Profile at a glance

  • Full name: Okkotsu Yuta (乙骨 憂太)
  • Birthday: March 7
  • Height: over 170 cm
  • Grade: Special-grade sorcerer; second-year, Tokyo Jujutsu High
  • Japanese voice: Megumi Ogata
  • Bound to: Rika Orimoto (the Queen of Curses, his childhood friend)

Who Yuta is

The protagonist of the prequel film Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and the senior of the Tokyo first-years, Yuta is a soft-spoken, self-effacing high-schooler who spent the early part of his adolescence haunted — literally — by the ghost of his childhood friend Rika Orimoto. When Rika was killed in a traffic accident in front of him, his uncontrolled cursed energy bound her spirit to him as a special-grade curse, turning what was supposed to be a childhood promise (“when we grow up we'll get married”) into a supernatural contract that almost destroyed his entire middle school.

Gojo took Yuta in at Tokyo Jujutsu High in order to keep him away from execution, and the film is the story of Yuta learning that being loved and being cursed are sometimes the same word. By the time he reappears in the main series, he is one of the four strongest sorcerers alive and, quietly, the person most likely to inherit Gojo's seat in the hierarchy after Shibuya.

Rika and the Copy technique

Yuta's combat kit is built around two interlocking ideas:

  • Rika, the Queen of Curses. The manifested form of Rika's soul is a skeletal, crowned giantess that can absorb attacks, swallow enemies whole, and lend Yuta overwhelming physical reach. She is not a shikigami and she is not a puppet — she is, and remains, a person Yuta refuses to dismiss as a technique. The climax of Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is less about defeating the antagonist than about Yuta and Rika finally choosing to let each other go, on terms that are not ejection or exorcism but mutual permission.
  • Copy. A secondary technique that lets Yuta temporarily borrow another sorcerer's cursed technique by making physical contact and exchanging cursed energy. Combined with his enormous raw cursed-energy pool, it makes him one of the most versatile fighters in the series — he can fight opponents who rely on their own signature technique by wearing that technique back at them.

His combat approach is also notable for how much it leans on simple swordplay. Yuta fights with a katana as his primary weapon, and the series uses the sword to underline how fundamentally he is an ordinary boy reinforced by an extraordinary relationship, rather than a prodigy who was born special.

The Culling Game: Sendai and the four-way

In the Culling Game, Yuta is assigned to the Sendai colony and ends up in a four-way free-for-all against three of the period-displaced sorcerers sealed in the game — Ryu Ishigori, Kurourushi, and Uraume. (Reader experiences vary by adaptation; the colony is the key point.) The arc is remembered less for its technical choreography and more for what it proves about Yuta: he is not just Gojo's spare. He is capable of functioning as a field commander, making triage decisions on the fly, and holding the line for classmates who need time to recover. The 2026 audience survey had him at third place in the character popularity ranking, behind only Yuji and Panda, in large part because of how Culling Game Yuta reads on screen.

Pilgrimage: walking where Yuta walked

Izumi-Chuo Station and Sendai City Museum (Miyagi)

The Sendai colony arc is staged around the real Nanboku Line, and Izumi-Chuo Station — the northern terminus — is the anchor. Since late 2025, designed manhole covers around Izumi-Chuo feature Yuta, Rika, Ryu Ishigori, and Kurourushi, and a walking loop connects them in a single afternoon. Sendai City Museum sits within walking distance and is the closest real-world analogue to several background plates in the arc.

Oonogame, Sado Island (Niigata)

The Culling Game anime's ending sequence is set against Oonogame, a massive freestanding rock on the northwestern coast of Sado Island. It was chosen because the landscape reads as “standing on the edge of an older world,” which is the emotional register Yuta occupies in the series. Sado is reachable by ferry from Niigata Port and is one of the least touristed pilgrimage destinations in this entire guide.

Why Yuta still matters

Yuta is the character the series uses to argue that the premise — love is the most twisted curse in existence — does not automatically mean love is bad. It means love is heavy, and choosing to carry a heavy thing is the most adult act the series allows any of its characters. When Yuta tells his enemies “excuse you, it's true love,” the joke lands because he means it. Visiting the Sendai Nanboku Line is the closest thing the franchise offers to standing in the place where a boy decided love was worth the cost, and kept going.