Doesn't say what? Lightning translated it nearly 1 to 1 like both translations have. What's your point here then? That Yuki and Yuta are vastly different in every stat or they're relative and thus Maki's point of bringing up their special grade sorcerer status is directly used to imply relativity? Or is it that Maki is just saying it to say it without taking into account Yuta's abilities?
Doesn't matter. She knows, as they all already knew, beating Kenjaku regularly is impossible.
In Shinjuku none of them were worried about beating Kenjaku normally.
Their fear came from him jumping in while they were dealing with Sukuna or after they had barely squeaked a win from Sukuna and now had to deal with a fresh Kenjaku.
Even their plan of taking Kenny down was a side quest all things considered.
They couldn't send someone too weak or else they'd just die. But they couldn't send someone too important, who'd take too much time or take too much damage or else Sukuna would demolish everyone back in Shinjuku.
It's why the plan came down to sending Takaba who could distract Kenjaku, Yuta who could kill Kenjaku, Rika who could kill the spirits and Todo to reduce chances of failure as much as possible.
Ofc in the series circumstances are different from vs battles and that's why all of this prep would be utterly unnecessary.
And that's all that's needed. You're inferring they are different though, you'd need to show this otherwise the statement is totally meant for implying they're in the same ballpark of power, even if you think its not stats, but Yuki obviously has the greater ap.
I feel the narrator telling us no one but Gojo in the modern era surpasses Yuta in Jujutsu is enough.
My main point is not that Yuta is 50x stronger than Yuki but using their similar rank to judge them as sub-Kenjaku doesn't work because of how vast the special grade designation is and how match ups can differ as well.
That scan still proves relativity. Even if you don't believe they're relative in stats, which is just dumb, the special grade sorcerer status is about immeasurable power, that's what Yuki and Yuta are, and if you think that's what Maki is going off of, it still supports the general idea that beating Kenjaku regularly is impossible. Also they had the heavy hitters when Maki says beating him straightforward/conventionally wasn't gonna happen. Then there's MeiMei saying they gotta jump Kenjaku to beat him.
These are under assumptions that they'd have to deal with other things. Mei Mei and Kusakabe are completely out of their depth power-wise and they say as much. They are also worried that Sukuna has more tricks up his sleeves and Uraume is also on stand-by so even if they manage to take them down they'd still need to deal with Kenny on top of that which they cannot do but the heavy hitters may be able to. With less chance of success if they're injured from Sukuna.
I don't get your point ngl, the manga shows us both times Kenjaku fights, it needs to be several people involved with work arounds around direct confrontation, they have to weaken him, and they needed him to reveal his gravity or let his guard down.
It doesn't "need" to be anything. The same way Sukuna could've won by fighting a different way or Gojo could've won by being more on-guard or JJH could've won easier with better planning.
We're looking at the participants in the fight and not the circumstances. JJH wanted to take care of Kenny as quickly as possible with no casualties.
Yuki could've fought Kenny blind but Choso wanted to give her more info so he went first. Yuki could've used her domain but Tengen wanted to disable Kenny's so she used SD and suffered for it instead. Yuta or Maki could've been sent to fight him alone but it would'nt've been easy which they wanted to avoid.