Jujutsu Kaisen
MAPPA
2023
Jujutsu Kaisen. By now I’m sure you all have realized my tastes lean toward anime, comics and all things nerdy. It would be impossible to gloss over one of my favorite ongoing manga/ anime, Jujutsu Kaisen. With the anime’s second season just about over, allow me to gush over Jujutsu Kaisen.
Jujutsu Kaisen takes a very interesting approach to the shonen genre. In a landscape flooded by protagonists that aim high with dreams of becoming pirate king, wizard king and hokage (basically a ninja king) main character, Yuji Itadori stands to oppose all conventions. Yuji’s goal is simple— to die a good death surrounded by all the people he loves. Simple on paper but the inviting event of Jujutsu Kaisen’s story is that Yuji ingests a piece of “the most evil sorcerer to have ever lived” Ryomen Sukuna’s corpse resulting in his body serving as a prison for the spirit. This means when Yuji dies, so does he. The logical solution is clear to Yuji and for the most part he’s okay with it. He understands his duty and hasn’t cursed his fate one bit which is exactly why this second season hits so hard.
Jujutsu Kaisen’s second season is trying to break Itadori. It was arguable that the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen played it pretty safe in terms of the shonen genre. The first season had followed in suit with general shonen plot points like mentorship, establishments of power, a tournament arc and the beast within trope but there was always an underlying complexity to Jujutsu Kaisen. Moments like Junpei’s arc (if you know you know) and the finger retrieval arc (if you know you know) showed their was more to Jujutsu Kaisen and the second season served to show just that.
It is clear to me Gege wishes to torture Itadori. This character’s strength is in his resilience so the lengths that they go to break him down challenges us, the audience as much as it challenges him. We feel everything he feels as his wish for a proper death is tried simply because Sukuna lives within his body. His own personal curse. Please. Go. Watch. Jujutsu Kaisen.