Anime Reviews
Jujutsu Kaisen (2020, MAPPA)
呪術廻戦
[Ongoing Curse Wars]
"Superhuman" Yuuji Itadori is part of the school Occults Club. One day he is visited by an agent from the Curse Tech Department who is responsible for disposing of cursed objects with weakened seals around Japan before they take physical form and cause any problems. Many such objects with powerful curses are used to ward off lesser curses attracted by negative emotions. As a result it also absorbs the smaller curses and grows until it becomes too deadly and powerful to handle.
When Yuuji's club mates decide to unwrathel their local school's ward, Ryomen Sukuna's finger a Special Grade cursed object, trouble breaks loose. Struggling to fight off other cursed demons who want to devour the object to increase their own power, Yuuji decides to absorb it himself. As a result, he is almost taken over by Ryomen.
Going by the Curse Tech rules, Yuuji was to be executed immediately but if a vessel with a Curse dies, so does the Curse. Not many can control a Curse as Yuuji can so he is given the option to gather the remaining parts of Ryomen before dying. Unlike many Yuuji wasn't bothered by the Curses and so he decides to take on the task as part of his late grandfather's last wish; saving people from Curses so they can have a "proper death" while trying to keep the infamous most powerful cursed Ryomen under control as his vessel.
And so together with his two classmates Megumi Fushiguro and Nobara Kugisaki from the first year of Tokyo Metropolitan College of Jujutsu Tech he begins his training with most powerful Jujutsu sorcerer, Satoru Gojou. Meanwhile special-grade curses are conspiring to take over the human world and the Tech College is uneasy about the existence of Sukuna's vessel, ploying to get rid of him despite their intention to protect the world from Curses.
An interesting start to the hyped show. Starts off really silly with a variety of odd personalities introduced but it turns dark quite fast too. It's all paced so quickly it's like, "Yeah, yeah, we've seen all this sealed evil setting before so lets fast forward."
Rather than go with an over-powered lead who doesn't give up, we actually see Yuuji and his classmates start off very weak before they grow by fighting tougher opponents. It's not really a deep plot nor is the world setting because it doesn't move along much even half way through season 1. It tends to go in some random direction sometimes which keeps it fun but suddenly the main plot feels like it's just something shallow to keep the show together. On the surface there's one side trying to keep the ultimate evil from being unleashed into the world, another side wants Curses to take over the world. Underneath all that, it's really just watching the huge roster of silly characters do silly things and fight most of the time.
Interactions are fun and there's a talking panda played by voice actor Tomozaki Seki, Daru from Steins;gate. I guess the silly characters keep the mood balanced. It never manages to stop surprising you with silly moments. They can be pretty messed up sometimes, dark humour wise. There's also fun shorts after the credits every episode too.
Fight scenes are good, smooth and intense. No sense of quality drop such as characters going out of ratio although there's a tweet suggesting many of the fight scenes are traced from other popular works and movies like the scene when Satoru was fighting Miguel is from Ip Man. There's a lot of gore but feels like tamer version of Tokyo Ghoul. There's a lot of decapitation and demon gut flying around with plenty of fancy moves as you'd expect from an action show.
There's not really any fan service but plenty of innuendo and casual dirty talk. Well, maybe lots of nude males. There's a mention of Jennifer Lawrence here. No parodying. Funny how the tech school looks like the most popular landmarks of Japan in one place like the Kiyomizu Temple and 1000 Tori Gates. Episode 14 changes OP which is an odd point when it's usually half way it happens. I guess it's a major event episode.
Apparently the author Gege Akutami is a fan of the Bleach series so you might see some resemblances to that Manga. I haven't watched that show so I can't confirm. This is also an adaptation to a sequel Manga while the prequel "Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School" is getting its own movie. It's an entertaining action comedy with gore if that makes sense... If I had to describe this show with other titles, it would be God of High School x Kimetsu; the silly trio and intense fights coupled with the cruel demonic hunting world.
Sequels
After the prequel movie 0 which focuses on Satoru's last group of students like Yuta and how he gained his Curse comes S2, which used the first 5 episodes as a pre-prequel to show some history about Satoru, Suguru and Shoko's days as students. You see how Suguru ended up becoming a villain before we return to the present for the Shibuya Incident arc and the feared by all Sukuna. We see a flashback about Kugisaki too.
I think the fights try to be too stylish and eventually all those powerful moves each character pulls off can get really tiresome to watch. The usual, "Did I get him?" becomes a really silly line. Once we're back to the present, it's all just literally flashy moves with poor choreography so you can't really follow what's going on.
That said, the fights in the station were tense so it feels like they focused their resources there rather than the supporting character fights. There's a "nice boat" moment in episode 47 (S2E23).
Kind of a messy S2 overall.
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