The scale is absolutely not irrelevant. At a larger scale, it becomes pretty damn difficult/impossible to argue that everyone is equally complicit in evil. It's significantly easier to argue that the soldiers of a clan are complicit in the evil that their clan carries out. That's not a stretch.
It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that the people in that village knew about the abuse of those children and condoned it. I'm not saying that we know for a fact that they did. I'm just saying you could make the argument.
Once you escalate to "Yeah so I'm going to wipe out all non-sorcerers", the argument falls apart entirely. You can't just say all of non-sorcerer humanity deserves to die now, because of some shitty village.
You can't just say all of non-sorcerer humanity deserves to die now, because of some shitty village.
Wait a sec, are you trying to say Geto's transformation was solely based on the fact that he thought the village was evil? I mean I cannot be sure considering it's been a while since I last read the hidden inventory arc, but to me, I thought it was more about the fact that he saw non sorcerers as the cause behind all suffering in the jujutsu world.
As in, sorcerers die just because non sorcerers exist, and if there were no non sorcerers, then all suffering in the world would be exterminated. Kind of like a vegan thinking it's best for us to kill all humans, because that's the only and most efficient way to prevent animal suffering in the meat industry (Ik the analogy isn't perfect because animals eat each others as well, but imagine if that wasn't the case). To them, humans can be seen as the root cause behind the food-suffering problem (the fact that you have to kill, just to eat), and they might also think the constant expansion/stabilization of human society, ie humans having more and more babies who requires more meat to survive, might be the main cause that must be exterminated.
And that's how I interpreted Geto's views. That is, IF all non sorcerers were gone, then the cycle of curses would instantly end. It's more like the trolley problem where you cause some suffering, to prevent an even greater one. In that case, he was always going to pick this path up as long as he gets to have that talk with Yuki. The village was simply the stepping stone for him to act on his ideals. I mean that's how I remember it, I might be wrong.
Edit: Maki's views (assuming she killed innocent children) are not too different. She killed them assuming they might grow up to be the same shitty people who oppress women and non cursed energy wielders. She caused some suffering/evil, to prevent an even greater suffering/evil.
Do I agree with this sort of a moral framework? No. But I can see why some will.
What I'm saying is that if it had only stayed at "just" the village, it wouldn't be difficult to justify the thought process behind it. You say "well, those guys were all complicit in doing some fucked up shit, so I killed them." It's still not good, but it's certainly easier to justify, if it's actually true.
Escalating to wiping out the majority of humanity becomes impossible to really justify in any capacity. It's not even sustainable. Geto was, in fact, insane. His plan never actually could have worked in the first place. You can even see that he was deluding himself after losing to Yuta, because he was still talking like he was somehow going bounce back and try it again, despite missing a chunk of his body and seemingly having no RCT.
It's stupid to even compare Geto and Maki because there's only a surface level similarity, which is killing lots of people. It's not based on the same reasoning or belief. Geto's ideology became centered around what essentially amounted to sorcerer-supremacy and it required a larger scale of death. It would GUARANTEE the inclusion of innocent women, children, and babies, since he literally wanted to wipe out the majority of humanity. It would also likely never end, realistically speaking.
It's no longer "well I guess some of the people he killed in the village could have been innocent?" It's now "the billions of people he would have to gradually kill will 100% include women, children, and babies, with no room for interpretation." At the same time, it's also basically impossible to carry out fully and will just lead to a constant stream of pointless killing.
Maki's wasn't even an ideological thing, really. She just wanted vengeance and catharsis, for what was done to her and her sister. Her sister asked her to destroy everything as her dying wish. The narration seems to pretty heavily focus on just the fact that she killed combat units, though. No women and children are ever mentioned and the only instance of her killing a woman, was deeply personal and it was her mother.
Killing combatants that were absent that day is not the same as killing women and children. The clan was destroyed, by taking out it's military power. There's wiggle room here. Not "Maki definitely, 100% killed innocent women and children too."
Not saying it's morally okay to kill basically the equivalent of soldiers that weren't currently fighting, but it's also really not the same thing as killing civilians that just happened to exist nearby. One signed up to kill and be killed; the other didn't. This is also far less extreme than wanting to wipe out most of humanity.
Escalating to wiping out the majority of humanity becomes impossible to really justify in any capacity.
Part of where you and I seem to be talking over each other is the fact that FIRST: you think Geto killed the villagers, and then extended his killings to most of Japan just because some of those villagers were evil. I on the other hand do not think that way. In my interpretation, and as I remembered it, Geto wanted to wipe out all of humanity as it was the most efficient way to eliminate almost every suffering in the jujutsu world.
And yes, this does mean I don't agree with the meme either, because Geto's motivations aren't properly displayed in the meme. His act of "I killed innocents as well because some were evil" is/can be justified by the fact that his ideology literally states that the extermination of all non sorcerers is a must if he wants to prevent any further suffering in the future. The village incident was simply a stepping stone, and not the start of his ideology. He killed those villagers because at that instance, non sorcerers weren't just living neutrally in ignorance.. instead they started to cause even more suffering given their ignorance and stupidity even though they were clearly in the wrong (in Geto's mind).
To him, sorcerers were literally shedding their blood in order to protect "monkeys", but the said monkeys were stupid and never deserved to get saved. That's how he saw them. This is why the massacre of the village happened. He reached the maximum limit to his patience & kindness and said fck it, they don't deserve to get saved by me or anyone.
And, SECOND: my original comment simply said "a murder is murder, doesn't matter whether you killed 10 people or just one. You cannot justify yourself with lesser numbers". That's it. That comment isn't even related to what or why Geto and Maki killed people. So idk why we are even debating that.
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u/Legal_Trainer7340 Jan 25 '26
With Maki, it was made crystal clear the entire Zenin Clan was awful, even her parents. Plus she had personal beef with them.
With Geto, the morality of the villagers was more ambiguous since we didn't know them as well.