Jujutsu Kaisen S2 – 9 [Shibuya Incident – Gate, Open]

Welcome all, to another week of Jujutsu Kaisen! This week is the climax of Gojo’s fight. We all know how this ends, so the real question is: How hype was it? Lets dive in and find out!

Starting off, lets give some praise for Jujutsu Kaisen’s animation team this week because that was great. Gojo got to go hard and show off exactly why he’s the fan favorite. Whether it be running around at the speed of sound killing some monsters or schooling some spirits in hand-to-hand, it was a great time. It’s a damn shame about the dimming though. I get it, it’s required by law, Porygon’s existence continues to affect anime to this day. Doesn’t change the fact that it made a couple of scenes look worse than they otherwise would have though. Still, at least fans have something to look forward to when the blu-rays come out. And it’s not like it ruined every scene either. To bring it back around to positivity, Jujutsu Kaisen’s focus on facial expressions this week was great. From Jogo to Geto to Gojo, I loved them all.

Getting into the actual story, well… There isn’t much. Most of this episode was just Gojo kicking peoples asses and showing off. Still, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some cool narrative stuff slipped in there. Getting to watch Gojo cut loose for once is a good example. As the viewer the last time we saw him like this was only a few episodes ago, at the end of the Hidden Inventory arc. In-universe though it’s been a few years since he’s really been able to get into it. To cut loose and just overpower someone with absolutely no remorse. I mean, just look at his face as he crushes Hanami against a wall or rips the vines out of her head. Doing nothing but walking towards her, letting her get squished between his power and the wall? It was badass but also terrifying.

To be honest, it almost makes me feel bad for the spirits. Like yes, they deserve it, they took a bunch of humans hostage and caused all of this purely to try and limit Gojo to take him down. But watching Jogo’s reaction to everything Gojo did… It really felt like he cared for Hanami, like they had some real comradery. Sadly this feeling didn’t last terribly long. Part of that is because Gojo just didn’t let it, but also because not long after they are making jokes about Hanami being dead. Coming from Mahito it makes sense, dude doesn’t care about anything. But I thought Jogo at least would be a bit more affected for a bit longer. Villains showing emotions beyond aggression, anger and sadism is always a treat. It makes them relatable, memorable. It’s part of why the Cursed Painting brothers from S1’s finale still stick in my head.

Speaking of sticking with you, there was another part of the episode that I just can’t ignore, and that’s the Mahjong scene. I thought this was a really good. Just showing them hanging out and chatting, playing something simple. It’s humanizing. Plus we got to hear about their plan to defeat Gojo in a very natural setting. Sadly though, and this is more of a me problem than a Jujutsu Kaisen problem, I don’t understand/play Mahjong. This is a shame because I feel like there’s some meaning to the hands/tiles they pulled/played. I felt like I was missing something, like if I understood the game than the silence and the cutting between hands would be a bit more poignant. Maybe that’s just me looking to deeply into things, but if we have any Mahjong players on the site then let me know down below what you thought.

Getting back to their plan though, this was solid. It’s not like we haven’t seen Gojo get worn down before, Fushiguro did it back in Hidden Inventory. This time though it was more of a mental break than a physical one. They wanted to drive him up a wall for the shock factor of when Geto reveals himself, which was cool. What made the scene for me though was the whole thing around Gojo. How he had accepted some casualties were inevitable, acceptable even. But only if those casualties are caused by Curses, not himself, meaning he couldn’t use his Domain Expansion for longer than an instant. It was great narrative justification for why he doesn’t either just ignore the normal people or accept that he couldn’t save as many as he had wanted to. And him killing 1,000 monsters in under 5 minutes? Just an all around good scene.

Speaking of Geto’s reveal, this was cool. I was always curious how he survived, as it felt rather obvious to me that he had died back in the Zero movie. Instead learning that he had in fact died, and that’s why Gojo was so shocked to see him again, so much so that he stopped moving for a full minute, made for a strong reveal. Once again, Jujutsu Kaisen comes up with a solid reason for Gojo to lose/make the decision he did. My only quibble is that I think it’s a shame to lose some of the power of Geto being his own character. Instead of being this reoccurring villain with history, he’s instead this “new” villain that’s actually just a brain in his body. We will see how he shapes up, since technically he’s been the same brain since S1. But I’m definitely going to miss Geto.

So yeah, all in all this was a great episode for Jujutsu Kaisen. Solid production, though held back a bit by the legally required dimming, solid reveals, solid emotions. Just an all around solid episode. I’m glad that last week was just a short break for the series, a small step down as they preserve resources for the scenes that matter. I expect we’ll see a few more of those as we go, Jujutsu Kaisen can’t do an entire season of this shit. But so long as MAPPA can continue to intelligently pace things, to pick and choose which scenes/fights are important, than it should be fine. And you know what? After 9 episodes this new director, Shouta Goshozono, has my trust. Dude hasn’t fucked anything up yet so I’m gonna trust him until he gives me a good reason not to.