Satoru Gojo

Casting

Yuichi Nakamura (left) voices Gojo in Japanese while Kaiji Tang (right) voices the character in English.

He is voiced by Yuichi Nakamura in the original Japanese series. From serious scenes to comical gag scenes, Gojo has different facial expressions, but since Nakamura played without restrictions on the swing range, he reiterated at the recording site that he enjoyed gags. The actor did not find a change in Gojo's characterization, finding his mentoring of Yuta similar to the other protagonists from the main Jujutsu Kaisen series. He enjoyed the recording sessions he had, as well as the many school-like relationships. He was impressed by Megumi Ogata's work as Yuta for providing him with a large range of emotions.^[13] Mariya Ise voiced the younger Gojo in a flashback from the anime.^[2] Nakamura claimed he struggled in properly portraying Gojo for the anime's second season due to the two story arcs depicting the same character with different quirks and personality as a result of his age. The voice actor was impressed by the animation studio Mappa which allowed his character to have more facial expressions which resulted in more direction from his superiors.^[14]

Kaiji Tang voices Satoru in English. Tang described him as one of "the trolliest trolls to ever troll anime." He noted that the character stands out due to his "whimsical" nature and how he interacts with his students. He was also praised for how likeable he comes across, due to the kind nature he portrays in the series with a dark narrative while simultaneously showing interesting supernatural powers. Tang still noted that Gojo's arrogance was his only weak point, which also makes him come across as more human.^[15]

In another interview, Tang compared Gojo to comic book character Clark Kent, believing the charm behind the character was that, despite his age, Gojo acts like a spoiled child. Before dubbing Gojo, Tang had not read the Jujutsu Kaisen manga but had heard of it. When cast, Tang did research by reading the manga. When first interacting with Yuji Itadori, Gojo is noted to see a rarely-explored darker side of his personality due to how he thinks of the idea of killing a cursed teenager, which leads him to see more arrogance in Gojo. In contrast to his previous works like Gearless Joe from Megalobox or Archer from Fate/stay night, Tang feels that Gojo looks at the world in a more childish way than his previous characters; while Gojo has seen several challenges in his past, none of them made a major impact on him.^[16] In order to lipsync the character, Tang ended up ad-libbing, resulting in Gojo swearing when confronting Jogo.^[17]

Jujutsu Kaisen 0

A sorcerer working as a teacher at Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School, he holds the self-proclaimed title 'The Strongest'; most allies and enemies alike never actually dispute the title and generally consider him to be one of the most dangerous people alive. In the events of Jujutsu Kaisen 0, Gojo recruits Yuta Okkotsu, a high school student, accompanied by his Curse Spirit, Rika Orimoto, and convinces him to join Jujutsu High. During this time, Gojo makes Yuta train with the previous year students, Panda, Maki Zenin, and Toge Inumaki, to help Yuta control his curse and develop friendships.^[18] Yuta's curse attracts Suguru Geto, a previous student at Jujutsu High and an old friend of Gojo. Geto seeks Yuta's curse and wishes to create a shaman-only world. Geto is gravely injured after his fight with Okkotsu and is later executed by Gojo. Gojo then helps Yuta understand the true nature of his curse and powers.^[19]

Jujutsu Kaisen

On the day of the Kyoto Goodwill Event, Gojo meets up with other faculty members to watch the event. As it begins, he watches it through monitors with the other faculties. When intruders invade the site, Gojo heads over to the site along with Utahime and Yoshinobu. He engages with Juzo first, easily restraining him, while using his Hollow Purple Technique on Hanami. Gojo convinces his superiors at the college to keep Yuji Itadori alive until he consumes all of Sukuna's fingers. He teaches Yuji, Megumi Fushiguro, and Nobara Kugisaki.

Afterwards, the manga's Hidden Inventory arc explores Gojo's past. When he and Geto were both in high school, they were assigned to escort the Star Plasma Vessel Riko Amanai, who was to merge with the immortal sorcerer, Tengen.^[20][21] When the merging was to take place, they are attacked by mercenary Toji Fushiguro,^[22] who defeats the two and kills Riko.^[23] As Gojo recovers and kills Toji, Geto begins doubting his duties as a sorcerer, and, having grown annoyed of protecting non-sorcerers, vows to break the cycle and kill every non-sorcerer to prevent the birth of more cursed spirits.^[24] He escapes from the school and massacres a village with his powers. Gojo confronts Geto about his crimes, but is unable to kill him and lets him go.^[25]

Gojo was later ambushed by the Special Grade Cursed Spirits at Shibuya, and after he exorcised Hanami, Kenjaku manages to seal him away in the Prison Realm.^[26][27] Nevertheless, Gojo lets Yuta protect Yuji from being executed should something bad happen to him. Gojo's students successfully release him from the Prison Realm and he immediately challenges Sukuna to a duel on Christmas Eve. After several exchanges, Gojo comes close to winning, but is killed by Sukuna.^[28] He finds himself in airport talking with Geto and his other late friends. His corpse is later used by Yuta to aid Yuji in fighting and defeating Sukuna.^[29]

Popularity

Satoru Gojo was well received by the series' readers and critics. In a Viz Media popularity poll taken in March 2021, he was voted the most popular character in the franchise.^[30] At the 5th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, Gojo and his fight against Ryomen Sukuna was nominated for Best Boy and Best Fight Scene, respectively. Yuichi Nakamura's performance as Gojo was one of the nominees for Best Voice Artist Performance (Japanese).^[31][32] Nakamura won "Best Actor in Supporting Role" for his work as Satoru Gojo in the 16th Seiyu Awards.^[33] In promoting the movie Jujutsu Kaisen 0, advertisements with Gojo as a dog were made alongside SoftBank Group.^[34] In December 2021, Mappa and Shueisha also celebrated Gojo's birthday with PulpFiction Cine finding him as one of the most popular characters from the series while also promoting the movie.^[35] In a poll from 2021 by LINE Research, Gojo took the first spot in regards to Jujutsu Kaisen characters.^[36] Gojo ranked second in the Best Male Character Animage's 2021 Anime Grand Prix poll behind Kyojuro Rengoku from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba,^[37] while he was third in the 2022 poll behind Yuta Okkotsu from Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and Tengen Uzui from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.^[38] Yuichi Nakamura ranked eighth in the Best Voice Actor category in 2021,^[37] while he was fifth in the following year for his character's performance.^[38]

The character attained popularity in Chile when the second season of the anime aired, resulting in fans illustrating Gojo at an advertising billboard located inside Universidad de Chile station of Metro de Santiago.^[39] At the 8th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, Gojo won the award for Best Supporting Character. Three of Gojo's international voice actors were nominated in the voice acting categories, namely Yuichi Nakamura (Japanese), Jose Gilberto Vilchis (Spanish), and Léo Rabelo (Portuguese); Nakamura and Rabelo won their respective awards, while Vilchis lost to Emilio Treviño's Denji.^[40] In August 2024, Gojo ranked in first place on Shueisha's fourth Jujutsu Kaisen character popularity poll, with 113,392 votes.^[41] He won the Newtype Anime Award for Best Male Character in 2024.^[42] At the 9th Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2025, Lohit Sharma won Best Voice Artist Performance (Hindi) for his performance as Gojo.^[43]

Critical response

Comic Book Resources regarded Gojo as the ninth most mature character in the series despite his "childish" personality and regarded him as highly lovable within the manga's readers.^[44] They also considered him as one of the series' most dangerous members due to his "over-the-top" powers that couldn't be rivaled.^[45] IGN also called Gojo as a fan-favorite character due to the focus of his personality.^[46] StudyBreak noted that Gojo's flamboyant personality often comes across fitting comic relief, citing how he reacts when he thinks Fushiguro is being hit on by a woman as well as how impressive he is shown to be in combat against a serious threat.^[47]

Comparing him to other mentor characters like Kakashi Hatake, All Might or Aizawa, news website Bleeding Cool said Gojo remains as more likable within this archetype as a result of how "The character is truly a balance of caring coldness with power that keeps dismissing any serious threats", particularly for how caring he is to his students and the might he shows in battle sequences.^[48] Comic Book Resources had said his fight against Jogo was the series' best fight.^[49] While Anime News Network praised the fight scene Gojo has against Jogo for the handling of visuals, finding it far superior than the studio's previous work The God of High School referred by the staff as "irredeemable trash" not only due to the narrative but also pacing in handling Gojo's fight sequence, making the anime adaptation of Jujutsu Kaisen develop its potential in the process. While still finding Gojo as an archetype due to the overpowered he is portrayed as, the reviewer still found him enjoyable personality-wise.^[50]

The Mary Sue found Gojo's characterization in Jujutsu Kaisen 0 identical to the main series as a result of how he trains the students but still found the pilot helped to further explore his past as a result of his tragic relationship with Geto.^[51] Crunchyroll listed Gojo's higher screen time in the animated film adaptation of the manga, citing him as a fan favorite character people would appreciate to see.^[52] The character's connection with the late Sugawara no Michizane was kept vague that might generate a future impact in the series by critics especially when Yuta Okkotsu reappears in Jujutsu Kaisen and wonders about their relationship to Suguwara.^[51][53] Otaquest also noted the similarities as well as how important is the relationship between Gojo and Geto which ends in a way that surprised the main series' readers.^[54] Manga News looked forward to more focus about the relationship between Gojo and Geto.^[55] The eventual exploration of Gojo and Geto's youth in the second season of the anime received the praise by IGN for their dynamic though the site found the former's powers too complicated to explain and that Geto appeared to be more important to see in such arc.^[56] Gojo's character has been popular in social focus. Following the anime adaptation of the flashbacks to Geto and Gojo's youth, Polygon's Ana Diaz noticed there were several fans who made dōjinshi stories with them which went viral.^[57]

The twist of the manga chapter involving Gojo's death led to manga artist Kenjiro Hata go on a hiatus from writing the manga Fly Me to the Moon due to the need of recovering from the "shocking" event.^[58] According to IGN, Akutami received death threats over the death of Gojo which came across as a shocking event to several manga readers.^[59] In September 2023, leaks of the manga's 236th chapter caused a major controversy online within the community. Contents of the chapter surprised fans to the point they took to social media to react to the new development. At time of publication, the "#GojoSatoru" hashtag was trending on X with more than 11,400 posts.^[60] Comic Book Resources had mixed opinions about Gojo's death, praising the event for the major impact it resulted in the entire narrative since nearly most of the surviving characters watching his death were his students but still felt like Akutami was trying too hard to make Jujutsu Kaisen a dark series by killing several characters in the Shinjuku arc.^[61][62] Gojo's death despite his confidence when confronting Sukuna and Kenjaku became famous in social media due to the ironic result.^[63] Once the series ended, GameRant praised both Gojo and Yuta's characters as the writer noted they overshadowed Yuji, the actual main character of the series.^[64]

Gojo has often been compared to Killua Zoldyck from Hunter × Hunter based on physical and personality similarities. When Mariya Ise was cast to portray the younger Gojo in a flashback from the anime's second season, Hindustan Times said the "meme [came] to life" as Ise was known for voicing Killua and fans were "happy" with such casting.^[65]

Awards and nominations