Category: Jujutsu Kaisen

Jujutsu Kaisen – 18 [Sage]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

This is it, this is the week Jujutsu Kaisen kicks it into gear! At least I hope it is. Between Hanami breaking into school grounds, Gojou getting locked out and one last flashback it better be. So with all that to talk about lets skip the preamble and jump into it!

The big one, the most exciting bit, is that the raid is happening! I can’t tell you how happy I am to see these curses because the first half of this episode was everything wrong with this arc. Once again Jujutsu Kaisen is shoving in another backstory/fight combo for one of its side characters whom I don’t even remember the name of. I get why it’s doing it, Jujutsu Kaisen wants to establish everyone’s powers and motives before heading into this big conflict. That’s good practice, you want you audience to know these things. But you can’t just introduce 5 new characters, info-dump their entire personality, and then expect us to care when you launch into a huge conflict. You need smaller arcs focused on each that build up to this big event. And it’s not like Jujutsu Kaisen can’t do this, because it did so with Toudou.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 17 [Kyoto Sister School Exchange 3]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Welcome to Girl Power, sponsored by Jujutsu Kaisen! This week the production is back in force and the narrative is back on the interesting characters. So without further ado lets dive in!

This is an interesting week for Jujutsu Kaisen, and for Shonen in general, because its almost 100% female lead. Why is this special? Well to put it simply, most Shonen female characters are absolute trash, they are terribly written. Its clear that most Shonen authors either don’t know how, or are not interested in, writing female characters. So to get an episode where they are not only the spotlight, but the sole focus, was rather novel. It’s a bit sad though that they were all still restricted to only fighting each other. The “female empowerment”/Strong Women narrative gets a little smudged when they are locked in their own box, not allowed to fight the male characters. Hopefully that changes as the event progresses though. I would love to see Maki or Nobara actually get a shot against Toudou or perhaps the other Kyoto student.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 16 [Kyoto Sister School Exchange 2]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Another week, another episode of Jujutsu Kaisen’s token tournament arc. I imagine it’s tough to follow up Yoshino’s arc, that was both emotional and hype. But I was hoping for something a bit more… poignant from Itadori’s return. Still, this week Toudou gained some depth and Panda got a backstory, so not all is lost. So without further ado lets dive in!

Production wise this week was an improvement from the last. Along with the fights being overall better choreographed, Jujutsu Kaisen also brought back some of the sakuga. It’s still a far cry from the series highs, but it makes for a decent time nonetheless. The continued use of the CGI environments for rotating camera shots is interesting, but the forest is proving to be a challenging location for it. Unlike the sewers or the highschool, a forest is a natural location. It doesn’t have the same rigid, geometric style to it as man-made locations. So when you start trying to render it in CGI, to rotate around it, the fake becomes very easy to spot. I think it has to do with the trees, their leaves and the general spread of color through the scenes. It’s not great, but Jujutsu Kaisen makes it work well enough.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 15 [Kyoto Sister School Exchange Event 1]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Everyone knows what time it is, its Jujutsu Kaisen time! I have an interesting week for you here. From Toudou making a friend to maybe, possibly, but not guaranteed, the beginning of the MAPPA melt. Don’t know what that is? Well read on and find out!

Starting off, what do I mean by “MAPPA meltdown”. Well if you were here when I blogged Dororo, review here, you have a pretty good idea. Its when Studio MAPPA falls apart production wise in the second half of the series. When their schedule and working conditions finally give out and the series can’t sustain itself anymore. I wonder this about Jujutsu Kaisen this week because it was… a bit rough, to put it kindly. Composites were all over the place, as if they were trying to replicate Ufotable’s CGI environment style, and general animation wasn’t what we were used to. There was some decent choreography between Itadori and Toudou yes, but outside that this is one of the worse looking Jujutsu Kaisen episodes. Hopefully this is just a one off before their big showcase, but I can’t help but be… hesitant.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 14 [Kyoto Sister School Exchange Event 0]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Welcome back to Jujutsu Kaisen everyone! We had a pretty sizeable break after a pretty emotional arc and its time to see what’s in store for us next. So without further ado, lets dive in!

Starting off I want to talk about what’s new this week, the OP and ED. Both were always going to be difficult to follow up, with the ED especially being one of if not the best of 2020. Rather than fight a losing battle with style thought, MAPPA has gone for something more heartwarming and it works. I like the use of the vertical camera and phone recording to really immerse us in Itadori’s perspective. Meanwhile the actual shots themselves are lit and animated beautifully, with Nobara’s reaction on the beach especially standing out. As for the OP, it once again has some stunning lighting and water effects. Its not as great as the first, with the song especially not doing much for me. But all in all I think it’s a perfectly fine OP for a new cour. But enough about that you want to talk spoilers.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 13 [Tomorrow]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Merry Christmas everyone and welcome to the last post of Jujutsu Kaisen for the year! What a bloody episode to end on eh? We had action, we had murder and we even had a bit of self-reflection, and I loved it. So without further ado lets dive right in!

Starting off, god damn that action looked good. I continue to love how malleable/expressive Mahito’s body is and Hironori Tanaka did a fantastic job working with it. It helps that the man was also the episode director as I understand it, but still. The fluid movement, the sharp lines and heavy blacks. The man made even still shots look dynamic and captivating. And none of this is even mentioning the more surrealist bits that Jujutsu Kaisen continues to incorporate. All in all, this episode looked fantastic and made for an incredible finale. About the only thing I can really nitpick here is that the CGI used was very noticeable. There was a bit about halfway through where the blood/Mahito’s body was done in CGI and it sticks out like a sore thumb. Still, 20 seconds amongst this beautiful production isn’t enough to bring it down.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 12 [To You, Someday]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Welcome all to another week of Jujutsu Kaisen! Apologies for the slight delay, I was a tad busy yesterday and wasn’t able to get around to the episode. But oh boy what an episode it was. We had murder, anger, conflict and maybe even a few emotional moments. All that and more in this weeks episode, so lets dive in!

Starting off, lets talk production! There were a lot of fun shots this week, both in terms of animation and stills. Animation wise, Mahito continues to be a treat. His malleable body and fighting style lend itself to some really creative sequences. Whether it be his arms flailing about or the ripples in his body from Itadori’s punches. Add on his exaggerated manic expressions and you have some fun stuff! Meanwhile with stills Jujutsu Kaisen once again went the heavily stylized route, to great success. Although it has minimal movement, Sukuna and Mahito’s mocking laughter and the display of their faces above Itadori was incredibly striking. I love hos Jujutsu Kaisen continues to prominently display the characters teeth for scenes like this. It almost works like a caricature, bringing out important facial features to more clearly communicate things to the viewer. So yeah, all around, this episode looked pretty good!

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 11 [Narrow-minded]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Y’all know the drill by now, it’s time for another week of Jujutsu Kaisen! This week see’s the conclusion of Mahito’s fight, Yoshino making a new friend and Itadori getting caught up in it all. So without further ado, lets dive in!

Production wise, I think this week looked good. Park’s camera angles were still there in the Mahito fight but they were more contained this week. Easier to follow, if that makes sense. Last week he kept switching sides or doing 360 degree spins around characters/scenes. It made the space and the characters positions within said space difficult and annoying to follow. This week though he manages to rein it in a bit, not breaking the 180 degree rule, etc. All the while keeping the wilder and expressive character animation. All in all, I think this episode was a success production wise and I’m looking forward to seeing more from Park in the future! Obligatory production talk out of the way, lets get into what y’all really care about, narrative!

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 10 [Idle Transfiguration]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

It was inevitable folks. Jujutsu Kaisen has been consistently pretty good up until now, so it was bound to misstep eventually. And while its not terrible, there was still some good here, this episode was that episode. Curious? Well lets jump right into it then.

Starting off, the camera work in Kento and Mahito’s fight was… it was something. It seems as if director Seong-Hu Park is finally making himself known just like he did with last seasons God of High School. The camera has gained a mind of its own and begun to float and fly around the scene in ways that are… not necessarily the best. Don’t get me wrong, the animation in these scenes were fine to good. I’m not criticizing the animators work. More that the camera undercut a lot of it and made it either difficult or undesirable to follow. The constant heavy movement made it so much of the fight didn’t really stick, or lost weight in the movements. This wasn’t every shot of course, and Mahito still came out better for it and I will talk about him later. But overall it felt like to much.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 9 [Small Fry and Reverse Retribution]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Welcome to another episode of Jujutsu Kaisen! I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving, what with all the madness going on in the world right now. It’s nice to be able to tune it out and focus on something fun. Considering the content of this weeks episode though, who knows if Jujutsu Kaisen qualifies for that. So without further ado, lets dive in and figure it out!

Now, as it turns out my commenters were right! Building up to this, I have often referenced the “next arc” as the tournament arc. The Kyoto vs Tokyo event that Jujutsu Kaisen has been building up to. Turns out, and you commenters pointed this out first, we have another arc happening first and that’s… kind of nice. In my build up, in my expectation of the tournament arc being the next arc, I often talked about how I thought that a weird fit. That transitioning from the prison and Itadori’s death to a standard tournament felt really weird. I wanted more time for Fushiguro to grieve, more time for all the characters to change as people before they met up again. And this Mahito arc Jujutsu Kaisen is giving us right now is exactly that. It’s dark, but it can ease us into the tournament.

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