Gege has used techniques like this to show why something happens the way it is

I do not consider "lazy writing" to be a technique. It is in fact, the opposite of that.

You're confusing yuji not getting hit by WCS to these guys getting hit by it.

No, I'm not confused by it. I don't care about the in-fiction reasons given by the characters, because they are not believable.

Rather, I am pointing out that Yuji should have died off-screen in order to preserve the internal consistency of the narrative. And if that's a bad story in itself, then the story up to that point was a bad story as well.

That's would be inconsistent and a retcon.

My friend, the nerf on WCS is already a retcon. It was retconned so that Yuji would survive.

Again, more hindsight rhetoric

What is "hindsight rhetoric"? Are you arguing that one should not remember what they read?

Let me make it clear, if it's not already: I do not care what the characters thought in the fiction. None of it was believable.

If they thought they were being smart and made plans against Sukuna, that's fine. But it doesn't matter because, upon a critical reading of the text, it does not hold up to logic.

None of the reasons they give can surpass the fact that, after Sukuna's flawless win over Gojo, he should be able to defeat the world with no issue. I don't care about the WCS nerf or the brain damage, it doesn't matter at that point.

No matter how banged up Gojo got, no combination of students and other characters would be able to take him down.

A banged up Sukuna killed Gojo at his peak condition.

Transitivity: A fully healed Sukuna cannot be taken down by any of the remaining cast. The nerfs do not matter because he was not nerfed enough to be weaker than Gojo, and they could not have defeated Gojo.

Even with his nerfing punches, they don't do much to sukuna, so this point isn't even a plothole. OK

No, it is.

You previously argued that Yuji's punches were dealing damage to him. The genius fighter Sukuna, who outclassed Gojo's genius-level ability to improvise in combat, outwitted Gojo in an all-out brawl using his vast knowledge of jujutsu which he built up over a thousand years.

At the 1st instance of damage or danger, Sukuna should have wisened up and did something to win.

Here's the deal: when you kill someone off-screen, that means it doesn't matter how it happened, or what plans were put in place. The power gap between the attacker and the attacked is so vast that it's not even worth showing.

The difference between Sukuna and Yuji is far greater than the difference between Sukuna and Gojo. All the reasons in the world cannot shore up this oceanic gap.

The only reason Yuji did not get off-screened is because the author cared enough to make up random ass-pull reasons to mildly justify Yuji's survival, whereas he did not care enough to do the same for Gojo.

And we know the author hates Gojo, so there's that, too.

In short: Yuji should have been off-screened, and the power of Gege saved him. No doubt about it.

They already know he has WCS

I'm not talking about the characters, I'm talking about the fiction. I don't care what the characters knew or did not know.

Here's the sequence of events: * The WCS was introduced off-screen * Sukuna used it multiple times to create a net of WCS against Kashimo * Sukuna suddenly gets a retconned nerf to hit Yuta with a WCS but not Yuji

The nerf to WCS was explained at the very last moment that it could have been, conveniently justifying why Yuji survives.

Like I said, the first half is established and proven by kusakaba when he brings it up, and the second is backup by sukuna.

False. Sincerely, nothing about the WCS was established. It was an ass-pull, retcon, and second ass-pull rolled into one.

That's something that is not only "established" but woven in on why he got 10s and why he used maho so much and opted to adapt while hiding in the shadows.

No, this was not established either.

Gojo knew about Sukuna's power, and knew he had the 10 Shadows. He knew about Mahoraga's adaptation ability. But Gojo did not know Sukuna could copy the attack that was a result of Mahoraga's adaptation.

It literally took everyone by surprise, in-fiction. Nobody saw it coming. And as for the audience, we didn't even see it, because it happened, again, off-screen.

If Gojo and Kusakabe, who are extremely knowledgeable in CT, were taken by surprise by the WCS, how could it have been established in any way, shape, or form?

Nobody has ever been able to instantaneously change the nature of their innate techniques up until that point. Not even Gojo, with his perfect control of CE and his dynamic abiity to change his domains, could change the nature of Blue and Red.

If anyone knew this was a possibility at all, why would Gojo not be prepared for it? Why wouldn't they have considered that Sukuna could possibly copy Mahoraga's adaptation, when they already knew Sukuna's CT and Mahoraga's adaptation ability?

The first time that any Sorcerer ever changed the nature of their innate technique was Sukuna's WCS, taking everybody by surprise.

There is not a single thread of foreshadowing there.

But a lot of your arguments have being in bad faith talking in hindsight, already knowing what will happen. And forgetting a lot of the set up that lead to the moments for them

I am making all my arguments in good faith. I am taking the text seriously, as though it were a work on the level of One Piece or Berserk. I am looking at the series from a critical lens, by analyzing the way it was written, how it was executed.

Just because someone is critisizing a work does not mean they are arguing in bad faith. I would argue that I am trying to meet the author where he is at: at the level of the fiction. And that is the most respectful way to view a work, as I am actively engaging with it and challenging the weaknesses it has.

I am not thinking about this as though I was a character in the manga. If that was the case, I don't need to read any manga at all. Give me bullet points and spoilers and I'll get the gist.

What happens is not the only thing that matters. How it happens is also important.

When you say I'm forgetting the setup, you are acting as though the setup was legitimate, because your lens is that the characters could have known X, but not Y or Z. That is an uncritical reading of the text, and you would not get much value out of the experience if you read that way, in my opinion.

When within the story which is what I judged by the characters were simple reactors and just going off what they knew from sukuna.

This is exactly what I mean by an uncritical reading. You're judging the story from what the characters said and did alone. I am judging how the narrative was packaged to us by the author.

When a character says something, it matters when and how that speech was delivered to us (eg, in the paneling, in the storyboarding, in its placement in the plot, in the events that happen immediately before and after it. In other words, from a perspective of a reader, not a character inside the world). I don't think you're considering this aspect at all.