⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: This article covers the Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku fight from Jujutsu Kaisen manga chapters 145 to 162 and related arcs. Major character deaths ahead. Proceed only if you’re caught up or spoiler-ready.
The fight between Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku is one of the most emotionally loaded battles in all of Jujutsu Kaisen, and manga fans refuse to let it be forgotten. Here at Shonen Vortex, we’ve been dissecting every chapter since the Shibuya Incident broke our brains, and this fight keeps coming back to the top of our conversations. It’s not just about power. It’s about what Kenjaku represents, what Choso is fighting for, and what Yuki sacrifices to make her life mean something. As we head into Season 4 adaptation territory, this is the fight every anime-only fan needs to understand before it hits the screen.
Table of Contents
- What Is the Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku Fight?
- Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku: The Setup That Makes It Hit Different
- Choso’s Role: Blood Manipulation Against the Impossible
- Yuki Tsukumo and the Biggest Swing in Jujutsu Kaisen
- Why Kenjaku Always Wins (And Why That’s the Point)
- What This Fight Means for Jujutsu Kaisen Season 4
- FAQs
What Is the Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku Fight?
The Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku battle takes place in Chapters 145 to 162 of the Jujutsu Kaisen manga, immediately following the catastrophic events of the Shibuya Incident. It is a two-on-one confrontation where Choso Kamo and Yuki Tsukumo, a special grade jujutsu sorcerer, attempt to stop Kenjaku before he escapes with everything he came for. The fight is notable not for who wins, but for what is lost.
Key reasons manga fans rank it as essential:
- It gives Yuki Tsukumo one of the most complete sendoffs in the series
- Choso’s emotional arc reaches a raw, devastating high point
- Kenjaku’s intelligence and technique make him terrifying beyond raw power
- It ties directly into the Culling Game’s rules and design, which Kenjaku himself engineered
- The fight reframes what victory even means for a sorcerer
- It is one of the few fights where the heroes give everything and it still isn’t enough
- The emotional stakes are inseparable from the lore stakes
Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku: The Setup That Makes It Hit Different
Re-reading the Shibuya arc, the panel most fans skip is Kenjaku’s casual confirmation that everything, including Gojo’s sealing, was just step one. That context makes the Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku fight sting so much harder.
By the time this fight begins, Kenjaku has already achieved his primary objective. Gojo Satoru is sealed inside the Prison Realm. Thousands are dead. The higher-ups are compromised. Kenjaku is not panicking. He is managing loose ends.
Choso arrives at this fight already depleted. He’s been in combat throughout Shibuya. His brothers were killed. His motivation is pure and uncomplicated: he wants Kenjaku dead because Kenjaku used and discarded the Death Paintings as tools. That grief fuels some of his most controlled, devastating use of Blood Manipulation in the series.
Yuki arrives as something rarer: a special grade sorcerer who rejected the jujutsu establishment entirely. Her cursed technique, Star Rage, lets her add virtual mass to herself and objects. She is not fighting to survive or protect an institution. She is fighting because she believes she can end Kenjaku’s plan permanently.
Blood Manipulation (Ketsueki Soujuu) Japanese: 血液操縦
- User: Choso Kamo (and the Kamo clan)
- First seen: Chapter 104 (manga)
- Mechanism: The user manipulates blood inside and outside their body. Choso, as a Death Painting Womb, can use blood with extraordinary efficiency including Piercing Blood, a technique with near-speed-of-light projectile velocity (Chapter 106, confirmed via Naoya’s reaction time context)
- Limitations: Requires blood as a medium. Loss of blood weakens the user. Extended use against high-CE opponents drains reserves quickly
- Notable feats: Choso pinning Naoya in Shibuya; nearly one-shotting Yuji in their first encounter (Chapter 105)
Choso’s Role: Blood Manipulation Against the Impossible
Choso is fighting someone who has spent over a thousand years inside different bodies, learning techniques, accumulating experience. This is not a fair fight and Akutami never pretends it is.
What makes Choso’s performance in this fight remarkable is his precision. He is not trying to overpower Kenjaku with volume. He uses Piercing Blood at controlled angles, forcing Kenjaku to move and respond rather than dictate the pace. For a depleted fighter with legitimate grief fogging his judgment, that discipline is a character statement.
The tragedy is that Kenjaku carrying Geto Suguru’s body is an ongoing psychological wound for Choso. Kenjaku has been using Geto’s face and cursed technique since the end of the Hidden Inventory arc, and that creates split-second hesitations that Kenjaku is smart enough to exploit.
This is also where Binding Vows become relevant. Kenjaku’s entire plan is built on a network of binding vows and rule structures he designed in advance, including those embedded in the Culling Game’s framework. Choso is fighting not just a man but a centuries-long chess game.
Choso’s ceiling in this fight is genuinely impressive given his condition. But his ceiling is not Yuki’s.
Yuki Tsukumo and the Biggest Swing in Jujutsu Kaisen
Here at Shonen Vortex, we’ve tracked the Gojo-vs-everyone debate across the fandom for years. And our honest read is that Yuki Tsukumo dying in this fight is Akutami’s clearest statement that raw power means nothing against the right preparation.
Yuki is arguably the most powerful active sorcerer not named Gojo at this point in the story. She has an untethered cursed technique, a lifetime of independent research, and no institutional loyalty slowing her thinking. She comes into this fight with a plan.
Her plan is to use her innate technique, Star Rage, in combination with a Black Hole-level output to create a gravitational collapse that pulls Kenjaku in. She commits completely. She uses Reverse Cursed Technique to sustain herself through the damage she absorbs. She is not playing conservatively.
And she still loses.
Kenjaku’s counter is not a more powerful attack. It is technique knowledge accumulated over centuries. He understands what she’s doing before she completes it. This is consistent with how Akutami writes Kenjaku across the entire series: he is one of the most dangerous villains in Jujutsu Kaisen not because he’s the strongest but because he is always the most prepared.
Yuki’s death hits differently because she was never given a proper introduction until moments before she dies. That deliberate withholding makes her sacrifice feel earned and wasteful at the same time. That tension is intentional.
Why Kenjaku Always Wins (And Why That’s the Point)
The fandom is split on whether Kenjaku or Sukuna is the true antagonist of Jujutsu Kaisen. But the Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku fight clarifies something the Sukuna fights don’t: Kenjaku wins through systems, not strength.
He built the Culling Game rules specifically to trap sorcerers inside a framework that benefits his goals regardless of individual outcomes. As covered in our breakdown of who Kenjaku really is, his technique, Reverse Cursed Technique transplantation via brain surgery, lets him inherit every body’s cursed technique. He has been collecting for over a thousand years.
Choso and Yuki fighting him two-on-one is genuinely threatening. That’s the point. He needed both of them occupied and eliminated, and he still managed it while injured. That level of performance under pressure is why he sits at the top of any Jujutsu Kaisen villain ranking.
The fight also matters because of what it reveals about Yuji’s dark and complicated lineage. Choso fighting for his brother, only to lose and eventually reconcile with Yuji as a brother figure, is one of Akutami’s cleanest emotional through-lines. The brother who survives the fight becomes the reason Choso keeps moving forward.
Two years after the manga concluded, this fight still generates arguments. As of 2026, fan consensus on Reddit and X leans toward the Yuki moment being the most underrated sacrifice in the series.
What This Fight Means for Jujutsu Kaisen Season 4
Right now, the fandom is split on how MAPPA will adapt the Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku sequence. Anime-only viewers got their introduction to Yuki in Season 2, but she remains underexplained in the adaptation so far.
Jujutsu Kaisen Season 4 is confirmed and is entering the manga material that follows directly from this fight. The Culling Game Part 2 secrets that Kenjaku unlocked with this win are the foundation of the entire next arc. If MAPPA gives Yuki the same attention they gave Nanami in Shibuya, this sequence could be the emotional peak of Season 4.
For context on where the strongest Jujutsu Kaisen characters stand going into that arc, the post-Yuki landscape is the most dangerous the series has ever been. And Hana Kurusu’s role in potentially freeing Gojo becomes even more critical after this fight removes Yuki from the equation.
The Season 4 final arc truth is that everything Kenjaku achieved in this fight gets paid off in the Culling Game, and then Sukuna becomes the primary threat again. The transition between those two phases of the story runs directly through this battle.
FAQs
Q. Who wins the fight between Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku?
Kenjaku wins. He survives the encounter despite taking serious damage from both Choso and Yuki Tsukumo. Yuki’s final attack creates a gravitational singularity that destroys both her and Kenjaku’s current body in Chapters 160 to 161, but Kenjaku’s brain survives and is recovered. Choso is left critically injured.
Q. Does Yuki Tsukumo die fighting Kenjaku?
Yes. Yuki Tsukumo dies in Chapter 161 of the Jujutsu Kaisen manga. She uses her cursed technique, Star Rage, to create a massive gravitational collapse intended to kill Kenjaku. Kenjaku survives because his brain, which is his true body after centuries of technique transplantation, endures the destruction.
Q. Is Choso a special grade sorcerer at this point?
Choso is classified as a special grade cursed spirit rather than a sorcerer, specifically as a Death Painting Womb. His Blood Manipulation technique is inherited from the Kamo clan via his human parentage. His fighting capability in this arc is roughly comparable to a first-grade sorcerer operating at peak.
Q. Why does Kenjaku use Geto’s body?
Kenjaku chose Geto Suguru’s body specifically to access Cursed Spirit Manipulation, which lets him command and absorb cursed spirits. Geto’s soul departed at the conclusion of the Hidden Inventory arc. Kenjaku’s technique allows him to inhabit a body by transplanting his brain, which is why he has survived across centuries.
Q. How does this fight connect to the Culling Game?
The Culling Game was designed and initiated by Kenjaku. Winning this fight against Choso and Yuki removed the last major threats capable of disrupting his plan before the game began. Every rule inside the Culling Game was engineered by Kenjaku to funnel cursed energy toward his ultimate goal of merging humanity with Tengen.
Conclusion
The Choso and Yuki vs Kenjaku fight is not the flashiest battle in Jujutsu Kaisen. It does not have the visual scale of Gojo vs Sukuna or the stakes theater of Shibuya’s peak. What it has is consequence. Yuki dies having swung as hard as anyone in this series. Choso loses and survives and carries it. Kenjaku walks away with everything he needed.
That is what Akutami does better than almost any other shonen writer: he lets the villain win the battles that matter, while the heroes win the ones we remember.
Season 4 will test whether anime audiences feel what manga readers felt in these chapters.
Where does Yuki Tsukumo rank in your top sacrifices in the series? And be real: did Akutami give her enough pages? Drop your take in the comments.
