Jujutsu Kaisen: Why Was Geto Unable to Absorb Toji’s Inventory Curse? Toji’s Worm Explained!
The fight between Toji Fushiguro and Suguru Geto was an epic duel between two powerful fighters. Toji, of course, won, but he spared Geto’s life and simply left. And while it cannot be denied that Geto have it his all, Toji was simply too powerful, and one of the reasons for that is his Inventory Curse, the cursed spirit that Toji had with him. Using his Cursed Spirit Manipulation technique, Suguru Geto tried to take away Toji’s inventory and armory, but he failed, and that was the deciding moment in which Toji won. Geto was sure he would do it, but he was unable to do it. Why? Well, we are going to provide you with that answer here.
Suguru Geto can absorb a curse if it is at least two levels below him, and since he is a Special Grade sorcerer, the weak Inventory Curse met this condition. But, he was still unable to absorb it because it had a master-slave relationship with Toji, and Suguru Geto is, as we have found out, unable to absorb a curse if it had already established any formal relationship with someone else; this was a restriction of his technique that did not allow him to steal curses, i.e., he had to kill the “owner” to get to the curse.
The rest of this article will be about Toji Fushiguro’s special cursed spirit, the Inventory Curse, which is also one of the most interesting ones overall. We will explain what the Inventory Curse is, why it was so important for Toji, and why Suguru Geto was ultimately unable to absorb it. Of course, as always, we have to warn you that this article will be filled with spoilers from the upcoming episodes, so be careful how you approach it if you don’t want to know all the details.
Geto was unable to absorb the curse because he cannot steal curses
After Toji defeats Geto and kills Riko, Suguru Geto engages him in a bitter fight. He summons two of his most powerful curses, “Kuchisaki-Onna” and Rainbow Dragon, but also some other powerful curses, as he unsuccessfully tries to harm Toji. As they fight, Toji explains to Suguru how he could stay undetected until then and even how he fights.
However, Suguru doesn’t care and instead wants to know how he found them and what happened to Misato. Toji admits he took care of her but doesn’t know if she’s still alive. As Suguru briefly gains the advantage and tries to cripple the assassin by stealing his curse and weapons, he fails, and Toji easily manages to defeat Suguru’s curses and defeats him. He slashed his chest with two attacks and left him down on the ground, defeated, although he let him live.
But Geto’s fate has already been discussed; what interests us now is how Geto could not absorb Toji’s Inventory curse. As we know, Geto’s Innate Technique is called Cursed Spirit Manipulation. This technique allowed Geto to “collect” curses to use as tools or weapons in the future; Geto was a master at employing it, making it one of the most potent Innate Techniques in the whole series.
By compressing curses into the shape of a little ball or spherical and ingesting them, the user can tame curses to be employed later. These curses can be used for a variety of purposes, and their strength actually varies, but an important thing to note is that they stop evolving after being absorbed.
The technique has one main prerequisite. Namely, when using this technique, a jujutsu sorcerer can easily domesticate a cursed spirit as long as the latter is two classes beneath him. Since Geto was a Special Grade jujutsu sorcerer, there weren’t many cursed spirits he could not absorb, and since he himself judged the Inventory Curse to be quite weak, he thought there would be no problems.
The Inventory Curse is, as its name suggests, an inventory. Regardless of size, it can hold a particular number of items and even living things. The number of items that can be held inside the Inventory Curse may be limited, but from what we’ve observed, either the limit is quite large, or there isn’t any.
It seemingly has no other powers, which is why it is absolutely true that it can be described as a low-grade curse. It is unknown how high its consciousness is developed, but the Inventory Curse can talk, and it seemingly has some rudimentary emotions as well, as we’ve seen when it talked to Geto and asked for a hug not long after Gojo killed Toji in their second fight.
So, as you can see, the Inventory Curse wasn’t a challenge for Geto, but Geto was unable to absorb it. He activated his innate technique and began the process, but once the Inventory Curse was supposed to touch his hand and transform into a sphere, it simply stopped and returned to Toji, which shocked Geto. This was when a major downside of Geto’s technique was revealed.
Namely, the user can only absorb a free curse, i.e., that does not have any formal relationship with anyone else in that aspect. As for those that have – and it is, in most cases, a master-servant relationship – the user can only absorb those curses that already had a servitude relationship with another person when that person dies; they cannot gain possession of a curse that already had a servitude relationship with another person.
This actually means that Suguru Geto cannot steal someone else’s curse, which is why he was – in Jujutsu Kaisen 0 – unable to simply steal Rika off of Yuta. He cannot steal and can only absorb curses free from any type of formal relationship with anyone. This is why he could not absorb the Inventory Curse, as it has a master-slave relationship with Toji, which stopped Geto’s innate technique. So yes, the curse was – in this case – weak enough, but the absorption was stopped because the curse had already had a master at the time.
When Toji was, of course, killed, the curse was once again free, and it made its way to Geto, calling him mommy and wanting a hug from him, which – once again – left Geto shocked. It is unknown whether he absorbed it or simply exorcised it at that point.
