I Hope I Made You Feel Something, Because You Made Me Feel Everything.

“I hope I made you feel something, because you made me feel everything.”

— Gemma Troy

maybe you weren’t the one for me but deep down I wanted you to be

On the note of sukuna inflicting insane amounts of violence onto those he finds interesting, I wanna bring up the parallel between gojo and sukuna with how in shibuya gojo in the 2v1 goes for hanami first and how many times he mentioned how unique her presence and technique is in chapters before that like he goes for her first bc he believes jogo to be weak (and maybe he expected more from hanami, having survived a hollow-purple from him before and all, but she doesn't respond or entertain him the way he wanted and just dies, also the glee with which he crushes her with his limitless like he expected her to overcome it somehow and the angry/irritated look he has after she's dead and he's left to fight choso and jogo)

I never thought about Hanami and Gojo's relationship that way, but looking closer there is definitely something going on. And I think it has everything to do with Toji.

Gojo both massively respects and fears Toji for getting past Infinity. He respects him enough to steal his fit and raise his kid free of Zenin nonsense, but he also fears being made that vulnerable again. So Gojo does this thing where he simultaneously looks for other Tojis while mercilessly destroying anything that resembles Toji. The go to example of this is:

The cursed tools capable of piercing Infinity have been personally dealt with by Gojo so another Toji incident won't happen again. It's a reasonable trauma response all things considered. What's unreasonable was his treatment of Miguel whose Cursed Technique (CT) mimics Toji. (Though it doesn't seem like it was ever activated in full during their fight.)

Despite part of that beatdown being racially motivated, Miguel's Black Rope did remind Gojo of Toji's Inverted Spear of Heaven, hence him getting rid of it. So while Gojo has enough respect for Miguel as a strong individual he can trust with training his students, there's that underlying fear from being too much like Toji. (Tbh Gojo being wary of his build is similar to how unnerved he was by Toji's physical prowess too.)

Now that we've established Gojo's weird relationship with Toji ghosts, back to Hanami. The first thing he notices about them is how good they are at hiding their presence and running away. Who else specializes in that kind of stealth? Toji.

So while Gojo is excited to have someone who might be his equal again, the fact that they're enemies has Gojo jumping straight to Hollow Purple to get rid of that treat. I don't think it's a coincidence the damage Hanami and Toji looks similar side by side.

And going to their fight in Shibuya, Gojo does something really weird to this curse that resembles Toji—he puts Limitless down. It was a bait tactic for sure, but it's almost like he is forcibly reliving his trauma. Toji first attacked when he turned Limitless off and from behind. And here Gojo turns it off again, and puts his back to the not-Toji.

But unlike with Toji, he senses when Hanami goes for him and turns around to torment and kill them. The cruelty with which he deals damage to Hanami exceeds even that of Jogo. It feels like he's using them as some kind of emotional punching bag where this time he kills the Toji before everything goes wrong.

I think his facial expressions being a more monstrous version of the ones he made while fighting Toji supports this theory as well. Gojo makes weird frog faces during the Sukuna fight, but they're just nowhere near this unhinged.

This could also be why he looks so upset after they're dead. Yes he killed the Toji, but now he doesn't have that rival. (Wow it's just like Sukuna being upset at the toys he broke.)