Jujutsu Kaisen 呪術廻戦

2020 fall | Episodes: 24 | Score: 8.6 (1801925)

Updated every Saturdays at 01:25 | Status: Finished Airing

Type: TV

Producers:Mainichi Broadcasting System | TOHO animation | Shueisha | dugout | Sumzap

Streaming: Crunchyroll | Animax Mongolia

Synopsis

Idly indulging in baseless paranormal activities with the Occult Club, high schooler Yuuji Itadori spends his days at either the clubroom or the hospital, where he visits his bedridden grandfather. However, this leisurely lifestyle soon takes a turn for the strange when he unknowingly encounters a cursed item. Triggering a chain of supernatural occurrences, Yuuji finds himself suddenly thrust into the world of Curses—dreadful beings formed from human malice and negativity—after swallowing the said item, revealed to be a finger belonging to the demon Sukuna Ryoumen, the King of Curses. Yuuji experiences first-hand the threat these Curses pose to society as he discovers his own newfound powers. Introduced to the Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School, he begins to walk down a path from which he cannot return—the path of a Jujutsu sorcerer. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

Voice Actors

Uchida, Yuuma

Nakamura, Yuuichi

Enoki, Junya

Seto, Asami

News

Reviews

joemaamah
08/19/2024, 06:29 AM
I never did get why the Hype Lemmings hurled themselves from the cliff over this mid garbage, I watched all the episodes, then came back a couple months later, intending to review it. Frankly, I couldn't remember a damned thing about the characters or the plot. Other than they were the accumulation of over 40 years of every shonen trope, and cliche, ever puked out by the industry. Nothing innovative or interesting, just move along please. Nothing to see here. The artwork wasn't annoying. The animation didn't strike me as exceptional in any way, but it had some moments. Nothing amazing going on with the VAs.There was nothing the director did other than to get this out the door on schedule. The sound track deserves no mention. It was mental pablum for the masses, and they lapped it up like pink champagne. This would be the epitome of mid, and get a 50/100 full failing E grade. It must have been powerful jutsu to get people to believe this had any kind of redeeming value at all.
Flint000
03/25/2024, 01:53 PM
I dont see what the fuzz is about this show. Average at best, cookie cutter shounen. Suffers from the same issue Kimetsu no Yaiba has, too much effort invested into animation and low effort into character design, world building, etc. The power system is barely explained upon and some of the powers come straight out of a toddlers mind. Nanami's "Ratio Technique" is idiotic. He can divide anything into "lengths" which are subdivided into a ratio of 7:3, at the separation point there will be a weak point. (?????) The length to be decided by Nanami has no limitations so essentialy he can place the weakpoint wherever, and at that point why have the hassle of having the ratio part added to it? Your abilities get buffed if you reveal them to your enemy? Nah, hot garbage power system
bentleys
03/22/2024, 08:25 AM
It was quite enjoyable to watch. The animations are enough to make me want to appreciate these action-packed moments; it's undeniably cool to watch. The universe is nice, albeit somewhat cliché, although that's not really a problem... ...Except when it's way too much, to the extent that you truly feel a lack of personality during certain episodes. The four main characters are exactly the same as Naruto. Speaking of characters, few are endearing; giving us 2 minutes of background (which are also clichéd to the extreme) isn't enough for me to appreciate their stories. Sukuna is probably the only slightly interesting one; otherwise, they're very flat.As for the story, it's overly simplistic and stops evolving halfway through the season. The subsequent episodes fall into a loop of endless and uninteresting fights. The comedic moments are enjoyable even if they're not always funny. The openings and endings are very well done. If you're a fanatic of this type of shonen anime, go for it. I'd still place it above your average shonen. Otherwise, move along; you won't miss much.
mbarseru
02/12/2024, 01:24 AM
Im sorry I just find this show to be very boring. I finished S1 and felt like the story so far was super forgettable, not to mention lacking in depth. None of the characters truly feel like deep individuals, and hence making their fights feel shallow and unreasonable. I feel like JJK is basically the power fantasies of a bunch of middle schoolers, imagining themselves as these ultra-cool, ultra-funny, and ultra-powerful beings. They are all cocky and arrogant because they are not yet adults and do not find the need to refine themselves into much deeper beings. They are aimless because all that they know isgoing to school, these people have no passion nor anything interesting about them as unique individuals, as neither do most middle schoolers. Watching this anime makes me get the feeling that people like this show purely because they enjoy that childhood fantasy. It is a distant feeling where we would imagine ourselves as these ultra-awesome heroes that are vanquishing evil and saving the world. I think people connect with this show as they too yearn to relive these moments of their life, back when college or high school wasn't dragging them down, and their imagination was able to do all the heavy lifting. Now, through the power of MAPPA sweat and blood, people are able to relive these moments while allowing the show do the heavy lifting, while letting these hollow characters take place as their imaginary set pieces of their perfect world. I feel like the perfect connecting point of this “theory” I guess you could call it, would be the fact that, there aren't any sexual themes in the show so far. While the show does discuss “oh man, which girls are hottest” I do feel like that sort of falls more into the middle schooler territory, where they call somebody hot or attractive but they themselves don't fully comprehend what exactly does that mean. I feel like while others yearn for their child like imaginative world view, I myself do not have this issue and more appreciate depth of character and interest of the individual. There is nothing wrong with liking JJK, I just myself find these shallow traits to be boring, no matter how beautiful. grug
UrOpinionsRGarb
09/01/2023, 07:30 AM
Literally the most overrated anime in the world... The first season was barely tolerable. It was essentially a complete Naruto rip-off with the main character who holds a demon inside of him, which in turn grants him great power. The key difference here is: Naruto is a character of depth who goes through great personal struggle and growth and that demon functions as an artistic metaphor as well as a functional plot device. Jiujutsu, on the other hand, was written by a child with crayons and just steals the most obvious elements from Naruto without paying attention to why it actually works. Yay crayons! Characters: Gojo is clearlya Kakashi ripoff, it's baffling to me how 100% of people do not call this out. His character is one-dimensional, like all the characters in Jiujutsu. He's the OP rebel... he wins all fights and says whatever he wants--he faces no struggles, ever. The series includes a Sasuke ripoff named Fushiguro. He is very strong and oh so cold. What an original foil to place against the series' Naruto ripoff: Itadori. Itadori is Naruto except worse in every way. Sakura in this series is manifested by the brash and very tsundere girl known as Kugisaki. She is relatively useless and purposeless, just like Sakura. Special mention! Inumaki, the character who uses "cursed words" (not curse words), which is a clear ripoff of the bug user Shino. They both have their mouths covered by their outfits, hardly speak, and appear only occasionally to do their very narrowly illustrated power. The plot: Is incomprehensible. There is no plot. They just kind of hang out, fight sometimes, see poorly drawn monsters sometimes, and the episode ends. Animation: Season 1 animation was sad, average. Season 2 animation is fantastic and essentially, I imagine, the writer was like "I can has Chainsaw Man animation, mappa?" And they were like... "I guess..." Still frames, backgrounds, character depictions are often gorgeous works of art. This is literally the only redeeming quality of this horrific horrific series. [end]
Gsarthotegga
05/27/2022, 05:15 PM
While I made it a habit to review most of the shows I watched sometime ago, this is a weekly show I kept up with and skipped reviewing until now... there's just not much substance. What is one to say about a shounen that hasn't already been said numerous times? Even the standout ones just reinvent the wheel at best. The "god tier" shounen tends to have incredible animation, and... yeah, that's it! There are a few patterns that regularly make the rounds in these kinds of shows, and JK is not immune to it. JK is one of the better ones as of latein terms of solid visuals, animation, and fight choreography. Clearly, the storyboarding is solid—the pacing is quick... um, you know, as long as our characters aren't wasting time playing baseball or waiting in line for autographs from idols. The silliness listed above is played up for laughs, and the serious-looking muscle man character is a softy who really simps out on women the whole show and gets into fights with other people over having different taste in women. It's not funny, and it's lame. I wish more shounen authors could figure out how difficult effective comedy can be and how much it detracts from an otherwise passable yarn. There's a good reason why people seek out comedy when they want comedy instead of a shounen. Comedy in shounens should probably be relegated mostly to quirks that don't act as filler or slow the plot down. Most shounen authors need to ditch the comedy. They're terrible at it. The filler problem so common in shounen shows, especially long ones, and most of them are long, is probably exacerbated by the popularity of the slice of life genre. They are rarely ever especially great art (keep in mind I'm not disparaging the whole genre—I think a few are very good, but the popularization of this style has led to some of the laziest trash shows out there)—they are essentially filler turned into a show. Yeah, why don't you eat the fat and throw away the steak or the banana peel and throw away the banana? I believe it's basically encouraged to pad a show with filler—it used to be that studios just didn't have time to meet deadlines otherwise, but isn't it becoming a bit of a style choice? Having a show be accessible is fine, but an author is only capable of so much, and the tendency of authors to cover all bases with drama, slice of life, comedy, action, romance, etc., leads to a disgusting stew that no one would want to eat unless they've been conditioned to do so. Those are some general problems with the genre, and JK partly suffers from much of what I've outlined. These authors rarely find the specific niche they're good at and commit to it, while casting aside what they aren't so great at communicating—presumably because popular series in the genre tend to have these elements, so the mangaka copies these tendencies slavishly. Like, does this show want to be a dark horror shounen or a goofy one? It flips between them. We can observe that the straight attempts at humor are terrible, so the latter is something we can assume is not the forte of the author—he's not able to pull it off like the author for Jojo or Hunter X Hunter or anything like that. I've seen some shows that balance these conflicting elements well, but this is not one of them. On the other hand, the show starts on a more serious note. The first episode begins with some very simple theming that's fine enough to establish our main character—who is a big dumb. Yes, that may not be proper grammar, but it is the best way to capture the essence of the character. He's just a block head who fights for his friends—the usual. Some themes are good to ground the show with a little bit of something to say. That's fine. Thematically, the most interesting segment was probably between the patchwork demon and the wannabe school shooter. I wouldn't say their discussions were all that novel, but it actually works into establishing themes and creating a perspective for the antagonists, and it's a step above most of the other blather between our braindead characters. The early segments are very dark and moody, with well-drawn disgusting creatures devouring people, dimly lit hallways, and what appears to be a gruesome demise for our main character. Soon, we learn more about demons and curses and all of the fun shounen elements of the show. The innate domains show a lot of potential, many of the abilities and styles for various characters are interesting, but others are just goofy. Among the main characters, you have a talking panda, a character who uses cursed phrases and all of what he says is humor because the only "safewords," are food items, etc. There's that same crossover of goofiness that destroys the mood. In an early episode the three mains are sent on a mission to a correctional facility, and this segment is so dark, it's almost reminiscent of Silent Hill. They get trapped in the innate domain of a demon, and the skin of the whole area becomes metallic, rusty, corroded, grimy, etc. It's a really heavy point of the series that is never topped. The characters are completely outclassed and struggling to survive. I've never seen so much tension in a shounen almost, and the atmosphere is very solid here. I would say this is an example of something the author is actually good at doing outside of the purely technical components of the work, so he should really look to this as a strength when trying to form a more coherent conceptual framework. There are many other fights that have tension, and some darker moody segments afterwards, but few and far between. The fights become slugfests similar to other shounen—perhaps with a bit more thought put into strategizing, and a decent repertoire of creative attacks. The peak of the series was at a very early point, then the author couldn't decide between one style or another, and went beyond his talent in trying to balance too many disparate styles. What we're left with is a show without a notable story—not that it needs one per se, but outside of mood pieces and character interactions, we're left with not much to look forward to other than fight after fight. The characters aren't the worst I've ever seen in shounen, but they're largely rather flat and simple characters. Sure, the fights are great, but there's not a huge incentive to watch 24 episodes of a show when you can just watch the fight scenes. The fight scenes are supposed to be supplemented by the characters, the themes, and the story, but the show is too shallow for these to act as an enhancement. That's basically a long-drawn out way of saying most shounen have formulaic tendencies, most authors in this genre lack artistic maturity and cannot figure out what to include and exclude to make an actual good work and not just some trash that appears in Shounen Jump, and they really need to study writing more or team up with a writer or something—all of which equally applies to this technically proficient yet hollow series.
Yangtze12
12/31/2021, 09:31 AM
Jujutsu Kaisen was, basically, the seasonal hyped shonen, in other words, top animation with a poor story unfortunately. Let's analyze the issues that this anime had and then it's positive aspects: ISSUES 1) Characters: Like in many fighting shonen a new "good" character appears, he/she meets with the main group, they became friends for the sake of it (because the script demands it) and, finally, most of them become irrelevant thanks to the power scale. The problems don't end here, their characterization is, also terrible. Most of them are plane characters with a lame motivations or they just follow the motivations of other people. For example, Sukunasaved Itadaki because he considered him interesting, like the first big asspull of Boku no Hero Academia, Itadaki with his one episode motivation after his grandfather's death (he didn't care or remembered list after that episode). I understand the anime, or at least this is what I think, tried to be a style over substance; nevertheless, putting plane characters and introduce new of them for fill the cast makes this anime a mindless spectacle. It's not impossible to be a style over substance having, at least, a decent characterization for your cast. We have Gurren Lagann, Jojo's and the manga of Akira. In those cases, you remember the show not only for the action choreographies but, also, for the charisma of several characters (like Kamina, Joseph Joestar and Tetsuo), this, also, helps with the inmersion to the anime in much less time. In order to avoid potential characterization, the anime set missions for the main cast. With this, the characters didn't have to be worried about anything else. I remember the show Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Here we got, also, different missions for the main cast every episode with the huge difference that the characters here had a character development with each passed mission thanks to the analysis post-missions. Here, they complete a mission and pass by. This was unfortunate because the anime had the potential to make a character development, but it was really conformist in this aspect. There are, also, contradictions or cognitive dissonance with some characters. For example, Nobara spoke, in many moments of the show, stuff like women can be strong too and can achieve the missions on their own, just to be saved for the male characters when she got in real trouble. Another character constantly criticized the woman taste of the other characters just to reveal, later, that he was saved by one. The few moments where the anime tried to had substance and characterization, it made things worse, like the allegories of the human hearts and the proper deaths. Now I understand why the writer limited itself with the characterization. Itadaki is treated as a potential martir because he wants to save people exchanging his own life, practically. We hope this doesn't end being a meme like the case of Code Geass. 2) Deaths: Anybody can die permanently in this show, however, this is not the case for our protagonist. Is not only the strong plot armor for him, also, it makes extremely predictable the possible outcome of the show. Like the case of Boku no Hero Academia, where since the 1st episode the anime told us clearly that the protagonist, in one way or another, will end defeating all the villains, here we have, indirectly, the same. 3) Power System: By far the worst and contradictory aspect of the show. They introduced a enemies power scale and, later, the protagonists defeated the stronger enemy of that scale without so much problems. And this is not the worst, there's no training or justification to increase the power of the cast, like wtf. We had fighting shonen like Dragon Ball, Naruto, HxH, among others where they included entire arcs to show the training of the main cast and their progress. I'm not saying that all of these arcs were, at the end, good or memorable, but, at least, the writers showed that they had a little care about the growing of the power and experience of their characters, at least there was an attempt unlike this anime. Sure, many people could say that the power depends on the cursed spirits the character poses, however, this directly would contradict the sorcerer grades introduced. How can I difference a sorcerer from another knowing that they don't have a proper training or a inexistent one? Natural talent I guess. 4) Fights: Despite being one of the strongest aspect of the show, it's still having his problems. The characters explain their powers and abilities in the middle of the fights. Is not only the fact that this is anticlimatic, also, the writer can introduce the ability or power that the character needs to defeat the turn's antagonist, fucking convenient. Also we have the classical last minute saves, overpowered good guys who helps our protagonists when they feel doing it (when the script needs it) and unfinished fights to keep alive the main cast. 5) Pacing: Like the case of several anime in the last years (not only fighting shonen), the anime presented a lot of concepts and information the first episode. After that, the pacing got slower until the anime arrived to the second half where the pacing was completely dreadful. POSITIVE ASPECTS - The animation is amazing and very fluent, the soundtrack is very enjoyable (the ending in particular is an absolute banger) and the fights looks spectacular if you ignore the substantial part of it. CONCLUSION Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Jujutsu Kaisen is not different than most of the generic fighting shonen that came out the last years. I don't find any merit of it beside the soundtrack, animation and part of it's action. For this reason, I have no choice but to give it a score of 4/10. It could have been definitely better; nevertheless, the fighting shonen writers have been really conformists with their stories during the last years.
Berm
07/11/2021, 11:17 PM
Welcome to Jujutsu Kaisen, an anime filled with great animation, horrendous characters, and an average shounen plot. Over the time the show aired, it gained massive attention and critical acclaim, rivaling even Demon Slayer in terms of commercial success. However, just like Demon Slayer, I see no reason to enjoy the show other than for its animation. In fact, many criticisms I have with the show are similar in line to criticisms that I had with Demon Slayer. Let’s start out with the thing that people have been talking about the most with the show. (Spoiler warning of course) “The animation in this series is incredible,” is whatI would like to say. However, the animation isn’t always as amazing as most people make it out to be. It still is amazing at certain parts, especially when it needs to be, but a lot of the time the animation is just above average. For many scenes which involve a lot of talking, the animation becomes very run-of-the-mill. These scenes have very little animation, usually only the characters moving very slightly. Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect all of the scenes to look that good, however, these scenes take up a majority of the show. People focus too much on small chunks of the show and completely ignore the bad elements. I must say though, when the animation hits, it REALLY hits. In almost every episode, there’s at least 1 scene of sakuga. The action scenes, regardless of the characters participating in them, the plot importance, or any other reason, look amazing. The number of different cursed techniques characters use in the show allows for the action to elevate to even greater levels. There’s tons of variety in the fight scenes. My personal favorite is the action scene in the final episode. The way the animation matches up with the music makes the scene that much more engaging. Seriously, that scene was like a flash of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre show. To touch on the openings (even though it doesn’t affect my score at all), the animation is some of the best I’ve seen. Even better than the show's high points, the animation is on another level. Now time for the thing keeping the series from being good, the characters. Almost all of the characters in the show, including the main trio, are insufferable. Yuji Itadori is just like a standard shounen protagonist in many ways. TvTropes defines the average shounen protagonist as “big hearted, energetic kid heroes, with a natural gift that blows others out of the water.” This definition fits Itadori down to a tee. Now the problem with his character is not the fact that he fits within this trope, it’s the fact that he leans heavily into the negative aspects of the trope. He seemed like a promising character at the beginning of the series. Although simple, his motivation with his grandfather and his whole “proper death” thing seemed like an interesting idea. The problem is, they did nothing to his character after the first 5 episodes. He becomes a completely stagnant character. He doesn’t have any meaningful interactions with other characters, we don’t get to explore his psych at all, and most importantly he doesn’t change. This is sort of a problem with most characters in the series, but we’ll get to that later. Basically after the first fourth of the anime he’s dedicated to 3 things: showing off how cool his powers are, making just plain awful or tone breaking jokes, or furthering the plot. Megumi and Nobara I have less to say about, since they’re also basically trope characters. Megumi is ‘Serious Guy’ and Nobara is “Mean Girl.’ They have some flashbacks in the earlier episodes that give their characters some background information, but, just like with Itadori, they serve no narrative purpose after the first 6 episodes. Gojo is also listed as a main character on this site, although I don’t see him as one. He’s easily the most interesting of the four, however that still does not make him a good character. His cheerful and laid back attitude despite the circumstances he’s in is interesting, but sometimes can be tone breaking. As for the side characters, they’re a little better. None of the other Jujutsu Tech students are anything special. They consist of another “Mean Girl” trope, a talking Panda, and a person who can only speak through onigiri flavors. They also get some small characterization but nothing ever comes from this. None of them serve any importance to the plot. One major problem I have with the characters is their quirkiness. Most characters seem to be very exaggerated with their personalities, making them seem unrealistic. Lots of characters are completely one dimensionally, and their entire character hinges on a single quirk that they have. The worst example of this has to be Toudou. His entire character is centered around the fact that he likes women who are tall and have a big ass. He is quite possibly one of my least favorite characters in anime ever. All he does is ask people what type of women they like and fights them if they don’t agree with him. In a comedy anime, his character could have been at least bearable. But in Jujutsu Kaisen, a show with lots of blood and death constantly happening, his character seems to be so out of place in the show. Every time he appears on screen I get whiplash from how at odds he is with the rest of the show. As for characters such as Nanami, Mahito, and Junpei, I actually like them! They’re the best characters in the show, and make the Vs Mahito Arc the best arc in the series by far. All of their motivations are great, they get lots of characterization for how little time they are on screen, and each one of them has an impact on the plot for the arc they’re in. The most asinine thing though is that they completely get shafted from the narrative after that arc. Junpei ends up dying, and there is not a single mention of him after the fact. When Itadori’s talking about what a proper death means right after Junpei dies he’s not even mentioned. Nanami completely disappears, never to be mentioned again, even after the slight connection he and Itadori made. Mahito is the only one to actually be mentioned or show up later in the series, but even then he says like two lines, and could have been swapped in for another character for when he appears. Basically, the character writing in this series is awful. Like...REALLY awful. One gripe I have with the show that is completely subjective is the comedy. Of course, humor is subjective, so I can’t really go into why I don’t like the comedy of the series. To me, the humor in the show is very standard shounen humor. Anime slapstick never works with me. The soundtrack is a mixed bag. The action music is good at most points, however the OST during the slice of life sections is horrendous. Jujutsu Kaisen falls into many holes that standard shounen shows fall into. Overall this show is massively overrated. Points of it are enjoyable enough, however those sections make up very little of the show. I hate giving out number scores but if I had to give this show a score it would be a 4/10. The animation is the only thing holding this show up. Story - 4 Art - 8 Sound - 6 Character - 2 Enjoyment - 3 Overall - 4
sana_a99
06/06/2021, 05:57 PM
You know, I was very excited when this anime was about to come out. I saw so many posts on Instagram and stuff, so I was like "YAYYY, can't wait." Now that I've watched it... I really, really, can't give it a high score no matter how much I want to. I know MAPPA did a great job with the animation and everyone worked hard on it, and I appreciate them. However... The reason I gave it a low score is because of the plot and the characters. Like someone mentioned before, I would also rather have a mediocre art with a good plot than amazing artwith a mediocre storyline. After all, if the plot nearly makes me want to quit watching it all the time... what's the point? There is something wrong with Jujutsu Kaisen. It's not the animation or the soundtrack. It's the overall experience with it. Like many others have said, yes, the plot is overused, the characters are nothing special nor are their interactions with one another. Even with 24 episodes, I feel like it's all just random scenes and fighting. I know... it's a shounen and shounen has a lot of fighting most of the time. However, every other shounen out there establishes the plot pretty well before or after 24 episodes. For me, the only good part so far has been Junpei's story, and even that felt rushed. One of the worst things about JK, for me, is that they do not explain the techniques, their functions, how they came to be, etc. well at all. They seem to just spit out ten thousand techniques and make the techniques work in their favor so they could win somehow. I don't know. I can't call it "horrible" because that would be calling all the other shounen anime out there "horrible" since, for me, 95% of JK is borrowed from other shounen. I get it: it's hard to be 100% original. And no one is expecting that. However, the same flow, the plot and characters mixed together is very boring to see for the ten thousandth time without a spark in the story. I feel like Gojo, who looks like Kakashi and acts Dazai, is one of the biggest reason why people are obsessed with this show. I don't know why he's overhyped. I mean he's cool and all, but I'm pretty sure it's because he acts exactly like Dazai and has a pretty face. That is all. I haven't read the manga. Maybe it gets better. Maybe it's super slow with development because they have much, much, much, more to cover. Idk. All I reviewed is season 1 and season 1 only. And that is my honest opinion.
Kash_020322
05/04/2021, 02:10 PM
At first i thought it would be a really good new gen shounen anjme as everyone hyped it up to be !! But nahhhh ! It was the same old cliche we have been watching for years STORY: the story is so cliche and the goal of main character doesn't even make sense! Like he didn't give shit about anything at the start and then his grandfather just said protet people and that's it , just like that it became his LIFE GOAL WTF?? I haven't seen something as half baked as this! His goal is to give people proper death yet he couldn't saveso many of his companions and give them their proper death! Lol it just doesn't make sense ! Even if he save some of them people will always face undeserved and untimed death! Look at the amount if murders and accidents take olace in this modern era (JJK IS SET IN OUR MODERN ERA) ! So many people die bcoz of these accidents and murders and natural disasters so nobody can save all of them from dying from nature's actions so THE MC'S GOAL DOESN'T MAKE SENSE ART: it was descent not to much out of the world or anything!! Thanks to mappa it looked good SOUND: The OST's are pretty bad and not rememberable at all ! There's only one ost that i am sure most of the fans remember and that was gojo theme!all other osts are lame CHARACTERS: Oh my god the characters are so cliche and annoying! All the females have the same type of 'wannabe strong girl' attitude ,i .e, they all have the same vibe to them and it gets pretty annoying and boring! The characters like todo doesn't make sense with their annoying personality ! We have a regular op teacher! And the villains are HOT TRASH!! SERIOUSLY THEIR IDEOLOGY DOESN'T MAKE SENSE! Whenever you have time just looka t mahito's dialogues and you will understand that whatever he speaks just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!! The backstories are pretty boring and doesn't have any kind of impact that makes you want to live characters even more ENJOYMENT: You will only enjoy it bcoz the animation is good and the fights are well animated ! That's it nothing else OVERALL: One of the most overhyped and overrated shows i have ever seen in my life ! Doesn't deserve any of its praise ! Highly disappointed
nurfee
04/25/2021, 08:20 AM
I will keep this review as short as possible. JJK looked promising. Its art and style caught my eyes. The reason I began watching was because of Satoru (he is everywhere on Instagram). I watched 24 episodes and I still don't know, wtf is going on. Heck, I still know nothing about our main character Itadori. I want to start of with the good things about this anime: - the Art is very nice and I love the animation- openings are great - I like how Itadori isn't a loud character - Hanami was an enjoyable villain, which had an interesting goal Things I disliked: - characters are shallow - fights between students don't make sense with the intention to kill each other (muscle guy and tsundere girl against other main characters) - things aren't explained enough - to many similarities between characters of Naruto - Interesting aspects aren't mentioned enough (what happend to Itadoris parents? Why does Sukuna respect Megumi)? - Itadoris main reason to fight is to have a memorable death (could have been good but the execution is poor) Main problem with JJK Regardless of not explaining enough, JJK fails at Storytelling. It isn't even bad, it is worse than anything I have seen until now. Examples: - why were Satorus eyes shown that early? It could have been more impactful, if it were introduced later. We know him now as that really strong guy and it isn't interesting anymore - why not mention or show Itadoris past in some episodes or scenes to somehow get an idea, who he is, so that we can route for him! - why not show more about that occupoccu guy, who is several mentioned with an accident that accured some time ago? - Junpeis arc was the most interesting arc in season 1 but it felt to short and anticlimatic And most importantly - If a character comes back from the death, why not making it amazing I get that JJK wants to be different, but it was the worst scene I have watched since Cerseis death on GOT. JJK is a shitshow Story: there is no story: 3 Art: Great: 9 Sound: Ok: 8 Character: Who?: 4 Enjoyment: Non: 3 Overall: 4 And I am really nice with giving JJK a 4
Aspection
04/17/2021, 01:23 AM
This show is as average as they come, personally, I was really disappointed with not only the show, but the hype it garnered for reasons I cannot fathom. If you want the most basic example of a shounen, this is it. TL;DR: This show is borderline bad. There is NOTHING in here that's better than other shows, and there are plenty of things that are truly dreadful. I only completed this show believing in the hype and hoping it would improve eventually-- it never did. Summary: Cool guy Naru-- I mean Itadori with innate powers stronger than the universe itself beats everyone else by order ofmagnitude cause he's an orphan and gets bullied. Oh wait, wrong show (His grandfather did tell him to be useful though so good enough). With the help of the most legendary jujutsu master Kaka- I mean Gojou, they go around beating everything down to a pulp. Oh, there are also side characters that get increasingly stronger to try and match Itadori's unreasonable growth like his rival sasuk-- I mean Fushiguro and the and fan service "I'm a badass but also hot" waifu sakur-- I mean Kugisaki to fill in the trio squad. Obviously no one can actually harm any of them since it's a terribly written shounen, but at least they pretend to. Art & Sound (9/10): Let's get this out of the way: the only reason anyone cares for this show is because it looks good and jujustsu sounds like jujitsu and that's exciting. Art and sound are great as you would expect from a show that is literally nothing but art and sound quality. The fight scenes are great, but I would personally argue there is much better out there. Everything else (2/10): There are curses or something that need to be exorcised, so we have sorcerers that may or may not have randomly assigned curse powers that can kill these curses that may or may not actually be humans with half-assed backstories half the time. DISCLAIMER: this all depends on what feels the coolest at the moment and can change whenever the show feels like it. These curses interact with the real world, but conveying that through storytelling is too much of a hassle. Instead we just accept random moms dying and entire school student bodies being seriously injured out of nowhere as being the unquestioned norm. But that's alright, because a character will do something funny the next scene so we can haHAA and forget about it. The curses dealing such immense damage to society are ranked from weak to mega strong, but in typical lazy shounen fashion, in our story they actually scale from mega strong to OMEGA STRONG AND BEYOND. In their very first mission, the trio could barely defeat a "weak" curse. *spoilers till next paragraph* By the end of the season they defeat THREE curses of the "strongest" category in one swoop. We know those curses to be nowhere near the strongest in reality, but the show built them up to be on par with the most elite of curses. Also everyone gets promoted to 2nd highest rank possible straight from the bottom to adjust for their power level spiking. This is horrendous story telling. It's a Naruto clone with an even worse story. We have nine tails-- I mean Sukuna chilling the whole time doing whatever he wants, but only when convenient to the plot. At least Naruto had a reason for the big bad evil being sealed away beyond "CaUSE ItAdoRI Is SpeCIAL". We have no reason to like any of the characters. At no point in the story did I give a crap about any of them, why should I? They all have two-dimensional personalities with one dimensional attitudes. The show even goes out of it's way to claim "Sorcerers need to be one dimensional to be powerful" & "A sorcerer's power curve isn't always gentle". The show is self aware of how terrible it's own plot is and attempts to excuse it with more lazy reasons; I have no idea why anyone would argue otherwise. Bad characters, bad setting, bad story (even by shounen standards!), bad dialogue, and honestly even bad slapstick jokes which make up half of each episode. By the end of the show I skipped everything that involved a side character knowing it will amount to 0 impact on anything beyond that one scene. Actually, you could skip any scene in the show that isn't sakuga and not miss out on anything. I really hope this show doesn't get a 2nd season and people come to their senses of just how mediocre this show truly is.
HenriqueNeves
03/31/2021, 02:39 PM
Jujutsu Kaisen has a “simple” premise, but that seeks to appropriate some clichés of the shounen universe in an innovative and illustrious way, almost as a tribute to the genre, but that ends up over-calculating its own initial proposal, transforming anime into a forced bull with references of the genre. The anime doesn't even try to differentiate itself very much from a standard shounen, and it doesn't even need to. Much of the anime's approach is to get as deep as possible in these clichés. From the way the characters speak, even the narrative structure of the anime follows this logic very well. For those wholike it, anime is also a full plate for references that refer us to some famous titles, such as Satoru Gojou, which in addition to appearance, is also always late like Naruto's Kakashi Sensei. There are several other evident references such as this one, but that fit this homage to the genre. The most amazing thing about the anime is how it supplies what it considers most important for the progress of the work. He skips the famous training arc; the way the characters get to know each other is quick and direct; the information is passed in a very verbose way, the anime explained and it is already done. It's all designed to be very dynamic and immediate, so the anime can make the most of its main theme. But in reality, these ideas do not seem to be perfectly reflected in the work, perhaps, not even close to that. The problems start with the way director Seong-Hu Park chooses to stage the anime. Unfortunately, it transforms the whole creative approach of the work into a kind of methodical anime. In large part, everything is very calculated. The plans follow an ultra-organized and perfectionist logic. But then you should be asking: what's the problem with anime in over-calculating its plans? I say that it acquires a more contemplative relationship with emptiness. The viewer's gaze ends up focusing more on an aesthetic presence, than on its main theme. It turns out that the whole importance of the director with the genre becomes another way to aestheticize everything. Most action scenes have the same pattern. It has a cool choreography, the camera moves dynamically, everything is very fluid and CALCULATED. There comes a point where it is practically possible to know how the fight scenes are going to happen. The only thing really well developed during most of the episodes, was an association of the villains with the problems of the world. In my interpretation, it is as if these problems existed and the humans of this universe had to fight against this individual every day. The anime even exposes quite obviously in the episode where the Kento Nanami character takes Jujutsu off a clerk's shoulders, and she feels a relief from it. It is sad to have to talk about it, it's an idea that works practically in isolation. I admit that in episode 5 I was already exhausted from watching the work. Until arriving in episode 17 to 18 (when the anime really gets really good) everything that happens in the course of the plot is directed in this same repeated logic. My surprise comes in the following episodes, when the villains interrupt the competition between the teams. He takes a more direct stance with his main theme and proposes a growing logic until episode 21. This logic is related to animation, which takes on an even more organic air than in previous episodes, and appropriates even more of its spaces. Unfortunately, the final episodes suffer from it, put the heyday of the anime is there. Then another problem is forced to repeat again the same idea of the initial episodes, but this time there is no longer a sense of danger so evident. To end my review. Director Seong-Hu Park once again (as in The God of High School) tries to innovate and deconstruct the language in some way, but ends up not quite assimilating the way he wants to highlight this idea, doing yet another empty job with cute animation .
ThatAnimeSnobRE
03/27/2021, 04:12 PM
INTRO Jujutsu Kaisen belongs in the category that began with Demon Slayer: Anime series that are carried almost entirely by their movie-quality animation. Their plots and characters are nothing you haven’t seen before, but at least everything looks gorgeous. The Bleach fans of old in specific will rejoice, since it plays out in an almost identical way. It’s why I often jokingly call this show Bleblechu Bankaisen. By the way, Bleach will have a hard time making anyone care when its last arc gets finally adapted and it’s nowhere near the animation quality of this one. Oh, and the script is crap too. CHARACTERS The character chemistry willbe the hardest thing for most to get into, since it feels phoney. Everyone meets and befriends each other in a matter of minutes, thus there is no gravity behind their friendship. It’s one thing to spend months with someone before you can call him an ally or a friend, and a whole other to bond in mere minutes. Every Jujutsu sorcerer in the show becomes part of the team super fast, so it never feels like these characters care deeply about each other. Character motivations are another lame thing, since they are ridiculously simple. One wants to help people because his grandpa told him to do it, another wants to find her childhood friend, and a third wants to be kind like his sister. Holy smokes, it’s one thing to expect something less than trying to be the best sorcerer in the world, and a whole other to want close to nothing. There is nothing inspiring or grand in whatever they want. Naruto was instantly grabbing your attention because he was very sad on the swing, and Deku did the same by crying after being bullied and told he will never become a hero. There is no such thing here. And it doesn’t help how passive they are the whole time. They fool around waiting for orders until a mission happens and they go to the mission. Their motivations don’t matter one bit. The only good thing I found in the characters is the protagonist who wants to eat a bunch of cursed fingers so he can turn into a super evil dude… and die, so that the curse of the fingers can stop hurting people. Quite noble. Also, his anguish while seeing he is unable to save every person he comes across or how he often has to kill in order to protect others is portrayed nicely. A special mention must be made regarding the female characters in the show, which are often praised for not existing as fan service and for being strong and independent. It’s not much of a positive trait when they come off as unlikable feminists who are too busy bitching about first world problem and their role in society, while in battle they are still far weaker than the men. Especially Nobara, who fails at almost everything she does, has to be constantly saved by the men, and yet the audience is supposed to praise her as a strong and independent woman. She’s just there to be bitching, yelling, and being obnoxious. ACTION As I said the sole reason for anyone to watch this anime is the fighting, which is super duper well animated and choreographed. Just don’t expect it to be deep or something. Most supposed tactics are silly at best and come down to a character having broken juchubruchu powers and the other one not being able to defend against them. -The characters will also have to explain their juchubruchu powers in the middle of the fight. On one hand it’s lame infodumping that stops the fights. On the other it’s a lame excuse for their juchubruchu abilities to work. That’s right, if their opponent doesn’t know what hit him, he won’t get affected by them. -The ending of the fights is almost always left inconclusive, because a good guy will be butting in right before a conclusive strike, the bad guy will be running away, and nothing will be resolved. It happens so many times and it never feels satisfactory. It will be leaving you with blue balls. -There is never any legit reason for how they cover up the destruction caused by the monsters. There is no gas explosion excuse like in Fate Stay Porn, or an invasion from the north excuse like in God of ten chapters per episode. The barrier they set up doesn’t prevent the victims from occasionally seeing the monsters, and buildings are blowing up during the fights. So why doesn’t the public know about the curses when they are not hidden? -There is also a good guy who is so powerful, no bad guy stands a chance against. The only way a good guy will bother to fight is if there is a lame excuse for why Reverse Kakashi is not present for ending everything in a few seconds. Which is why he will be often mysteriously away on a trip, or a barrier specifically designed for him will be keeping him out of the fight. -There is tournament arc at some point, because there can’t be a shonen without one, and it’s easily the most boring part of the show. There are zero stakes in the fights, since nobody can die and it’s all just an excuse for showing a bunch of flashbacks regarding the support cast. Too bad none of that matter since, as I said above, these people have no chemistry and never feel like a team. They are not even important, as stated by the very bad guys who openly said that the only two people that matter are the protagonist and the blindfold guy. What a way to fodderize your entire cast just a few episodes after the show began. Even when those nobodies try to kill the protagonist you never feel any tension, because you know he can casually return to life thanks to his inner demon. DEATH The show is full of permanent deaths, many of which are outright gruesome. They make it seem like anyone can die in horrible ways. Too bad it only happens to unimportant characters. There is also someone important who dies, but he was so stupid the whole time he almost deserved to die. That idiot thought some school bullies killed his mom, and not a mass murdering monster. Also, as I said above, the main character can resurrect whenever he feels like it, and then jokes about it when he presents himself alive and well to his friends (who have no chemistry and therefore are not much of friends). It takes away most of the tension regarding him surviving or not during the fights. THE REST The comedy is mostly miss for a shonen. I didn’t laugh once during the comedic moments, because they are all very weak in delivery and written for toddlers. What’s the point in having a monster hierarchy? There are difficulty levels when it comes to the monsters and yet they can already defeat the strongest grade, effectively making the chart completely obsolete in the same episode it was introduced. Training is a joke. Not-Sakura (Nobara) trains to get stronger by being thrown at the ground repeatedly. Itadori masters ki control by sitting down, eating chips and watching movies. I am sure this is far more relatable to the average modern viewer than the days when shonen characters were training in lethal martial arts over a pit of lava.
ren0080
03/26/2021, 06:55 PM
Jujutsu Kaisen is the best modern shounen anime... or is it? Let's take a look. The story is average. Nothing too much to say to it except that it's a speedrun of the usual Shounen Formula. Too much is happening in this season that I hardly remember anything that happened. It didn't have an impact whatsoever since the story's development is too fast. There wasn't any room to breathe in and take the current information, which makes me not care about the stakes since it is too fast and it happened so early in the series. The characters are... decent. They aren't memorable or anything. Heck, I forgotsome of the characters even existed because the story didn't give the viewers enough breathing room to appreciate and know their character. So I didn't care about the characters at all. There wasn't any emotional connection to any of the characters. Also, mildly spoiler, personal connections between characters are so superficial level that I even wondered why tf are they risking their lives to someone they just met lmao In other words, there isn't any believable relationship between the characters since their bonding time was too fast that it looks like they are together because plot. The animation is the highlight of this anime. But while it is fluid and fast-paced, it has a drawback. Impacts here don't really have any impact. The impact of their strikes looks like they are just girls slapping their besties because of a silly joke. They look like tapping each other. Heck, even Dragon Ball had a more believable impact in their strikes lmao Overall, it's good animation. But it lacks the oomph in its impact. The music is okay overall. The OST is good, but the openings and endings are just decent. Nothing to say here except, it could be better. Enjoyment factor. The comedy here is hit-or-miss. There wasn't any scene that made me laugh, so it's a miss for me. But that's just due to poor timing on their part. The timing of their punchline is too fast due to the fast pacing of the anime, which in turn, comedy and emotional stuff aren't hitting as hard as it should be. Overall, it's a decent shounen that could have been better if it was more slow-paced or at least normal-paced.
THEHANZO1
03/26/2021, 04:38 PM
Many of you probably won't even listen to my words after having seen the score that I gave to this anime. Many of you probably think: "What a f**king retard, the anime he's been talking about is a god damn masterpiece! How dare he?!" And many of you probably haven't even read further than these first three sentences. But in case you'll give me a chance to explain my score, let me give you a closer look into my thoughts, and let's see, why I didn't like JJK as much as other ppl did. Story – 6/10 First things first: The story starts off right away withour main character, hanging around at school, giving us the first insights of him and his personality. Also, with the death of grandpa, his motives of doing good things in this world and becoming some kind of a “hero” (that’s technically the false expression, but you can see it as a place holder) are revealed. And here’s the first problem in my opinion, which isn’t the really the fast start of the anime itself, it’s actually that Yuuji’s personality, and more or less his only motivation to keep going on this whole journey, consists of his grandpa saying: “You’re strong, so help people”. To admit, this would’ve been completely fine if some of Yuuji’s past was revealed, and if the author decided to show how important his granddad was to him. Just Yuuji saying that he was the only person that was there for him isn’t enough, and in the end this simple motive, which honestly offered some potential to develop and to grow, just becomes a dull somewhat, which clearly can’t carry a whole personality. Focusing on the storyline again, Yuuji’s not the only character that gets introduced in the first couple of episodes. Basically the whole main cast with Gojou, Megumi, Nobara, Sukuna and the aforementioned Yuuji shows up in a truly short period of time. Being honest with you, that in particular went a little to fast for me. The mc showing up in the first episode is a really common thing, but so many characters at once destroy the opportunity to explain their motives, and who they are supposed the be in this whole construct. And those vague glimpses of their pasts that I’ve seen don’t give the viewer a sufficient understanding of those characters. But if you understood what the motive was, again, it’s just the classic "I have to save people because person xy affected me back then" kind of thing. Using the same pattern over and over, and changing it a little bit isn’t really a creative way of constructing motives. But hey, we’ve gotta work with what we’ve got, don’t we? So there they are, our team on an endless mission of fighting evil spirits to protect the world. Although this concept has been covered in many, many shonen anime (the most popular one would be Bleach), JJK did this quite alright. The ranking systems for the monsters, as well as for the jujutsu sorcerers make it easy to understand if a situation is dangerous or not, or if the character is likely to have a chance or not. Thanks to that, the viewer gets invested easily into the matter, which furthermore makes this show uncomplicated to watch. What I like indeed, is how the show progresses from those missions to a battle against a big enemy, which has a threatening plan to take over the world. Even though this might sound as cliched as possible, it’s in fact well-done. The characters themselves play a big part in this, but I would want to get into that later. What the author did right in that regard was building the bridge between of the first and the second arc. In the first 6-7 episodes, everyone was just kinda playing around, and that phase was used, as I said, to let the viewers “find their way” into the show. 2 or 3 twists were built in, which had a surprising effect. The unexpected situations which it resulted in personally entertained me and gave the show a refreshing aspect. After that, Junpei, an intriguing and relatable character was presented to the audience, and he marked the beginning of the new arc. Through the newly formed cooperation between Junpei and the antagonist Mahito, there maintained a constant tension, because one does not know whether Junpei will give in to his anger or resentment, or whether he will decide to follow Itadori and turn to the good side. This situation only resolves when it comes to the showdown between Mahito and Nanami & Itadori. This actually created new tensions, because, if you’re willing to see it like that, Junpei’s suffering and hatred devolved to Itadori, and Itadori himself now holds a grudge against Mahito and his allies. Thus the author succeeded in a clever way to give Itadori a reason to hate the enemy from the bottom of his heart, with which a new enmity was born. In that regard: Chapeau! But what could come next? Oh yes, there was something that shouldn’t be missing in any shonen anime: A tournament arc! Although it wasn’t a complete tournament, I assume that you can count it as one, at least it was originally planned out to be a tournament. Funny moments, tragic flashbacks, good fights, and my personal highlight, the friendship between Toudou and Itadori makes it all an enjoyable watch. The infiltration of Mahito and Hanami was pretty obvious to see coming, and that they also get away with it wasn’t surprising at all. In pretty much every other shonen anime that also had a tournament arc, the process was always the same after all: 1. Group A competes with Group B, 2. Enemy attacks, 3. Group A and Group B fight together to beat the enemy, 4. Enemy escapes, but actually reached his goal. THE END. Well, not exactly like that, but it’s often the case. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing, it’s just kinda overused after hundreds of anime adapted tournament arcs in that way. So, what have we got after all that? Intriguing characters? A refreshing story? I wouldn’t say that those aspects weren’t covered in the anime, it’s just like something inside me wants to tell me: “Hmmmm, haven’t we already seen this somewhere?” Maybe I’m just stupid, maybe I’m just not able to appreciate the “greatness” of this show, but in the end, I don’t see a reason to praise this as the next big thing. I’m one hundred percent sure that JJK gets big, I mean, it’s already massive now, but imo it doesn’t differ from the most shonen anime, of which some also have an equally interesting concept as this one. It’s done well quite in fact, that’s to say. Still, the idea it tries to develop already had a limited potential right from the beginning, and since it didn’t manage to pass that limit, the story’s sadly just slightly better than average. Characters 7.5/10 Maybe I was pretty rubbish about the story, I’m sorry ‘bout that. In contrast, what I have to admit is that Jujutsu Kaisens’ characters really are something very special. Or at least some of them. Let’s begin with our protagonist, Yuuji. You may be surprised, but along with Megumi, he’s probably one of the least intriguing characters, at least I see it that way. Yuuji is like vanilla ice; some kind of eatable, but nothing special in particular. His motive and goals are too simple in my opinion, especially the relation to his grandfather could’ve been extended to give his motive more importance (I mentioned that earlier). He’s kind of a funny guy, and isn’t cringe in any way, which makes it bearable to watch him. He also sometimes has his moments where he’s able to shine, and honestly, seeing that is quite entertaining. However, after all he’s like a typical shonen mc. You know, wanting to protect his friends, believes in the power of friendship, actually isn’t the smartest guy in the world, never gives up and believes in his goals and motives, etc. If you’re the author, ofc you can whatever you want with your characters, but I would’ve wanted to avoid any kinds of cliches, because nobody genuinely likes them. And if they suit the character well, they have to be executed in a really really unique way, which I haven’t seen often in anime. So yeah, he’s ok as a protagonist, develops like you would’ve expected it, and does the things you would’ve expected from him. Jumping to Gojo now, what I like about him is the harmony that exists between him and Yuuji. They’re just a perfect match, because their personalities are very similar to each other. The bullshit I’ve heard that he’s just a bad copy of Kakashi from Naruto isn’t even close to reality. Gojo is a totally different character, and apart from his blindfold and his strength, he shares nothing with Kakashi. Kakashi is more the reserved kind of character, who calmly observes a situation and then makes some intelligent moves to defeat his opponent, whereas Gojo loves to fool his enemies. As seen in the fight with Jougo, he loves to play with them and teasing them, before revealing his real skills and finishing them off. His goofy personality fits perfectly in that regard and makes it understandable why so many people love him. He’s just the guy you have to like no matter what. Nobara and Megumi do an alright job as serving as Yuuji’s companions, but nevertheless, they’re also good as standalone characters. Nobara has some typically girly traits, e.g. liking fashion a lot and caring about looks, but she can also get very serious, or sometimes even silly or funny. The same goes for Megumi, even though he’s more the quiet and thoughtful type of guy. But hey, that means more diversity, which serves to make this anime more than just a one dimensional show. Both of them also have their pasts, which shall create their reasons to keep on going, as same as it was for Yuuji. Sadly these “motives” are as boring (if that’s the right word) as Yuuji’s was, and that was clearly some wasted potential. On the other hand, I think they don’t have to be perfect, and perhaps everyone else says that the development they go through, which is directly connected with their background is perfectly done. I can’t judge about that, I only say what I think, just to make that clear. Dicucssing the other guys from the school in Tokyo, at the beginning I thought it’s supposed to be a bad joke. A talking panda? A dude who permanently repeats the ingredients of a meal? I honestly thought that the author wanted to prank me. No, really. But what shall I say, even them I started to like. And one by the name of Maki impressed me much more than the others, she could even be a better character than Nobara. If you look at her strong and independent personality, you’ll notice that she’s really an exceptional person. In general, the female characters differ a lot from the standard weak and useless, often oversexualized girls in other shonen anime. Another compliment to the author at this point. By the way, the same thing as for the characters from Tokyo also goes for the ones from Kyoto. But there’s one character, a certain man who stands above everybody else, in terms of likability as well as in terms of fighting skills. And who could be other than my boy: Toudou. My god, I haven’t seen such a cool dude in a fairly long time, and it was so invigorating to experience him in action. At first his well-known question seemed dumb to me. Why would you ask something like that? But in his craziness, he literally searched for his one and only brother. And when he found Itadori and both became like best friends, it was just so much fun watching them fighting together. And therefore I want to say: Toudou, actually you aren’t being hated, everybody f**king loves you! So that this essay comes to an end soon, let's talk briefly about the antagonists, or rather the two most important ones: Sukuna and Mahito. Sukuna kinda reminds me of Gilgamesh (Fate) with his arrogance combined with his powers. His line: ”Know your place, fool” just fits perfectly to his character and makes him standing above all the other curses. It was mentioned that e.g. Jougo is technically stronger than him, but his presence makes the difference in the end. And that’s the thing: He’s the king. He rules all those other weaklings who think they’re strong, but only are small fishes compared to him. Sukuna also gives of a mysterious vibe, especially when he’s talking about Megumi, because we all know that he has some plans with him, which makes it even more interesting to watch. Mahito in comparison is more the likable kind of guy. He may have done cruel and bad things, but because of his often shown goofy and funny personality, I can’t take these actions even serious anymore. I think I actually sympathize with him, just because of his character. Now if that’s a good thing or not to sympathize with the villain who eventually wants to destroy the world is left to be seen, but I can't help admitting that he's a great character and that I hope for seeing even more of him in the future. Art & Animation – 9/10 The fight scenes go hard. Because of each individual's diverse abilities, there’s relatively more tactics and strategy that go into them than your average action anime, which makes them a whole lot more interesting to watch as it’s not just punching each other, and winning through willpower. It’s a mostly consistent art style, and if you saw just the style you wouldn’t be able to differentiate it from any other anime, but the studio didn’t skimp out on the elaborate backgrounds and set design. As for the animation itself, it’s smoother than a baby’s bottom, with constant angle changes and fast paced movements the scenes come to life, but also aren’t so crazy as to prevent you from being able to focus on what’s happening and not be able to enjoy it. The animation of everything from Cursed Energy to rushing water was great to look at. I loved how parts of the animation style occasionally changed, such as water and the backgrounds when movement was increased. Personally, I quite like the character design, though some people have said it's alright compared to its predecessors. Both the people and the curses character’s looks are deliberately well suited for their personality and skills. Some of them just look cool too, nothing too deep or thought out, just, yeah, looks cool. That's honestly about all I have related to the animation. It's simply extremely good! Sound – 8/10 The soundtracks of Jujutsu Kaisen are in-fact very well done. It’s not overbearing during scenes with heavy dialogue. Furthermore, some of the fight scenes in the anime are accompanied with incredible songs that just get you hyped. It's not a crazy good in a way to where it sticks out in the genre but it does do a great job fulfilling its role. Also the opening and ending songs are god damn sensational, I haven’t heard such great songs in a while. The voice acting is really good, too, and that’s no wonder, because many experienced voice actors and talented people worked on that show, so it had to be great. Enjoyment – 5/10 Now it almost hurts to say that, but I honestly couldn’t force myself to like that show as much as I should have. You know, I’ve already watched quite an amount of shonen in my life, and while watching this anime, I only thought: “Bruh, that’s so boring, I’ve seen this millions of times”, even though it’s not the case. I wrote down why this show’s so great, and tried to convince myself to like it, but something inside rebelled against that. It doesn’t make any sense to me, and I really would’ve loved to like that show as a whole, but it didn’t work in the end. Btw, this doesn’t mean that I disliked everything of it, I certainly had moments, where I felt like: “Man, the shit’s about to get crazy!”, but in the next moment, the feeling was gone again. And that's how it went throughout the anime. Well what do you wanna do? Overall – 6/10 All in all, from the objective perspective, it’s a must-watch for shonen fans, even though the story might be boring sometimes. I probably would’ve given it a higher score, but I couldn’t detach myself from my inner feelings about, so I’m really sorry. For everybody reading this review, I hope you had a great time while watching Jujutsu Kaisen, and I also pray to the gods for a seconds season, because maybe my feelings will change then. Cheers🎶
Twumi
03/26/2021, 03:27 PM
After the ridiculous success of Demon Slayer, the shounen industry is finally taking notes on how to make a successful adaption. There's so many things that can be said about JJK, that I'm confused where to start from. Let me start by giving JJK's staff the appreciation they deserve. Being a huge AoT fan, I'm honestly a little bit salty. I'm not undermining AoT, it's just that my eyes have been spoiled from seeing a sakuga on every damn episode of JJK. It's honestly just so good. So yes, I'm gonna first highlight the sector which totally carries JJK, the animation. JJK is a feast for youreyes. The animation is just so magnificent, starting from the beautiful landscapes to the sakuga on even the smallest fights. The fights are so well choreographed, the camera angles, the key frames. I don't have enough words to explain the greatness of the animation. You have to witness it for yourself. Just like how Demon Slayers impeccable animation by Ufotable carried it, in the same way JJK's animation by MAPPA definitely elevates the anime to another level. And without the elegant animation, I don't think JJK would be at where it's at right now. So MAPPA definitely needs credit where it's due, this is how you do a first season of an anime. One other great thing about JJK is it's power system. If you're like me who absolutely loves a great power system, then you'll also fall in love with JJK's power system. JJK has a very concrete power system, which is cursed energy. Cursed energy kind of replicates Chakra from Naruto. Both needs a good amount of focus and training to achieve them. The only difference is that in Naruto, Chakra exists in all beings. However, in JJK, not everyone had cursed energy, like Maki, they use cursed tools instead which is also an interesting concept. The reason I love the power system is that it is not too complex neither is it too simple like, eat hair = I'm strong now. Yuuji imbues his hands with cursed energy, Nobara uses hammer and nails, Fushigoro summons cursed beasts, and Gojou can manipulate space at an atomic level. There's literally an old man who uses an electric guitar to fight, I fucking love this! This power system and the character's powers, all of them makes the anime even more amazing for me. The characters are probably the second greatest part of the anime. Yuuji is such a good shounen protagonist, he isn't annoying and doesn't scream all the time, is quite care free. On the other hand, the other members of the MC trio are just so fun to watch, Fushigoro and Nobara both. I'd be lying if I said that it didn't remind me of Naruto a little bit. The fun little rivalry between Yuuji and Fushigoro, just like Naruto and Sasuke, except better. And isn't it a breath of fresh air, finally having a female MC that isn't annoying and absolutely useless. In episode 23, when Nobara was suddenly getting sucked into a gate, instead of screaming and crying for help, she just showed Fushigoro a thumbs up, saying that she'll be fine, like the badass she is! God I love the characters. The character goals are really interesting, which also makes the characters, interesting. Yuuji isn't like other shounen nice guys who refuse to kill people like Deku, he has an actual reason to do that. He highly commends "the value of life". He also does good deeds because he wants to die peacefully and be remembered as a good person, quite a simple but respectable goal. Fushigoro is probably my second favourite character in JJK. He is very secretive and stoic, all while caring for his friends. In episode 23, we got to see a different side of him, and honestly he has so much depth to him. I normally hate female delinquent characters so much, I can't stand them as much as I can't stand Tsunderes. I hate how they go "Kimochi warui" after everything. But Nobara is different. She is very talkative during battles, verbally destroying the shit outta the opponent, all while being badass as fuck during all times. She also deeply cares about his friends, she is a great character. Not only this, but side characters like Panda, Maki, Inumaki. Every- again LITERALLY EVERY CHARACTER in this anime is so fucking good and interesting, even the antagonists like Sukuna and Mahito have a considerable amount of depth to them which everyone can comprehend, which makes them so good. Let me tell you this, an entire paragraph isn't enough to explain how amazing and interesting the characters are. The only part JJK is a bit lacking in is story. Since it's only season 1 and the story hasn't expanded much, but even still, the story is a bit generic. It feels like a typical monster of the week kind of story. Even the story is a bit average now, all other aspects carry this anime. And yes, the story switches tones really quick, it goes from a dark and gritty tone to a light hearted tone pretty fast. And the best part is that they perfectly execute it. No one said that an anime must excel at all aspects. There was no boring moment in the entire anime, despite the story being typical, I always thoroughly enjoyed it. The Juju Strolls are a perfect addition after the end of every episode, no matter how tense an episode is, the Juju Strolls are entertaining to watch. Now about sound, it's amazing. The 2 opening sequences and ending sequences are all so amazing. Especially the amazing opening from Eve and the great ending from ALI. After that, there's the voice acting. Most people can't differentiate between good voice acting and bad voice acting, but I have noticed that a good amount of anime often fail at properly delivering dialogues. JJK's voice acting feels genuine and natural, so big props to the talented voice actors. Soundtrack is also quite lacking. It's not the best there is, but it works. Of course, I don't expect all anime to have Sawano level soundtracks. Another thing that I need to separately mention are the eye catchers. If you don't know what eye catchers are, they are those intro type of clips that are often in the middle of an episode. JJK's eye catchers are so captivating, they have this horror-y feeling to it. Now to sum it all up in one sentence: Jujutsu Kaisen is great. JJK has to be one of the greatest new gen shounens. As for whether you should watch it or not- YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD. I don't always tell people so confidently to watch an anime. It is the start of a new era through Jujutsu Kaisen, and I'm damn interested to see where it's gonna go from here. See you all in the next season!
debochca
03/26/2021, 10:35 AM
What is wrong with a generic shounen anime? I firmly hold the idea that, nowadays, originality is something almost impossible, because every new anime you see will remind you of x anime you had seen before. No matter how hard you try not to compare, the floating idea is always there "oh, this is exactly the same premise as x anime". Nevertheless, does a show need to be only original to be great? No! Of course, if it has originality it is something to congratulate, but if it doesn't, there's a lot of ways to tell a story and pass over that. It can havea big potential and develop it very well, with a good soundtrack and an amazing animation. It can have a bunch of likeable characters that, even though they are typical shounen main cast, can be really good and memorable. It's like reading a lot of books from the same author; even though you have an idea of which path the book is going to take, since you know how the writer works, that doesn't mean that you are going to despise every book the author writes after you read a pair of them just because it looks like his previous work. And if you do, please, grow up, grab a few books from the same author or movies from the same director and take a seat and, for once, enjoy life. If you have good reasons and a lot of arguments against a work, do it, hate it, and do it with all your strength! But hating just because, is stupid. Hating on generic or hyped animes assuming it is mediocre or repetitive because it belongs to certain genre doesn't make you look cool, get over it. That is Jujutsu Kaisen, a shounen anime that has a lot of things you have seen before, and a lot that you haven't. It has a simple premise: a guy eats a cursed finger and gets some sort of Kyuubi to lodge ins his body and becomes a magician so he can control that beast. The only thing is that the guy that starts existing inside him, instead of being the strongest bijouu, is the strongest curse. Instead of being the one with the major quantity of tails, he is the one with the major quiantity of lost cursed fingers all over the place. The adorable guy that ate that finger is called Yuuji Itadori, and the entity that lives inside him is called Sukuna, the king of curses, a strong as hell dude that can use Yuuji’s body to his own benefit and possess it whenever he felt like it. Oh, yes, and he can create a second mouth on his container friend’s face so he could talk to the rest and to not be excluded of the conversation. And to laugh at Yuuji, of course. I must admit it. I saw the first episode by accident, it wasn't at my radar at all. And even more, I dropped it by the middle of it because I found it unattractive. After that, the anime got to CR and its publicity all over the platform kind of convinced me to give it another chance. And I don't regret it. When I finished that first episode, I liked it. It didn't seem to me the perfect first episode, because it's nothing really special, but it was fine. After that, every episode was getting better, and that's another point that I give to it. It's way better a show that improves every minute than one that starts with all the cards and loses the game by the middle of the show. The humour in this show is, in my opinion, well done and in good measure. The dark atmosphere is successfully handled with some scenes that show you how crude that reality is. From the go, curses are nothing but a humanity’s creation. Curses are born from hate, resentment, pain and so, and that says a lot since the more pain it collects, the more powerful it is, and there’s a lot of fucked up curses. And even letting aside that fact, this reality is harsh since people is too. We saw it with Nobara’s backstory, with Junpei, with Megumi’s family. Darkness and a sad aura is all over the place. The world, then, is decent constructed; is not perfect, but it does justice to the show. I can say there are some plot armour on it, based on how powerful Sukuna is and how he can manipulate some stuff in the way he desires without thinking it too much, or based on the dark energy and its scope, because Gojou, for example, is sooooo buffed that the world kind of fails to demonstrate his power’s limits. He protect, he attack, but most importantly he FLY. However, I won’t be focusing on that since this plot armors or exaggerations are lowkey subtle. At least, it is not the only weapon they have. It has the typical main character that is pretty cheerful, charismatic, energic and that respects the dead. Personally, I loved him; if he was real, I would adopt him. His personality doesn't seem forced, he plays the fool without abusing of it, and most important, he isn't in love with his sidekick but with Jennifer Lawrence. Something that I really liked about him and the beginning of this series is how, since the first moment, his grandfather dies and throws him his last words. I mean, you start the show and you already know what motivates him to play the hero part. And that's nice. I 'm not saying is mythical, but is well made and gives him a little depth that is going to carry with him for the rest of the story, rather as a weight than as a lesson or a choice, almost forcing him to be a good person or to do a good for the others before he dies. Another thing, related to this, that I can save from him is that he doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t want to be the best. He just wants to read mangas and keep doing stuff with his friends at the occultism club. He doesn’t have that typical MC complex of trying to be the strongest just because he wants people to respect them nor a dream of being the highest in a hierarchy. The only reason he is becoming a magician is because he is taking responsibility for his acts, and later on because he wants to be strong enough to control Sukuna in order not to hurt his partners. Itadori is a simple person who likes simple things, that is relatable, sensitive and funny. He is so simple that that makes him a human, and as such, you can understand him, and his fears and his suffer. He doesn’t cry because his sensei died nor anything so dramatic, he cries because he loses his friends. He doesn’t behave as some sort of powerful guy, but he openly admits that he is scared of dying. He is so likeable that every person he mets, likes him. Even when he is insistent, he makes his way through them and gets to develop a good relationship with them, just like he did with Junpei, and I just can’t believe how much I ended up empathizing with both of them and their relationship and the natural way it was handled. Nothing from other world, just two guys discussing about gore movies. Junpei himself is a really well-made character that achieved his goal of getting us all sentimental with his tragic and detailed background and story. Not gonna lie, his entire arc broke my heart, with just a bunch of episodes I could totally feel him. As a lot of people said, Junpei wasn’t a victim of curses, but a victim of humanity. Just when you think that JJK is starting to get slow, this arc comes in, breaks your window and slaps you in the face. Going back to the characters, I have to say that I’m a person who gets attached easily to them, as long as they give me something to like them. I don't usually like “cold” characters, but Megumi is a guy that I like a lot. Typical emo of the group, but at least he has a good background and doesn't mistreat the MC all the time, he even constructs a valuable relationship with him. In the first episodes you already get a glance of his past and after some events the viewer starts to witness his first perspective changes and how Yuuji’s personality start to take root within him. Nobara is a character that I also love very much, because she doesn’t exactly fit in the stereotype of the useless female character that is in love with the emo, and another interesting quality that differences her a little is that she is shown as strong girl who appears with a clear objective in her mind. Since the first moment, she is a character with a part to achieve, an objective of starting a new life on her own and to chase after someone of her past in order to make peace with her and herself, and that’s pretty good. She fights a lot with Itadori in a comedic way and it’s a humour I personally enjoy because it’s well settled and the anime doesn’t abuse of it, she doesn’t get to the point of being unbearable, not even close. Yes, they argue all the time because they like to annoy the other one, especially her, but at the same time they develop an estimable partnership. Overall, I liked her since her first moment, and even more after seeing how confident she is even though her mistakes and her debilities, and how she doesn’t think of the main characters’ dicks. And the way she wanted to beat Mai just because she ruined her clothes cracked me up. “I love to look pretty as much as I love being strong”. That’s the woman I needed. More characters like Nobara, and even more like Maki, please. The other students are pretty interesting, every one of them: Maki, PANDA, Mechamaru. However, braindead muscles guys are my weakness, I’m not going to lie. Toudou is one of the best things of this show. He is one of those that are insanely strong and that enjoy having a good fight and that even enjoy losing if their opponent was better than them. He is an idol’s fan and takes every oportunity to demonstrate he is straight, considering a man’s taste in women as a matter of life and death. This guy can’t be taken seriously but damn, he made me laugh a lot, and really impressed me with his skills. His clean-punch fight against Itadori is AMAZING. No power-ups, no abilities getting out of nowhere, just two guys throwing fists and taking advantage of their surroundings. Excellent animation, choreography, feelings and the little talk. That fight is just so well done. And, of course, my favourite thing about that episode was his evangelism. He doesn’t become Itadori’s friend because Itadori told him his tragic backstory and told him “we are the same”. No, Toudou become’s Yuuji’s friend because they share opinions in their perfect type of woman, and their favourite butt: Jennifer Lawrence. You guys should just break the tension by opening a Jennifer’s fan club. I’m joining, you know. If you just tell me that “these are characters with nothing special and that you will eventually forget them”, well then, I’m sorry about your memory and how bad it is to not remember these guys. If you stick to that argument, then you just didn’t want you to like them. Now, about animation and sound I have nothing to say. MAPPA nailed it. No complaints, I love this studio and didn’t disappoint me here. And the sound, what can I say? Everybody talks about Lost in Paradise. I mean, it’s an awesome ending, not only because of the song, but the art on it. The OP is decent too, and beyond it, the OST along the episodes is noticeable too. And what I enjoyed a LOT were the seiyuus. My god, I love Nakamura Yuichi and Suwabe Junichi. Having both of them in this series were a gift to me, specially Junichi, who voiced Sukuna and did a very memorable job. In conclusion, Jujutsu Kaisen is the generic shounen anime that has its unique things that makes it a very good anime and even better than a lot of its predecessors. This show proves my point that you don’t need a perfect originality to make an excellent work done with lovable characters and a pretty well world building. From an idea to an execution there is a whole world and it depends on a show how it deals with it. This anime did it in a great way. In my experience, none of its defects stopped me from enjoying this piece, and I hope I made myself clear that If you are looking for a great show, to have a good time and have some laughs with an excellent animation, this is for you. If you hate generic shounen because you are a superior human being that thinks that a person that enjoys a shounen is unable to understand Evangelion, then pass it and miss it, for the health of the community.
SunlitSonata
03/26/2021, 10:28 AM
The thing about trends that a lot of people take for granted is that the more overstuffed a particular set of ideas are, the more likely it is to see either flipped on its head (see Shrek for fairy tale musicals) or given more offbeat renditions (see Joker or Into the Spider-Verse for superhero blockbusters). Genres being overstuffed, if anything, should encourage more experimentation and refinement. Over the years the Shonen genre has gone through a number of these phases. From past its formative years with Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, you’ve gotten shows using the mold for massive tapestries (One Piece), those attempting torewrite the genre rulebook (see Fullmetal Alchemist), shows trying to test Shonen’s capacity for being applicable in distinct scenarios (see HxH), long-form parodies of the genre, and many that wallow in it without doing anything interesting. Jujutsu Kaisen is interesting in this regard because on paper, it doesn’t seem that different from the standard genre mold, but in practice, it truly understands the appeal of the genre and what audiences want to get from it. Jujutsu Kaisen’s first season served as a phenomenal introductory section into the story it wants to tell, presenting its plot, characters, action and tone in a way that’s easy to digest, but is simultaneously a very smart setup that stands out by committing to multiple angles. The show feels like natural selection, where Gege Akutami realizes the elements that people have grown to like in the genre and downplays those that haven’t held up as well. It can be seen immediately with the protagonist, Yuuji Itadori. While yes, he is a teenage protagonist with the goal to protect others and become better at some special skill, a lot of the more in-your-face elements of this are downplayed. He’s not an overly hyperactive idiot, an insecure nerd or a miserable angsty sad sack, but has a good balance of characteristics, being a risk-taker at important moments, more down to earth yet still very passionate about his interests should the subject arise. Character design helps with this as he, alongside the other members of the hero cast, have taller designs that fit the “cool rebellious teen” look a la Bleach, more than the short, childish look of many Shonen heroes. The uniforms convey style during day and night with their reflective black and blue surfaces, but Yuuji still sets himself apart with the red hood adding that degree of cheeriness to the rest of the outfit. Yuuji doesn’t just feel like an archetype; he feels like a character, one given an early sense of consequence, as well as an interesting comparison to be made with the final boss tier opponent in his body as far as power ceiling goes. The idea of this “manifest double” is played up more in the first half of the show than the second, but as Yuuji grows personally, it promises to be a unique recurring element. Jujutsu Kaisen wants to mix shonen power action, comedy, and horror ideas together into one distinct package, and all things considered it’s really cohesive. The first half of the show is primarily dedicated to showing the ropes of the world to Yuuji, but even this basic setup is handled in some pretty fun ways. By Episode 3, they already have the main three characters banter together in an enjoyable dynamic that thankfully never turns into love triangle bollocks. A later episode has to explain how the show’s power system works, but it doesn’t have Yuuji sit in a classroom to learn about it through exposition dumps, or even white-haired mentor character Gojou talking to him about it one on one. No, Gojou’s an incredibly wholesome gadfly, so he pulls Yuuji out of movie-induced focus to actively demonstrate how Cursed Domains work against a monster who actively reacts to its use. This felt like a much more natural way to convey exposition, and even the more whiteboard exposition like the danger grade levels is conveyed with a pretty breezy, sardonic sense of humor. It also introduces the villains in a way that, while not outstanding, worked well in pushing Yuuji to his physical and emotional limit right before the second half started. The only weird structural issue I had with the first half was some backstory for Kento Nanami. It’s spliced right in the middle of a serious fight, where the circumstances leading to it and the consequences following it were far more pertinent than this one guy’s backstory. By the end of the season, he was one of the characters who left the least impression on me. The second half of the show makes the focus of the first half even more reasonable, whilst honing in on the aspect that grew my attention the most early on; the many students from their setting’s magic school, all wearing the same swag as hell reflective uniform. The exchange event team battle serves as a great way to introduce a lot of these characters, their powers, unique designs, and their respective dilemmas without cheating shit later as story ramps up. Almost a third of the run is spent on this, but it’s infinitely more interesting than having a tournament arc in small arena cutting to stills of audience reaction since it gets out a lot more fun character moments. Akutami understands that we, as the excitable audience, want to see some coolass superpowers from a Shonen, and he happily delivers a ton of those that get to shine in this arc, from characters like: -Nobara, the main female girl in the series that, much like Yuuji, doesn’t feel tied to an archetype, appreciating fashion and fangirling over exciting scenes, yet not taking taunts lightly, being protective of her friends, and having a coolass power of fabricating voodoo dolls with specially sized hammers. -A guy who can only speak normally in ramen ingredients, but has incredible word power with increasingly higher personal costs against opponents -An incredibly wholesome talking panda with very versatile fighting stances -A bratty, yet at times comically deadpan witch girl with vantage via flight -A cool-looking bloodbender that currently gets by throwing packets but’ll inevitably have to use his own as deadly consequence. -The adorableness incarnate that is Miwa; a super earnest girl with a simple dream and appropriately simple power that is easy to see as being friendly with others, possible reflection for the audience too. -Two sisters, Mai and Maki, with a quick but strong burst of emotional tension established between them. They each have some sort of limit, Maki being an incredibly resolute fighter but with a weakness to not see curses without glasses, and Mai being unable to use curses without an object but being driven by heaps of vindictive spite. -A talking Iron Man suit with a twist that pleasantly caught me off guard -Toudou, a muscleman who’s incredibly self-centered until struck at personal interest, in which case he becomes an increasingly earnest partner with a sickass skill. Not everyone may like all of these characters, but with their fun powers, interesting power limiters and/or distinct personalities, they nail the appeal of a shonen ensemble. The initial presentation of these abilities in a lower stakes scenario makes their introduction less intrusive on a wider plot. Plus, the majority of these personalities play well for whenever the goofier moments roll around, particularly in the post episode stingers, and episodes like #21. I’m glad the author thought beyond the overly standard elemental stuff to make the ensemble leave an impression. Only hero characters of note I didn’t go more extensively on are Megumi and Gojou. Admittedly, Megumi doesn’t leave quite as much an impression as the others, but he still has a pretty cool power over familiars and got more interesting near the end as his persona began to unravel. And Gojou is such a fun rendition of the typical mentor character, with an excellent design that’s fitting to both sides of his character, constantly holding back yet being comically curious. Comedy doesn’t only exist for its own sake, but often as a way for Yuuji to bond with other characters in the cast, such as Nobara or Toudou. It’s given a lot of creative expressions, and for characters like Miwa, where their design presentation is intentionally at odds with their character, it feels fitting and adorable. Even Gojou’s comical overpowerdness doesn’t purely exist to be a joke by itself fitting his troll mentor personality, or an excuse for the animators to flex to a stunning degree, but an element actually considered by the show’s antagonists. Some jokes don’t land, but there’s enough characterful personality and expressiveness to them for them to not feel out of place, separate from more serious points to come. As for the horror elements, Jujutsu Kaisen’s animation does a great job conveying the darker atmosphere when need be in the early/mid-section of the show. It really gets that a major part of horror presentation is fear of the other, and more specifically, body horror of not-quite humans, with some excellent creature design animated in off kilter ways. As Gojou states, everyone at Jujutsu Academy is a little crazy, so it makes the major characters in the show lean into these crazier designs when channeling immense power, fitting for a series around handling curses. Thus, the show has its main villain, Mahito, use body horror to startling effect when creating his monster army. While I wouldn’t call the guy particularly deep so far, the show does present a playfully devilish personality and show his capacity to manipulate others in a reasonable sense. His powers to twist the composition of both himself and those he gets close to in uncanny, distorted shapes play into the show’s theme about curse power perfectly. The show isn’t that scary, but it adds an additionally unique element for itself with these fitting and well-animated leans to body horror. Speaking of animation, that’s most definitely a major draw into the series. Director Seong-Hu Park and his incredibly talented team of animators making bursts of exciting, visually active battle scenes when showing off the characters and their various powers. Almost every episode has a scuffle in it, several of which have some exciting camerawork to make leadups to individual actions consistently dynamic. Yes, comparing fights definitely shows that some look better than others (the sewer fights stood out the least to me), but relative to the sheer quantity of fights illustrated in the source, as well as the shonen anime landscape at large, it’s incredibly impressive and that the action was this consistent over the run. A lot of the common issues with anime fight scenes (placeholder backgrounds, motion tweens to cover up lack of movement, butt ugly CGI, long periods of chat in between blows) didn’t come up for me during the production, which really speaks to the work (or possible overwork) involved in the passion. Cursed Domains in particular get excellent scene-setting animation, and the unique way aura is depicted, with its aquamarine coloring and pseudo 3d “drawn” outline adds definably high energy to individual moves. This of course is helped by a pumping score, with Nanami’s theme, Fushigoro’s theme and Your Battle is My Battle standing out most among them. In general, while individual fights aren’t on par with ufotable’s more thinly spread action scenes, the impressive flexes from the team and strong character/tone aesthetic create a consistently visually appealing show. Jujutsu Kaisen doesn’t feel like a massively grand vision yet, so much as an ever-evolving series of smaller elements that combine well together when taped with strong structural decisions, but this feels in line with my natural selection thesis. In its characters, its story structure, its tone, and its ease to hop into exciting powerup action the animation team flexed over, it gets what audiences want from Shonen material as a strong start to a story while removing or playing down stuff that’s been less palatable overtime. I can only hope it improves further as the characters/battle conceits become stronger and its many dynamics continue to be tested.
bulkyhog
03/26/2021, 10:16 AM
Overall: 9/10 Now that JJK is over, I’m sure everyone who dropped it after 4 episodes or clowned it for being more trashy shonen are shaking and crying right now. While y’all did look foolish today, clown tryouts for the circus are next week. And if anyone STILL thinks JJK is an average shonen or sub-par anime, I would like to quote the great intellectual, Cardi B: “Hoes speaking capanese hit ‘em with karate chop.” JJK is peak shonen that, in my mind, WILL become a masterpiece in the coming years (can’t wait for Shibuya adaptation holy shit man). You take the hypest arcs/features that took foreverto develop from existing shonens, and you’ll find them in the first 24 episodes of JJK albeit on a smaller scale. So what makes JJK so fucking good? Is it the mix of realistic and diverse cast of characters? Or it’s ability to incorporate great themes and subtexts without feeling forced and overbearing? Maybe it’s the classic shonen tropes reskinned and used to maximum effectiveness, or the INSANE animation sequences and visuals Mappa pulled off. I think that’s what makes JJK such a fun anime to watch, because no matter what you watch anime for, you can find something enjoyable in this series. For me, the big enjoyment factor was the added level of realism and darkness you don’t quite find in other shonen anime, which makes JJK more of a 30% seinen 70% shonen hybrid: an AOT but more towards shonen. I think Parasyte x MHA is the closest comparison I can think of to JJK for a non-watched, and even then it’s still so vastly different. All that said, let’s take a look at why I consider JJK to be one of the absolute best shonen anime, and amongst the best anime released this year. Story: 6/10 I think most people can agree that JJK has a very simple story. Although I will say, without spoiling anything, that the Shibuya arc will elevate the story aspect of JJK to the next level, so keep an eye out for when that adaptation comes. JJK’s premise is very simple: monsters (curses) exist, people eliminate these curses (sorcerers). In terms of originality or creativity, there isn’t much to be found, although I will applaud JJK for having a very strong power system to work with (cursed energy works similar to chakra/nin from Naruto and HxH respectively). This means it’s easy for the average viewer to follow along in battles, and that we shouldn’t expect crazy plot twists/insane power scaling that ruins the integrity of the series. It’s important to realise that “story” has 2 defining aspects: 1. The worldbuilding, storytelling, and plot 2. The message, themes, and subtexts being explored That being said, I think JJK explores just enough messages, themes, subtexts and whatnot through its story and characters, that gives it that tiny edge over your traditional story. To name some arcs where these elements are a primary focus, consider the Junpei and Mahito interactions from the Vs. Mahito Arc, the all-girls battles in the Kyoto Goodwill Event Arc, and finally Megumi’s time to shine and the fallout from the Death Painting Arc. It’s a healthy amount of seasoning where it doesn’t feel forced at all, and quite natural within the scope of the characters and their personalities, which I’ll get into later on. That being said, I gotta acknowledge the introductory arc, EP 1 in particular, is a tiny bit of a downer. We quite literally jumped right into the world of curses, without much exploration of the relationship between Yuji and his deceased grandfather. An argument could be made about how the trope of “family member dies which sends protagonist out on a quest” is almost immediately subverted by Principal Yaga, but it doesn’t change the fact the pacing for the first arc is a bit weird, especially when you consider how well crafted and paced every other arc is. Simplicity shouldn’t be a killer: Dr. Stone has an equally simple story as JJK. At the end, it’s all about how well that story is executed. Dr. Stone does an amazing job of executing their story, and while JJK isn’t quite at the same level yet, it hopefully will be in the future. Art: 10/10 No debate to be had here. I think anyone who’s seen a single Crunchyroll clip of this anime would agree, the art is top-notch. Impact, flow, key animation frames, transitions, and camera angles are all insanely well done: I especially enjoyed how Mappa played around with “first-person” camera angles during certain fights (Toudou vs. Megumi and Toudou vs. Yuji). Action sequences aside, still frames and shots were done very nicely as well, with the shot of Hanami posing while talking about becoming sages being some wallpaper type shit. And don’t even get me started about the OPs and EDs we got, all of which are absolute masterpieces in their own rights. Sound: 10/10 Going off of the amazing OPs and EDs, god damn is the music and OST for JJK good. I really can’t get enough of it. You already know some hype ass shit is coming when certain tracks start playing, or when that eerie violin track comes on that shits gonna hit the fan. Most recent track stuck in my head is that sick rift we got when the trio crossed the river in EP 22. OST stuff aside, the voice acting is extremely well done too. You can hear the seething anger in Yuji’s voice when confronting Mahito. You can pickup the traces of whimsical innocence and cockiness in Gojo’s carefree voice, or in contrast, the serious nature behind Nanami’s voice. I for one also love the sounds curses make. Shit can be disturbing and hilarious at the same time and I’m all for it. Character: 9/10 If you asked me to pick one thing that makes JJK so much more different from contemporary and even iconic shonen, it would be this. The characters. I fucking love the characters from JJK, especially the women. And not for the typical simp reasons you’d imagine. For once, in the entire history of shonen anime (and I’m honestly not exaggerating at all considering how much shonen I’ve watched), we have finally witnessed truly amazing female characters. I have no fucking clue how Gege pulled this shit off (his mom reads the manga which partly explains the lack of fanservice and bullshit), but if you asked me for the definition of perfectly written female characters, you’ve got them right here in JJK. And not just one or two, a whole truckload of them. This is why I was super-peeved when people were shitting on JJK characters for being unoriginal, and comparing this shit to Naruto. As much as I love Naruto, you cannot possibly look at Nobara and Sakura and tell me they’re the same: anyone who thinks this outta be arrested. Nobara, like many other female characters in JJK, is an actual character. They have their own motivations and personality that’s NOT defined by the male characters around them. You pick any other shonen anime and most female characters are only defined by their interactions with male characters, through the typical sex/romance gags or damsel in distress stuff. While these tropes can sometimes be funny or good, it’s wayyyyyy too overused and honestly quite sad to see potentially interesting characters relegated to this. Nobara wants to be strong because she wants to be strong. Not so she can ride Sasuke-kun’s dick. Heck, we haven’t even gotten any serious romance shit going on, which should already tell you everything about the female characters. Maki wants to be strong to spite her family and Mai doesn’t want to be strong because she’s fine with living a “normal” life: this contrasting sibling dynamic was amazingly well written. Hell, Sakura didn’t do shit until her battle against Sasori in Shippuden. And Nobara? Fucking black flashed Kechizu’s bitchass in EP 24. Get that shitty ass comparison off the airwaves bitch. If you need any more evidence of strong female characters, I simply point you to EP 17. Specifically, the conversation between Nishimiya and Nobara on what it means to be a female-sorcerer, and Maki and Mai’s conversation on why Maki is trying so hard. Perfectly executed, chef’s kiss, mwah. Honestly can’t get any better than that. Now, let’s look at best boi Yuuji (Gojo is the goat, different status here people). I like him because his goal is simple: help people before you die. It’s something I can relate to personally, and I’m sure many others can as well. This adds, again, to the realism of JJK’s characters. We don’t have grandiose goals like becoming Pirate King, Wizard King, Ninja King, Hero King, etc. etc. Even moreso, I like Yuuji’s development. Yuuji is like a tragic hero (this is truly realised later on but I won’t spoil it). He never set out to become a sorcerer, his life was turned upside down and he was thrown into this whole other world. And we see this reflected in the first 2-3 arcs. He gets his ass clapped, time and time again forcing him to realise how hopelessly weak and stupid he is. This guy straight up hit depression and shit, his lowest of the low, in VS. Mahito Arc where he really came to realise how fucked up the world of curses is. What about our other shonen protagonists? Naruto didn’t really hit this until Valley of the End, Luffy until Marineford, Asta until Vetto/Midnight Sun, and Deku basically never has (in the anime). But because of the path he’s committed himself to, after despairing and regretting, his only option is to keep moving forward (Eren stans Yuuji). I can’t really elaborate too much on Megumi since he hasn’t had too much of the spotlight so far, but he’s the moody lancer archetype done right. He never feels too extra or unnecessarily cringe and isn’t an asshole about his views either, since he cares about his friends even though he’s normally grumpy and collected. So far his biggest development was in EP 23, where we see him finally discard his old perception of himself as a limited, extremely selfless individual. It’s a simple lesson but one a lot of people forget: sometimes, you gotta be selfish instead of selfless. Good on you Megumi for realising your own power and deciding to just go ham with it when you feel like it instead of being a team player, after all, “dying to win and risking death to win are completely different things.” I won’t speak too much on Gojo since we haven’t gotten his backstory yet, which is more like his actual character development, but all I can say is he’s an overpowered character done right. He’s never used as a deus ex machina, heck, he’s often missing when he’s truly needed the most because he’s got shit to deal with overseas. As for villains, super well done on Gege’s part too. Mahito is an amazing villain, as is Sukuna. Most importantly, there isn’t any moral ambiguity in these villains, as you would often find in other series, and as Yuuji realised himself. These guys are just pure evil incarnate. Sukuna doesn’t help Yuuji for any other reason than to advance his own agenda, which even now we don’t really know. We also know Getou is pretty fucking evil, but the fact we don’t know much about him leaves you excited for when the reveal is actually made on who he is and what he wants. Side characters like Inumaki, Panda, and Maki get enough development so they aren’t absolute fodder and you can care about their wellbeing, but not so much where they detract from the primary trio of Yuuji, Nobara and Megumi. TLDR, JJK does a very good job of making their characters independent of each other and realistic. It’s able to effectively use tropes to enhance, but not define each character. Add in Gege’s amazing writing ability and you get truly meaningful interactions between super realistic characters. Good shit. Enjoyment: 9/10 Although the story started off a bit weak, everything just kept getting better and better. Literally, every episode, every arc, was in some way or another better than the previous one. And that’s really hard to do when most series just plateau at certain points: JJK is constantly going up, even if only by a small amount. Even when life as a university student got busy and hectic, JJK was something I could look forward to every week, where I could spend 24 minutes just chilling and enjoying a really fucking good piece of work. The mixing of characters, plot, action, and themes/messages is masterfully done, so it’s no wonder so many people enjoy watching JJK. All I can say is, JJK does it’s job fantastically well: I strongly expect manga sales to increase even more now that the anime has ended. As for what to expect in the future, I’m sure it’s hard to believe considering how great JJK already is but it just gets even better. Whether it’s 3, 4, or even 10 years from now, the day the Shibuya arc is adapted and released, is the day JJK will cement itself in history as one of the greatest shonen to ever be made. And that my friends, is most definitely not capanese.

Jujutsu Kaisen 呪術廻戦

2020 fall | Episodes: 24 | Score: 8.6 (1801925)

Updated every Saturdays at 01:25 | Status: Finished Airing

Type: TV

Producers:Mainichi Broadcasting System | TOHO animation | Shueisha | dugout | Sumzap

Streaming: Crunchyroll | Animax Mongolia

Synopsis

Voice Actors

Uchida, Yuuma

Nakamura, Yuuichi

Enoki, Junya

Seto, Asami

News

Reviews

joemaamah
08/19/2024, 06:29 AM
I never did get why the Hype Lemmings hurled themselves from the cliff over this mid garbage, I watched all the episodes, then came back a couple months later, intending to review it. Frankly, I couldn't remember a damned thing about the characters or the plot. Other than they were the accumulation of over 40 years of every shonen trope, and cliche, ever puked out by the industry. Nothing innovative or interesting, just move along please. Nothing to see here. The artwork wasn't annoying. The animation didn't strike me as exceptional in any way, but it had some moments. Nothing amazing going on with the VAs.There was nothing the director did other than to get this out the door on schedule. The sound track deserves no mention. It was mental pablum for the masses, and they lapped it up like pink champagne. This would be the epitome of mid, and get a 50/100 full failing E grade. It must have been powerful jutsu to get people to believe this had any kind of redeeming value at all.
Flint000
03/25/2024, 01:53 PM
I dont see what the fuzz is about this show. Average at best, cookie cutter shounen. Suffers from the same issue Kimetsu no Yaiba has, too much effort invested into animation and low effort into character design, world building, etc. The power system is barely explained upon and some of the powers come straight out of a toddlers mind. Nanami's "Ratio Technique" is idiotic. He can divide anything into "lengths" which are subdivided into a ratio of 7:3, at the separation point there will be a weak point. (?????) The length to be decided by Nanami has no limitations so essentialy he can place the weakpoint wherever, and at that point why have the hassle of having the ratio part added to it? Your abilities get buffed if you reveal them to your enemy? Nah, hot garbage power system
bentleys
03/22/2024, 08:25 AM
It was quite enjoyable to watch. The animations are enough to make me want to appreciate these action-packed moments; it's undeniably cool to watch. The universe is nice, albeit somewhat cliché, although that's not really a problem... ...Except when it's way too much, to the extent that you truly feel a lack of personality during certain episodes. The four main characters are exactly the same as Naruto. Speaking of characters, few are endearing; giving us 2 minutes of background (which are also clichéd to the extreme) isn't enough for me to appreciate their stories. Sukuna is probably the only slightly interesting one; otherwise, they're very flat.As for the story, it's overly simplistic and stops evolving halfway through the season. The subsequent episodes fall into a loop of endless and uninteresting fights. The comedic moments are enjoyable even if they're not always funny. The openings and endings are very well done. If you're a fanatic of this type of shonen anime, go for it. I'd still place it above your average shonen. Otherwise, move along; you won't miss much.
mbarseru
02/12/2024, 01:24 AM
Im sorry I just find this show to be very boring. I finished S1 and felt like the story so far was super forgettable, not to mention lacking in depth. None of the characters truly feel like deep individuals, and hence making their fights feel shallow and unreasonable. I feel like JJK is basically the power fantasies of a bunch of middle schoolers, imagining themselves as these ultra-cool, ultra-funny, and ultra-powerful beings. They are all cocky and arrogant because they are not yet adults and do not find the need to refine themselves into much deeper beings. They are aimless because all that they know isgoing to school, these people have no passion nor anything interesting about them as unique individuals, as neither do most middle schoolers. Watching this anime makes me get the feeling that people like this show purely because they enjoy that childhood fantasy. It is a distant feeling where we would imagine ourselves as these ultra-awesome heroes that are vanquishing evil and saving the world. I think people connect with this show as they too yearn to relive these moments of their life, back when college or high school wasn't dragging them down, and their imagination was able to do all the heavy lifting. Now, through the power of MAPPA sweat and blood, people are able to relive these moments while allowing the show do the heavy lifting, while letting these hollow characters take place as their imaginary set pieces of their perfect world. I feel like the perfect connecting point of this “theory” I guess you could call it, would be the fact that, there aren't any sexual themes in the show so far. While the show does discuss “oh man, which girls are hottest” I do feel like that sort of falls more into the middle schooler territory, where they call somebody hot or attractive but they themselves don't fully comprehend what exactly does that mean. I feel like while others yearn for their child like imaginative world view, I myself do not have this issue and more appreciate depth of character and interest of the individual. There is nothing wrong with liking JJK, I just myself find these shallow traits to be boring, no matter how beautiful. grug
UrOpinionsRGarb
09/01/2023, 07:30 AM
Literally the most overrated anime in the world... The first season was barely tolerable. It was essentially a complete Naruto rip-off with the main character who holds a demon inside of him, which in turn grants him great power. The key difference here is: Naruto is a character of depth who goes through great personal struggle and growth and that demon functions as an artistic metaphor as well as a functional plot device. Jiujutsu, on the other hand, was written by a child with crayons and just steals the most obvious elements from Naruto without paying attention to why it actually works. Yay crayons! Characters: Gojo is clearlya Kakashi ripoff, it's baffling to me how 100% of people do not call this out. His character is one-dimensional, like all the characters in Jiujutsu. He's the OP rebel... he wins all fights and says whatever he wants--he faces no struggles, ever. The series includes a Sasuke ripoff named Fushiguro. He is very strong and oh so cold. What an original foil to place against the series' Naruto ripoff: Itadori. Itadori is Naruto except worse in every way. Sakura in this series is manifested by the brash and very tsundere girl known as Kugisaki. She is relatively useless and purposeless, just like Sakura. Special mention! Inumaki, the character who uses "cursed words" (not curse words), which is a clear ripoff of the bug user Shino. They both have their mouths covered by their outfits, hardly speak, and appear only occasionally to do their very narrowly illustrated power. The plot: Is incomprehensible. There is no plot. They just kind of hang out, fight sometimes, see poorly drawn monsters sometimes, and the episode ends. Animation: Season 1 animation was sad, average. Season 2 animation is fantastic and essentially, I imagine, the writer was like "I can has Chainsaw Man animation, mappa?" And they were like... "I guess..." Still frames, backgrounds, character depictions are often gorgeous works of art. This is literally the only redeeming quality of this horrific horrific series. [end]
Gsarthotegga
05/27/2022, 05:15 PM
While I made it a habit to review most of the shows I watched sometime ago, this is a weekly show I kept up with and skipped reviewing until now... there's just not much substance. What is one to say about a shounen that hasn't already been said numerous times? Even the standout ones just reinvent the wheel at best. The "god tier" shounen tends to have incredible animation, and... yeah, that's it! There are a few patterns that regularly make the rounds in these kinds of shows, and JK is not immune to it. JK is one of the better ones as of latein terms of solid visuals, animation, and fight choreography. Clearly, the storyboarding is solid—the pacing is quick... um, you know, as long as our characters aren't wasting time playing baseball or waiting in line for autographs from idols. The silliness listed above is played up for laughs, and the serious-looking muscle man character is a softy who really simps out on women the whole show and gets into fights with other people over having different taste in women. It's not funny, and it's lame. I wish more shounen authors could figure out how difficult effective comedy can be and how much it detracts from an otherwise passable yarn. There's a good reason why people seek out comedy when they want comedy instead of a shounen. Comedy in shounens should probably be relegated mostly to quirks that don't act as filler or slow the plot down. Most shounen authors need to ditch the comedy. They're terrible at it. The filler problem so common in shounen shows, especially long ones, and most of them are long, is probably exacerbated by the popularity of the slice of life genre. They are rarely ever especially great art (keep in mind I'm not disparaging the whole genre—I think a few are very good, but the popularization of this style has led to some of the laziest trash shows out there)—they are essentially filler turned into a show. Yeah, why don't you eat the fat and throw away the steak or the banana peel and throw away the banana? I believe it's basically encouraged to pad a show with filler—it used to be that studios just didn't have time to meet deadlines otherwise, but isn't it becoming a bit of a style choice? Having a show be accessible is fine, but an author is only capable of so much, and the tendency of authors to cover all bases with drama, slice of life, comedy, action, romance, etc., leads to a disgusting stew that no one would want to eat unless they've been conditioned to do so. Those are some general problems with the genre, and JK partly suffers from much of what I've outlined. These authors rarely find the specific niche they're good at and commit to it, while casting aside what they aren't so great at communicating—presumably because popular series in the genre tend to have these elements, so the mangaka copies these tendencies slavishly. Like, does this show want to be a dark horror shounen or a goofy one? It flips between them. We can observe that the straight attempts at humor are terrible, so the latter is something we can assume is not the forte of the author—he's not able to pull it off like the author for Jojo or Hunter X Hunter or anything like that. I've seen some shows that balance these conflicting elements well, but this is not one of them. On the other hand, the show starts on a more serious note. The first episode begins with some very simple theming that's fine enough to establish our main character—who is a big dumb. Yes, that may not be proper grammar, but it is the best way to capture the essence of the character. He's just a block head who fights for his friends—the usual. Some themes are good to ground the show with a little bit of something to say. That's fine. Thematically, the most interesting segment was probably between the patchwork demon and the wannabe school shooter. I wouldn't say their discussions were all that novel, but it actually works into establishing themes and creating a perspective for the antagonists, and it's a step above most of the other blather between our braindead characters. The early segments are very dark and moody, with well-drawn disgusting creatures devouring people, dimly lit hallways, and what appears to be a gruesome demise for our main character. Soon, we learn more about demons and curses and all of the fun shounen elements of the show. The innate domains show a lot of potential, many of the abilities and styles for various characters are interesting, but others are just goofy. Among the main characters, you have a talking panda, a character who uses cursed phrases and all of what he says is humor because the only "safewords," are food items, etc. There's that same crossover of goofiness that destroys the mood. In an early episode the three mains are sent on a mission to a correctional facility, and this segment is so dark, it's almost reminiscent of Silent Hill. They get trapped in the innate domain of a demon, and the skin of the whole area becomes metallic, rusty, corroded, grimy, etc. It's a really heavy point of the series that is never topped. The characters are completely outclassed and struggling to survive. I've never seen so much tension in a shounen almost, and the atmosphere is very solid here. I would say this is an example of something the author is actually good at doing outside of the purely technical components of the work, so he should really look to this as a strength when trying to form a more coherent conceptual framework. There are many other fights that have tension, and some darker moody segments afterwards, but few and far between. The fights become slugfests similar to other shounen—perhaps with a bit more thought put into strategizing, and a decent repertoire of creative attacks. The peak of the series was at a very early point, then the author couldn't decide between one style or another, and went beyond his talent in trying to balance too many disparate styles. What we're left with is a show without a notable story—not that it needs one per se, but outside of mood pieces and character interactions, we're left with not much to look forward to other than fight after fight. The characters aren't the worst I've ever seen in shounen, but they're largely rather flat and simple characters. Sure, the fights are great, but there's not a huge incentive to watch 24 episodes of a show when you can just watch the fight scenes. The fight scenes are supposed to be supplemented by the characters, the themes, and the story, but the show is too shallow for these to act as an enhancement. That's basically a long-drawn out way of saying most shounen have formulaic tendencies, most authors in this genre lack artistic maturity and cannot figure out what to include and exclude to make an actual good work and not just some trash that appears in Shounen Jump, and they really need to study writing more or team up with a writer or something—all of which equally applies to this technically proficient yet hollow series.
Yangtze12
12/31/2021, 09:31 AM
Jujutsu Kaisen was, basically, the seasonal hyped shonen, in other words, top animation with a poor story unfortunately. Let's analyze the issues that this anime had and then it's positive aspects: ISSUES 1) Characters: Like in many fighting shonen a new "good" character appears, he/she meets with the main group, they became friends for the sake of it (because the script demands it) and, finally, most of them become irrelevant thanks to the power scale. The problems don't end here, their characterization is, also terrible. Most of them are plane characters with a lame motivations or they just follow the motivations of other people. For example, Sukunasaved Itadaki because he considered him interesting, like the first big asspull of Boku no Hero Academia, Itadaki with his one episode motivation after his grandfather's death (he didn't care or remembered list after that episode). I understand the anime, or at least this is what I think, tried to be a style over substance; nevertheless, putting plane characters and introduce new of them for fill the cast makes this anime a mindless spectacle. It's not impossible to be a style over substance having, at least, a decent characterization for your cast. We have Gurren Lagann, Jojo's and the manga of Akira. In those cases, you remember the show not only for the action choreographies but, also, for the charisma of several characters (like Kamina, Joseph Joestar and Tetsuo), this, also, helps with the inmersion to the anime in much less time. In order to avoid potential characterization, the anime set missions for the main cast. With this, the characters didn't have to be worried about anything else. I remember the show Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Here we got, also, different missions for the main cast every episode with the huge difference that the characters here had a character development with each passed mission thanks to the analysis post-missions. Here, they complete a mission and pass by. This was unfortunate because the anime had the potential to make a character development, but it was really conformist in this aspect. There are, also, contradictions or cognitive dissonance with some characters. For example, Nobara spoke, in many moments of the show, stuff like women can be strong too and can achieve the missions on their own, just to be saved for the male characters when she got in real trouble. Another character constantly criticized the woman taste of the other characters just to reveal, later, that he was saved by one. The few moments where the anime tried to had substance and characterization, it made things worse, like the allegories of the human hearts and the proper deaths. Now I understand why the writer limited itself with the characterization. Itadaki is treated as a potential martir because he wants to save people exchanging his own life, practically. We hope this doesn't end being a meme like the case of Code Geass. 2) Deaths: Anybody can die permanently in this show, however, this is not the case for our protagonist. Is not only the strong plot armor for him, also, it makes extremely predictable the possible outcome of the show. Like the case of Boku no Hero Academia, where since the 1st episode the anime told us clearly that the protagonist, in one way or another, will end defeating all the villains, here we have, indirectly, the same. 3) Power System: By far the worst and contradictory aspect of the show. They introduced a enemies power scale and, later, the protagonists defeated the stronger enemy of that scale without so much problems. And this is not the worst, there's no training or justification to increase the power of the cast, like wtf. We had fighting shonen like Dragon Ball, Naruto, HxH, among others where they included entire arcs to show the training of the main cast and their progress. I'm not saying that all of these arcs were, at the end, good or memorable, but, at least, the writers showed that they had a little care about the growing of the power and experience of their characters, at least there was an attempt unlike this anime. Sure, many people could say that the power depends on the cursed spirits the character poses, however, this directly would contradict the sorcerer grades introduced. How can I difference a sorcerer from another knowing that they don't have a proper training or a inexistent one? Natural talent I guess. 4) Fights: Despite being one of the strongest aspect of the show, it's still having his problems. The characters explain their powers and abilities in the middle of the fights. Is not only the fact that this is anticlimatic, also, the writer can introduce the ability or power that the character needs to defeat the turn's antagonist, fucking convenient. Also we have the classical last minute saves, overpowered good guys who helps our protagonists when they feel doing it (when the script needs it) and unfinished fights to keep alive the main cast. 5) Pacing: Like the case of several anime in the last years (not only fighting shonen), the anime presented a lot of concepts and information the first episode. After that, the pacing got slower until the anime arrived to the second half where the pacing was completely dreadful. POSITIVE ASPECTS - The animation is amazing and very fluent, the soundtrack is very enjoyable (the ending in particular is an absolute banger) and the fights looks spectacular if you ignore the substantial part of it. CONCLUSION Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, Jujutsu Kaisen is not different than most of the generic fighting shonen that came out the last years. I don't find any merit of it beside the soundtrack, animation and part of it's action. For this reason, I have no choice but to give it a score of 4/10. It could have been definitely better; nevertheless, the fighting shonen writers have been really conformists with their stories during the last years.
Berm
07/11/2021, 11:17 PM
Welcome to Jujutsu Kaisen, an anime filled with great animation, horrendous characters, and an average shounen plot. Over the time the show aired, it gained massive attention and critical acclaim, rivaling even Demon Slayer in terms of commercial success. However, just like Demon Slayer, I see no reason to enjoy the show other than for its animation. In fact, many criticisms I have with the show are similar in line to criticisms that I had with Demon Slayer. Let’s start out with the thing that people have been talking about the most with the show. (Spoiler warning of course) “The animation in this series is incredible,” is whatI would like to say. However, the animation isn’t always as amazing as most people make it out to be. It still is amazing at certain parts, especially when it needs to be, but a lot of the time the animation is just above average. For many scenes which involve a lot of talking, the animation becomes very run-of-the-mill. These scenes have very little animation, usually only the characters moving very slightly. Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect all of the scenes to look that good, however, these scenes take up a majority of the show. People focus too much on small chunks of the show and completely ignore the bad elements. I must say though, when the animation hits, it REALLY hits. In almost every episode, there’s at least 1 scene of sakuga. The action scenes, regardless of the characters participating in them, the plot importance, or any other reason, look amazing. The number of different cursed techniques characters use in the show allows for the action to elevate to even greater levels. There’s tons of variety in the fight scenes. My personal favorite is the action scene in the final episode. The way the animation matches up with the music makes the scene that much more engaging. Seriously, that scene was like a flash of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre show. To touch on the openings (even though it doesn’t affect my score at all), the animation is some of the best I’ve seen. Even better than the show's high points, the animation is on another level. Now time for the thing keeping the series from being good, the characters. Almost all of the characters in the show, including the main trio, are insufferable. Yuji Itadori is just like a standard shounen protagonist in many ways. TvTropes defines the average shounen protagonist as “big hearted, energetic kid heroes, with a natural gift that blows others out of the water.” This definition fits Itadori down to a tee. Now the problem with his character is not the fact that he fits within this trope, it’s the fact that he leans heavily into the negative aspects of the trope. He seemed like a promising character at the beginning of the series. Although simple, his motivation with his grandfather and his whole “proper death” thing seemed like an interesting idea. The problem is, they did nothing to his character after the first 5 episodes. He becomes a completely stagnant character. He doesn’t have any meaningful interactions with other characters, we don’t get to explore his psych at all, and most importantly he doesn’t change. This is sort of a problem with most characters in the series, but we’ll get to that later. Basically after the first fourth of the anime he’s dedicated to 3 things: showing off how cool his powers are, making just plain awful or tone breaking jokes, or furthering the plot. Megumi and Nobara I have less to say about, since they’re also basically trope characters. Megumi is ‘Serious Guy’ and Nobara is “Mean Girl.’ They have some flashbacks in the earlier episodes that give their characters some background information, but, just like with Itadori, they serve no narrative purpose after the first 6 episodes. Gojo is also listed as a main character on this site, although I don’t see him as one. He’s easily the most interesting of the four, however that still does not make him a good character. His cheerful and laid back attitude despite the circumstances he’s in is interesting, but sometimes can be tone breaking. As for the side characters, they’re a little better. None of the other Jujutsu Tech students are anything special. They consist of another “Mean Girl” trope, a talking Panda, and a person who can only speak through onigiri flavors. They also get some small characterization but nothing ever comes from this. None of them serve any importance to the plot. One major problem I have with the characters is their quirkiness. Most characters seem to be very exaggerated with their personalities, making them seem unrealistic. Lots of characters are completely one dimensionally, and their entire character hinges on a single quirk that they have. The worst example of this has to be Toudou. His entire character is centered around the fact that he likes women who are tall and have a big ass. He is quite possibly one of my least favorite characters in anime ever. All he does is ask people what type of women they like and fights them if they don’t agree with him. In a comedy anime, his character could have been at least bearable. But in Jujutsu Kaisen, a show with lots of blood and death constantly happening, his character seems to be so out of place in the show. Every time he appears on screen I get whiplash from how at odds he is with the rest of the show. As for characters such as Nanami, Mahito, and Junpei, I actually like them! They’re the best characters in the show, and make the Vs Mahito Arc the best arc in the series by far. All of their motivations are great, they get lots of characterization for how little time they are on screen, and each one of them has an impact on the plot for the arc they’re in. The most asinine thing though is that they completely get shafted from the narrative after that arc. Junpei ends up dying, and there is not a single mention of him after the fact. When Itadori’s talking about what a proper death means right after Junpei dies he’s not even mentioned. Nanami completely disappears, never to be mentioned again, even after the slight connection he and Itadori made. Mahito is the only one to actually be mentioned or show up later in the series, but even then he says like two lines, and could have been swapped in for another character for when he appears. Basically, the character writing in this series is awful. Like...REALLY awful. One gripe I have with the show that is completely subjective is the comedy. Of course, humor is subjective, so I can’t really go into why I don’t like the comedy of the series. To me, the humor in the show is very standard shounen humor. Anime slapstick never works with me. The soundtrack is a mixed bag. The action music is good at most points, however the OST during the slice of life sections is horrendous. Jujutsu Kaisen falls into many holes that standard shounen shows fall into. Overall this show is massively overrated. Points of it are enjoyable enough, however those sections make up very little of the show. I hate giving out number scores but if I had to give this show a score it would be a 4/10. The animation is the only thing holding this show up. Story - 4 Art - 8 Sound - 6 Character - 2 Enjoyment - 3 Overall - 4
sana_a99
06/06/2021, 05:57 PM
You know, I was very excited when this anime was about to come out. I saw so many posts on Instagram and stuff, so I was like "YAYYY, can't wait." Now that I've watched it... I really, really, can't give it a high score no matter how much I want to. I know MAPPA did a great job with the animation and everyone worked hard on it, and I appreciate them. However... The reason I gave it a low score is because of the plot and the characters. Like someone mentioned before, I would also rather have a mediocre art with a good plot than amazing artwith a mediocre storyline. After all, if the plot nearly makes me want to quit watching it all the time... what's the point? There is something wrong with Jujutsu Kaisen. It's not the animation or the soundtrack. It's the overall experience with it. Like many others have said, yes, the plot is overused, the characters are nothing special nor are their interactions with one another. Even with 24 episodes, I feel like it's all just random scenes and fighting. I know... it's a shounen and shounen has a lot of fighting most of the time. However, every other shounen out there establishes the plot pretty well before or after 24 episodes. For me, the only good part so far has been Junpei's story, and even that felt rushed. One of the worst things about JK, for me, is that they do not explain the techniques, their functions, how they came to be, etc. well at all. They seem to just spit out ten thousand techniques and make the techniques work in their favor so they could win somehow. I don't know. I can't call it "horrible" because that would be calling all the other shounen anime out there "horrible" since, for me, 95% of JK is borrowed from other shounen. I get it: it's hard to be 100% original. And no one is expecting that. However, the same flow, the plot and characters mixed together is very boring to see for the ten thousandth time without a spark in the story. I feel like Gojo, who looks like Kakashi and acts Dazai, is one of the biggest reason why people are obsessed with this show. I don't know why he's overhyped. I mean he's cool and all, but I'm pretty sure it's because he acts exactly like Dazai and has a pretty face. That is all. I haven't read the manga. Maybe it gets better. Maybe it's super slow with development because they have much, much, much, more to cover. Idk. All I reviewed is season 1 and season 1 only. And that is my honest opinion.
Kash_020322
05/04/2021, 02:10 PM
At first i thought it would be a really good new gen shounen anjme as everyone hyped it up to be !! But nahhhh ! It was the same old cliche we have been watching for years STORY: the story is so cliche and the goal of main character doesn't even make sense! Like he didn't give shit about anything at the start and then his grandfather just said protet people and that's it , just like that it became his LIFE GOAL WTF?? I haven't seen something as half baked as this! His goal is to give people proper death yet he couldn't saveso many of his companions and give them their proper death! Lol it just doesn't make sense ! Even if he save some of them people will always face undeserved and untimed death! Look at the amount if murders and accidents take olace in this modern era (JJK IS SET IN OUR MODERN ERA) ! So many people die bcoz of these accidents and murders and natural disasters so nobody can save all of them from dying from nature's actions so THE MC'S GOAL DOESN'T MAKE SENSE ART: it was descent not to much out of the world or anything!! Thanks to mappa it looked good SOUND: The OST's are pretty bad and not rememberable at all ! There's only one ost that i am sure most of the fans remember and that was gojo theme!all other osts are lame CHARACTERS: Oh my god the characters are so cliche and annoying! All the females have the same type of 'wannabe strong girl' attitude ,i .e, they all have the same vibe to them and it gets pretty annoying and boring! The characters like todo doesn't make sense with their annoying personality ! We have a regular op teacher! And the villains are HOT TRASH!! SERIOUSLY THEIR IDEOLOGY DOESN'T MAKE SENSE! Whenever you have time just looka t mahito's dialogues and you will understand that whatever he speaks just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!! The backstories are pretty boring and doesn't have any kind of impact that makes you want to live characters even more ENJOYMENT: You will only enjoy it bcoz the animation is good and the fights are well animated ! That's it nothing else OVERALL: One of the most overhyped and overrated shows i have ever seen in my life ! Doesn't deserve any of its praise ! Highly disappointed
nurfee
04/25/2021, 08:20 AM
I will keep this review as short as possible. JJK looked promising. Its art and style caught my eyes. The reason I began watching was because of Satoru (he is everywhere on Instagram). I watched 24 episodes and I still don't know, wtf is going on. Heck, I still know nothing about our main character Itadori. I want to start of with the good things about this anime: - the Art is very nice and I love the animation- openings are great - I like how Itadori isn't a loud character - Hanami was an enjoyable villain, which had an interesting goal Things I disliked: - characters are shallow - fights between students don't make sense with the intention to kill each other (muscle guy and tsundere girl against other main characters) - things aren't explained enough - to many similarities between characters of Naruto - Interesting aspects aren't mentioned enough (what happend to Itadoris parents? Why does Sukuna respect Megumi)? - Itadoris main reason to fight is to have a memorable death (could have been good but the execution is poor) Main problem with JJK Regardless of not explaining enough, JJK fails at Storytelling. It isn't even bad, it is worse than anything I have seen until now. Examples: - why were Satorus eyes shown that early? It could have been more impactful, if it were introduced later. We know him now as that really strong guy and it isn't interesting anymore - why not mention or show Itadoris past in some episodes or scenes to somehow get an idea, who he is, so that we can route for him! - why not show more about that occupoccu guy, who is several mentioned with an accident that accured some time ago? - Junpeis arc was the most interesting arc in season 1 but it felt to short and anticlimatic And most importantly - If a character comes back from the death, why not making it amazing I get that JJK wants to be different, but it was the worst scene I have watched since Cerseis death on GOT. JJK is a shitshow Story: there is no story: 3 Art: Great: 9 Sound: Ok: 8 Character: Who?: 4 Enjoyment: Non: 3 Overall: 4 And I am really nice with giving JJK a 4
Aspection
04/17/2021, 01:23 AM
This show is as average as they come, personally, I was really disappointed with not only the show, but the hype it garnered for reasons I cannot fathom. If you want the most basic example of a shounen, this is it. TL;DR: This show is borderline bad. There is NOTHING in here that's better than other shows, and there are plenty of things that are truly dreadful. I only completed this show believing in the hype and hoping it would improve eventually-- it never did. Summary: Cool guy Naru-- I mean Itadori with innate powers stronger than the universe itself beats everyone else by order ofmagnitude cause he's an orphan and gets bullied. Oh wait, wrong show (His grandfather did tell him to be useful though so good enough). With the help of the most legendary jujutsu master Kaka- I mean Gojou, they go around beating everything down to a pulp. Oh, there are also side characters that get increasingly stronger to try and match Itadori's unreasonable growth like his rival sasuk-- I mean Fushiguro and the and fan service "I'm a badass but also hot" waifu sakur-- I mean Kugisaki to fill in the trio squad. Obviously no one can actually harm any of them since it's a terribly written shounen, but at least they pretend to. Art & Sound (9/10): Let's get this out of the way: the only reason anyone cares for this show is because it looks good and jujustsu sounds like jujitsu and that's exciting. Art and sound are great as you would expect from a show that is literally nothing but art and sound quality. The fight scenes are great, but I would personally argue there is much better out there. Everything else (2/10): There are curses or something that need to be exorcised, so we have sorcerers that may or may not have randomly assigned curse powers that can kill these curses that may or may not actually be humans with half-assed backstories half the time. DISCLAIMER: this all depends on what feels the coolest at the moment and can change whenever the show feels like it. These curses interact with the real world, but conveying that through storytelling is too much of a hassle. Instead we just accept random moms dying and entire school student bodies being seriously injured out of nowhere as being the unquestioned norm. But that's alright, because a character will do something funny the next scene so we can haHAA and forget about it. The curses dealing such immense damage to society are ranked from weak to mega strong, but in typical lazy shounen fashion, in our story they actually scale from mega strong to OMEGA STRONG AND BEYOND. In their very first mission, the trio could barely defeat a "weak" curse. *spoilers till next paragraph* By the end of the season they defeat THREE curses of the "strongest" category in one swoop. We know those curses to be nowhere near the strongest in reality, but the show built them up to be on par with the most elite of curses. Also everyone gets promoted to 2nd highest rank possible straight from the bottom to adjust for their power level spiking. This is horrendous story telling. It's a Naruto clone with an even worse story. We have nine tails-- I mean Sukuna chilling the whole time doing whatever he wants, but only when convenient to the plot. At least Naruto had a reason for the big bad evil being sealed away beyond "CaUSE ItAdoRI Is SpeCIAL". We have no reason to like any of the characters. At no point in the story did I give a crap about any of them, why should I? They all have two-dimensional personalities with one dimensional attitudes. The show even goes out of it's way to claim "Sorcerers need to be one dimensional to be powerful" & "A sorcerer's power curve isn't always gentle". The show is self aware of how terrible it's own plot is and attempts to excuse it with more lazy reasons; I have no idea why anyone would argue otherwise. Bad characters, bad setting, bad story (even by shounen standards!), bad dialogue, and honestly even bad slapstick jokes which make up half of each episode. By the end of the show I skipped everything that involved a side character knowing it will amount to 0 impact on anything beyond that one scene. Actually, you could skip any scene in the show that isn't sakuga and not miss out on anything. I really hope this show doesn't get a 2nd season and people come to their senses of just how mediocre this show truly is.
HenriqueNeves
03/31/2021, 02:39 PM
Jujutsu Kaisen has a “simple” premise, but that seeks to appropriate some clichés of the shounen universe in an innovative and illustrious way, almost as a tribute to the genre, but that ends up over-calculating its own initial proposal, transforming anime into a forced bull with references of the genre. The anime doesn't even try to differentiate itself very much from a standard shounen, and it doesn't even need to. Much of the anime's approach is to get as deep as possible in these clichés. From the way the characters speak, even the narrative structure of the anime follows this logic very well. For those wholike it, anime is also a full plate for references that refer us to some famous titles, such as Satoru Gojou, which in addition to appearance, is also always late like Naruto's Kakashi Sensei. There are several other evident references such as this one, but that fit this homage to the genre. The most amazing thing about the anime is how it supplies what it considers most important for the progress of the work. He skips the famous training arc; the way the characters get to know each other is quick and direct; the information is passed in a very verbose way, the anime explained and it is already done. It's all designed to be very dynamic and immediate, so the anime can make the most of its main theme. But in reality, these ideas do not seem to be perfectly reflected in the work, perhaps, not even close to that. The problems start with the way director Seong-Hu Park chooses to stage the anime. Unfortunately, it transforms the whole creative approach of the work into a kind of methodical anime. In large part, everything is very calculated. The plans follow an ultra-organized and perfectionist logic. But then you should be asking: what's the problem with anime in over-calculating its plans? I say that it acquires a more contemplative relationship with emptiness. The viewer's gaze ends up focusing more on an aesthetic presence, than on its main theme. It turns out that the whole importance of the director with the genre becomes another way to aestheticize everything. Most action scenes have the same pattern. It has a cool choreography, the camera moves dynamically, everything is very fluid and CALCULATED. There comes a point where it is practically possible to know how the fight scenes are going to happen. The only thing really well developed during most of the episodes, was an association of the villains with the problems of the world. In my interpretation, it is as if these problems existed and the humans of this universe had to fight against this individual every day. The anime even exposes quite obviously in the episode where the Kento Nanami character takes Jujutsu off a clerk's shoulders, and she feels a relief from it. It is sad to have to talk about it, it's an idea that works practically in isolation. I admit that in episode 5 I was already exhausted from watching the work. Until arriving in episode 17 to 18 (when the anime really gets really good) everything that happens in the course of the plot is directed in this same repeated logic. My surprise comes in the following episodes, when the villains interrupt the competition between the teams. He takes a more direct stance with his main theme and proposes a growing logic until episode 21. This logic is related to animation, which takes on an even more organic air than in previous episodes, and appropriates even more of its spaces. Unfortunately, the final episodes suffer from it, put the heyday of the anime is there. Then another problem is forced to repeat again the same idea of the initial episodes, but this time there is no longer a sense of danger so evident. To end my review. Director Seong-Hu Park once again (as in The God of High School) tries to innovate and deconstruct the language in some way, but ends up not quite assimilating the way he wants to highlight this idea, doing yet another empty job with cute animation .
ThatAnimeSnobRE
03/27/2021, 04:12 PM
INTRO Jujutsu Kaisen belongs in the category that began with Demon Slayer: Anime series that are carried almost entirely by their movie-quality animation. Their plots and characters are nothing you haven’t seen before, but at least everything looks gorgeous. The Bleach fans of old in specific will rejoice, since it plays out in an almost identical way. It’s why I often jokingly call this show Bleblechu Bankaisen. By the way, Bleach will have a hard time making anyone care when its last arc gets finally adapted and it’s nowhere near the animation quality of this one. Oh, and the script is crap too. CHARACTERS The character chemistry willbe the hardest thing for most to get into, since it feels phoney. Everyone meets and befriends each other in a matter of minutes, thus there is no gravity behind their friendship. It’s one thing to spend months with someone before you can call him an ally or a friend, and a whole other to bond in mere minutes. Every Jujutsu sorcerer in the show becomes part of the team super fast, so it never feels like these characters care deeply about each other. Character motivations are another lame thing, since they are ridiculously simple. One wants to help people because his grandpa told him to do it, another wants to find her childhood friend, and a third wants to be kind like his sister. Holy smokes, it’s one thing to expect something less than trying to be the best sorcerer in the world, and a whole other to want close to nothing. There is nothing inspiring or grand in whatever they want. Naruto was instantly grabbing your attention because he was very sad on the swing, and Deku did the same by crying after being bullied and told he will never become a hero. There is no such thing here. And it doesn’t help how passive they are the whole time. They fool around waiting for orders until a mission happens and they go to the mission. Their motivations don’t matter one bit. The only good thing I found in the characters is the protagonist who wants to eat a bunch of cursed fingers so he can turn into a super evil dude… and die, so that the curse of the fingers can stop hurting people. Quite noble. Also, his anguish while seeing he is unable to save every person he comes across or how he often has to kill in order to protect others is portrayed nicely. A special mention must be made regarding the female characters in the show, which are often praised for not existing as fan service and for being strong and independent. It’s not much of a positive trait when they come off as unlikable feminists who are too busy bitching about first world problem and their role in society, while in battle they are still far weaker than the men. Especially Nobara, who fails at almost everything she does, has to be constantly saved by the men, and yet the audience is supposed to praise her as a strong and independent woman. She’s just there to be bitching, yelling, and being obnoxious. ACTION As I said the sole reason for anyone to watch this anime is the fighting, which is super duper well animated and choreographed. Just don’t expect it to be deep or something. Most supposed tactics are silly at best and come down to a character having broken juchubruchu powers and the other one not being able to defend against them. -The characters will also have to explain their juchubruchu powers in the middle of the fight. On one hand it’s lame infodumping that stops the fights. On the other it’s a lame excuse for their juchubruchu abilities to work. That’s right, if their opponent doesn’t know what hit him, he won’t get affected by them. -The ending of the fights is almost always left inconclusive, because a good guy will be butting in right before a conclusive strike, the bad guy will be running away, and nothing will be resolved. It happens so many times and it never feels satisfactory. It will be leaving you with blue balls. -There is never any legit reason for how they cover up the destruction caused by the monsters. There is no gas explosion excuse like in Fate Stay Porn, or an invasion from the north excuse like in God of ten chapters per episode. The barrier they set up doesn’t prevent the victims from occasionally seeing the monsters, and buildings are blowing up during the fights. So why doesn’t the public know about the curses when they are not hidden? -There is also a good guy who is so powerful, no bad guy stands a chance against. The only way a good guy will bother to fight is if there is a lame excuse for why Reverse Kakashi is not present for ending everything in a few seconds. Which is why he will be often mysteriously away on a trip, or a barrier specifically designed for him will be keeping him out of the fight. -There is tournament arc at some point, because there can’t be a shonen without one, and it’s easily the most boring part of the show. There are zero stakes in the fights, since nobody can die and it’s all just an excuse for showing a bunch of flashbacks regarding the support cast. Too bad none of that matter since, as I said above, these people have no chemistry and never feel like a team. They are not even important, as stated by the very bad guys who openly said that the only two people that matter are the protagonist and the blindfold guy. What a way to fodderize your entire cast just a few episodes after the show began. Even when those nobodies try to kill the protagonist you never feel any tension, because you know he can casually return to life thanks to his inner demon. DEATH The show is full of permanent deaths, many of which are outright gruesome. They make it seem like anyone can die in horrible ways. Too bad it only happens to unimportant characters. There is also someone important who dies, but he was so stupid the whole time he almost deserved to die. That idiot thought some school bullies killed his mom, and not a mass murdering monster. Also, as I said above, the main character can resurrect whenever he feels like it, and then jokes about it when he presents himself alive and well to his friends (who have no chemistry and therefore are not much of friends). It takes away most of the tension regarding him surviving or not during the fights. THE REST The comedy is mostly miss for a shonen. I didn’t laugh once during the comedic moments, because they are all very weak in delivery and written for toddlers. What’s the point in having a monster hierarchy? There are difficulty levels when it comes to the monsters and yet they can already defeat the strongest grade, effectively making the chart completely obsolete in the same episode it was introduced. Training is a joke. Not-Sakura (Nobara) trains to get stronger by being thrown at the ground repeatedly. Itadori masters ki control by sitting down, eating chips and watching movies. I am sure this is far more relatable to the average modern viewer than the days when shonen characters were training in lethal martial arts over a pit of lava.
ren0080
03/26/2021, 06:55 PM
Jujutsu Kaisen is the best modern shounen anime... or is it? Let's take a look. The story is average. Nothing too much to say to it except that it's a speedrun of the usual Shounen Formula. Too much is happening in this season that I hardly remember anything that happened. It didn't have an impact whatsoever since the story's development is too fast. There wasn't any room to breathe in and take the current information, which makes me not care about the stakes since it is too fast and it happened so early in the series. The characters are... decent. They aren't memorable or anything. Heck, I forgotsome of the characters even existed because the story didn't give the viewers enough breathing room to appreciate and know their character. So I didn't care about the characters at all. There wasn't any emotional connection to any of the characters. Also, mildly spoiler, personal connections between characters are so superficial level that I even wondered why tf are they risking their lives to someone they just met lmao In other words, there isn't any believable relationship between the characters since their bonding time was too fast that it looks like they are together because plot. The animation is the highlight of this anime. But while it is fluid and fast-paced, it has a drawback. Impacts here don't really have any impact. The impact of their strikes looks like they are just girls slapping their besties because of a silly joke. They look like tapping each other. Heck, even Dragon Ball had a more believable impact in their strikes lmao Overall, it's good animation. But it lacks the oomph in its impact. The music is okay overall. The OST is good, but the openings and endings are just decent. Nothing to say here except, it could be better. Enjoyment factor. The comedy here is hit-or-miss. There wasn't any scene that made me laugh, so it's a miss for me. But that's just due to poor timing on their part. The timing of their punchline is too fast due to the fast pacing of the anime, which in turn, comedy and emotional stuff aren't hitting as hard as it should be. Overall, it's a decent shounen that could have been better if it was more slow-paced or at least normal-paced.
THEHANZO1
03/26/2021, 04:38 PM
Many of you probably won't even listen to my words after having seen the score that I gave to this anime. Many of you probably think: "What a f**king retard, the anime he's been talking about is a god damn masterpiece! How dare he?!" And many of you probably haven't even read further than these first three sentences. But in case you'll give me a chance to explain my score, let me give you a closer look into my thoughts, and let's see, why I didn't like JJK as much as other ppl did. Story – 6/10 First things first: The story starts off right away withour main character, hanging around at school, giving us the first insights of him and his personality. Also, with the death of grandpa, his motives of doing good things in this world and becoming some kind of a “hero” (that’s technically the false expression, but you can see it as a place holder) are revealed. And here’s the first problem in my opinion, which isn’t the really the fast start of the anime itself, it’s actually that Yuuji’s personality, and more or less his only motivation to keep going on this whole journey, consists of his grandpa saying: “You’re strong, so help people”. To admit, this would’ve been completely fine if some of Yuuji’s past was revealed, and if the author decided to show how important his granddad was to him. Just Yuuji saying that he was the only person that was there for him isn’t enough, and in the end this simple motive, which honestly offered some potential to develop and to grow, just becomes a dull somewhat, which clearly can’t carry a whole personality. Focusing on the storyline again, Yuuji’s not the only character that gets introduced in the first couple of episodes. Basically the whole main cast with Gojou, Megumi, Nobara, Sukuna and the aforementioned Yuuji shows up in a truly short period of time. Being honest with you, that in particular went a little to fast for me. The mc showing up in the first episode is a really common thing, but so many characters at once destroy the opportunity to explain their motives, and who they are supposed the be in this whole construct. And those vague glimpses of their pasts that I’ve seen don’t give the viewer a sufficient understanding of those characters. But if you understood what the motive was, again, it’s just the classic "I have to save people because person xy affected me back then" kind of thing. Using the same pattern over and over, and changing it a little bit isn’t really a creative way of constructing motives. But hey, we’ve gotta work with what we’ve got, don’t we? So there they are, our team on an endless mission of fighting evil spirits to protect the world. Although this concept has been covered in many, many shonen anime (the most popular one would be Bleach), JJK did this quite alright. The ranking systems for the monsters, as well as for the jujutsu sorcerers make it easy to understand if a situation is dangerous or not, or if the character is likely to have a chance or not. Thanks to that, the viewer gets invested easily into the matter, which furthermore makes this show uncomplicated to watch. What I like indeed, is how the show progresses from those missions to a battle against a big enemy, which has a threatening plan to take over the world. Even though this might sound as cliched as possible, it’s in fact well-done. The characters themselves play a big part in this, but I would want to get into that later. What the author did right in that regard was building the bridge between of the first and the second arc. In the first 6-7 episodes, everyone was just kinda playing around, and that phase was used, as I said, to let the viewers “find their way” into the show. 2 or 3 twists were built in, which had a surprising effect. The unexpected situations which it resulted in personally entertained me and gave the show a refreshing aspect. After that, Junpei, an intriguing and relatable character was presented to the audience, and he marked the beginning of the new arc. Through the newly formed cooperation between Junpei and the antagonist Mahito, there maintained a constant tension, because one does not know whether Junpei will give in to his anger or resentment, or whether he will decide to follow Itadori and turn to the good side. This situation only resolves when it comes to the showdown between Mahito and Nanami & Itadori. This actually created new tensions, because, if you’re willing to see it like that, Junpei’s suffering and hatred devolved to Itadori, and Itadori himself now holds a grudge against Mahito and his allies. Thus the author succeeded in a clever way to give Itadori a reason to hate the enemy from the bottom of his heart, with which a new enmity was born. In that regard: Chapeau! But what could come next? Oh yes, there was something that shouldn’t be missing in any shonen anime: A tournament arc! Although it wasn’t a complete tournament, I assume that you can count it as one, at least it was originally planned out to be a tournament. Funny moments, tragic flashbacks, good fights, and my personal highlight, the friendship between Toudou and Itadori makes it all an enjoyable watch. The infiltration of Mahito and Hanami was pretty obvious to see coming, and that they also get away with it wasn’t surprising at all. In pretty much every other shonen anime that also had a tournament arc, the process was always the same after all: 1. Group A competes with Group B, 2. Enemy attacks, 3. Group A and Group B fight together to beat the enemy, 4. Enemy escapes, but actually reached his goal. THE END. Well, not exactly like that, but it’s often the case. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing, it’s just kinda overused after hundreds of anime adapted tournament arcs in that way. So, what have we got after all that? Intriguing characters? A refreshing story? I wouldn’t say that those aspects weren’t covered in the anime, it’s just like something inside me wants to tell me: “Hmmmm, haven’t we already seen this somewhere?” Maybe I’m just stupid, maybe I’m just not able to appreciate the “greatness” of this show, but in the end, I don’t see a reason to praise this as the next big thing. I’m one hundred percent sure that JJK gets big, I mean, it’s already massive now, but imo it doesn’t differ from the most shonen anime, of which some also have an equally interesting concept as this one. It’s done well quite in fact, that’s to say. Still, the idea it tries to develop already had a limited potential right from the beginning, and since it didn’t manage to pass that limit, the story’s sadly just slightly better than average. Characters 7.5/10 Maybe I was pretty rubbish about the story, I’m sorry ‘bout that. In contrast, what I have to admit is that Jujutsu Kaisens’ characters really are something very special. Or at least some of them. Let’s begin with our protagonist, Yuuji. You may be surprised, but along with Megumi, he’s probably one of the least intriguing characters, at least I see it that way. Yuuji is like vanilla ice; some kind of eatable, but nothing special in particular. His motive and goals are too simple in my opinion, especially the relation to his grandfather could’ve been extended to give his motive more importance (I mentioned that earlier). He’s kind of a funny guy, and isn’t cringe in any way, which makes it bearable to watch him. He also sometimes has his moments where he’s able to shine, and honestly, seeing that is quite entertaining. However, after all he’s like a typical shonen mc. You know, wanting to protect his friends, believes in the power of friendship, actually isn’t the smartest guy in the world, never gives up and believes in his goals and motives, etc. If you’re the author, ofc you can whatever you want with your characters, but I would’ve wanted to avoid any kinds of cliches, because nobody genuinely likes them. And if they suit the character well, they have to be executed in a really really unique way, which I haven’t seen often in anime. So yeah, he’s ok as a protagonist, develops like you would’ve expected it, and does the things you would’ve expected from him. Jumping to Gojo now, what I like about him is the harmony that exists between him and Yuuji. They’re just a perfect match, because their personalities are very similar to each other. The bullshit I’ve heard that he’s just a bad copy of Kakashi from Naruto isn’t even close to reality. Gojo is a totally different character, and apart from his blindfold and his strength, he shares nothing with Kakashi. Kakashi is more the reserved kind of character, who calmly observes a situation and then makes some intelligent moves to defeat his opponent, whereas Gojo loves to fool his enemies. As seen in the fight with Jougo, he loves to play with them and teasing them, before revealing his real skills and finishing them off. His goofy personality fits perfectly in that regard and makes it understandable why so many people love him. He’s just the guy you have to like no matter what. Nobara and Megumi do an alright job as serving as Yuuji’s companions, but nevertheless, they’re also good as standalone characters. Nobara has some typically girly traits, e.g. liking fashion a lot and caring about looks, but she can also get very serious, or sometimes even silly or funny. The same goes for Megumi, even though he’s more the quiet and thoughtful type of guy. But hey, that means more diversity, which serves to make this anime more than just a one dimensional show. Both of them also have their pasts, which shall create their reasons to keep on going, as same as it was for Yuuji. Sadly these “motives” are as boring (if that’s the right word) as Yuuji’s was, and that was clearly some wasted potential. On the other hand, I think they don’t have to be perfect, and perhaps everyone else says that the development they go through, which is directly connected with their background is perfectly done. I can’t judge about that, I only say what I think, just to make that clear. Dicucssing the other guys from the school in Tokyo, at the beginning I thought it’s supposed to be a bad joke. A talking panda? A dude who permanently repeats the ingredients of a meal? I honestly thought that the author wanted to prank me. No, really. But what shall I say, even them I started to like. And one by the name of Maki impressed me much more than the others, she could even be a better character than Nobara. If you look at her strong and independent personality, you’ll notice that she’s really an exceptional person. In general, the female characters differ a lot from the standard weak and useless, often oversexualized girls in other shonen anime. Another compliment to the author at this point. By the way, the same thing as for the characters from Tokyo also goes for the ones from Kyoto. But there’s one character, a certain man who stands above everybody else, in terms of likability as well as in terms of fighting skills. And who could be other than my boy: Toudou. My god, I haven’t seen such a cool dude in a fairly long time, and it was so invigorating to experience him in action. At first his well-known question seemed dumb to me. Why would you ask something like that? But in his craziness, he literally searched for his one and only brother. And when he found Itadori and both became like best friends, it was just so much fun watching them fighting together. And therefore I want to say: Toudou, actually you aren’t being hated, everybody f**king loves you! So that this essay comes to an end soon, let's talk briefly about the antagonists, or rather the two most important ones: Sukuna and Mahito. Sukuna kinda reminds me of Gilgamesh (Fate) with his arrogance combined with his powers. His line: ”Know your place, fool” just fits perfectly to his character and makes him standing above all the other curses. It was mentioned that e.g. Jougo is technically stronger than him, but his presence makes the difference in the end. And that’s the thing: He’s the king. He rules all those other weaklings who think they’re strong, but only are small fishes compared to him. Sukuna also gives of a mysterious vibe, especially when he’s talking about Megumi, because we all know that he has some plans with him, which makes it even more interesting to watch. Mahito in comparison is more the likable kind of guy. He may have done cruel and bad things, but because of his often shown goofy and funny personality, I can’t take these actions even serious anymore. I think I actually sympathize with him, just because of his character. Now if that’s a good thing or not to sympathize with the villain who eventually wants to destroy the world is left to be seen, but I can't help admitting that he's a great character and that I hope for seeing even more of him in the future. Art & Animation – 9/10 The fight scenes go hard. Because of each individual's diverse abilities, there’s relatively more tactics and strategy that go into them than your average action anime, which makes them a whole lot more interesting to watch as it’s not just punching each other, and winning through willpower. It’s a mostly consistent art style, and if you saw just the style you wouldn’t be able to differentiate it from any other anime, but the studio didn’t skimp out on the elaborate backgrounds and set design. As for the animation itself, it’s smoother than a baby’s bottom, with constant angle changes and fast paced movements the scenes come to life, but also aren’t so crazy as to prevent you from being able to focus on what’s happening and not be able to enjoy it. The animation of everything from Cursed Energy to rushing water was great to look at. I loved how parts of the animation style occasionally changed, such as water and the backgrounds when movement was increased. Personally, I quite like the character design, though some people have said it's alright compared to its predecessors. Both the people and the curses character’s looks are deliberately well suited for their personality and skills. Some of them just look cool too, nothing too deep or thought out, just, yeah, looks cool. That's honestly about all I have related to the animation. It's simply extremely good! Sound – 8/10 The soundtracks of Jujutsu Kaisen are in-fact very well done. It’s not overbearing during scenes with heavy dialogue. Furthermore, some of the fight scenes in the anime are accompanied with incredible songs that just get you hyped. It's not a crazy good in a way to where it sticks out in the genre but it does do a great job fulfilling its role. Also the opening and ending songs are god damn sensational, I haven’t heard such great songs in a while. The voice acting is really good, too, and that’s no wonder, because many experienced voice actors and talented people worked on that show, so it had to be great. Enjoyment – 5/10 Now it almost hurts to say that, but I honestly couldn’t force myself to like that show as much as I should have. You know, I’ve already watched quite an amount of shonen in my life, and while watching this anime, I only thought: “Bruh, that’s so boring, I’ve seen this millions of times”, even though it’s not the case. I wrote down why this show’s so great, and tried to convince myself to like it, but something inside rebelled against that. It doesn’t make any sense to me, and I really would’ve loved to like that show as a whole, but it didn’t work in the end. Btw, this doesn’t mean that I disliked everything of it, I certainly had moments, where I felt like: “Man, the shit’s about to get crazy!”, but in the next moment, the feeling was gone again. And that's how it went throughout the anime. Well what do you wanna do? Overall – 6/10 All in all, from the objective perspective, it’s a must-watch for shonen fans, even though the story might be boring sometimes. I probably would’ve given it a higher score, but I couldn’t detach myself from my inner feelings about, so I’m really sorry. For everybody reading this review, I hope you had a great time while watching Jujutsu Kaisen, and I also pray to the gods for a seconds season, because maybe my feelings will change then. Cheers🎶
Twumi
03/26/2021, 03:27 PM
After the ridiculous success of Demon Slayer, the shounen industry is finally taking notes on how to make a successful adaption. There's so many things that can be said about JJK, that I'm confused where to start from. Let me start by giving JJK's staff the appreciation they deserve. Being a huge AoT fan, I'm honestly a little bit salty. I'm not undermining AoT, it's just that my eyes have been spoiled from seeing a sakuga on every damn episode of JJK. It's honestly just so good. So yes, I'm gonna first highlight the sector which totally carries JJK, the animation. JJK is a feast for youreyes. The animation is just so magnificent, starting from the beautiful landscapes to the sakuga on even the smallest fights. The fights are so well choreographed, the camera angles, the key frames. I don't have enough words to explain the greatness of the animation. You have to witness it for yourself. Just like how Demon Slayers impeccable animation by Ufotable carried it, in the same way JJK's animation by MAPPA definitely elevates the anime to another level. And without the elegant animation, I don't think JJK would be at where it's at right now. So MAPPA definitely needs credit where it's due, this is how you do a first season of an anime. One other great thing about JJK is it's power system. If you're like me who absolutely loves a great power system, then you'll also fall in love with JJK's power system. JJK has a very concrete power system, which is cursed energy. Cursed energy kind of replicates Chakra from Naruto. Both needs a good amount of focus and training to achieve them. The only difference is that in Naruto, Chakra exists in all beings. However, in JJK, not everyone had cursed energy, like Maki, they use cursed tools instead which is also an interesting concept. The reason I love the power system is that it is not too complex neither is it too simple like, eat hair = I'm strong now. Yuuji imbues his hands with cursed energy, Nobara uses hammer and nails, Fushigoro summons cursed beasts, and Gojou can manipulate space at an atomic level. There's literally an old man who uses an electric guitar to fight, I fucking love this! This power system and the character's powers, all of them makes the anime even more amazing for me. The characters are probably the second greatest part of the anime. Yuuji is such a good shounen protagonist, he isn't annoying and doesn't scream all the time, is quite care free. On the other hand, the other members of the MC trio are just so fun to watch, Fushigoro and Nobara both. I'd be lying if I said that it didn't remind me of Naruto a little bit. The fun little rivalry between Yuuji and Fushigoro, just like Naruto and Sasuke, except better. And isn't it a breath of fresh air, finally having a female MC that isn't annoying and absolutely useless. In episode 23, when Nobara was suddenly getting sucked into a gate, instead of screaming and crying for help, she just showed Fushigoro a thumbs up, saying that she'll be fine, like the badass she is! God I love the characters. The character goals are really interesting, which also makes the characters, interesting. Yuuji isn't like other shounen nice guys who refuse to kill people like Deku, he has an actual reason to do that. He highly commends "the value of life". He also does good deeds because he wants to die peacefully and be remembered as a good person, quite a simple but respectable goal. Fushigoro is probably my second favourite character in JJK. He is very secretive and stoic, all while caring for his friends. In episode 23, we got to see a different side of him, and honestly he has so much depth to him. I normally hate female delinquent characters so much, I can't stand them as much as I can't stand Tsunderes. I hate how they go "Kimochi warui" after everything. But Nobara is different. She is very talkative during battles, verbally destroying the shit outta the opponent, all while being badass as fuck during all times. She also deeply cares about his friends, she is a great character. Not only this, but side characters like Panda, Maki, Inumaki. Every- again LITERALLY EVERY CHARACTER in this anime is so fucking good and interesting, even the antagonists like Sukuna and Mahito have a considerable amount of depth to them which everyone can comprehend, which makes them so good. Let me tell you this, an entire paragraph isn't enough to explain how amazing and interesting the characters are. The only part JJK is a bit lacking in is story. Since it's only season 1 and the story hasn't expanded much, but even still, the story is a bit generic. It feels like a typical monster of the week kind of story. Even the story is a bit average now, all other aspects carry this anime. And yes, the story switches tones really quick, it goes from a dark and gritty tone to a light hearted tone pretty fast. And the best part is that they perfectly execute it. No one said that an anime must excel at all aspects. There was no boring moment in the entire anime, despite the story being typical, I always thoroughly enjoyed it. The Juju Strolls are a perfect addition after the end of every episode, no matter how tense an episode is, the Juju Strolls are entertaining to watch. Now about sound, it's amazing. The 2 opening sequences and ending sequences are all so amazing. Especially the amazing opening from Eve and the great ending from ALI. After that, there's the voice acting. Most people can't differentiate between good voice acting and bad voice acting, but I have noticed that a good amount of anime often fail at properly delivering dialogues. JJK's voice acting feels genuine and natural, so big props to the talented voice actors. Soundtrack is also quite lacking. It's not the best there is, but it works. Of course, I don't expect all anime to have Sawano level soundtracks. Another thing that I need to separately mention are the eye catchers. If you don't know what eye catchers are, they are those intro type of clips that are often in the middle of an episode. JJK's eye catchers are so captivating, they have this horror-y feeling to it. Now to sum it all up in one sentence: Jujutsu Kaisen is great. JJK has to be one of the greatest new gen shounens. As for whether you should watch it or not- YOU DEFINITELY SHOULD. I don't always tell people so confidently to watch an anime. It is the start of a new era through Jujutsu Kaisen, and I'm damn interested to see where it's gonna go from here. See you all in the next season!
debochca
03/26/2021, 10:35 AM
What is wrong with a generic shounen anime? I firmly hold the idea that, nowadays, originality is something almost impossible, because every new anime you see will remind you of x anime you had seen before. No matter how hard you try not to compare, the floating idea is always there "oh, this is exactly the same premise as x anime". Nevertheless, does a show need to be only original to be great? No! Of course, if it has originality it is something to congratulate, but if it doesn't, there's a lot of ways to tell a story and pass over that. It can havea big potential and develop it very well, with a good soundtrack and an amazing animation. It can have a bunch of likeable characters that, even though they are typical shounen main cast, can be really good and memorable. It's like reading a lot of books from the same author; even though you have an idea of which path the book is going to take, since you know how the writer works, that doesn't mean that you are going to despise every book the author writes after you read a pair of them just because it looks like his previous work. And if you do, please, grow up, grab a few books from the same author or movies from the same director and take a seat and, for once, enjoy life. If you have good reasons and a lot of arguments against a work, do it, hate it, and do it with all your strength! But hating just because, is stupid. Hating on generic or hyped animes assuming it is mediocre or repetitive because it belongs to certain genre doesn't make you look cool, get over it. That is Jujutsu Kaisen, a shounen anime that has a lot of things you have seen before, and a lot that you haven't. It has a simple premise: a guy eats a cursed finger and gets some sort of Kyuubi to lodge ins his body and becomes a magician so he can control that beast. The only thing is that the guy that starts existing inside him, instead of being the strongest bijouu, is the strongest curse. Instead of being the one with the major quantity of tails, he is the one with the major quiantity of lost cursed fingers all over the place. The adorable guy that ate that finger is called Yuuji Itadori, and the entity that lives inside him is called Sukuna, the king of curses, a strong as hell dude that can use Yuuji’s body to his own benefit and possess it whenever he felt like it. Oh, yes, and he can create a second mouth on his container friend’s face so he could talk to the rest and to not be excluded of the conversation. And to laugh at Yuuji, of course. I must admit it. I saw the first episode by accident, it wasn't at my radar at all. And even more, I dropped it by the middle of it because I found it unattractive. After that, the anime got to CR and its publicity all over the platform kind of convinced me to give it another chance. And I don't regret it. When I finished that first episode, I liked it. It didn't seem to me the perfect first episode, because it's nothing really special, but it was fine. After that, every episode was getting better, and that's another point that I give to it. It's way better a show that improves every minute than one that starts with all the cards and loses the game by the middle of the show. The humour in this show is, in my opinion, well done and in good measure. The dark atmosphere is successfully handled with some scenes that show you how crude that reality is. From the go, curses are nothing but a humanity’s creation. Curses are born from hate, resentment, pain and so, and that says a lot since the more pain it collects, the more powerful it is, and there’s a lot of fucked up curses. And even letting aside that fact, this reality is harsh since people is too. We saw it with Nobara’s backstory, with Junpei, with Megumi’s family. Darkness and a sad aura is all over the place. The world, then, is decent constructed; is not perfect, but it does justice to the show. I can say there are some plot armour on it, based on how powerful Sukuna is and how he can manipulate some stuff in the way he desires without thinking it too much, or based on the dark energy and its scope, because Gojou, for example, is sooooo buffed that the world kind of fails to demonstrate his power’s limits. He protect, he attack, but most importantly he FLY. However, I won’t be focusing on that since this plot armors or exaggerations are lowkey subtle. At least, it is not the only weapon they have. It has the typical main character that is pretty cheerful, charismatic, energic and that respects the dead. Personally, I loved him; if he was real, I would adopt him. His personality doesn't seem forced, he plays the fool without abusing of it, and most important, he isn't in love with his sidekick but with Jennifer Lawrence. Something that I really liked about him and the beginning of this series is how, since the first moment, his grandfather dies and throws him his last words. I mean, you start the show and you already know what motivates him to play the hero part. And that's nice. I 'm not saying is mythical, but is well made and gives him a little depth that is going to carry with him for the rest of the story, rather as a weight than as a lesson or a choice, almost forcing him to be a good person or to do a good for the others before he dies. Another thing, related to this, that I can save from him is that he doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t want to be the best. He just wants to read mangas and keep doing stuff with his friends at the occultism club. He doesn’t have that typical MC complex of trying to be the strongest just because he wants people to respect them nor a dream of being the highest in a hierarchy. The only reason he is becoming a magician is because he is taking responsibility for his acts, and later on because he wants to be strong enough to control Sukuna in order not to hurt his partners. Itadori is a simple person who likes simple things, that is relatable, sensitive and funny. He is so simple that that makes him a human, and as such, you can understand him, and his fears and his suffer. He doesn’t cry because his sensei died nor anything so dramatic, he cries because he loses his friends. He doesn’t behave as some sort of powerful guy, but he openly admits that he is scared of dying. He is so likeable that every person he mets, likes him. Even when he is insistent, he makes his way through them and gets to develop a good relationship with them, just like he did with Junpei, and I just can’t believe how much I ended up empathizing with both of them and their relationship and the natural way it was handled. Nothing from other world, just two guys discussing about gore movies. Junpei himself is a really well-made character that achieved his goal of getting us all sentimental with his tragic and detailed background and story. Not gonna lie, his entire arc broke my heart, with just a bunch of episodes I could totally feel him. As a lot of people said, Junpei wasn’t a victim of curses, but a victim of humanity. Just when you think that JJK is starting to get slow, this arc comes in, breaks your window and slaps you in the face. Going back to the characters, I have to say that I’m a person who gets attached easily to them, as long as they give me something to like them. I don't usually like “cold” characters, but Megumi is a guy that I like a lot. Typical emo of the group, but at least he has a good background and doesn't mistreat the MC all the time, he even constructs a valuable relationship with him. In the first episodes you already get a glance of his past and after some events the viewer starts to witness his first perspective changes and how Yuuji’s personality start to take root within him. Nobara is a character that I also love very much, because she doesn’t exactly fit in the stereotype of the useless female character that is in love with the emo, and another interesting quality that differences her a little is that she is shown as strong girl who appears with a clear objective in her mind. Since the first moment, she is a character with a part to achieve, an objective of starting a new life on her own and to chase after someone of her past in order to make peace with her and herself, and that’s pretty good. She fights a lot with Itadori in a comedic way and it’s a humour I personally enjoy because it’s well settled and the anime doesn’t abuse of it, she doesn’t get to the point of being unbearable, not even close. Yes, they argue all the time because they like to annoy the other one, especially her, but at the same time they develop an estimable partnership. Overall, I liked her since her first moment, and even more after seeing how confident she is even though her mistakes and her debilities, and how she doesn’t think of the main characters’ dicks. And the way she wanted to beat Mai just because she ruined her clothes cracked me up. “I love to look pretty as much as I love being strong”. That’s the woman I needed. More characters like Nobara, and even more like Maki, please. The other students are pretty interesting, every one of them: Maki, PANDA, Mechamaru. However, braindead muscles guys are my weakness, I’m not going to lie. Toudou is one of the best things of this show. He is one of those that are insanely strong and that enjoy having a good fight and that even enjoy losing if their opponent was better than them. He is an idol’s fan and takes every oportunity to demonstrate he is straight, considering a man’s taste in women as a matter of life and death. This guy can’t be taken seriously but damn, he made me laugh a lot, and really impressed me with his skills. His clean-punch fight against Itadori is AMAZING. No power-ups, no abilities getting out of nowhere, just two guys throwing fists and taking advantage of their surroundings. Excellent animation, choreography, feelings and the little talk. That fight is just so well done. And, of course, my favourite thing about that episode was his evangelism. He doesn’t become Itadori’s friend because Itadori told him his tragic backstory and told him “we are the same”. No, Toudou become’s Yuuji’s friend because they share opinions in their perfect type of woman, and their favourite butt: Jennifer Lawrence. You guys should just break the tension by opening a Jennifer’s fan club. I’m joining, you know. If you just tell me that “these are characters with nothing special and that you will eventually forget them”, well then, I’m sorry about your memory and how bad it is to not remember these guys. If you stick to that argument, then you just didn’t want you to like them. Now, about animation and sound I have nothing to say. MAPPA nailed it. No complaints, I love this studio and didn’t disappoint me here. And the sound, what can I say? Everybody talks about Lost in Paradise. I mean, it’s an awesome ending, not only because of the song, but the art on it. The OP is decent too, and beyond it, the OST along the episodes is noticeable too. And what I enjoyed a LOT were the seiyuus. My god, I love Nakamura Yuichi and Suwabe Junichi. Having both of them in this series were a gift to me, specially Junichi, who voiced Sukuna and did a very memorable job. In conclusion, Jujutsu Kaisen is the generic shounen anime that has its unique things that makes it a very good anime and even better than a lot of its predecessors. This show proves my point that you don’t need a perfect originality to make an excellent work done with lovable characters and a pretty well world building. From an idea to an execution there is a whole world and it depends on a show how it deals with it. This anime did it in a great way. In my experience, none of its defects stopped me from enjoying this piece, and I hope I made myself clear that If you are looking for a great show, to have a good time and have some laughs with an excellent animation, this is for you. If you hate generic shounen because you are a superior human being that thinks that a person that enjoys a shounen is unable to understand Evangelion, then pass it and miss it, for the health of the community.
SunlitSonata
03/26/2021, 10:28 AM
The thing about trends that a lot of people take for granted is that the more overstuffed a particular set of ideas are, the more likely it is to see either flipped on its head (see Shrek for fairy tale musicals) or given more offbeat renditions (see Joker or Into the Spider-Verse for superhero blockbusters). Genres being overstuffed, if anything, should encourage more experimentation and refinement. Over the years the Shonen genre has gone through a number of these phases. From past its formative years with Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, you’ve gotten shows using the mold for massive tapestries (One Piece), those attempting torewrite the genre rulebook (see Fullmetal Alchemist), shows trying to test Shonen’s capacity for being applicable in distinct scenarios (see HxH), long-form parodies of the genre, and many that wallow in it without doing anything interesting. Jujutsu Kaisen is interesting in this regard because on paper, it doesn’t seem that different from the standard genre mold, but in practice, it truly understands the appeal of the genre and what audiences want to get from it. Jujutsu Kaisen’s first season served as a phenomenal introductory section into the story it wants to tell, presenting its plot, characters, action and tone in a way that’s easy to digest, but is simultaneously a very smart setup that stands out by committing to multiple angles. The show feels like natural selection, where Gege Akutami realizes the elements that people have grown to like in the genre and downplays those that haven’t held up as well. It can be seen immediately with the protagonist, Yuuji Itadori. While yes, he is a teenage protagonist with the goal to protect others and become better at some special skill, a lot of the more in-your-face elements of this are downplayed. He’s not an overly hyperactive idiot, an insecure nerd or a miserable angsty sad sack, but has a good balance of characteristics, being a risk-taker at important moments, more down to earth yet still very passionate about his interests should the subject arise. Character design helps with this as he, alongside the other members of the hero cast, have taller designs that fit the “cool rebellious teen” look a la Bleach, more than the short, childish look of many Shonen heroes. The uniforms convey style during day and night with their reflective black and blue surfaces, but Yuuji still sets himself apart with the red hood adding that degree of cheeriness to the rest of the outfit. Yuuji doesn’t just feel like an archetype; he feels like a character, one given an early sense of consequence, as well as an interesting comparison to be made with the final boss tier opponent in his body as far as power ceiling goes. The idea of this “manifest double” is played up more in the first half of the show than the second, but as Yuuji grows personally, it promises to be a unique recurring element. Jujutsu Kaisen wants to mix shonen power action, comedy, and horror ideas together into one distinct package, and all things considered it’s really cohesive. The first half of the show is primarily dedicated to showing the ropes of the world to Yuuji, but even this basic setup is handled in some pretty fun ways. By Episode 3, they already have the main three characters banter together in an enjoyable dynamic that thankfully never turns into love triangle bollocks. A later episode has to explain how the show’s power system works, but it doesn’t have Yuuji sit in a classroom to learn about it through exposition dumps, or even white-haired mentor character Gojou talking to him about it one on one. No, Gojou’s an incredibly wholesome gadfly, so he pulls Yuuji out of movie-induced focus to actively demonstrate how Cursed Domains work against a monster who actively reacts to its use. This felt like a much more natural way to convey exposition, and even the more whiteboard exposition like the danger grade levels is conveyed with a pretty breezy, sardonic sense of humor. It also introduces the villains in a way that, while not outstanding, worked well in pushing Yuuji to his physical and emotional limit right before the second half started. The only weird structural issue I had with the first half was some backstory for Kento Nanami. It’s spliced right in the middle of a serious fight, where the circumstances leading to it and the consequences following it were far more pertinent than this one guy’s backstory. By the end of the season, he was one of the characters who left the least impression on me. The second half of the show makes the focus of the first half even more reasonable, whilst honing in on the aspect that grew my attention the most early on; the many students from their setting’s magic school, all wearing the same swag as hell reflective uniform. The exchange event team battle serves as a great way to introduce a lot of these characters, their powers, unique designs, and their respective dilemmas without cheating shit later as story ramps up. Almost a third of the run is spent on this, but it’s infinitely more interesting than having a tournament arc in small arena cutting to stills of audience reaction since it gets out a lot more fun character moments. Akutami understands that we, as the excitable audience, want to see some coolass superpowers from a Shonen, and he happily delivers a ton of those that get to shine in this arc, from characters like: -Nobara, the main female girl in the series that, much like Yuuji, doesn’t feel tied to an archetype, appreciating fashion and fangirling over exciting scenes, yet not taking taunts lightly, being protective of her friends, and having a coolass power of fabricating voodoo dolls with specially sized hammers. -A guy who can only speak normally in ramen ingredients, but has incredible word power with increasingly higher personal costs against opponents -An incredibly wholesome talking panda with very versatile fighting stances -A bratty, yet at times comically deadpan witch girl with vantage via flight -A cool-looking bloodbender that currently gets by throwing packets but’ll inevitably have to use his own as deadly consequence. -The adorableness incarnate that is Miwa; a super earnest girl with a simple dream and appropriately simple power that is easy to see as being friendly with others, possible reflection for the audience too. -Two sisters, Mai and Maki, with a quick but strong burst of emotional tension established between them. They each have some sort of limit, Maki being an incredibly resolute fighter but with a weakness to not see curses without glasses, and Mai being unable to use curses without an object but being driven by heaps of vindictive spite. -A talking Iron Man suit with a twist that pleasantly caught me off guard -Toudou, a muscleman who’s incredibly self-centered until struck at personal interest, in which case he becomes an increasingly earnest partner with a sickass skill. Not everyone may like all of these characters, but with their fun powers, interesting power limiters and/or distinct personalities, they nail the appeal of a shonen ensemble. The initial presentation of these abilities in a lower stakes scenario makes their introduction less intrusive on a wider plot. Plus, the majority of these personalities play well for whenever the goofier moments roll around, particularly in the post episode stingers, and episodes like #21. I’m glad the author thought beyond the overly standard elemental stuff to make the ensemble leave an impression. Only hero characters of note I didn’t go more extensively on are Megumi and Gojou. Admittedly, Megumi doesn’t leave quite as much an impression as the others, but he still has a pretty cool power over familiars and got more interesting near the end as his persona began to unravel. And Gojou is such a fun rendition of the typical mentor character, with an excellent design that’s fitting to both sides of his character, constantly holding back yet being comically curious. Comedy doesn’t only exist for its own sake, but often as a way for Yuuji to bond with other characters in the cast, such as Nobara or Toudou. It’s given a lot of creative expressions, and for characters like Miwa, where their design presentation is intentionally at odds with their character, it feels fitting and adorable. Even Gojou’s comical overpowerdness doesn’t purely exist to be a joke by itself fitting his troll mentor personality, or an excuse for the animators to flex to a stunning degree, but an element actually considered by the show’s antagonists. Some jokes don’t land, but there’s enough characterful personality and expressiveness to them for them to not feel out of place, separate from more serious points to come. As for the horror elements, Jujutsu Kaisen’s animation does a great job conveying the darker atmosphere when need be in the early/mid-section of the show. It really gets that a major part of horror presentation is fear of the other, and more specifically, body horror of not-quite humans, with some excellent creature design animated in off kilter ways. As Gojou states, everyone at Jujutsu Academy is a little crazy, so it makes the major characters in the show lean into these crazier designs when channeling immense power, fitting for a series around handling curses. Thus, the show has its main villain, Mahito, use body horror to startling effect when creating his monster army. While I wouldn’t call the guy particularly deep so far, the show does present a playfully devilish personality and show his capacity to manipulate others in a reasonable sense. His powers to twist the composition of both himself and those he gets close to in uncanny, distorted shapes play into the show’s theme about curse power perfectly. The show isn’t that scary, but it adds an additionally unique element for itself with these fitting and well-animated leans to body horror. Speaking of animation, that’s most definitely a major draw into the series. Director Seong-Hu Park and his incredibly talented team of animators making bursts of exciting, visually active battle scenes when showing off the characters and their various powers. Almost every episode has a scuffle in it, several of which have some exciting camerawork to make leadups to individual actions consistently dynamic. Yes, comparing fights definitely shows that some look better than others (the sewer fights stood out the least to me), but relative to the sheer quantity of fights illustrated in the source, as well as the shonen anime landscape at large, it’s incredibly impressive and that the action was this consistent over the run. A lot of the common issues with anime fight scenes (placeholder backgrounds, motion tweens to cover up lack of movement, butt ugly CGI, long periods of chat in between blows) didn’t come up for me during the production, which really speaks to the work (or possible overwork) involved in the passion. Cursed Domains in particular get excellent scene-setting animation, and the unique way aura is depicted, with its aquamarine coloring and pseudo 3d “drawn” outline adds definably high energy to individual moves. This of course is helped by a pumping score, with Nanami’s theme, Fushigoro’s theme and Your Battle is My Battle standing out most among them. In general, while individual fights aren’t on par with ufotable’s more thinly spread action scenes, the impressive flexes from the team and strong character/tone aesthetic create a consistently visually appealing show. Jujutsu Kaisen doesn’t feel like a massively grand vision yet, so much as an ever-evolving series of smaller elements that combine well together when taped with strong structural decisions, but this feels in line with my natural selection thesis. In its characters, its story structure, its tone, and its ease to hop into exciting powerup action the animation team flexed over, it gets what audiences want from Shonen material as a strong start to a story while removing or playing down stuff that’s been less palatable overtime. I can only hope it improves further as the characters/battle conceits become stronger and its many dynamics continue to be tested.
bulkyhog
03/26/2021, 10:16 AM
Overall: 9/10 Now that JJK is over, I’m sure everyone who dropped it after 4 episodes or clowned it for being more trashy shonen are shaking and crying right now. While y’all did look foolish today, clown tryouts for the circus are next week. And if anyone STILL thinks JJK is an average shonen or sub-par anime, I would like to quote the great intellectual, Cardi B: “Hoes speaking capanese hit ‘em with karate chop.” JJK is peak shonen that, in my mind, WILL become a masterpiece in the coming years (can’t wait for Shibuya adaptation holy shit man). You take the hypest arcs/features that took foreverto develop from existing shonens, and you’ll find them in the first 24 episodes of JJK albeit on a smaller scale. So what makes JJK so fucking good? Is it the mix of realistic and diverse cast of characters? Or it’s ability to incorporate great themes and subtexts without feeling forced and overbearing? Maybe it’s the classic shonen tropes reskinned and used to maximum effectiveness, or the INSANE animation sequences and visuals Mappa pulled off. I think that’s what makes JJK such a fun anime to watch, because no matter what you watch anime for, you can find something enjoyable in this series. For me, the big enjoyment factor was the added level of realism and darkness you don’t quite find in other shonen anime, which makes JJK more of a 30% seinen 70% shonen hybrid: an AOT but more towards shonen. I think Parasyte x MHA is the closest comparison I can think of to JJK for a non-watched, and even then it’s still so vastly different. All that said, let’s take a look at why I consider JJK to be one of the absolute best shonen anime, and amongst the best anime released this year. Story: 6/10 I think most people can agree that JJK has a very simple story. Although I will say, without spoiling anything, that the Shibuya arc will elevate the story aspect of JJK to the next level, so keep an eye out for when that adaptation comes. JJK’s premise is very simple: monsters (curses) exist, people eliminate these curses (sorcerers). In terms of originality or creativity, there isn’t much to be found, although I will applaud JJK for having a very strong power system to work with (cursed energy works similar to chakra/nin from Naruto and HxH respectively). This means it’s easy for the average viewer to follow along in battles, and that we shouldn’t expect crazy plot twists/insane power scaling that ruins the integrity of the series. It’s important to realise that “story” has 2 defining aspects: 1. The worldbuilding, storytelling, and plot 2. The message, themes, and subtexts being explored That being said, I think JJK explores just enough messages, themes, subtexts and whatnot through its story and characters, that gives it that tiny edge over your traditional story. To name some arcs where these elements are a primary focus, consider the Junpei and Mahito interactions from the Vs. Mahito Arc, the all-girls battles in the Kyoto Goodwill Event Arc, and finally Megumi’s time to shine and the fallout from the Death Painting Arc. It’s a healthy amount of seasoning where it doesn’t feel forced at all, and quite natural within the scope of the characters and their personalities, which I’ll get into later on. That being said, I gotta acknowledge the introductory arc, EP 1 in particular, is a tiny bit of a downer. We quite literally jumped right into the world of curses, without much exploration of the relationship between Yuji and his deceased grandfather. An argument could be made about how the trope of “family member dies which sends protagonist out on a quest” is almost immediately subverted by Principal Yaga, but it doesn’t change the fact the pacing for the first arc is a bit weird, especially when you consider how well crafted and paced every other arc is. Simplicity shouldn’t be a killer: Dr. Stone has an equally simple story as JJK. At the end, it’s all about how well that story is executed. Dr. Stone does an amazing job of executing their story, and while JJK isn’t quite at the same level yet, it hopefully will be in the future. Art: 10/10 No debate to be had here. I think anyone who’s seen a single Crunchyroll clip of this anime would agree, the art is top-notch. Impact, flow, key animation frames, transitions, and camera angles are all insanely well done: I especially enjoyed how Mappa played around with “first-person” camera angles during certain fights (Toudou vs. Megumi and Toudou vs. Yuji). Action sequences aside, still frames and shots were done very nicely as well, with the shot of Hanami posing while talking about becoming sages being some wallpaper type shit. And don’t even get me started about the OPs and EDs we got, all of which are absolute masterpieces in their own rights. Sound: 10/10 Going off of the amazing OPs and EDs, god damn is the music and OST for JJK good. I really can’t get enough of it. You already know some hype ass shit is coming when certain tracks start playing, or when that eerie violin track comes on that shits gonna hit the fan. Most recent track stuck in my head is that sick rift we got when the trio crossed the river in EP 22. OST stuff aside, the voice acting is extremely well done too. You can hear the seething anger in Yuji’s voice when confronting Mahito. You can pickup the traces of whimsical innocence and cockiness in Gojo’s carefree voice, or in contrast, the serious nature behind Nanami’s voice. I for one also love the sounds curses make. Shit can be disturbing and hilarious at the same time and I’m all for it. Character: 9/10 If you asked me to pick one thing that makes JJK so much more different from contemporary and even iconic shonen, it would be this. The characters. I fucking love the characters from JJK, especially the women. And not for the typical simp reasons you’d imagine. For once, in the entire history of shonen anime (and I’m honestly not exaggerating at all considering how much shonen I’ve watched), we have finally witnessed truly amazing female characters. I have no fucking clue how Gege pulled this shit off (his mom reads the manga which partly explains the lack of fanservice and bullshit), but if you asked me for the definition of perfectly written female characters, you’ve got them right here in JJK. And not just one or two, a whole truckload of them. This is why I was super-peeved when people were shitting on JJK characters for being unoriginal, and comparing this shit to Naruto. As much as I love Naruto, you cannot possibly look at Nobara and Sakura and tell me they’re the same: anyone who thinks this outta be arrested. Nobara, like many other female characters in JJK, is an actual character. They have their own motivations and personality that’s NOT defined by the male characters around them. You pick any other shonen anime and most female characters are only defined by their interactions with male characters, through the typical sex/romance gags or damsel in distress stuff. While these tropes can sometimes be funny or good, it’s wayyyyyy too overused and honestly quite sad to see potentially interesting characters relegated to this. Nobara wants to be strong because she wants to be strong. Not so she can ride Sasuke-kun’s dick. Heck, we haven’t even gotten any serious romance shit going on, which should already tell you everything about the female characters. Maki wants to be strong to spite her family and Mai doesn’t want to be strong because she’s fine with living a “normal” life: this contrasting sibling dynamic was amazingly well written. Hell, Sakura didn’t do shit until her battle against Sasori in Shippuden. And Nobara? Fucking black flashed Kechizu’s bitchass in EP 24. Get that shitty ass comparison off the airwaves bitch. If you need any more evidence of strong female characters, I simply point you to EP 17. Specifically, the conversation between Nishimiya and Nobara on what it means to be a female-sorcerer, and Maki and Mai’s conversation on why Maki is trying so hard. Perfectly executed, chef’s kiss, mwah. Honestly can’t get any better than that. Now, let’s look at best boi Yuuji (Gojo is the goat, different status here people). I like him because his goal is simple: help people before you die. It’s something I can relate to personally, and I’m sure many others can as well. This adds, again, to the realism of JJK’s characters. We don’t have grandiose goals like becoming Pirate King, Wizard King, Ninja King, Hero King, etc. etc. Even moreso, I like Yuuji’s development. Yuuji is like a tragic hero (this is truly realised later on but I won’t spoil it). He never set out to become a sorcerer, his life was turned upside down and he was thrown into this whole other world. And we see this reflected in the first 2-3 arcs. He gets his ass clapped, time and time again forcing him to realise how hopelessly weak and stupid he is. This guy straight up hit depression and shit, his lowest of the low, in VS. Mahito Arc where he really came to realise how fucked up the world of curses is. What about our other shonen protagonists? Naruto didn’t really hit this until Valley of the End, Luffy until Marineford, Asta until Vetto/Midnight Sun, and Deku basically never has (in the anime). But because of the path he’s committed himself to, after despairing and regretting, his only option is to keep moving forward (Eren stans Yuuji). I can’t really elaborate too much on Megumi since he hasn’t had too much of the spotlight so far, but he’s the moody lancer archetype done right. He never feels too extra or unnecessarily cringe and isn’t an asshole about his views either, since he cares about his friends even though he’s normally grumpy and collected. So far his biggest development was in EP 23, where we see him finally discard his old perception of himself as a limited, extremely selfless individual. It’s a simple lesson but one a lot of people forget: sometimes, you gotta be selfish instead of selfless. Good on you Megumi for realising your own power and deciding to just go ham with it when you feel like it instead of being a team player, after all, “dying to win and risking death to win are completely different things.” I won’t speak too much on Gojo since we haven’t gotten his backstory yet, which is more like his actual character development, but all I can say is he’s an overpowered character done right. He’s never used as a deus ex machina, heck, he’s often missing when he’s truly needed the most because he’s got shit to deal with overseas. As for villains, super well done on Gege’s part too. Mahito is an amazing villain, as is Sukuna. Most importantly, there isn’t any moral ambiguity in these villains, as you would often find in other series, and as Yuuji realised himself. These guys are just pure evil incarnate. Sukuna doesn’t help Yuuji for any other reason than to advance his own agenda, which even now we don’t really know. We also know Getou is pretty fucking evil, but the fact we don’t know much about him leaves you excited for when the reveal is actually made on who he is and what he wants. Side characters like Inumaki, Panda, and Maki get enough development so they aren’t absolute fodder and you can care about their wellbeing, but not so much where they detract from the primary trio of Yuuji, Nobara and Megumi. TLDR, JJK does a very good job of making their characters independent of each other and realistic. It’s able to effectively use tropes to enhance, but not define each character. Add in Gege’s amazing writing ability and you get truly meaningful interactions between super realistic characters. Good shit. Enjoyment: 9/10 Although the story started off a bit weak, everything just kept getting better and better. Literally, every episode, every arc, was in some way or another better than the previous one. And that’s really hard to do when most series just plateau at certain points: JJK is constantly going up, even if only by a small amount. Even when life as a university student got busy and hectic, JJK was something I could look forward to every week, where I could spend 24 minutes just chilling and enjoying a really fucking good piece of work. The mixing of characters, plot, action, and themes/messages is masterfully done, so it’s no wonder so many people enjoy watching JJK. All I can say is, JJK does it’s job fantastically well: I strongly expect manga sales to increase even more now that the anime has ended. As for what to expect in the future, I’m sure it’s hard to believe considering how great JJK already is but it just gets even better. Whether it’s 3, 4, or even 10 years from now, the day the Shibuya arc is adapted and released, is the day JJK will cement itself in history as one of the greatest shonen to ever be made. And that my friends, is most definitely not capanese.

Jujutsu Kaisen 呪術廻戦

North American Anime & Manga Releases for October

Winners of the 17th Seiyuu Awards

North American Anime & Manga Releases for February

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Gets Second Anime Season in 2023

TAAF 2022 Anime of the Year Winners Announced

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Gets Prequel Anime Film

Additional 'Jujutsu Kaisen' Cast Members Announced

Fall 2020 Simulcast List [Update 12/1]

Q4 2020 Anime & Manga Licenses [Update 12/14]

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Reveals Additional Cast Members, Third Promo

Fall 2020 Preview

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Unveils Additional Staff, Cast, Second Promo

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Announces Additional Cast

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Reveals Production Staff, Promo for Fall 2020

TV Anime Adaptation of 'Jujutsu Kaisen' in Production

Jujutsu Kaisen 呪術廻戦

North American Anime & Manga Releases for October

Winners of the 17th Seiyuu Awards

North American Anime & Manga Releases for February

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Gets Second Anime Season in 2023

TAAF 2022 Anime of the Year Winners Announced

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Gets Prequel Anime Film

Additional 'Jujutsu Kaisen' Cast Members Announced

Fall 2020 Simulcast List [Update 12/1]

Q4 2020 Anime & Manga Licenses [Update 12/14]

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Reveals Additional Cast Members, Third Promo

Fall 2020 Preview

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Unveils Additional Staff, Cast, Second Promo

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Announces Additional Cast

'Jujutsu Kaisen' Reveals Production Staff, Promo for Fall 2020

TV Anime Adaptation of 'Jujutsu Kaisen' in Production