent character again despite being one of the first real characters within the Jujutsu world. As Jujutsu Kaisen series creator Gege Akutami stated in a special interview for the recent art exhibition for the series in Japan, Yuta’s delayed introduction came about because his editor suggested it’d be simpler without Yuta involved in the beginning.
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“I intended Gojo to take on the teacher and guide role, and have Itadori meet the members of Jujutsu Tech early on,” Akutami began (as translated by @soukatsu_ on X). “Gojo was absolutely necessary as the mentor to the story.” But while Gojo was important to the story, Yuta’s involvement would only complicate things at first. “When making Sousen [a version of Jujutsu Kaisen drafted before becoming a full series], Katayama, my editor at the time suggested that things would be simpler without Okkotsu so I chose for him to not appear at the start of Jujutsu Kaisen.”
But it wasn’t until deciding to introduce the character later that Akutami went and made Yuta’s original four chapter story into the full Jujutsu Kaisen 0 prequel we know it as today, “When I made the decision to introduce his character later, it felt right to make Volume 0, which had been serialized in Jump GIGA, a mythical origin story within Jujutsu Kaisen. On the other hand, there was literally no option to cut out Gojo. It would have been like My Hero Academia without All Might.” So simply, Yuta being there at the beginning would have just been too complicated of a start to the story.
