Jujutsu Kaisen: Who Is Sonoda-san & Why Did Geto Kill Him?

With the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen finally underway, we’ve had the chance to see Gojo’s Past Arc, which took us back to 2006, when Gojo and Geto were still students and showed us what they did, as well as what led to Geto becoming a villain. Now, this short arc has told us an interesting story, and we can agree with that, but it also introduced many interesting characters. Some of them had a bigger impact, while the others had a smaller one. In this article, we will talk about a character called Sonoda-san, who Geto killed during his takeover of the former Time Vessel Association. You will find out who Sonoda-san is and why Geto killed him.

Sonoda-san was, by all means, Shigeru Sonoda, the former leader of the Time Vessel Association, but this hasn’t been officially confirmed. Namely, after Geto took over the former Star Religious religious cult, he decided to talk to them and tell them his plan; after he did it, a lot of them objected to it, so Geto, with a smile on his face, called “Sonoda-san” to the stage and then killed him with a large daruma doll, making an example out of him. This makes sense, seeing how Sonoda was the group’s former leader, and killing him was, for Geto, a demonstration of power.

The rest of this article will focus on Sonoda-san and his fate in the Jujutsu Kaisen series. Sonoda-san was a secondary villain introduced to the series, and while he did not have a long-lasting impact, people still want to know about him, which is what inspired this article. His fate interests all fans, so we will reveal what happened to him in this article. This article will contain some spoilers from the Jujutsu Kaisen manga, so be careful how you approach it.

Sonoda-san was probably Shigeru Sonoda, the former leader of the Star Religious cult

Before revealing the facts you want to know, let us tell you what happened. Namely, After witnessing the crowd of cultists applauding Riko’s death, Suguru Geto had an existential crisis, questioning his ideology. Before, he thought that the jujutsu sorcerers existed to protect non-sorcerers, but seeing how vile and disgusting people could be, he began questioning whether people deserved such protection.

For a while, he pondered which way to go, but after witnessing two vile adults accusing two young girls of being monsters during one of his solo missions, Suguru Geto finally snapped and massacred the whole village, thus effectively becoming a villain.

Knowing that curses would effectively disappear in a world without non-sorcerers, which was revealed to him by Yuki, he changed drastically as a character and opted to be a villain. He decided to eliminate non-sorcerers, which made him a villain, as he was willing to sacrifice even innocent lives, even the lives of good non-sorcerers, to achieve his twisted goal.

One of his first moves was taking over the former Star Religious cult, which is ironic since they were responsible for Riko’s death, which, in turn, was a trigger for his villainous turn. The Star Religious cult, which was another name for the Time Vessel Association, was an organization of influential non-curse users in Jujutsu Kaisen; ironically, they worshipped Master Tengen as their supreme deity but had a completely different perception of Tengen’s role in the world. Only two members have been revealed – Shigeru Sonoda and Shiu Kong – and they have a much longer tradition than Q, a rival organization introduced simultaneously.

Their goal is to stop the resurrection of the immortal Master Tengen via the Star Plasma Vessel, who needs to merge with the immortal jujutsu sorcerer for him to come back to life. They were ultimately disbanded, although not completely eliminated.

So, after Riko’s death triggered his villainous turn, Suguru Geto decided to take over the group, and he gathered all the surviving members in their assembly hall. He then arrived, with a smile on his face, and declared to them that he would be taking over the organization and that he would also be changing its name, asking them nicely to follow him and his leadership.

This was abrupt, so you can understand how many gathered members objected to that. Geto acted surprised and then summoned Sonoda-san up to the stage, seemingly to say or demonstrate something. He then brutally killed him in front of everyone using a large daruma doll curse, which shocked everyone. He then reiterated his intention to take over the organization and, in a more serious tone, ordered everyone to follow him and not question anything.

He eventually reformed the group and pretended to be a benevolent monk who would cleanse people from curses, which is what we sad in Jujutsu Kaisen 0.

So, getting back to Sonoda-san, who was he? His face was seen only briefly as the daruma doll was crushing it, so we cannot really confirm that part precisely, but based on everything we know, it is most likely Shigeru Sonoda, the vile leader of the cult who ordered the death of Riko Amanai and who seemingly escaped at the end of the Gojo’s Past Arc.

We know that Sonoda was not apprehended and that the cult continued to exist in a smaller capacity, which means that Sonoda was alive when Geto became a villain.

Seeing how there is absolutely no other character in the series named Sonoda, and how it would be a big coincidence that Sonoda-san and Shigeru Sonoda are different people, we assume that Sonoda-san was; indeed, Shigeru Sonoda and his status as being deceased (on the official wikia) corroborates this thesis, so we assume that they are one and the same person.