Jujutsu Kaisen – 7 [Assault]

This week on Jujutsu Kaisen we get punches, kicks, explooooooosions galore! That’s right its a low-narrative, high-hype week as Goto defeats a curse spirit with the power of theoretical math. Without further ado, lets dive in!

As I said, this week was pretty light on the story content. The whole thing was basically one big fight with a dash of narrative relevance at the end. I’m not complaining of course! I love hype fights, I’m self-proclaimed Shonen trash. It just means this weeks post is going to be a bit shorter since I can only gush about animation for so long. As for the narrative we did get, it’s mostly setup for the arc to come. We meet a new villain named Mahito, who many will recognize from the OP. Meanwhile Gojo gives us a hands on lecture on jujutsu domains, how they work, and just how powerful they can be. All in all it isn’t anything to incredible, but Jujutsu Kaisen did a fine job working it into/around the set piece fight for the week. So enough piddling around lets talk about that!

Now, where do I begin… Just wow. Jujutsu Kaisen really came out swinging this week, particularly with the lava and fire effects. You could hardly tell the lava was a CGI liquid simulation because of the post-processing/2D animation layered over it. Meanwhile the fire exploding around said lava was great. Not quite on the expressive level of Fire Force, where every characters fire is portrayed differently, but still good. Easily my favorite part of the episode though had to be Jougo’s expressions. This creature’s design was created for these wacky faces and I love them. Whether he be seething in anger, pouting in disappointment or shaking in terror, Jougo was incredibly expressive this week. Something about the single large eye allowed the animators to go off and have fun contorting his face. All that said, there is one animator in particular I want to call out this week.

I am of course talking about veteran animator turned Director for Jujutsu Kaisen, Seong-Hu Park. That’s right, the Director for the entire show is also one of its best animators. He did the same thing during his time working on God of High School last season, animating a number of its most impressive scenes. I can only imagine that simultaneously being both Animator and Director on a project gives him incredible freedom when it comes to his scenes. The freedom to use his wacky camera angles, explosive impact frames and mastery of how the body moves. I can only hope he extends that freedom to the rest of his staff, as animators like Eiji Komatsu and many other as-of-yet uncredited artists are what make action set pieces like this work. Still, they do not stand alone.

I also want to use this episode as an opportunity to thank the work of groups such as the background and compositing teams. It’s hard to remember at times, but these characters are not simply drawn onto the scene. Rather they are drawn onto white backgrounds, independent of everything else, and composited into the scene in full. So while the animators are creating these spectacles, the compositing team is putting in just as much work behind the scenes to make it all fit together. For that, we can thank the Series Composition lead Hiroshi Seko and Director of Photography Teppei Itou, along with both of their teams. The way the lighting is effected by the fire, how it changes within the domains or how the background is effected by the fight. All of this and more is due to their teams, and it looks fantastic.

Next we can actually talk about the fight itself, and Gojo. Of all the things Jujutsu Kaisen was going to pull out, theoretical math was not on the list. Don’t get me wrong, its an incredibly stupid but fun sort of power. The idea of “There is an infinite number of decimals between 0 and 1” sort of thing. How Jougo gets slower the close he gets, and so he can never actually touch Gojo without his permission. What really sold it for me though was Gojo being an absolute troll about it. The whole holding hands bit, along with the blood not touching him mid punch, etc. It made an otherwise bullshit power kind of fun and also makes it very clear just how OP Gojo actually is. I’m looking forward to how Jujutsu Kaisen keeps him from interrupting and ending every big fight moving forward.

Finally we come to domains, which seem to be Jujutsu Kaisen’s big “thing”. By “thing” I mean its gimmick, its unique battle setting Shonen “thing”. Naruto had Jutsu requiring hand signs, though that disappeared eventually, One Piece has hyper specific fruit powers, etc. Jujutsu Kaisen’s answer appears to be Domains, unique to each user and what are effectively battles of will. With the victor’s domain dominating the field and basically making an “I win” area. My immediate reaction is… I like it. I like how it takes over the field and makes every fight a unique location. Jujutsu Kaisen is no longer tied down by its modern japanese setting. Now, its fights could take place in whatever environment they want, and I think that’s kinda cool. No idea how it will work out in practice, but I am looking forward to finding out.

So all in all, how was this weeks Jujutsu Kaisen? As far as sakuga episodes go, I was satisfied. It was a good fight, lots of nice effects and the ending was great. It wasn’t an animation spectacle on the same level as say, Mob Psycho 100, but there was a style to it all its own. Something that I think Gojo’s domain encapsulates perfectly, how this sense of infinity was portrayed. The use of interstellar backgrounds, of black holes and paint splatters to emulate the “everything”. It’s very hard to describe, but it also isn’t something I think I have seen in anime before. At least not presented in that manner. So good Jujutsu Kaisen. You promised a big episode and you delivered on it. Now you just need to figure out this training/tournament arc.