Jujutsu Kaisen: Here’s What Transfigured Humans Are & How They Are Created!
There are many strange things seen and heard in Jujutsu Kaisen, as fans of the series will know. The series is known for its dark tone and bizarre imagery, which is embodied in some strange and complex processes that happen in the series or to the characters in the series. One such concept is the concept of Transfigured Humans, which is directly related to Mahito and his powers, and in this article, we will explain it to you.
Transfigured Humans result from Idle Transfiguration, which is Mahito’s Innate Technique. Mahito’s technique can modify (reshape) the soul of anyone with whom Mahito comes into contact, including Mahito himself. Thanks to this, he can directly touch a person’s soul and modify it, and based on the idea that the body is the reflection of the soul if the soul itself is modified, so is the body. Mahito has a lot of possibilities with this technique, but he usually morphs the soul into something grotesque and bizarre, which then creates a monstrosity on the outside as well, and this monstrosity is known as a Transfigured Human.
The rest of this article will thus focus on Mahito’s Innate Technique, Idle Transfiguration. It will explain what it is, how it works, and how it relates to the concept of Transfigured Humans. We will provide you with numerous details about these powers and relevant plot-related details that will explain how exactly this works and how powerful it is. Transfigured Humans are an important part of the series’ lore, and in this article, you will find out everything you need to fully understand the concept. Of course, some spoilers from the series might be present, so be careful how you approach the article in question.
What are Transfigured Humans in Jujutsu Kaisen? They are the result of Mahito’s Idle Transfiguration
Transfigured Humans have been seen and mentioned on more than one occasion in the series, as they are a concept that is present from (basically) the very beginning of the series. They have initially been described as monstrosities due to their grotesque appearance, but once the whole concept was better understood, they have been given the name Transfigured Humans, or Kaizō Ningen (改造人間) in Japanese. In this article, we will give you a detailed overview of the concept as a whole and how it all works.
The concept of Transfigured Humans is based on the connection between the body and the soul. Namely, the general idea is that the body is directly related to one’s soul, i.e., that the body is, in fact, a reflection of one’s soul. If your soul is pure, your body will reflect that, but if your soul is corrupted, this will also be reflected in a person’s outward appearance.
So, this actually means, based on this theory, that if one can tamper with the soul in any way, they could also change the appearance of the body. This could be done to improve one’s body and completely disfigure it. And this is where Transfigured Humans come in.
Namely, Transfigured Humans are the result of someone tampering with their souls. Although we have seen countless examples as well, in most cases, the tampering was executed so that the people were changed into grotesque monstrosities, making them look completely hideous and unrecognizable. Their appearance is changed almost completely (although the transfiguration can be partial as well), and they are completely unrecognizable after going through the process.
So, how is this even done? This is where Mahito, one of the series’ main villains, comes in. Namely, Mahito is, as we all know, a pretty morbid and vile villain, and we have seen his ability to alter his enemies and transform them into hideous monstrosities. This ability is called Idle Transfiguration and is Mahito’s Innate Technique.
Namely, with this technique, Mahito can directly influence the soul of his targets by simply touching them. When he touches them, he can touch their soul as well, making him an exceptionally dangerous opponent, even though Idle Transfiguration has limits when it comes to certain types of opponents. But that is not the topic here.
What is important here is that Mahito can use his technique to directly reshape the soul. He can do it to his own soul, which is why he can quickly heal his wounds and even completely reshape his body (and that is why he is so difficult to kill, as you have to literally destroy his soul if you want to do it), but also the souls of others.
The process can be done to improve one’s condition, as he has done with Junpei in the beginning and with Mechamaru, whom he completely healed, but is – in most cases – done to create the monstrosities known as Transfigured Human. Although technically, everyone changed by this technique is a Transfigured Human, the term is generally used only to describe the dehumanized monstrosities created by Mahito.
Transfigured Humans seem to have some degree of consciousness but are not wholly self-aware and cannot be described as proper living beings. They are more like a mindless mass of something and behave like that. They rarely have any powers at all and just exist without any proper purpose, really.
They cannot really communicate or do much, and from what we can understand, they seem to be suffering very much while in this state, as the process itself completely shatters and reshapes their souls, which is, we can imagine, quite painful.
On top of that, all Transfigured Humans will eventually die, as the process is fatal. It is probably because the very core of the Transfigured Humans is changed to such a degree that it is incompatible with what we perceive as life, so these creations simply die after a while. However, they usually end up being killed (exorcised) by the jujutsu sorcerers before that.
The most dangerous thing about this is that the process is irreversible; namely, even Mahito, who is the only one who can apply this power (okay, now it’s Kenjaku since he has consumed Mahito and taken his powers, but you get the point) cannot reverse the process, so once a target is affected by Idle Transfiguration and becomes a Transfigured Human, regardless of the degree, they cannot be reverted back to their previous state, even by Mahito, which is why Idle Transfiguration is one of the most dangerous powers in the whole series.
This is also why Nobara’s fate is unknown at the moment, as she has a very special defense system against Mahito’s technique and has only been partially affected by it. However, due to the volatile effects of Idle Transfiguration, we still don’t know what will happen to her.
