Summary
The following contains spoilers for the second season of JUJUTSU KAISEN, available onCrunchyroll.
As seen in plenty of other shōnen anime and manga,JUJUTSU KAISENhas a few characters with names that are a play on an aspect that is central to their personalities or their character. One such character is Nobara Kugisaki, the Jujutsu Sorcerer who literally puts the last nail in the coffin for her enemies, and even gave the copy Mahito a hard time prior to thegut-wrenching events that took placein episodes 43 and 44.
In various ways, Nobara’s use of hammer and nail as part of her cursed technique is one aspect of her personality that is so important, it is the very basis of her name. Here’s how “Kugisaki Nobara” is an interesting play on words that reflects the character’s personality and abilities.
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Nobara’s cursed technique is one where she can apply her cursed energy to a hammer and a set of nails, and use those imbued weapons in various ways. In addition to melee combat, Nobara’s true power is the use of straw dolls in tandem with the aforementioned to create powerful attacks that resonate with what is done to the dolls. The ability is based on the concept of voodoo dolls, in which one can inflict physical or spiritual harm upon a foreign object or doll that transfers said harm to a certain target. She can also use the severed body parts of her enemies as conduits of the ability, inflicting high amounts of damage. Through creating a link between herself and the opponent, Nobara is able to use “resonance” to inflict critical damage.
Her mostpowerful signature technique is Hairpin, where she turns the nails into explosives that rend and tear through her enemies. The name Kugisaki Nobara is written 釘崎野薔薇, with the last name being “Kugisaki” 釘崎, which is a rather straightforward pun. The “kugi-” in Kugisaki translates to “nail”, while the “-saki” is seen in many last names, and refers to a cape (on the coast); a peninsula, or promontory. This is interestingly the same “-saki” seen in the name ofBLEACHprotagonist Ichigo Kurosaki. Together, Kugisaki could be understood as “tip of the nail”, which makes sense given Nobara’s preferred choice of weapon.
A Rose By Any Other Name Would Still Spell Out Nobara
Nobara’s first name is interesting because it only gets referred to in a way that only those who have already picked apart the name pun would get. For one, the “-bara” in Nobara is the Japanese word for rose; however, the second kanji used to write this word streamlines the meaning down to the exact type. Rosa multiflora, the Japanese rose. The first syllable of Nobara’s name gives an even more interesting bit of context. The “No-” in Nobara is written 野, and this character is used to denote a field or plain, but when applied as a prefix (the way that it has been in the case of Nobara’s name), the character takes on the meaning of “wild”. This character is also the “ya-” sound in “yasai”, the Japanese word for “vegetable” and the origin of the word"Saiyan" in theDragon Ballfranchise.
Essentially, “Nobara” translates to “wild Japanese rose”, which fits Nobara on various levels, but the most obvious is the characterization of Nobara as someone who is “rough around the edges”. Her name is meant to reflect femininity, and follows a well-established trend of floral names for girls, but also the toughness and literal spikiness of her personality. This imagery of thorns or prickly things also builds upon the vision of nails invoked by her last name. On another level, during the latter stages of the first season ofJUJUTSU KAISENin her doubles fight against Choso’s brothers Eso and Kechizu, Nobara inflicted her cursed technique upon herself to counter the Cursed Womb: Death Paintings' blood technique and injure her opponents along with herself, causing a string of rose-like markings to appear on her face, neck and arm.
Nobara’s Thorny Nature is Teased in Her Name
Another aspect that reflects the rosy element of Nobara’s name is the fact that the nails imbued with her cursed energy can also have poison qualities, as seen during the Eso and Kechizu fight. A well-known fact about roses is that their thorns cause quite a notable amount of pain and discomfort to anyone unlucky enough to get pricked, but beyond this, they are generally harmless. Despite this, there’s a misconception that rose thorns are poisonous, and that is due to the incidence of a skin infection that commonly affects gardeners, nursery workers, and farmers who find themselves getting pricked on a regular basis. Sporotrichosis is an infection caused by a fungus calledSporothrix schenckiithat can be found on moss, twigs, or rose thorns.
When mold spores are forced into the skin through cuts, scrapes, and prickles, the resulting infection can take months to develop, and when it does, it first presents as a bump on the skin. In 60% of cases, the mold can spread along the body’s lymph nodes, causing new bumps and ulcers to form along a line on the infected appendage – just like how the rose markings appeared on one side of Nobara’s bodyduring the Eso and Kechizu fight. Ominously, the same side of Nobara’s face became the site of Mahito’s Idle Transfiguration. Nobara’s technique reflected the ability of rose thorns to inflict this kind of “poison damage”, as the markings that spread across her body were an indication of the toxicity of her technique. On various levels, the name “Kugisaki Nobara” has reflected the wild, tough but ultimately beautiful character ofJUJUTSU KAISEN’s tritagonist, while also bearing reference to her signature techniques and combat style. The apparent last moments of Nobara Kugisaki weren’t totally for naught, as she managed to deal a heavy blow on the unsuspecting Mahito’s soul, showing the curse that not even he can grab a rose without getting pricked by a few thorns.
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