Welcome all, to another late episode of Jujutsu Kaisen! Apologies for that, seasonal premiers are taking a lot of my writing time. I haven’t even started the Undead Murder Farce review yet! God damnit… Getting back to Jujutsu Kaisen, this week kicks off a few fights, lets a senpai show off and sees the return of one of our greatest villains. Is it any good? Lets dive in and find out!
First up, lets talk production. While Jujutsu Kaisen is still generally solid, this week some cracks have started to appear. From ridiculous close ups designed to obscure the action to some choppy movement, this was one rougher than most episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen. Combine that with MAPPA forcing animators to sign confidentiality agreements and looking for animators on twitter and the signs that production is falling apart are there. While we’re still getting some banger shots for now, seriously I don’t want to underplay how good things like Toji or Itadori’s spiderman shots were, I would not be surprised if Jujutsu Kaisen started to melt in the upcoming weeks. Hopefully that doesn’t happen, I think MAPPA has generally done a good job elevating Gege’s original work. But we can’t just ignore what’s going on in the industry I’m afraid.
Moving on, the core of the episode is about taking down the veil around Shibuya to get in and save Gojo. During this our 2 leads, Fushiguro and Itadori, end up fighting some sorcerers and in the process get a sort of history lesson. Now we’ll get to the fights in a moment, because I actually really liked this. Remember last week when I asked what society did before Gojo was born if he was what was holding everything in line? Well Jujutsu Kaisen actually gave me an answer this week, and it was a solid one. It’s the basic idea of “Build it and they will come”, of Batman’s very existence begetting the Joker’s. Gojo being born was, in essence, what set all of this off. His power basically… awakened, so to speak, many of the curses we are seeing today. That’s solid!
As for the history lesson, this was appreciated too. I liked getting this look into a pre-Gojo world. Not only how comparatively dangerous it was but how those living in it reacted to Gojo’s existence. It makes sense that some people wouldn’t appreciate change, as well that they would attempt to kill him. It doesn’t make these one-off villains deep or complex characters by any means, sure. But it gives us an answer as to why they are here and why they are helping cursed spirits to begin with. Which, considering those cursed spirits want to kill all of humanity, is a pretty relevant question in my mind. Jujutsu Kaisen also makes it clear that these people are sort of cowards. They wouldn’t be here if the plan to capture Gojo had failed. It reminds us just how impactful he was, as well as where these people rank in power.
Getting back to the fights, we have 2 going on. Itadori and Fushiguro’s against the old bald man was kind of fun, it had some cool choreography. The power was a bit silly, I still don’t really get Jujutsu Kaisen’s magic system, and how they figured it out was a bit out of nowhere. But it lead to a decent fight and there were enough context clues that I can buy someone in-universe figuring it out. The main issue I have is something I mentioned up above, the extreme use of closeups. Maybe this was meant to make us feel claustrophobic or involved in the action? I’m not sure, but it didn’t work. Instead it often left me confused as to how we got from point A to point B.
As for the other fight, Takuma vs a guy and his grandmother, this wasn’t all that engaging at first. In fact I’d go so far as to say that the meat of this fight was Takuma’s history with Nanami, showing us not only his desire to do things correctly but his respect for his fellow sorcerer. It was a nice scene showing us the relationship between 2 non-leads. That’s appreciated! So often shounen only care about how a character relates to the lead, it doesn’t really care about their interactions with anyone else. Look at My Hero Academia for example, as much as I love it characters like Iida and Todoroki don’t really have meaningful relationships outside of Midoriya. And while what Jujutsu Kaisen is giving us here isn’t massive, it doesn’t have to be. It just needed to show me these characters lives don’t revolve around Itadori. And it did.
All that said, while the fight wasn’t to spectacular at first it kicked into high gear by the end. I had forgotten that Toji made a reappearance here. And you know what? I’m all for it. When you bring back a good guy it feels cheap, because their death was the consequence of another heroes actions generally. When you bring back a villain though, I think it works, because they are a threat. They make things harder for our leads. Of course it helps that Toji is my favorite villain, and also the most dangerous one out there. He also brings back all the events of Hidden Inventory for us to chew on, as well as his inevitable meeting with his son, Fushiguro. Jujutsu Kaisen has a lot of options here, most of them good. So I’m looking forward to what it does with him.
That said, there’s only one problem here: Now our leads have to fight Toji. Toji was able to kick Geto and Gojo’s ass before. Sure it was a few years ago, and Gojo later came back and beat him. But I imagine even if he did fight Gojo that Toji wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. He’d have learned. So the question now is, how do our leads possibly stand up against this guy? They are nowhere near ready for this fight. Hell I’d go so far as to say Toji is probably the strongest person on the field right now, so how much can Itadori really do? Personally I expect he will become more of a neutral party, his pact giving him some leeway around the technique and letting him fight both sides. Barring that though… Well he has to go easy on his son… right?
Anyways, yeah, this was another solid episode. The production is starting to show some cracks, which is a shame, but the narrative is cranking up and I’m down for Toji’s return. I’m looking forward not only to his fights, which I expect to be great if the production can hold together, but also his interactions with people. He has so many interesting conversations available to him. From Maki and the old Zen’in guy to his son, Fushiguro. Hell he could even meet Not!Geto and see what became of one of his former opponents, giving us his reaction to that, or even Sukuna if he gets woken up by the spirits. Jujutsu Kaisen has a lot of possibilities with him and I’m looking forward to most.
