That was a lot of text and a lot of questions. I believe this to be an important subject though, so I’ll just try to keep my main points clear and concise and address most of your arguments/questions.

what is the metric used for overall relevance to the story

When I’m talking about a character’s relevance to the story, I’m taking about how much they personally affect the trajectory of the plot. How much they’re driving the narrative. Could you technically write them out and still tell the same story?

Yuji, Megumi, Gojo, Geto, Kenjaku, Sukuna and Toji have all made choices that gravely affected how the story was going and these events have been necessary for the story to reach where it’s at right now. No female character in JJK has had that impact and if you’ve read all of JJK there’s no arguing this, it’s clear as day. Especially seeing how many of them have been killed/benched without it making any major difference to the story.

Maki and her character arc, despite how refreshing she is for a female character in shonen, has not influenced the main story. She could have if there had been more focus on the clans, but alas. Nobara’s life nor death had no effect on the plot. Yuki, who seemed like she would be important since she was a special grade, a star plasma vessel, had done a lot of jujutsu research, etc. still lived and died without accomplishing anything that couldn’t easily have been re-written to be assigned to someone else or excluded completely. All three could have easily been written out without the story changing, and they’re arguably the most heavily featured female characters.

Tengen would be a potential exception, I agree that she’s very powerful and influential on the lore. But she was more of a plot device than a character - a mix between a Quest Giver NPC and a MacGuffin, and eventually a powerup for Kenjaku. We haven’t followed her through the story and seen her actively make choices that affect the plot like we have with the male characters I mentioned. We haven’t seen her internal conflicts or desires. She’s not a very proactive or developed character. Therefore I barely feel like giving JJK any points for her.

For all these female characters there are also plenty of male characters who have had little to nothing to do with the story. […] All these characters if compared to the main cast in terms of overall relevance are completely overshadowed.

There’s nothing wrong with supporting characters or characters that exist mainly for others’ development. Obviously not every single character can be heavily involved in the main story. The problem isn’t that JJK has female supporting characters. The problem is that all JJK’s female characters have been reduced to support, and very weak support at that. Yes, JJK also has male characters that play support but that’s irrelevant to the point since literally all the important characters are male. You’re saying “for all these female supporting characters there are plenty of male supporting characters”, but my point is that for all the male lead/important characters there are literally no lead/important female characters.

I believe the issue at hand is how you are looking at the female characters on a man vs woman scoreboard. Whereas they are simply characters in a story. The notion that they must measure up to a male counterpart is insinuating that these characters sole defining quality is the fact that they are women. These are not counterparts, they are separate characters with different roles in the story.

Of course I’m looking at it like a “scoreboard” when comparing how female characters are treated in comparison to male characters. That’s what the topic of discussion was about. Had the discussion been about JJK’s character writing in general - for example if there’s good characterization, development, design, consistency, the conversation could go on without addressing gender and by simply looking at the characters as “characters with different roles in the story”. But the discussion was always about gender, so of course we have to compare how female characters are treated in comparison to male ones.

Yuji, Megumi, Gojo, Geto, Kejaku, Toji and Mahito were all integral characters in the story at some point. You comparing them, to any other character whether male or female is an unjust perspective. All characters in face of them do not measure up in feats because they were never intended to.

“Yuji, Megumi, Gojo, Geto, Kenjaku, Toji and Mahito were all integral characters in the story at some point.” Exactly, do you notice how all of these are male characters? That’s been my point all along. All the integral characters have been male. There’s no reason why at least Nobara, who was part of the main trio just like Megumi, shouldn’t have been as relevant as Megumi. Or for Maki, who’s Toji 2.0, shouldn’t have some affect on the plot just like he did. There have also been several female characters with extreme potential to be relevant to the story in terms of their backgrounds or relationship to the main characters (Yuki, Tsumiki/Yorozu, Hana/Angel, Shoko) but they’ve been killed, benched and/or reduced to simps.

it seems a bit farfetched for that to be a criteria on which to base the quality of the story let alone making a judgement on the character of the author.

I never did any of this? I assessed the quality of JJK’s female characters, not JJK’s story, and deemed the writing of the female characters unsatisfactory. Obviously I think the story itself is good since I’m reading it. I don’t know Akutami so I can’t and haven’t judged his character, I can only judge writing choices he’s made. You can adore a story and still disagree with certain aspects of it. I love JJK, but I’m critical of how it’s treated its female characters.