[Updated] Is Nobara Back? Is She Really Alive In JJK?

Nobara Kukisagi is a very beloved character by Jujutsu Kaisen fans because of her funny and badass attitude. She is also a character with a plethora of potential for character development. Her back story has also piqued all of ours curiosity.

However, during the Shibuya Incident arc, catastrophe struck Nobara – a potential death.

Nobara has not made an appearance in the JJK manga (except for a couple of flashbacks) for over a hundred chapters. It makes our belief stronger that something untoward has taken place – most possibly her death.

But then there is also a lot of ambiguity surrounding it.

Is Nobara dead or alive in JJK?

Well, Nobara’s status had been kept ambiguous in Jujutsu Kaisen by Gege Akutami for over 100 chapters. However, chapter 267 has finally put the Nobara question to rest.

To answer in short, Nobara Kugisaki is alive and back. She returned in chapter 267 of JJK manga. Honestly, the amount of times I have changed this answer is too much. What a crazy ride it has been Nobarabros!

In the Shibuya Incident arc, Nobara was involved in a ferocious fight with Mahito’s double. She managed to injure the double during the fight by using her cursed technique.

This sent the double’s impact to the original Mahito, fighting Itadori Yuji elsewhere.

Mahito realized that Nobara figured out his double’s inability to use Idle Transfiguration. Both of them take a chance to escape and switch bodies for two reasons.

One, for Mahito to take advantage of Nobara being off-guard about his ability, and two, killing her in front of Yuji to crush his soul.

Yuji realized the danger too late, and Nobara ends up taking an attack on her face from Mahito. She reminisces about her past with Saori and her Tokyo Jujutsu Tech friends before falling prey to Mahito’s ability.

However, in chapter 127, Arata Nitta, a first year student at Kyoto High states that he has finished treating Nobara. And even though she did not have a pulse, nor she was breathing, he said that she was not hundred percent dead.

Nitta took her and retreated to give her more treatment because he felt there was still a chance to save her (since it hadn’t been too long since she received the wounds).

And it was because of this that many fans hoped for Nobara to come back. And all the copium was rewarded come chapter 267.

In the said chapter, Nobara makes a classy comeback with an eyepatch, before going to hit the last Sukuna’s finger using her Resonance.

While Gakuganji and Utahime note that Nobara has only been awake for a short while, we don’t get any extra details about how she was healed.

Nobara’s Resonance resulted in the damage passing on to Sukuna and consequently helping Itadori in the fight. She capped off her performance saying “Oppapi”, which was a throwback to how Itadori made a surprise entrance before the Kyoto Sister School event, after everyone assumed he was dead!

Honest opinion:

To be honest, Nobara’s return was a complete 180 from what I had been expecting.

I blame Akutami for keeping us in limbo for so long regarding Nobara’s death, and even more so for making us believe multiple times that the character wouldn’t be coming back!

The more I didn’t see any information about her, the less I believed in her chances of returning. So, even though the moment of Nobara’s return was full of hype, part of me feels that her character arc could have been handled better.

I mean, there were multiple hints, and even the author’s words suggested that Nobara might be dead.

I wish we had been given more clues and foreshadowing about her status. In hindsight, there are readers who are using this panel from JJK 222 as Akutami possibly suggesting was Nobara was on recovery road.

Nobara’s death was ‘hinted’ for a long time:

As I mentioned before, Akutami played a cruel jape with the readers whenever it came to Nobara’s status. Every new mention we got about her seemed to make everyone a little less hopeful about her return.

The hopes of seeing Nobara again in Jujutsu Kaisen first dwindled after chapter 144 came along.

In this chapter, Itadori reluctantly touched upon the difficult topic of Nobara’s condition. Megumi and his conversation poured cold water over our expectations of seeing Nobara anytime soon.

Now, Megumi’s silence could have suggested anything, but it was the way Itadori reacted which made me feel that Nobara was in a state of no return.

Fast forward to chapter 210, we have Itadori mentioning that he felt Hana Kurusu was taking Nobara’s place in their group.

This once again felt like a subtle hint to fans that Akutami probably had no real reason to bring Nobara back.

Additionally, in the Q&A booklet that was handed down during the Jujutsu Kaisen Exhibition at Shibuya in 2024, Akutami clearly stated that he had already planned on departing both Nanami and Nobara at the Shibuya Incident arc.

This comment from the author also made readers (including me) think that she was truly dead and that she won’t be coming back in the manga.

To add to it, in chapter 265, we see Itadori talking about the his understanding of what makes someone’s life valuable. And during this monologue, Nobara is shown alongside the characters who have been confirmed to be dead – include Gojo, Nanami and Choso.

This appearance all but sealed the fate of the character for a lot of fans. This was the day a lot of people defaulted from their copium intakes.

However, true Nobara fans pulled through all of it (I know I gave up a couple of chapters ago), and they have been rewarded for their faith!!

Nobara’s narrative potential was not fulfilled:

Nobara is a well-liked character by the fandom. Akutami sure is ruthless about killing characters, but sometimes there is a rhyme and reason.

Akutami mostly kills characters (at least prominent ones) only when their narrative potential is exhausted, like Nanami.

His death contributed to the building up of Mahito’s character as a villain and breaking Yuji’s resolve (initially atleast). But Nobara’s death would not have added up to anything significant.

It made a waste of her narrative potential and rich backstory, and there is a feeling that Akutami could have done much better than that.

Add to that the fact that we haven’t seen her entire character development yet. She still had to reunite with Saori and Fumi.

There were hopes that that we will see Nobara come through in the Culling Game. But since that didn’t happen, the theories moved to Nobara appearing in the fight against Sukuna and using her resonance to deal some serious damage to the king of curses.

These theories only intensified when it was revealed that Gojo had hidden away one of Sukuna’s fingers.

Fans were hoping to see Nobara, someone who takes pride in her appearance, come back with a scar on her beautiful face, or with an eyepatch. And now Akutami seems to have granted these wishes.

In the end, all the theories surrounding Nobara returning in a badass manner seems to have fallen flat following JJK chapter 265 come true after JJK 267.

One can still keep up the copium by arguing that Nobara appearing there is just Yuji’s POV and that her death is still not confirmed. But, we feel that it’s time to let go of her now! Let her rest in peace!

What are your thoughts on Nobara’s death? return? Drop them in the comments below!!