Jujutsu Kaisen's Takaba inverts one of shonen's best tropes, and nobody noticed
Fumihiko Takaba from Jujutsu Kaisen might be one of the most out-of-context sorcerers given how he was an entertainer stuck between talented jujutsu sorcerers. Moreover, another addition to his strangeness might be how he reversed a popular shonen trope, and never got praise for it, which could be why he was one of the strongest sorcerers.
Training makes a shonen protagonist stronger (and sometimes even overpowered). However, due to Takaba's Comedian cursed technique, he naturally couldn't train like others as he couldn't plan funny jokes beforehand. This might also explain why he failed as a comedian and enjoyed his time with Kenjaku when these two acted as comedians.
Disclaimer: This article contains potential spoilers from the Jujutsu Kaisen manga series and has the author's opinion.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Why training might have made Takaba weaker
'Training to become stronger' is one of the most popular shonen tropes, if not the most, in anime. Be it an isekai where a weak protagonist gets reincarnated into a fantasy world or any other anime with a weak protagonist, training is the first and foremost thing that could make a main character stronger.
The importance of this trope can be seen from how an arc is dedicated to it, the 'training arc' (which is a key part of every anime series and is mostly well-received). However, one character from Jujutsu Kaisen might get weaker if he ever trained and that is one who helped Okkotsu Yuta in killing Kenjaku, Fumihiko Takaba.
Fumihiko Takaba was a human who worked as a comedian whose jokes weren't funny. He was one of the few normal humans (like Tsumiki Fushigoro) who were awakened as sorcerers. As expected, Takaba had no idea what powers (cursed techniques) he possessed, so he did what he thought he was good at, being a comedian.
As expected, his jokes still weren't funny and he couldn't use his cursed technique until the final battle against Kenjaku. During their battle, the two sorcerers fought inside Comedian (Takaba's cursed technique) as their scenery changed from being inside a hospital to playing as friends in the sea. Ultimately, Comedian led them to a final scenario where Takaba and Kenjaku acted as stand-up comedians.
Comedian is a cursed technique where the user could make any scenario, funny in his mind, a reality. This was the reason behind the continuously changing scenarios when Takaba fought Kenjaku. As Takaba was ultimately defeated, did he have some chance of winning if he was aware of his cursed technique?
The answer might be no. While funny jokes could be prepared in advance, Takaba was the last person to do this because he was bad at it (as indicated by his career as a failed comedian). So, Takaba's training to think of funny jokes (something he was already bad at) would have weakened him, instead of making him stronger.
Analysis and final thoughts
Takaba might be the only person who enjoyed his battle against a series antagonist. This was because Kenjaku fulfilled his dream of seeing people laugh, something he had been deprived of since he started his career.
This might be because the Jujutsu Kaisen antagonist wanted to see how his enemy's technique worked, but Kenjaku enjoyed his battle against Takaba so much so that he declared his experience with Takaba as the 'best.' Moreover, Kenjaku even claimed that he was glad that the last experience of his life was playing with Takaba.
Related Links
- Who is Fumihiko Takaba in Jujutsu Kaisen?
- Gege might be playing the ultimate joke on Jujutsu Kaisen fans with Takaba's ending
- Gojo's death in Jujutsu Kaisen could have been caused by Takaba
- Takaba is Jujutsu Kaisen's wild card (and even Kenjaku knows it)