Suguru Geto, the once compassionate and law abiding sorcerer, suddenly gets thrown into a pit of despair following the assassination of Riko Amanai. While his descent into madness was a slow process (took over a year), there are two standout incidents which clearly represent a shift in his outlook.
The first one being the murder of everyone at the unnamed village where Geto went to exercise a cursed spirit, and second was him killing his parents.
By understanding what drove Geto to commit these heinous crimes, we better come to understand his thought process and the reason he decided to walk down a path of evil.
So without further ado, let’s get to breaking down some motives here.
Why did Suguru Geto kill everyone in the village?
In September of 2007, Suguru Geto, now a third year student at Jujutsu High, was sent to investigate the unnatural kidnappings and deaths that took place in an unnamed village.
Over the course of his assignment, Suguru exorcized the cursed spirit which was behind the mishaps in the village. Despite that, he came upon two kids who were imprisoned and harassed by the very same villagers.
Since these two kids possessed cursed energy and could ‘see’ things, they were held responsible for whatever unexplained incidents took place over there. Despite Suguru’s objection, the villagers refused to believe the contrary.
The kids, later introduced to be Hanako and Mimiko, were ostracized simply for having possessed something which was beyond the understanding of the common folk.
This injustice being meted out to the two kids was the final nail in the coffin for Geto, who once wished to be the champion of the non-sorcerers. This is where he donned the mask of a person with darker albeit broken ideals and proceeded to kill all the 112 residents of the village.
Why? Because what he saw there helped him resolve a moral conflict he had been dragging him down for a long time.
To be or not to be:
It’s safe to say that Suguru Geto was in a dilemma ever since Riko was assassinated in front of his eyes. His moral compass had been tilted by what he witnessed.
Read More: Why did Toji kill Riko Amanai? Nope, it was not just for money!
From that moment on, Geto was unsure as to why exactly he was required to protect the non-sorcerers. All the cursed spirits he exorcized, all missions he carried out, all of it was meant to make the life of non-sorcerers better. Because in the end, that’s what sorcerers did.
Geto had a hard time choosing whether he should hate the ugly side of these perceived weak in the society, or whether he should feign nonchalance and continue being a jujutsu sorcerer.
In his conversation with Yuki Tsukumo in chapter 77, he puts forth this moral dilemma.
We could say that Geto was undecided even at that point. We could argue that all his feelings of hatred for the non-sorcerers were just boiling under the hood. However, the events that followed made it seem like the entire universe was conspiring against him (or maybe it was just Gege Akutami).
The first incident to happen after this was Haibara’s death and it sent Geto down a path from which turning back was all too hard.
The young unassuming sorcerer met his end while carrying out a mission. And as I mentioned before, missions carried out by jujutsu sorcerers = helping the non-sorcerers.
The thoughts that welled up in Geto’s head danced to an all too familiar tune – was saving the weak, who clearly had an ugly side to them, worth the sacrifice? If he continued being a jujutsu sorcerer, would it end in him seeing all those close to him dead, just like Haibara.
Let’s be honest here, Riko’s assassination left a scar on both Gojo and Geto. In the latter’s case, it probably instilled in him a fear of losing the ones who were close to him and ones he chose to protect. Read Gojo and Riko
Haibara’s death only accentuated this particular fear.
Would Geto rather protect the non-sorcerers, of whom he was not sure about, or the sorcerers who were close to him? For him, the visible divide between monkeys and sorcerers only kept widening.
Though Geto had toyed around with the notion of killing all non-sorcerers during his conversation with Yuki, his conviction was steeled after he found out the imprisoned girls at the village.
It was a moment that completely broke him.
To answer in short, Suguru Geto killed everyone at the village because their harassment of the two innocent kids (with cursed energy) made him come to the conclusion of getting the world rid of non-sorcerers.
There was only so much his already distorted outlook could handle.
While Geto did turn into a curse user at that moment. There is still an important question that begs to be answered. Why did he kill his parents in that process?
Why did Geto kill his parents?
Utter bewilderment and disagreement is a sentiment that is commonly voiced by the Jujutsu Kaisen fandom when it comes to the matter of Suguru committing patricide.
While him killing everyone at the village is an act that is sympathized by the fans to a certain extent, his decision to kill his parents on the other hand is often questioned heavily.
This bias stems from the fact that the villagers were portrayed in a questionable light, but the same cannot be said for his parents. Geto did not come from a sorcerer background. Meaning his parents were ordinary humans, who supported and cared for him, despite the fact that he was different. This behavior was very much unlike the monkeys that Geto had come to hate.
Even so, he went ahead and committed a heinous crime. To understand why he did it, we need to take a better look at his new ideals.
A newfound conviction:
As I mentioned above, the incident at the unnamed village helped steel Suguru’s conviction about achieving a newfound ideal. And what was this newfound ideal? A world without non-sorcerers.
If there is one thing that was common in Geto before and after turning evil, it has to be his righteousness and his high moral ground.
When he decided to create a world without non-sorcerers, he went about it without any bias. In his eyes that meant killing his non-sorcerer parents too, even if they hadn’t done anything wrong.
The new world Geto envisioned had no place for non-sorcerers in it. If he decided to make an exception for his parents, then it wouldn’t be morally just.
Even though he had decided to walk down a darker path, Geto still strove to be fair in his ideals.
When we first saw him in Hidden Inventory, he was someone who was against killing the non-sorcerers without any reason. And now that he had a reason, and that too a strong one, he did not hold back, not even if the people in front of him were his parents.
Read More: Where does Hidden Inventory fit into the main Jujutsu Kaisen timeline?
Killing his parents could also be seen as Geto reinforcing his ideals onto himself. By killing his parents first, he made sure that there was no way he could go back on his decision. This was his way of self validation, the same way killing Riko and going up against Gojo was for Toji.
TLDR; Geto killed his parents because they were non-sorcerers, and they did not fit into the new world which he envisioned. He did not want to make an exception by allowing them to live.
Righteous in evil!
What do you make of Geto’s actions and his motives behind them? Do you think there was anything more to it than what I explained here? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or you can reach out to me on Tumblr/Reddit!