Jujutsu Kaisen

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]

Gojou, Satoru Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Itadori, Yuuji Main

Enoki, Junya Japanese

Fushiguro, Megumi Main

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Kugisaki, Nobara Main

Seto, Asami Japanese

Nanami, Kento ing

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Ryoumen, Sukuna ing

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Zenin, Maki ing

Komatsu, Mikako Japanese

Inumaki, Toge ing

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Okkotsu, Yuuta ing

Getou, Suguru ing

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Seshimo, Keisuke Producer, Production Coordination

Maeda, Toshihiro Producer

Kimura, Makoto Producer

Ootsuka, Manabu Producer, Chief Producer

Reviews

Mar 26, 2021

Twumi

Recommended

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 your ... eyes. 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 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 ed 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!

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Apr 17, 2021

Aspection

Mixed Feelings

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 of ... magnitude 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 1, 2023

UrOpinionsRGarb

Not Recommended

Funny

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 clearly ... a 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 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]

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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