How Strong Is Yuta Okkotsu? Jujutsu Kaisen’s Second-Strongest Sorcerer Explained

Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3, Episode 59 (“Sendai Colony”), as well as manga events from the Culling Game and Shinjuku Showdown arcs that have not yet been adapted in the anime. Read at your own discretion.

Dhruv Lakdawalla once conquered the entire Japanese archipelago single-handedly during the Civil War of Wa. He was an ancient sorcerer who had incarnated twice across generations, and in the Sendai Colony of the Culling Game, his shikigami technique had locked the area into a four-way deadlock so oppressive that even a special grade cursed spirit chose to go dormant rather than challenge him. Dhruv had amassed 91 points by November 12, 2018—more than almost any other player in the game. His two types of independent shikigami established what amounted to an impenetrable domain around his position, patrolling the colony in orbits that could identify and neutralize threats before they even got close. Then Yuta Okkotsu walked into his territory, and the fight was over before it started. In the manga (Chapter 173), the scene simply cuts away and cuts back to Dhruv’s body slumped against a wall. No prolonged exchange. No desperate counterattack. In the anime’s Episode 58 end-credits stinger, viewers catch a flash of Yuta’s blade descending—and then it’s done. The strongest pillar of Sendai’s deadlock was removed in what amounted to a single decisive stroke.

Dhruv’s death woke something worse. Kurourushi, a special grade cockroach cursed spirit that had been lying dormant specifically because Dhruv’s shikigami made it an unfavorable matchup, stirred from its sleep starving and furious. This was no ordinary cursed spirit. Kurourushi commanded swarms of flesh-eating cockroaches that could strip a civilian to bone in seconds, wielded a weapon called the Festering Life Sword, and was intelligent enough to have reproduced through parthenogenesis as an insurance policy in case it was exorcised. Uro herself, one of the deadlock’s elite players, considered it a particularly nasty opponent. Yuta fought it across a river and through the stadium where he had been sheltering civilians, trying the entire time to conceal his true abilities from Ryu and Uro, who were watching from vantage points. The finishing blow was as pragmatic as it was revolting: Yuta bit the cursed spirit’s face, then drove a blast of positive energy directly into its brain through the wound. Reversed cursed technique, delivered mouth-to-mouth. Ryu Ishigori, who had been observing from a rooftop, called it disgusting. He also acknowledged it was the most efficient possible method of killing a cursed spirit.

Then the real fight began. Takako Uro—a Heian-era assassin who once served as captain of the Fujiwara Clan’s Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad—ambushed Yuta from behind the moment Kurourushi was exorcised, commenting casually on his use of reversed cursed technique, one of the very abilities he had been trying to hide. Her cursed technique, Sky Manipulation, allowed her to treat empty space as a tangible surface, warping incoming attacks away from her body and shattering the air itself with a move called Thin Ice Breaker. Ryu Ishigori, a 400-year-old reincarnated sorcerer whose cursed energy output was the highest ever recorded in the Culling Game, opened fire from a rooftop with his signature Granite Blast—a beam of raw cursed energy launched from the cannon-shaped hole in his pompadour. What followed was the most intense three-way battle of the Culling Game arc, a fight that pushed Yuta to reveal abilities he had been carefully hiding, culminating in all three fighters expanding their domains simultaneously. By the end of Episode 59 (“Sendai Colony”), Yuta had defeated every one of them and earned 190 points. The question fans had been asking since the JJK 0 movie finally had a definitive answer: Yuta Okkotsu is not simply strong. He may be the most versatile sorcerer alive.

Every element of Yuta’s power traces back to a childhood tragedy. Rika Orimoto was his closest friend, a bright and affectionate girl who gave him her late mother’s wedding ring as a promise that they would marry someday. When Rika was hit by a car and killed in front of him at age eleven, Yuta’s grief was so overwhelming that he unconsciously cursed her death, binding her soul to him as an immensely powerful vengeful cursed spirit. For six years, the curse haunted him. Rika was fiercely overprotective, attacking anyone who got too close to Yuta, isolating him from classmates and making normal human connection impossible. The jujutsu higher-ups considered her such a grave threat that they doubted whether even Gojo Satoru could contain her. A fully manifested Rika was monstrous in form—grotesque, towering, and bearing no resemblance to the girl she once was—yet loyal to Yuta in a disturbingly affectionate way, responding to his emotions and acting on his behalf even when he did not ask. What makes this origin extraordinary is the revelation at the end of JJK 0 that it was Yuta, not Rika, who created the curse. As Gojo explained, Yuta is a descendant of Michizane Sugawara, one of the most powerful jujutsu sorcerers in history, and his innate cursed energy was so vast that his unconscious rejection of Rika’s death produced a special grade vengeful spirit of near-boundless power. Suguru Geto, who collected over four thousand cursed spirits in his lifetime, risked everything to steal Rika for himself—because he believed she was, without question, the undisputed Queen of Curses.

During his first year at Tokyo Jujutsu High under Gojo’s mentorship, Yuta learned to channel Rika’s immense energy, training relentlessly with a katana to focus his cursed output. In the climactic battle of JJK 0, Yuta offered his own life in exchange for full access to Rika’s power, then used it to defeat Geto and overpower every cursed spirit in his arsenal. That act of devotion unraveled the curse on Rika’s soul, allowing her to pass on to the afterlife. But the story didn’t end there. Rika Orimoto’s spirit bequeathed the last vestiges of her will to the cursed energy she left behind, and a new entity—still called Rika—remained with Yuta as a manifestation of her love and protection. This second Rika is no longer a vengeful spirit tethered to Orimoto’s soul, but she retains an identical skillset, an immense reservoir of cursed energy that exceeds even Gojo’s, and the ability to act independently when Yuta is in danger. Yuta activates her full manifestation by wearing the ring Rika gave him as a child, and once activated, he has exactly five minutes to access his full power before the connection expires. Those five minutes are all he needs.

The ability that makes Yuta genuinely terrifying is his innate cursed technique: Copy. This technique allows Yuta to replicate another sorcerer’s innate technique after Rika consumes part of that person’s body. The conditions are proportional—a stronger technique demands a more vital body part, though Yuta can circumvent this requirement by placing a binding vow that limits the number of times he can use the copied ability. Once consumed, the technique is stored inside Rika as an external stockpile, ready to be deployed whenever Yuta needs it. The copied technique’s effects also persist even after Yuta switches to a different technique. When he paralyzed Sukuna with Cursed Speech and then immediately switched to Sky Manipulation to hit him with Thin Ice Breaker, Sukuna remained frozen through both attacks—a devastating chain that few other sorcerers in the series could replicate.

The catch is significant. Yuta cannot access any of his copied techniques unless Rika is fully manifested or he is inside his own Domain Expansion, Authentic Mutual Love—a field of cross-like structures littered with countless katanas, each one capable of activating a different copied technique, encircled by ropes tied together in a pattern symbolic of love. A copied cursed technique also serves as the sure-hit effect of his domain. Inside it, Yuta can wield any katana and activate any copied technique without restrictions. Outside of it, the five-minute manifestation limit is a hard ceiling. Additionally, if a target whose body part Rika consumed can use reversed cursed technique and regenerates the consumed area, the copy condition is nullified and Yuta loses access to that technique. His own cursed energy output can also limit a copied technique’s effectiveness—his version of Sukuna’s Cleave, for instance, could only inflict minor cuts on the King of Curses, whereas the original could bisect opponents reinforced with immense cursed energy.

What Episode 59 demonstrated so brilliantly was how Yuta chains his copied techniques together in real time. He had already copied Toge Inumaki’s Cursed Speech during his first year at Jujutsu High through methods that remain unclear, and he used it through a megaphone summoned by Rika to freeze Uro in place mid-battle. While she was paralyzed, he struck her with Dhruv Lakdawalla’s shikigami-orbit technique—a move Uro never expected, since she assumed Yuta was simply a Cursed Speech user with shikigami abilities. Later, after Kurourushi severed Uro’s arm during the chaos following their triple domain clash, Rika consumed the severed limb, and Yuta gained access to Sky Manipulation. He then used Uro’s own Thin Ice Breaker against Ryu Ishigori and redirected Ryu’s Granite Blast straight back down at him—the finishing blow that ended the Sendai Colony battle. The psychological dimension of Copy is something Yuta himself considers its true strength: because opponents focus on the techniques he has supposedly “stolen,” they become less wary of the techniques’ original users, creating openings that Yuta and his allies can exploit.

Yuta vs. Gojo: Two Special Grades, Two Kinds of Power

The comparison between Yuta Okkotsu and Satoru Gojo is one the series itself invites. In JJK Season 3, Episode 2, Yuta disclosed to Yuji Itadori that his cursed energy reserves are greater than Gojo’s (Game Rant). This is not a throwaway boast. Multiple characters throughout the series acknowledge that Yuta possesses a nearly bottomless pool of cursed energy inherited through his bloodline as a descendant of Michizane Sugawara. Gojo himself speculated that Yuta may have been born from an even more blessed lineage than his own. With Rika acting as an external reservoir that can replenish Yuta’s already immense reserves in moments, his raw volume of cursed energy is functionally unmatched among living sorcerers.

And yet Gojo remains the stronger combatant—and the distinction is instructive. Gojo’s advantage is not volume but efficiency. His Six Eyes, a hereditary ocular jujutsu ability, allows him to use cursed energy with such microscopic precision that he effectively never runs out. Where Yuta must burn through enormous quantities of energy to fuel his techniques and maintain Rika’s manifestation within a five-minute window, Gojo’s Limitless technique runs perpetually with almost zero drain. The Infinity—Gojo’s passive defensive barrier that slows incoming objects to a standstill—operates continuously without conscious effort. Yuta has no equivalent for that kind of passive invincibility. In terms of combat versatility, however, Yuta arguably holds the edge. Gojo’s Limitless is devastatingly powerful but ultimately a single cursed technique with several applications: Cursed Technique Lapse (Blue), Cursed Technique Reversal (Red), and the combination of both in Hollow Purple. Yuta’s Copy, by contrast, gives him access to an ever-expanding library of abilities. During the Shinjuku Showdown arc, Yuta wielded Cursed Speech, Sky Manipulation, Dhruv’s shikigami technique, Sukuna’s Cleave, and even Kenjaku’s brain-transplanting technique in a single extended campaign.

Their roles in the story reflect this difference. Gojo is the immovable pillar—a sorcerer so overwhelmingly dominant that the entire jujutsu world’s power balance collapses when he is sealed. His strength is singular, absolute, and isolating; Gojo himself admitted that being the strongest means standing alone. Yuta is the adaptable successor—someone who lacks Gojo’s absolute defensive invincibility but compensates with tactical flexibility, the ability to absorb his enemies’ strengths, and a willingness to make monstrous choices when the situation demands it. Where Gojo’s power separates him from others, Yuta’s power is built on his connections to them. Gojo told Yuta he could someday defend the Earth in his absence. The Sendai Colony proved Gojo was not exaggerating.

Beyond Copy, Yuta possesses one of the rarest abilities in jujutsu sorcery: the Reversed Cursed Technique. Most sorcerers can only channel negative cursed energy. Reversed cursed technique works by multiplying negative energy against itself to produce positive energy—a process so complex that most practitioners can only heal themselves, and even that is considered exceptional. Yuta learned to use it in less than a year of studying jujutsu, an achievement made possible by Rika’s tremendous levels of cursed energy lowering the threshold for him to master the process. To put that timeline in perspective, Gojo only awakened reversed cursed technique after being driven to the brink of death by Toji Fushiguro during his second year. Yuta first used it to heal Maki Zenin, Toge Inumaki, and Panda simultaneously after they were injured by Geto—a feat that stunned even Geto himself, who remarked that a sorcerer this new should not be capable of such a thing.

What sets Yuta apart is not just that he can use reversed cursed technique, but that he can output positive energy externally and apply it to others. This is vanishingly rare. In the entire series, only Yuta, Shoko Ieiri, and Sukuna are confirmed to share this ability—Gojo cannot do it. Yuta used this capability to fake Yuji Itadori’s execution by stopping his heart with a fatal stab and then instantaneously healing him with reversed cursed technique the moment his heart stopped. He healed Naoya Zenin’s poison in exchange for cooperation. And in the Sendai Colony, he weaponized positive energy offensively, driving it into Kurourushi’s brain to destroy a body made entirely of negative cursed energy from the inside out. During the three-way battle against Uro and Ishigori, the stamina cost of repeatedly healing himself nearly depleted him entirely—a moment that forced him to fully manifest Rika and reveal his hidden arsenal of copied techniques to the enemies who had been watching him all along.

The Shinjuku Showdown: Yuta’s Monstrous Choice

In the manga’s final arc, the Shinjuku Showdown, Yuta’s role escalated beyond anything the Sendai Colony hinted at. After Gojo fell to Sukuna in their cataclysmic battle—cut clean in half by the King of Curses after an exhausting domain clash—the sorcerers had to cycle through waves of fighters: Higuruma, who stripped Sukuna of his cursed technique using Deadly Sentencing; Yuji, who struck at the boundary between Sukuna and Megumi’s souls; Choso, Maki, and Kashimo, each inflicting damage, each falling short of a decisive blow. Yuta entered the fight alongside Yuji and deployed his Domain Expansion, Authentic Mutual Love, against Sukuna. Inside his domain, he wielded katanas loaded with copied techniques, striking Sukuna with Thin Ice Breaker and using a copied version of Sukuna’s own Cleave against its original user (CBR)—one of the few characters in the entire series to pull that off. He gained access to Cleave after Rika consumed Sukuna’s final cursed finger.

But Sukuna was Sukuna. His world-cutting slash carved Yuta nearly in half, leaving him fatally wounded and seemingly dead. What followed was the most controversial and brilliant tactical decision of the entire arc. Before the Shinjuku Showdown began, Yuta had formulated a contingency plan with his allies. After killing Kenjaku at Lake Gosho Colony—a kill set up when the comedian Takaba distracted Kenjaku’s attention from Yuta’s overwhelming cursed energy—he had Rika consume Kenjaku’s body, copying the ancient curse user’s brain-transplanting technique. The plan was simple in concept and horrifying in execution: if Gojo fell and Yuta was still alive, he would transfer his own brain into Gojo’s preserved corpse and fight Sukuna using Gojo’s body (ComicBook.com). Shoko Ieiri had already sutured the body in preparation. When Sukuna’s slash left Yuta dying, the contingency was activated. Yuta’s brain was surgically transferred into Gojo’s body, and he used a reversed cursed technique to repair the corpse from the inside.

Yuta-in-Gojo’s-body returned to the battlefield wielding Limitless, firing Hollow Purple at Sukuna and even expanding Gojo’s domain. But the copy only lasted five minutes, and Yuta lacked Gojo’s Six Eyes and decades of mastery—meaning his use of Limitless was powerful but imprecise, unable to match the original. When the timer expired, Yuta collapsed. Yet he survived. Rika, acting independently to protect him as she always had, kept his bisected original body alive through sustained reversed cursed technique during the entire transplant window. When Yuta’s cursed technique recovered from burnout, he reconnected with Rika and returned to his own body (CBR: Yuta’s Cursed Techniques Explained). The stitched scar circling his forehead became a permanent reminder of what he was willing to do.

Yuta told Gojo, before the battle, that his teacher did not have to be a monster alone. When some of his allies opposed the body-swap plan due to Yuta’s importance to future operations, he grew frustrated with their refusal to use every available tactic against Sukuna. He argued that they were being inconsiderate of Gojo’s constant burden of having to be the “monster” who shouldered the jujutsu world’s safety alone, and declared that he would become a monster himself in order to win. That willingness to sacrifice his own humanity—to inhabit a dead man’s body, to fight with borrowed power on a five-minute clock, to risk his soul crumbling for the chance at one more round against the King of Curses—is what separates Yuta from every other sorcerer in the series. His power is enormous. But the thing that makes him Gojo’s true successor is not his cursed energy or his technique. It is his refusal to let anyone else carry the burden alone.

The manga’s epilogue confirms it. By 2035, Yuta had become head of the Gojo Clan—a fitting inheritance for the man who literally wore Gojo’s body into battle. He married Maki Zenin, and together they raised a family. Their grandchildren, Tsurugi and Yuka Okkotsu, inherited the ring that once summoned the Queen of Curses, now kept as a treasure of the Gojo Clan. Both Yuta and Maki lived to old age, passing away by 2080, in a world that existed because they had fought for it. In the end, the boy who was too afraid to connect with other people became the man who inherited the legacy of the strongest and built a family on the foundation of the love that cursed him. Every power Yuta possesses—Copy, Rika, his boundless cursed energy, his willingness to become a monster so others do not have to—originates from the same source: the people he refuses to let go. That is why he is second only to Gojo. And in some ways, it is why he surpasses him.