Jujutsu Kaisen: Nobara Kugisaki’s Cursed Technique And Abilities Explained!

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 saw two major deaths. One was Nanami Kento and the other is our beloved tomboy, Nobara Kugisaki. Both lost their lives at the hands of Mahito, but that doesn’t mean they died in vain.

Nanami was able to die without regrets, as confirmed in Chapter 236, and Nobara accepted her fate with the conviction that her life wasn’t so bad after all.

This behavior stems from their strong warrior-like spirit, which in turn is based on their cursed technique and other abilities.

We’ve already explored Nanami’s, now it’s time for our beloved tomboy, Nobara.

Straw Doll Technique

Her cursed technique is a traditional one, based on the Japanese mythology of wara ningyo rituals, taught to her by her grandmother, but she herself is not even a bit ancient; rather, she considers herself quite modern.

Basically, Nobara injects cursed energy into the toolset, which includes a hammer, nails, and the signature straw doll, and uses these tools to attack her opponent. Nails are conduits for her cursed energy, which she may direct however she pleases. Since it’s her innate cursed technique, she can use it in both offensive and defensive maneuvers.

The user uses a hammer to strike the nails, which then launch themselves forward, like projectiles, towards the target. Thanks to the cursed energy, the nails float in midair, making it easy to hit them where they’re meant to.

If the nails land on their victim, they can unleash a barrage of harm from the cursed energy coursing through them.

Nobara combines this technique with two other abilities: Resonance and Hairpin, which I will explain in a bit.

In her fight with Kyoto Jujutsu High Momo Nishimiya, she resorted to distracting her opponent by destroying the environment around her by inserting 3 nails onto nearby trees and using Resonance to make them explode.

Then she grabs a hair of Momo’s broomstick and attaches it to a straw doll. That doll sort of becomes like a voodoo doll, enabling Nobara to completely nullify Momo’s innate technique by using Resonance on her broom. This resulted in Momo completely losing control of her broom, making it easier for Nobara to attack.

(Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 41)

Resonance

Resonance is Nobara’s hallmark move and her go-to attack for exorcising weak curses. She uses it to keep curses from fleeing because she can exorcise them no matter where they are as long as it is tied to her straw doll.

By using resonance to inflict injury on more vital portions of the opponent’s body, the user can establish a link using one section of their target’s body. If you want to penetrate the heart of a curse, you can do things like put its severed arm on the straw doll and hit it with a nail using a hammer.

This maneuver proved very useful to wear off her poison and in turn, inflict damage on Choso’s brothers, Eso and Kechizu. Their Rot technique activated once their blood was into Nobara. But that proved to be their own undoing, as their blood was connected to Nobara’s, which was exactly what her technique required.

After repeatedly stunning both brothers with Resonance, Eso was finally compelled to disable her Decay method, proving that it was the ideal countermove for her.

(Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 61)

Resonance can not only affect objects but souls as well, and that proved extremely useful in her fight against Mahito in the Shibuya arc.

She could directly target Mahito’s soul by attacking his body with Resonance, so she activated her technique by driving a nail into Mahito’s forehead.

As a result, a cascade of spikes erupted from Mahito’s chest as the influence of Resonance’s activation spread to his full body. Thus, Yuji was unable to engage Mahito’s main body in battle. Afterwards, the harm dealt to Mahito’s main body was transmitted to his twin, leaving them both in a state of acute pain.

(Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 123)

Along with Resonance, Nobara typically uses another technique called Hairpin, so we’re going to go over next.

Hairpin

Hairpin is an extension of the Straw Doll technique, wherein she injects cursed energy into nails and tosses them around her opponent. Although the arrangement seems to be random, Nobara carefully places them in order to inflict the highest amount of damage on her opponent.

This is done with the snap of her fingers, sending a message to the huge amount of cursed energy flowing through the nails. thereby creating huge explosions.

Nobara activated this form of the technique against Eso, but a better version was used against Mahito, wherein the nails were placed even more precisely than before.

(Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 123)

With this, along with Resonance, Nobara was able to immobilize Mahito and his double.

(Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 123)

All these three techniques, according to Nanami, can be enhanced further after using Black Flash, because the user enters a zone of adrenaline rush, similar to what athletes experience.

Black Flash

When cursed energy is delivered within 0.000001 seconds of a physical hit, it causes a space distortion known as Black Flash. When a sorcerer achieves this, their cursed energy glows black, and their destructive power is comparable to a normal hit to the power of 2.5.

Nobara unleashed Black Flash, along with Yuji, for the first time on Kechizu, bringing the curse to a near-death state.

Final Thoughts

Nobara Kugisaki is one of Jujutsu Kaisen’s beloved characters, so much so that some fans wanted to quit watching the series after her death. Unfortunately, all that damage she inflicted on Mahito wasn’t enough to kill him, as his deadly rivalry came back to kill her.

But is she really dead, though?

Not exactly. Todo did say that she isn’t completely out of the picture, and there’s a very very tiny chance they could save her.

Nobara’s cursed technique is a total hax; making it the final key in bringing down Sukuna. Where, She will be the one to create an opportunity for Yuji to finally give Sukuna a taste of left-right goodnight!

Now you might be wondering how exactly this will happen? Well, that’s because her ability can actually harm the soul!

This was foreshadowed in her fight against Mahito in chapter 125, heavily injuring him with this broken ability, even forcing Mahito to admit that aside from Yuji, she was also his day one!

But the biggest foreshadowing to this was in chapter 222, where Sukuna said that his last finger was hidden by Satoru fricking Gojo himself!

THIS FINGER will be the downfall of Sukuna with the help of Nobara, together with Yuji AND MEGUMI!

Everything will come full circle with these three characters, where Gege has depicted his favorite theme of loneliness throughout this series and each of them has their own answers on how to live with it.