ALRIGH TLAIRGH TLIARH LGIH TLIH we need to talk about Jujutsu Kaisen. The manga is action-packed, the anime is picking up stupid amounts of attention (better luck next time gatekeepers!), and the new Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie is coming out soon. With so much hype surrounding a series, the question of how it became so popular presents itself…
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<– simp material for many
Personally, I think it’s Satoru Gojo. The action-packed fighting characteristic of the shounen* genre brought in all the male pubescents in the universe, all that was left was to target the female demographic, and what better way to do that than through having a super attractive male. 190 cm (6′ 3) tall, the most powerful sorcerer in the world, and a stupid overconfident personality… omg omgomgomgo gmo mgomogm g-g–g–g–ggojo ss-s–ss–ssensei hallo, i mean uhhh meow, i mean uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…
all jokes (i wasn’t joking) aside, the series has a lot to like about it. Let’s talk about that!
Genre: (Wikipedia btw) Adventure, Dark Fantasy, Supernatural
Story:
Quick rundown with as few spoilers as possible: Stupidly athletic and charismatic high schooler Itadori Yuuji from a series of events ends up entering a school for the supernatural, where he meets a buncha cool peeps and fights a buncha bad guys. Oh and all the while you can observe Satoru Gojo doing Satoru Gojo things. Oh also it’s not all sunshine and rainbows as it go kinda crazy later in the manga (Dark Fantasy).
Though the plot of Jujutsu Kaisen seems extremely basic at first, seeming like the generic idea of a kid with superpowers going to a school for kids like him… wait shoot thinking about it, it kinda is to a certain point. Ok ok lemme rephrase the last sentence: although the series is structured around a school environment, with our main character becoming friends with those in his year and those a year above him, due to circumstances that affect the main character, it becomes more nuanced. With the introduction of mysterious villains, all with their own motives, the chapters end up focusing more on the fights and their context, than mundane schoolwork. At times, the story will also dive into a certain character’s backstory not just for the sake of providing background information about a character, but in due time using the information from said backstory as a driving force for the current story arc. Overall, I have been reading Jujutsu Kaisen for over a year, and have yet to drop it because the story bored me or felt slow.
Characters:
The characters are all super cool! There’s even a panda!! :O
The characters are well designed as the actions that they make alongside the way they think all remain consistent for the most part throughout the story. Not once has someone acted in a way that seems out of character, unless there was an outside force involved. The character relationships also feel genuine and seeing them develop the way they do is one of the things to like about the series.
Art:
The art in the manga is extremely fitting for the series. Rather than it being overwhelmingly detailed, with unnecessary fluff thrown around, the art is simplistic enough that it gets the job done. Fights are simply drawn and as a result, it makes it easier to follow along, which is something as a reader I particularly enjoy.
Final thoughts:
For me, the supernatural ability of cursed energy, a form of power that can be manifested in oneself and harnessed, albeit cliche, is executed well. Alongside the fact that as a reader, you are spoonfed information about what cursed energy is and information pertaining to its uses, all the fights make sense as the theory behind all the supernatural abilities people use have been explained prior. Understanding fights aside, the fights are easy to follow along, though it might be more challenging to those who haven’t read manga before, most fights flowed well for me and felt almost animated at times. Overall, I would recommend Jujutsu Kaisen to just about anyone for the reasons stated above.
tl;dr: good manga with too many good looking boys i can’t anymore what in the world asdfaoijsopdjifpoij
*Shounen – Genre of manga that is targeted toward boys of age 12-18. Very action-packed and exciting!