The second season of Jujutsu Kaisen.
The past comes to light when second-year students Satoru Gojou and Suguru Getou are tasked with
escorting young Riko Amanai to Master Tengen. But when a non-sorcerer user tries to kill them, their
mission to protect the Star Plasma Vessel threatens to turn them into bitter enemies and cement their
destinies—one as the world’s strongest sorcerer, and the other its most twisted curse user!
(Source: Crunchyroll)
_With this review I will try to explain the issues the JJK team faced throughout this season, what led up to this season, and how this affected the adaptation._ MAPPA’s toxic practices have finally caught up to them. In a season mired with production issues, outspoken staff members, and outcry from the community, JJK team managed to pull off what can only be described as a miracle to get these episodes out on time. To explain the situation, first we need to go back to 2020. Contrary to popular belief, MAPPA consists of more than just one team, and the Seshimo Line is MAPPAs main team in charge of their biggest IPs, Jujutsu Kaisen, and more recently Chainsaw Man. The poor scheduling started all the way back when season 1 aired. Immediately after the production was completed, a movie and the second season were greenlit, all while having announced Chainsaw Man season 1. This meant that the team had 4 months to complete JJK0, to then immediately move onto CSM, which had roughly 9 months for an incredibly ambitious 12 episode production. That then leaves us to the second season of JJK, which had about 6 months from production to airing. __Anyone who is familiar with animation production knows this is absolutely atrocious, and HAD to have foreseen the production crumbling.__ The basic rule of thumb when it comes to anime production is that 1 cour (10-13 episodes) takes about 1 year to produce, and consequently, a 2 cour (21-26 episodes) production would take almost double that. Now this is the industry standard time, this can vary however depending on the expertise of the staff behind it, the medium (CGI or hand-drawn), and the general content of the IP. Despite that, MAPPA is a large studio, with plenty of connections in the industry, and have gotten away with these short allotted production times in the past by hiring more animators to make up for that with numbers. They basically follow the general philosophy of adding more cooks in the kitchen rather than maintaining a smaller team that would guarantee an overall consistent product. This poor scheduling led to overworking young and talented animators, as well as industry veterans with plenty stating they will not return to MAPPA for any future projects. These practices actively harm future MAPPA productions, particularly Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man, as it actively warns animators from working with them. Back in September, we saw leaks of an NDA animators at MAPPA were made to sign that forced them to not divulge information about the state of the production. This is further impacted by the director change, which saw the directorial debut of Shōta Goshozono (Gosso) replacing Sunghoo Park (JJK Season 1, JJK 0, God of Highschool). And while Gosso brings a refreshing, cinematic, take to the series, he evidently lacks the flair in action choreography that Park demonstrated in God of Highschool and the first season. Park brought such a great understanding of depth, weight and composition that is unique and brings a sense of realism that made these super powered fight sequences feel so down to earth. Fitting for a series so fight heavy. And while I am in no way unappreciative of Gosso’s work this season, especially under such a tight schedule, his take on fights just paled in comparison. With choreography and shot composition not up to the usual standards, it left a lot more to be desired. It is pure speculation as to why Park chose to not return as director in this season. Although if I were to take a guess, he might have foreseen the crazy demand and schedule proposed for the second season similar to the movie and left to create his own studio. In light of previous staff members not returning, 2 of the composers of the first season's soundtrack did not reprise their roles this time around. Season 1’s soundtrack was a collaborative effort of a team of 3 comprised of Alisa Okehazama, Hiroaki Tsutsumi and Yoshimasa Terui. However due to scheduling conflicts, both Alisa and Hiroaki could not return for the sequel, with admittedly the weakest of the trio returning for a solo effort. Yoshimasa is not a terrible composer by any means, his slower paced, emotion-packed pieces are his strong suit, but it is his faster paced arrangements for fight sequences that often feel erratic and make for a messy melody. This is further exacerbated by the misplaced soundtracks such as the Gojo and Geto conversation outside the KFC which was meant to be a heartfelt moment but wrongly came off as a cheerful encounter. The worst victim of this misplacement however has got to be the opening playing over Yuji’s breakdown in episode 17. In a scene that has now been memed to death, the choice of playing the opening during Yuji’s breakdown takes away all impact from an otherwise heart wrenching moment. At that point, we had seen so much death and destruction by the hands of the demon inside him that the focus should have been solely on Yuji and the guilt of his existence. Instead the Opening song queues and its so poorly mixed sound mixed in that it’s louder than his cries. This ultimately felt like a waste of Junya Enoki’s hard work. For me, I was always going to enjoy this season regardless of the adaptation, the content on its own is just so good that it could hold its own weight. Shibuya is the most fun I've had in shonen, the character development all highly condensed into a fight-packed arc with high stakes was pure fanservice. The fights ranged from scientific and technical like the Yuji v Choso fight to the raw and brutal like the Sukuna and Jogo. All culminating in an emotional fisticuffs showdown right at the end. What made the Shibuya arc special was how it did not fear to take out its best and most beloved characters, the constant sense of impending doom had viewers constantly on the edge of their seats. Even so, I can’t help but feel like we should’ve gotten better. This is a generational arc that didn’t deserve to have even the smallest and most inconsequential of fights such as the Grasshopper fight dumbed down to punch rushes. This entire season deserved to have the same quality as episodes 13 & 16. I can only dream of seeing the vision of these talented animators fully realised had they been given the right time. Ultimately, this situation is almost entirely Manabu Otsuka’s fault. Most likely during or just after the production of season 1 completed, the production committee met with MAPPA where they set the deadline for season 2 of 2023. Instead of using that time to give hidden inventory and Shibuya the love time and care it deserved, he decided to sneak Chainsaw Man in between. This is all an effort by Manabu to try and paint MAPPA as a high profile but quick studio. That is why they released the movie in just 4 months, it is to appeal to more production committees with rights to big IPs that might be willing to go to MAPPA for a quick adaptation. And now that they have pushed away all these talented animators and industry veterans, I fear that future seasons might not showcase much creativity that they brought to the table. That is not to speak of the incredibly talented work and the herculean effort the animators put into this season. It is nothing short of a miracle that they were able to put out an above average adaptation in half a year, and is a true testament to the talent that the team has and what we might unfortunately not see again in this future. I just wish that they were given more room to breathe and let their talents show.
Jujutsu Kaisen expands over a very novel concept, negative emotions or energy creates monsters that are a threat to humans. The basic significance of this concept comes from the fact that while its no more then the materialization of "energy" those curses are very much human in a poetic way(ultimately creating a paradox or explaining how humans are) which is mostly tackeled in the climaxes and to portray that several storylines are woven to make a tale which potentially could have been one of the best things this medium could have provided... Which brings me to a neat little fact. __It fails...__ ___ ~~~img(https://www.leisurebyte.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Jujutsu-Kaisen-Season-2-Cast.jpg)~~~ ___ And lets elaborate on that. Jujutsu Kaisen introduces a sheer number of story lines and dynamics through some good action, but ultimately due to the sheer _number_ of those it loses a general sense of direction which not only makes the characterization one of the weakest aspects of this series, But also rushes the conclusions or the pay offs in general. Toji Fushiguro, Geto, Gojo, Jogo and several others including Itadori go through phases which while could have been "impactful" end up being something hollow in the end. And it makes one of the most jarring decisions in media... Killing of characters suddenly to move the plot forward for the protagonist. Something is always left to be desired or more specifically the general feeling of "there should be something more" always remains intact. ___ ~~~img(https://www.leisurebyte.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Jujutsu-Kaisen-Season-2-Episode-17-3.jpg)~~~ ___ But a question arises why would that be? Considering the author does try to fit in a lot of stuff, ultimately the pacing issues arise. Jujutsu kaisen is fast when it comes to character moments while slow in general stuff which ultimately isnt important for the main plot. Ultimately these flaws or pacing/character issues are more apparent in the manga counter parts and even though the anime did overshadow that to some degree, you cant exactly do change or eliminate that aspect entirely. So whats the basic verdict in the end? Generally speaking, exploring one concept but carefully crafting it with characters has created several successful storylines and its no secret why. Having to many directions always ruins what "could have been" or a general impact or theme what ultimately compels one to write and thats the main prob with this season. In the end Jujutsu Kaisen is neither simple or complex ... Just hollow. Enjoyment is subjective and action is certainly an attraction but considering how weakly its built and again the sheer num of sequences or fights, its basically not something which can really create a sense of enthrallment(but again this factor is subjective). And the production really didnt help in that regard again. All in all watchable but literally got lost in its own storyline. Thanks for reading =)
~~~__(contains spoilers)__~~~ ~~~img400(https://static1.colliderimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/_yuji-itadori-megumi-fushiguro-satoru-gojo-and-nobara-kugisaki-in-jujutsu-kaisen.png?)~~~ Have you ever felt like a character is not blessed with a situation where they can make the most of their talents? You feel like the character is super interesting and has potential but they're never satisfyingly used by the narrative. Well, that's how I used to feel, not towards a character but towards a story as a whole: Jujutsu Kaisen. What I felt was indifference: I perfectly understood why people liked it and it should've been a story I loved myself yet I felt like it didn't take any risks and I couldn't fully feel involved with its stakes concurrently. In reality, it was simply due to my preferences and tastes but, after experiencing the Hidden Inventory & The Shibuya incident arc, I realized the root of all evil: Gojo. This little goofball plainly existing was one of my biggest hold back from wholly being immersed in JJK. His sealing is the best event that occured in the story and this is what I'm going to demonstrate in this review. ~~~img400(https://www.dexerto.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=828,quality=75,format=auto/https://editors.dexerto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/07/jujutsu-kaisen-young-satoru-gojo.jpeg)~~~ ____ ~~~ __Hidden's Inventory Arc: THE DESACRALIZATION OF GOJO__~~~ Gojo is 'perfect'. He was born with the six-eyes which gives him access to high levels of understanding capacity and analyzation. Both as a sorcerer and as a human being, he 'stands above others'. His mere birth caused the world to change and blah blah blah. Point is, all these factors made him a problem narratively wise. The first obvious one would be that he's broken: his ability quite litteraly being __infinity__, he could easily overpower any antagonist in the series (in S1, keep in mind) which can undermine the stakes for the viewers. Another thing, which was my personnal issue, is that it made him appear flat as a character. It was always hinted that his conflict resided in his loneliness, his infinite barrier being a metaphor for the distance between him and other characters. And his will for the sorcerer 'society' to change without him simply having to kill everyone (geto vibes) added depht to his motives but... If I'm being honest, these were treated as sub-sub-plots. His main characterization throughout season 1 was him being cool and confident. I could also add to the list that he 'stole the show' but that's a little bit too silly, even for me. The Hidden Inventory Arc made me realize that what could have been interpretated as 'flaws' was just something called 'build up' ~~~img500(https://butwhytho.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Toji-Fushiguro-But-Why-Tho-1.jpg)~~~ Toji is an impressive antagonist. Despite his little screentime, he managed to become memorable due to his characterization made only possible by his opponent: He is the first character to ever beat Satoru. And boy, what a beating. I never thought I'd see Gojo arboring such panicked facial expressions. I like how Toji's insane speed was symbolized by the fact that we ourselves as viewers weren't ablet to see him. Not only did it add to his characterization but it also put us at 'the same level' as Gojo. For the first time, we were not viewers meant to simply be amazed by Gojo's powers and confidence but we were his equals, sharing his fears and distress. His terrible loss taught us that he wasn't invulnerable. (Later on, he improves his technique which pretty much makes him invulnerable but keep in mind that I'm talking about how it affected our perception him as viewers). This fight also put in perspective the ideology of Gojo. We're reminded of his discourse with Geto in the first episode of the season. While Geto thought that it was the strong duty to protect the weak, Gojo was displeased with the idea of placing moral obligation on the concept of strenght. If you are strong, you are strong, if you are weak, you are weak. Only the weak would put restrictions and morals upon the strong to justify their own weakness and existence. Which makes sense because in a world ruled by the law of the strongest, the weaks have no right to live. Edgy, but that sums it up. That's the meaning behind that goofy braindestroyer quote "Are you Gojo Satoru because you're the strongest or are you the strongest because you're Gojo Satoru" that could also be phrased as "Did you earn the title of the strongest or were you simply born as such?" as well as "Does being the strongest define you or are you the one typifying it?"... Well, you get the gist of it. The point of this quote is to question the nature of the cause of Gojo's identity and strenght. Innate or acquired? Inevitable or preventable? How will a guy that made such bold statements about the strong and the weak react when he's put in a situation where he's outbested? ~~~img500(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/9f/15/9d/9f159d299060e9c4e4635d27a781e5de.jpg)~~~ __GOJO AS BUDDHA AND TOJI AS SUN WUKONG__ This might be common knowledge at this point but Toji versus Gojo round 2 is a tribute to/inspired by the tale of Sun WuKong and Buddha. Sun WuKong is the chinese trickster god also known as Monkey King that inspired many characters such as Goku, Luffy, Mori-Jin etc. He represents human's unbreakable spirit against fatality. He became insanely powerful but his negative emotions such as his greed, anger and pride led him to challenge Buddha, the 'awakened'. Buddha made a bet with him. The Monkey King was to win and claim the Jade Emperor was he able to escape the palm of Buddha's hand. Sun Wukong jumped and flew to the end of the world. Seeing nothing but five pillars, the Monkey King thought he had finally reached the far reaches of the universe. He returned triumphantly to Buddha only to find out that the five pillars were Buddha's fingers and that he never even left his palm. We can see many correlations with Jujutsu Kaisen. Firstly, similarly to Sun WuKong, Toji is himself a man who fought fatality. From the day he was born his fate was sealed and his value as a human was already decided, yet he refused his predestination and became the strongest Zen'in despite not having any cursed energy. He's ridiculously strong but three things led him to fight the awakened Gojo. One, his anger. The anger he felt when kid Gojo noticed him despite of all the things he had to go through to become invisible to the eyes of sorceres. Two, his ego. As he said it himself, he would've normally just made a run for it upon seeing the awakened Gojo. His job was done and he would've gained nothing by continuing the fight yet his pride didn not allow him to retreat. Three, his greed. His greedy will for getting back on the sorcerer world by killing their greatest asset, proving his worth, got the better of him. His sacrificed his 'true self' because of his negative emotions. On the other hand, Gojo got rid of his negative emotions (/took complete control over it), becoming imprenetable and transcending his human nature, attaining a higher state of consciousness, making him almost omniscient, in peace with himself and the world surrounding him. As if he was at the center of the universe, unleashing the true power of his sixth eye, throughout heavens and earth, he alone became the honoured one. As he said himself, he no longer felt any sadness nor anger towards Riko's death, he was simply in a state where his omniscience made him perceive everything and nothing all at once. This is an obvious allegory to Buddha when he reached Nirvanna. It is a place of perfect peace and happiness, like heaven. It is a state of enlightenment, meaning a person's individual desires and suffering go away as well as any negative mental states. Gojo killing Toji wasn't an act of malice but simply the consequence of Toji's actions. Gojo simply followed the 'laws of the universe' rather than his mere will. Toji who tried to denied his determinism was nothing but a monkey in the hand of Gojo embodying determinism itself (in a positive light). And the pillars he mistook for his way to freedom were the pillars that'd encage him against this inevitable truth and his demise. This can get too theoretical so I'll leave it there but I think the scene was very much understandable anyways. ~~~img500(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/711862997638971486/1189940303289925642/F29yOskXgAASqod.png?ex=659ffd44&is=658d8844&hm=eedb934fb11a1cbd01ffd1bdf81c9cc95af18be752e7084b63d634b94d816870&)~~~ __GOJO'S AND GETO'S DUALITY__ While fighting Toji made Gojo realize his place in the universe, Geto's defeat against Toji and Rika's death caused him the greatest of existential crisis. 'Taking in a cursed spirit is like swallowing the liquid of a rag that has just absorbed vomit'. Geto sacrificed himself for 'regular' humans. He had to bear all sorts of disgusting things for their sake only to find himself surrounded by them being overjoyed over the death of a little girl. What was he fighting for? He reaches a non-turning point after having massacred an entire vilage, including his parents, because the villagers had plans to execute two little girls for attracting demons. In reality, these girls were just more sensible to seeing cursed spirit. Not only are 'regular' humans the technical cause of all cursed spirit but they also put the blame on the only humans capable of saving them. Geto started to hate humans or as he likes to call them 'monkeys' (he's not beating the allegations I'm afraid). On the other hand, Gojo starts to developp a similar ideology to pre-Rika's death Geto. When the two of them confront each other and Geto breaks up with Gojo, the 'supremacy' of Gojo is once again questioned. Gojo could figuratevely see everything but the depression of his closest friend. This made me wonder, what does Gojo truly sees? What he wants to see. He believe he found his place in the universe but that's only as the one and only center of it. He knows that in a world without cursed spirit, the basis itself of his authority would be shaken off. Without the weak to protect, Gojo would have no identity as he was basically born to defeat curses. The gojobeinggojobecausehe'sstrongandthegojobeingstrongbecausehe'sgojo really does come in play here. Gojo's strenght is only justifiable due to curses existing just as Geto's plan wouldn't seem that unreasonable if he was as powerful as Gojo. From a cool-factor merchant to a layered character (thats also a complex philosophical allegory for Buddha lmao), Gojo's 'departure' started from here. One could argue his awakening sacralizes him but to me, seeing him struggle and fail to understand his friend is more view-changing about Gojo than the awakening scene. We already saw him as some sort of superior existence in the story, knowing that he attained this power through an harsh defeat makes him more human to my eyes. ____ ~~~__The Shibuya Incident Arc: A WORLD WITHOUT GOJO__~~~ ~~~img500(https://static0.gamerantimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/jujutsu-kaisen-season-2-shibuya-incident-poster-cropped.jpg?)~~~ I'm going to keep this section short and concise. Similarly to All Might in MHA, Gojo was the best thing that could happen to society as his precence alone was enough to dissuade bad things from happening and he is powerful enough to wipe the vast majority of dangerous cursed spirits. The downside is that the sorcerer society relied too much on him. The moment he's gone, Japan turns into an actual nightmare. He prevented nasty things from happening but he also prevented the growth of the rest of the cast. As long as there was Gojo around, sorcerers would never be pushed passed their limits which is essential to improve on their cursed energy handling. Although I think Gojo 'stealing the show' being a problem is easily refutable there's still a good case to be made about him preventing Yuji from taking the spotlight. His sealing allowed Yuji to grow as a character, figuratively, because his motives changed and he got huge developments and litteraly, because it allowed him to be part of some of the most iconic scenes of the story (WHERE YOU GO I GOOOO). ~!__Additional notes__: I love the art direction of season 2 to death. I have an obsession with drawings that 'simplify' things while keeping the accuracy of the thing itself. If you compare some of the shots image to image with season 1, you might think season 1 is superior but you can't compare a still image to an actual animation. What I'm saying is that season 1 looked good and had insane wallpaper use potential but animation is motion, it's not meant to be watched as a frame but as an overall clip. Due to Mappa's horrendous management, the latest episodes weren't as polished as the earlier ones but I honestly do not care about the downgrades, this is cinema. I particularly like Hidden's Inventory arc for turning JJK into Jujutsumonogatari. The art isn't just a tool to convey the story anymore. It's the story. img500(https://64.media.tumblr.com/de9aefb01a2a95eef15333a698ab4fa3/b3cb1f8a98ce9030-b7/s640x960/3b6d98916b70506ffaecf02cde36338b4f89875f.gifv) I adore this scene because it puts so much emphasis on both characters. Despite having long bodies, Geto distorts his back (he's just like me) and keep himself low which serves as good characterization and Gojo is relatable af. As someone as tall Gojo I swear to you that I do not know what to do with my legs and my arms sometimes. You can feel he has to carry his own weight by the way he walks but he still keeps himself high which perfectly embodies him. Not only is it funny and nice from an art persepective but it's also realistical despite the exaggeration. The anime did a great job in Yuji vs Choso. They found the perfect way to make Choso's power understandble through visuals alone and they pulled an Ufotable by adding numerous actions scenes into the fight while still being coherent with the source material. The tone of the anime as a whole is a success.!~ ____ You probably got it by now but Gojo is a sort of metaphor I used in order to talk about my appreciation for Jujutsu Kaisen, in S1 he had less depth but he had the potential to be great and this was basically my opinion of JJK. With Hidden's Inventory arc, the characterization of Gojo changed, making him much more intersting to me and this is also where I started to be fascinated by this story. I started to absolutely love JJK right when he got sealed the f#ck away (take it as you please lmao). Figuratively speaking, to me, Gojo being sealed is like the 'old' JJK being sealed away, the jjk with stakes that didn't work for me, the jjk that was a relatively safe story to let a new, fresh one appear. A tragedic story about grief, loss and despair mixed with the well known nekketsu shounen formula and a colorful cast that I love dearly. ~~~img500(https://i.imgflip.com/8aofxj.jpg)~~~
JJK SEASON 2 SPOILERS AHEAD, NO JJK MANGA SPOILERS Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 - The show that had my jaw on the ground every week. I want to start this off by saying I do not stand by the way Mappa treats their employees and I believe a serious change is in need. I eagerly await the Chainsaw Man movie, Hells Paradise season 2, and Mappa's other projects, but it wouldn’t feel right if there’s not a change in the way this company is run. After becoming one of the most popular Shounens of this generation in 2020, Jujutsu Kaisen is back for a season 2. Season 1 left JJK with high expectations, as I said before, it is one of the most popular Anime of this generation, season 1 is the 5th most popular anime on this site and the manga is also the 5th most popular on this site. On top of that, season 1 is the #43 highest-ranked anime and the manga is the #78 manga. So with all of these expectations, so how did it go? I am caught up with the JJK manga (chapter 244 as of this writing) so when I say that this show had my jaw on the floor pretty much every week, this show had to be really something. We start with the Hidden Inventory/Premature Death arc which follows Gojo and Geto in 2006 when they were still in high school and Geto wasn’t attempting genocide. This arc follows the start of Geto’s transition from someone who gave everything they could to protect normal people to someone who realized that those normal people are the problem. Gojo and Geto were assigned to protect the Star Plasma Vessel, Riko Amanai, a 14-year-old girl who is to become the vessel for Tengen, an ancient all-powerful Jujutsu sorcerer. Plenty of people want to kill Amanai for one reason or another, mostly for money from the people who want her dead. Right as they reach their destination, they are ambushed by Toji Fushiguro, the father of Megumi, who doesn’t even have a trace of cursed energy, which shouldn’t be possible. Geto runs off with Amanai while Gojo attempts to hold off Toji. The fight between Gojo and Toji is a good one, an inexperienced Gojo vs. someone who has zero cursed energy, meaning Gojo is unable to track him. I think the fight was animated well and Toji was made as intimidating as he should be, especially since he “killed” Gojo. Back to Geto and Amanai, they are right outside of “Tengen’s Territory” when Geto asks if Amanai really wants to do this, saying he and Gojo would protect her if not. In a change of fates, she confesses that she wants to spend more time with people, not be stuck as a vessel for the next 1000s of years before passing off to another vessel. As she says this, the outro music begins to pick up. “Lets go home” Geto says when BANG! A gunshot goes right through Amanai’s head and breaks her headband. This scene was evil, with the outro music picking up like the two were about to leave before Amanai was dramatically shot. You can see the shock in Geto’s face before he turns to the killer, Toji Fushiguro, and you can feel Geto’s anger when he says “Then die” after asking Toji what happened to Gojo and being told he was dead. After escaping Geto, Toji goes to claim his bounty with Amanai’s body. On his way out he sees a familiar tall, confidant, white-haired man that we all know and love. I know they messed up some of the angles from the manga but this scene was beautifully done. The lighting of the scene and tone that was created by Gojo’s voice actor is something we could only see in animation, and it was wonderful. Gojo then uses hollow purple on Toji for the first time in his life and it's as destructive as we last saw in season 1. Gojo is able to retrieve Amanai’s body and as he leaves a thunderous applause arises from a group that wanted Amanai dead. When he reaches the end of the room he runs into Geto and asks if he should kill them. This is the first time we see any fluctuation in Gojo’s character and morals, in season 1 he was just the relaxed overpowered teacher but here he is still a kid honing his power. Ghetto tells him that killing those people wouldn’t mean anything. We then jump to a year later where Gojo has become “The Strongest” something that was used in unison when talking about Gojo and Geto a year ago. But since Gojo was so powerful, he was sent on more missions by himself, meaning Geto did the same. Through this time we can see Geto has become sick of doing the same thing over and over “Exorcise. Absorb. Exorcise. Absorb.” “No one else understands what cursed spirits taste like. It’s like swallowing a dirty rag that’s been used to clean up shit and vomit.” He starts to question who he’s fighting for. You can tell he’s still affected by the scene of a crowd of people applauding the death of a 14-year-old girl from a year prior. He then runs into Yuki Tsumiko, who we know as Todo’s mentor from season 1. She tells Geto that she wants to rid the world of cursed spirits, which is a shocking statement to Geto who’s been stuck in a loop of fighting cursed spirits. Yuki tells Geto that there are two ways to eliminate cursed spirits from the world: 1. Eliminate cursed energy from mankind or 2. Make it possible for all of humanity to control their cursed energy. But both of these would be almost impossible. There is no known way to get rid of cursed energy with Toji Fushiguro dead and teaching every person to control their cursed energy would take forever. So the easiest answer is to kill everyone who doesn’t know how to control their cursed energy. Yuki says she’s not crazy enough to try that but on his next mission, Geto kills an entire town of people to protect two girls who don’t know how to use their cursed energy. This leads us to maybe the most famous scene from the season, at least from this arc. Gojo finds Geto in the streets of Japan and we see an angry, confused Gojo. So much pain is in Gojo’s voice and animated into his face, this is a wonderful scene that sets the table for the rest of the season. Before we get to the main event, we get a little detour and get to see the fate of the student who was giving information to Geto and his friends. We find out that Mechamaru has been giving away information about the schools and in return, Mahito would fix Mechamaru’s broken body. We also see a relationship form between Mechamaru and Miwa, so despite the fact that he betrayed our main characters and has put them in trouble more than once, we still desperately cheer for him as he tries to survive Mahito while Geto watches. Mechamaru knows what they are planning so as he fights Mahito he tries to send a warning to Gojo or any sorcerer of what is to come. These two episodes are really entertaining, the fight is well-animated and easy to follow and there is emotional value in it, watching Miwa talk to Mechamaru’s robot body while the real Mechamaru fights for his life. Then we reach the main event of the season that takes up the last 16 episodes of the season, the Shibuya incident. The first 7 episodes were really good, the story was intriguing and the animation was beautiful, but the Shibuya incident took everything to the next level. I read the manga at the beginning of 2022, so I knew what was coming (Kind of, I read the entire Shibuya incident in one night while tired and on vacation) yet every single week from the beginning of July to the end of December I spent waiting for Thursday and the new Jujutsu Kaisen episode, and every single week my expectations were shattered and my jaw was on the floor. It started with Gojo arriving in Shibuya and absolutely demolishing curses that we saw characters in season 1 struggle to survive against and some we haven’t seen in action yet in Hanami, Jogo, and Choso. This scene kinda reminds me of Optimus Prime in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (If you know, you know) because both are in a 1v3 and are absolutely schooling the trio before losing. Gojo decimates Hanami in just a few seconds, and it is beautiful to watch. Gojo is completely feral the entire fight and pushes the limits of the sorcery that we saw before, and Mappa pushes the limits of their animation. You can truly feel the power of Satoru Gojo. Gojo then gets trapped in the prison realm, but before he gets locked up he talks to the only person that could break through the invisible barrier around Gojo which is infinity, Geto. Gojo immediately realizes this isn’t the actual Geto, and it is revealed to us that Suguru Geto did in fact die on December 24th, 2017 after the events of Jujutsu Kasien 0, and the curse known as Kenjaku took over his body and his cursed technique. This is certainly an emotional scene, as Gojo gets locked up and it is made apparent that he won’t be able to break out by himself. Shibuya then turns into chaos, with the sorcerers trying to retrieve the prison realm with Gojo inside and save as many civilians as possible, while the curses try to escape with Gojo. The first season of Jujutsu Kaisen was mostly a success, but if you ask people what the biggest issue was, a good amount of people would say the pacing was not well done. In season 2, the pacing slows down a ton, the last 16 episodes take place within a few hours of each other, meaning we got to see a ton of fights with different characters and powers and flashy scenes. So much happens in this season it’s hard to go over it all, so here are some quick highlights. Nanami getting pissed at Haruta (The one lucky guy) and beating the shit out of him was so satisfying to watch, Yuji vs Choso was absolutely raw the whole fight felt dizzying and intense, the fight between Dagon and the combination of Maki, Nanami, and Naobito Ze’nin really put it into perspective where even powerful sorcerers stand against powerful curses. Dagon is able to handle the three of them easily until the reincarnated Toji Fushiguro enters and kills Dagon within a minute or two. Toji then runs off to fight Megumi, as the only thing he can think about is killing the most powerful being near him. Jogo, someone who has been clowned by fans for being clowned by Gojo twice then enters and “Kills” the remaining 3 sorcerers in the room, Maki, Nanami, and Naobito, in seconds, really putting into perspective how much more powerful these curses are compared to humans. This was an extremely shocking scene and really still just the start of what was to come later in the season. Jogo feeds Yuji ~10 fingers which means Sukuna arrives in Shibuya and shit goes down. First, Sukuna challenges Jogo to a fight, basically just for fun which leads to one of the more destructive fights in anime. An entire city gets wiped out in this fight, and Jogo still isn’t able to land a hit. The city ends up in flames before Sukuna drops a large piece of land on Jogo then burns him to a crisp using his own technique. Sometime after this fight Megumi summons Mahoraga, an extremely powerful cursed spirit which he cannot control so he knocks out Megumi himself and almost kills him before Sukuna saves him, realizing he has to keep Megumi and Haruta alive and defeat Mahoraga in order to keep Megumi alive. So Sukuna challenges Mahoraga and we get to see one of the most beautiful fights i’ve ever seen. Every detail was so well done but the animators have said that this fight was about 30% done. The restrictions and overworking done by MAPPA was at the forefront at this point as animators started talking about how they were exhausted on X and in other platforms, with some even saying they considered suicide. So not only was the animation worse than it could’ve been but there was a bad taste in my mouth whenever I watched a new episode knowing a group of people had to work their ass off in an amount of hours that shouldn’t be aloud just so the episode could be ready on Thursday. The season still continued despite this on and it just got better. Yuji finally gains control back and is greeted to a horrifying scene, a giant crater has been made in the middle of Shibuya by Sukuna and Yuji blames himself, because if he wasn’t there Sukuna wouldn’t have been able to do that. A lot of people had an issue with the opening [Specialz] playing as Yuji was having a mental breakdown, but if you look into what the song is about, it makes more sense. The song is the curses singing so you could say that the song playing now could be Sukuna mocking Yuji, and if that is the case I think that was a good decision by the studio. Yuji regains he resolve and decides he has to try to make up for what Sukuna did by saving as many people as possible, but that’s when he runs into the bastard that is Mahito. As Yuji runs into Nanami, Mahito has his hand on his back and since Nanami took a big hit from Jogo earlier Mahito is able to easily kill him. After a satisfying fight where Yuji has control for most of it, we cut to Kugisaki who is also fighting Mahito, or a duplicate Mahito, who then leads her to the actual Mahito and gets her mixed up and touched then killed by the actual Mahito. So within like 15 minutes since taking control back from Sukuna, Yuji had a breakdown because he blamed himself for killing thousands of people in Shibuya, lost one of his mentors, and one of his best friends. In each event we see a broken Yuji and each time his voice actor nails the pain that Yuji feels and makes us the viewers feel awful not just because we just lost some of the best characters in the show but because this 15-year-old kid lost two people who were very important to him and his transition into the Jujutsu world. In the next episode, we see a completely discouraged Yuji completely give up and just let Mahito have his way with him until he is saved by an old friend. Aoi Todo comes in at Yuji’s lowest point and not only gets him back on his feet but also gives us some of the best scenes from the season. Todo is able to use his technique to throw off Mahito, as he did to Hanami in season 1, and watching Mahito take the wrath that is these two brothers is so satisfying. The scene with Todo fighting with an imaginary Takada is one of the funniest and out of place things I've seen, and that’s why it’s so great. The season ends with a fight between Geto and Yuji with Urame joining Geto and the Kyoto students and Yuji Tsumiko joining Yuji. Geto is intimidating and his powers are beautifully animated in the last 2 episodes, including him releasing thousands of curses. The last episode is depressing, no normal person understands what’s going on and we see shots of the abandoned Shibuya as people try to explain what’s going on in a news broadcast. Geto, Principal Yaga, and Yuji all get sentenced to death while Gojo is named an enemy of the jujutsu society and any attempt to free him from the prison realm is punishable by death. The person assigned to execute Yuji is none other than Yuta Okkotsu, who we last saw in JJK 0. The last scene of the season is of Yuji unveiling a large group of curses that came from Geto earlier in the episode. Final thoughts This is one of the greatest seasons of anime that I've seen, the animation was beautiful the story was riveting every single week this just got better and better every Thursday I said next week wouldn’t be as good just for it to blow my mind once again, and it could’ve been so much better. I can’t imagine what this could’ve been like if Mappa gave their employees time to actually make this. We can only hope that something changes by the time season 3 comes and hopefully even before that for Mappa’s other projects.
Jujutsu Kaisen is an interesting beast of a series. When it first hit the mainstream anime community in 2020, many immediately took to praising it as one of the best Battle Shonens to come out of modern Jump, in spite of the fact that, in many other people’s eyes, it had yet to do anything all that notable or special to set itself apart from the competition. A big part of this was, of course, manga readers hyping up what the series would eventually do later down the line, and the rest was anime-onlies who were either blinded by the sakuga or engaged with the idea of what the series *could be* rather than necessarily what it actually was at the time. Regardless of the reason behind the hype, it was undeniable to many people that the show had potential. Sure, it might not be anything too special now, many people said, but if it executes its ideas well and lives up to the expectations the Manga readers set, then it absolutely could become one of the best modern Shonens. And that’s where this season comes in. Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is the series’s attempt to cash in all its hype, the moment where shit hits the fan and it truly becomes the series everyone says it could be. Or rather, to put it more accurately, Season 2 is when the show *tries* to do that, but ends up failing, falling down several flights of stairs, and ruining most of what made it entertaining in the first place. Breaking it down first, it’s almost necessary to talk about the season in terms of the two parts which it was broken up into: the 6 episode Hidden Inventory arc which constitutes the start, and the 17 episode Shibuya Incident arc which makes up the remainder of the season. The Hidden Inventory arc isn’t exactly anything too special, but it’s easily the best part of the season. This is some of the most tightly focused and plotted writing in the series, with its relatively short episode count being well-complemented by its small cast. As a flashback arc detailing Gojo’s Past, it succeeds well enough, adding a layer of nuance to the character which expands on what had been previously hinted at regarding him. It retains the first season’s sense of goofy charm while managing to be relatively more serious, and is generally rather well-directed and animated on top of that. This isn’t to say that it’s perfect, of course. The last stretch of the arc especially shows signs of rushing as just 5 episodes isn’t quite enough to fit the many emotional beats the arc tries to hit, leading to several parts of it falling rather flat when it comes to elements which don’t deal directly with Gojo’s character arc. Now you might be thinking at this point that this seems rather more positive and good than I was making it out to be at the start of this review. Well, that’s because the real problems with the season come in its second, much larger part, the Shibuya Incident. Shibuya starts out fine enough, mostly in how it picks up the momentum from the Hidden Inventory arc to fuel its first major fight and kick off the events of the arc. However, this is immediately lessened by the fact that that fight then proceeds to negate half of the emotional core of the Hidden Inventory arc in the first place, retroactively ruining a perfectly good arc for the sake of a cheap shock value reveal. This bit of less than stellar writing is then followed by the onset of the rest of the arc, which is practically a nonstop series of fight scenes. And here’s where a huge problem rears its head: most of them don’t really matter. Firstly, the show’s rather lean worldbuilding becomes a detriment here. The Jujutsu World as it exists is essentially a vague sketch made up of generic shonen worldbuilding tropes which the audience has no investment in. This was fine in the first season, where the stakes were generally character-based and the overall world took a backseat, but as Shibuya’s stakes are inherently grounded in the series’s setting, this starts to become a detriment to the audience’s investment. This would also likely be fine if the character writing within the arc was competent enough to carry the series like it did in the first season. However, here we come to another problem: the character writing in Shibuya takes an utter nosedive. This problem is rather multifaceted, so let’s break it down a bit. Firstly, the fights don’t really progress anything meaningful regarding the characters. Half of the fights in this season are against random one-note mooks whose only notable feature is their special ability. Consequently, there’s no personal stakes involved for any of the characters, and they have little-to-no development coming out of them. This arc’s episode count could be cut in half and pretty much nothing would change considering how inconsequential most of the fights are. This isn’t helped by the insane cast bloat, as the show constantly throws even more underdeveloped, one-note characters at the viewer and hopes that they might care about at least one of them. Secondly, the series’ fights lack any sort of flair or personality. A big part of the appeal of the show’s first season was how simply fun the cast was in terms of their interactions and how their lovably distinct personalities shined through in their fights. However, as this is the “serious” arc, characters are not allowed to show personality or any interesting unique characteristics while fighting. So instead we get an indistinct gray sludge of generic, forgettable fight after generic, forgettable fight which is lacking in both style and substance, carried only by the efforts of the animators. How does a writer keep the audience engaged in such an aggressively uninteresting slog, you ask? It’s quite simple, really: cheap shock value! You see that character the audience generally likes? Arbitrarily kill them off! Sure, their potential as a character hasn’t even begun to be tapped into and the audience barely knows them since you’ve spent so little time actually developing them, but if you make it sudden enough, you might be able to deceive the viewer into thinking it’s good writing! Oh, what’s that? The viewer isn’t quite emotional yet? Just shove a flashback in the middle of their death scene and spend half the episode on it! Shoving all the character’s actual depth into the very end of their screen time, literally right before they’re dead, is *totally* a legitimate substitute for writing an actually compelling character. And, just to make sure the audience gets the point, give the character *another* flashback at the start of the next episode, just beat the audience over the head with what they’re supposed to be feeling, that’ll totally make them think the show is actually emotionally meaningful and not just boring crap. Repeat some variant of this formula a couple times over, and you’ve got yourself the Shibuya Incident experience! Now, of course, some might say that even if the show isn’t well-written in the slightest, it’s still very well-animated, so you can just enjoy it as turn-your-brain-off fun. However, even that approach has its problems due to the series’s consistency issues. For every genuinely great-looking fight, there’s another that’s ruined by flat shading, messy storyboarding, and the show’s ludicrously boring color palette. And even if you can look beyond that, the show’s attempts to shove emotions down your throat consistently ruin any attempt you might make to turn your brain off. It’s rather hard to just take in the action sakuga when half the episode is taken up by a boring flashback. Overall, Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 can best be summed up in one word: Edgy. The season discards all of the potential it once had in favor of an “I’m 14 and this is deep” experience where an incoherent combination of black & red color palettes, random horrific imagery, and arbitrarily killing off characters passes itself off as good storytelling. It’s the most disappointing direction the series could have possibly taken, and easily one of the worst anime experiences of the year. Unless you’re an edgy teenager or a rabid sakuga fanatic, avoid this season like the plague.
Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is a masterpiece and I kind of hate it. It's a weird position to be in, I admit. My opinions of the first season of JJK weren't very intense: I liked it a lot, despite my many criticisms, and that was that. Just another mega-popular shonen elevated by a top-tier smorgasboard of action scenes and some truly excellent ass-kicking action girls. It certainly didn't feel like a show that would ever be worth expending as much thought as I've been doing the past couple months over the course of the Shibuya Incident. But somewhere between the first season's release and Jujutsu Kaisen becoming the third-biggest anime on the planet behind Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer, my feelings started curdling, so subtly that I barely even noticed until the second season came out and dragged them up to the surface. I love Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2, I hate Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2, it's one of the most triumphant and one of the most existentially depressing anime I've ever watched. It is, for better and worse, the most important anime of the 2023. And it's gonna take a very long time for me to fully parse out why. From the outside, you might be thinking, "Gee, what did this show do to shake your opinions up so violently? It must've really gone in a different direction that completely upended what it's even about." But no. Quite the opposite, in fact; the Shibuya Incident arc that dominates season 2 after a brief flashback story is about as straightforward an arc as you can imagine. It's a single, massive, sprawling brawl across the streets of Shibuya, sorcerers and curses duking it out all over the map with the fate of golden boy Satoru Gojo on the line. It's nothing but fight after fight after fight after fight with increasingly broken superpowers and collateral damage, escalating to absurd degrees and never letting off the gas. Yes, there's a lot of consequential stuff that happens in this arc, but on a moment to moment basis it's as pure an action experience as anime has ever accomplished. No complex political factions, no deep symbolism or themes, just the sheer chaos of watching a city come undone under the collective onslaught of this superhuman war. And it _fucking rules._ The first season of Jujutsu Kaisen was already a marvel in the action department, don't get me wrong. But under the new direction of Shouta Goshozono, who's been responsible for some of the absolute best-directed anime episodes in recent years, that experience has gone absolutely _nuclear._ Every episode is astonishing in a different way, every fight pulls out some new animation technique that completely changes the timbre of the action, every scene is directed so uniquely and specifically that it's impossible to forget. As good as season 1's action was, it favored consistency over creativity and didn't really get to flex the true insanity that these curses and cursed powers are capable of. But season 2 fully embraces every animator's individual quirks and lets them run absolutely _buckwild_ with it. Yuji's bathroom brawl with Choso is a searing cyberpunk-tinged smackdown. Sukuna's long-awaited return is a kaleidoscopic nightmare that feels pulled straight from a particularly nihilistic episode of Mob Psycho 100. Megumi's big spoileriffic fight paint the streets in surreal chaos reminiscent of early Masaaki Yuasa. And almost every single episode has this level of hyper-specific visual panache put into it. It is, without hyperbole, one of the most jaw-dropping achievements in anime spectacle of all time And that's just the action scenes! That's not even counting how goddamn amazing this show looks _outside_ of combat now! If you go back and watch season 1, it tended to play things really safe visually when it wasn't kicking up a fight. Conversation scenes and down moments are mostly functional-but-boring collections of shots that get the job done without leaving much of an impression. But with Goshozono at the helm, every single moment, from the most explosive showdowns to the simplest character-building conversations, is infused with _life._ Off-kilter camera angles imbue every line of dialogue with infinitely more meaning. The editing constantly catches you off guard in the best ways with how it draws your focus through a scene. There's some of the loveliest loosey-goosey comedic chibi animation I've seen in a long time. Every scene is distinct, every scene pops, every scene feels like its own unique entity in this mesmerising arthouse collage of styles and talents crashing together in somehow perfect harmony. I can think of very few shows in recent years that have looked this incredible and this experimental on such a consistent basis. Which is wild enough on its own, but there's an additional level to this: Jujutsu Kaisen is pulling out all these experimental, ecclectic techniques in a _mainstream shonen anime._ And that just _never_ happens. Mainstream shonen shooting for broad appeal _never_ play things this risky and outside-the-box with their visual presentation. Sure, most of them look good with all the money pouring into them, but they also look, well, like Jujutsu Kaisen season 1. They're polished and pretty with all the edges sanded off and nary a risk taken, content that being flashy and detailed can make up for a standard visual palette. But JJK season 2 has taken the kind of aesthetic you'd normally see in underground cult classics from offbeat animators too rebellious to fit into the industry machine and translated it to the widest audience imaginable. It's introduced genuine _artistry_ to this playing field, marrying the mainstream and the hipster and making it look like child's play. It's pushed the visual boundaries of mainstream shonen far beyond what they used to be, expanding what the most popular genre of anime can look like on a level I don't think we're fully prepared for. Imagine how many future adaptations will take cues from the course this season has charted. Imagine how creative, how _experimental,_ the future of shonen anime might be thanks to JJK. That's a cause for celebration no matter how you look at it. And yet. And yet, there's a question I've been unable to stop thinking about ever since the Shibuya Incident really got underway: if it weren't for the masterpiece production... would I even _like_ this arc? And unfortunately, I think I know the answer. Let's be brutally honest for a moment: Jujutsu Kaisen's biggest problem is, has been, and always will be that this show does not know how to goddamn focus. It's constantly introducing and throwing out plot points at seemingly random intervals, changing tracks and abandoning story threads before they're fully realized, even outright contradicting itself on a whim on multiple occasions. Hey, remember those two normal friends Yuji had back in the very first episode who he seemed to have a good relationship with and liked hanging out with? Well, JJK hopes you don't, because they completely vanished after the first episode and Yuji never so much as mentions them again, as if they never existed in the first place. Then it feels like it's setting up a classic shonen power trio with Megumi and Nobara, except then Yuji dies and has to hide his resurrection for another eight episodes so they never really develop as a group dynamic. Plus there was building up Junpei as a new friend-turned-antagonist only for him to get axed right off the bat, though at least that one tried to make some kind of thematic sense so it's not as egregious. But when you take a bird's-eye view of the whole unfolding story, it really becomes apparent how many times Jujutsu Kaisen will stop dead in its tracks, say "actually nevermind," and completely change direction, leaving whatever it was in the middle of developing to wither and die. And if that was a problem in season 1, then good fucking god does season 2 push it into absurdity. There's a genuinely excellent five-episode prequel arc that finally gives a sense of stakes and thematic weight to one of the show's most central relationships... only to reveal mere episodes later that one of those people is already dead, and all the potential story threads that could've sprung from the seeds planted by Hidden Inventory are stamped out before they've even got a chance to bloom. One of the dead characters from that flashback arc is brought back in absurdly convoluted way and set on a collision course with the character from the present they have the most connection to, setting up a confrontation with real emotional weight for both participants... except then he just dies again without it ever mattering. There's an out-of-nowhere romantic subplot that only starts mattering when one participant is already on the verge of death and only matters to the other when she's mourning his loss despite them never having shared a scene before. Not to mention a_ major fucking character death_ that comes so out of nowhere it's genuinely hard to emotionally wrap your head around it and is possibly undone literally minutes later because??? Look, being chaotic and messy doesn't have to be a death knell, especially for shonen. So much of what made Hunter x Hunter work so well is leaning into the sheer messiness of its world and characters, letting them push each other in bizarre, risky directions that a more traditional story structure might not have the guts to pull off. But this doesn't feel like intentional chaos, it feels like Gege Akutani just doesn't know what kind of story they're trying to tell, changing their mind every other episode and undoing whatever plot threads they were starting to set up because they realized they weren't interested in continuing them. And it absolutely _murders_ the emotional throughline of this show. Every potentially interesting, meaningful idea it brings up has a 50/50 chance of being hastily written out of the plot the second the author gets bored, leaving all that investment feeling wasted and pointless. At some point, it becomes hard to emotionally engage with _anything_ the show tries to pull; why bother taking the risk when there's no guarantee it's even going to be paid off, let alone paid off well? And the longer I sit with that feeling, the more it pricks at a far more frustrating question: why Jujutsu Kaisen? Why was this story, out of all the potential options, the one chosen for a once-in-a-decade animator's wet dream? Why were mostly flat antagonists like Mahito and Sukuna given spectacular enough fight scenes to sell their menace in a way the writing itself barely accomplishes? Why was Miwa and Mechamaru's half-finished sketch of a romantic subplot deserving of enough evocative, wrenching filmmaking to almost manage an emotional response in spite of its utter lack of development? Why spend all this time, effort, and crushing human misery polishing a deeply flawed story to a mirror shine instead of giving an already good story the royal treatment it actually deserves? Why is _this_ worth dragging Mappa's animators through the fires of hell for? I mean, not that any show would be worth the apocalyptically bad working conditions Mappa's corporate masters force on their employees to fatten their own bank accounts- seriously, can we figure out how to unionize the anime industry already?- but with all the horror stories coming out of this mismanaged production, it's hard not to look at the end result and wonder: Really? _This_ is what we've decided to bleed so many people dry for? Of course, that question's also fairly rhetorical. I know the reason Jujutsu Kaisen gets this kind of treatment when plenty of far more deserving shows have to settle for scraps: because it's a shonen. And shonen will always be favored by the moneymaking powers that be as long as the people making those decisions are traditionalist old men who don't see women and girls as a viable demographic. We're finally coming out of _years_-long drought for shoujo and josei anime, a stretch of time when almost no works targeted at women and girls were given anything above a shoestring budget and C-tier production schedule, and yet shonen has never once failed to be given all the tools it needs to devour the competition. Trite, treacly mush like Demon Slayer is given enough polish to become an era-defining blockbuster while the possibility of a Yona of the Dawn season 2 becomes an increasingly painful impossibility. And Mappa itself, a studio that first made a name for itself by winning the hearts and wallets of women and queer audiences with Yuri on Ice, has put the sequel film to that cultural phenomenon on indefinite hiatus as it grinds its animators into dust churning out shonen adaptation after shonen adaptation. Because even the biggest smash hit imaginable, the show that made this studio a household name in the first place, doesn't matter if it doesn't cater to the only audience that the industry really seems to care about. It's all of this I can't help but think about as I watch Jujutsu Kaisen top itself over and over again. In every mind-blowing fight scene, in every stunning display of cinematic brilliance, in every skill and talent the animators pour on screen, I see the countless other, more deserving shows that could've been something special with just a _fraction_ of this support. Just this season alone, we had I'm in Love With the Villainness and Shy, two female-forward anime with far more compelling ideas and stories that could've been genuine hits if they hadn't been flopped out with the most cardboard productions imaginable from studios that just didn't have the time or energy to do them justice. Imagine if just a few of the people pouring their souls into prettying up Supernatural Boys Punch Demons Version 347 were able to offer their talents to those shows instead. Imagine if a beloved shoujo, yuri, or BL manga getting slapped with a bargain-bin production inspired as much outrage as a shonen adaptation having only a small handful of animation cuts below spectacular (Yes, I still remember how stupid the Chainsaw Man anime discourse got). Imagine if this industry favored stories for women even half as much as it valued stories for men. Hell, I'd even be partly satisfied if blockbuster shonen anime just stopped treating their female casts so abysmally. And JJK used to be one of the few to manage that! What the hell happened between that first season and now, Gege? Nobara deserved better, god dammit! This is the contradiction of Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2. It's a masterclass of artistry that raises the bar for animated action everywhere, given to a story that doesn't deserve the honor of bearing it. It's a showcase of the most talented people working in this industry today, all putting their best efforts in to the least interesting project they could be providing their talents to. It's a mediocre franchise elevated to spectacular heights at the cost of potentially reaching even higher with a more worthy source material. It's all this industry's imagination and all its laziness, all its ambition and all its cowardice, rolled into a single shining exemplar of anime's infinite possibility that doubles as a condemnation of its priorities. And I've spent this entire season laughing with glee at at the heights it's reached while I feel my enthusiasm for the overall show slowly bleed away. Never before have I been left so in awe of what this medium is able to accomplish, yet simultaneously so exhausted by its unwillingness to spread that effort evenly. In the end, Jujutsu Kaisen is both the greatest success and the greatest failure imaginable. As a showcase of animated spectacle from the industry's most talented up-and-comers, it's a landmark achievement that will rightly go down in history. As a continuation of Jujutsu Kaisen, it's a death knell for this story ever being worth more than the sum of its parts. And as a representation of where this industry currently stands, it just leaves me sad, tired, and hollow. It will be a long time before we get a show as singular and staggering as this again. I just hope next time, all this talent and effort goes toward a story that can actually do something meaningful with it.
Man, Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 was kind of a letdown after the awesome first season. It had its moments, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me because of a bunch of problems. The speed at which things went down was a major buzzkill. It felt like they were in such a hurry to get through everything that it left my head spinning. Especially in the beginning, there was so much info and talking that I couldn't keep up. And even as the season went on, it didn't really slow down enough for the story to breathe. They just skipped over important stuff, and the characters didn't get the attention they needed. Talking about characters, they dropped the ball on that too. Season 1 did a great job building up the main crew, but Season 2 was all about new faces and storylines. The OG characters got the short end of the stick, and it felt like they didn't care about them anymore. And don't even get me started on the fanservice. There were way too many shots of half-naked girls that felt totally out of place. Like, come on, I signed up for a good story, not a peek-a-boo show. In the end, Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 didn't live up to the hype. It rushed through things, didn't give characters the love they deserved, and got too distracted with unnecessary stuff. There were a few cool moments, but overall, it was a bit of a mess. Now, let me break it down a bit more. The pacing was like they had a turbo button stuck on. It was like they were sprinting through a marathon, and I was left panting, trying to keep up. The early episodes were like an info avalanche, and I felt buried under it. I mean, can I get a moment to process things? Sure, they tried to fix it as the season went on, but it was like trying to put out a forest fire with a water gun. The story never got a chance to stretch its legs. It was like, "Here's the plot, blink and you'll miss it." And speaking of blinking, that's how fast they glossed over important plot points. It was like, "Wait, did that just happen? Wasn't that a big deal?" Now, let's talk characters. Season 1 made me care about these guys, but in Season 2, it was like they were tossed aside for the shiny new toys. The OG characters were just there, hanging out in the background like forgotten action figures. Yuji Itadori, the main dude, felt like he lost his mojo. He used to be all charismatic and engaging, but in Season 2, it's like they zapped the life out of him. I didn't even get what he was all about anymore. And the fanservice? Come on, Jujutsu Kaisen, I thought we were better than this. There were more shots of barely dressed girls than there were actual fights. It was distracting and felt forced, like they were trying too hard to spice things up. I'm here for a good story and epic battles, not awkward attempts at making things sexy. So, in conclusion, Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 had its moments, but they were overshadowed by the rushed pacing, neglect of OG characters, and the unnecessary fanservice. It's like they forgot what made Season 1 so great. Sure, there were a few sparks, but overall, it was more fizzle than sizzle. And my final, final rating? Let's stick with 3/10 stars. It's like they aimed for the moon but barely left the atmosphere.
This is the most disappointing and yet daring show I saw while airing. A team full of talent forced by their overlords to make an impossible possible, bring their incredible vision to life in horrendous conditions. What we got has no right to be so good, even acknowledging many inconsistency and production issues, doesn't take away from the monumental result achieved against the odds. While this alone would make this show into a beautiful, historic marvel of endurance, unfortunately the stinky story has to ruin my romantic view of this anime. Rushed conclusion to the first arc and structural problems brought to the series by it are enough to stain this gem by themself. It seemed obvious to me that Geto died in the zero movie, so the decision to make an arc dedicated to him and Gojo after killing him off is awful. I don't care about a dead soon to be antagonist! Wasted amazing potential of the confrontation between Toji and Megumi showcase how even when we get some interesting exceptions in this series of fights with uninteresting/underdeveloped characters, mostly nothing is achived. This is very annoying when some of the biggest fights in this climactic arc are between someone we know and some new or uninteresting dude. For a fighting anime power system is extremely bad and convoluted, with new rules coming out every second episode. At this point I feel like we should just stop pretending there are rules as the author clearly doesn't even care to mask his intentions. Speaking about characters it is important to mention that there are too many of them and most of them are undeveloped, unfortunately that includes many of the important characters that have no right to be so cruely disregarded. When author decides to kill someone off it either happens to a main character which was underdeveloped and had no arc or it happens to some random about which I don't care. To mitigate this problem Jujutsu turns towards an old technique of flashback/sudden development before the death of a character. One of the most insulting flashbacks lasts more than half the episode, probably becouse author realizes that killing said character has no sense or right to happen, but wants to add shock value and speeden the development of Itadori. The progression of this review shows adequately how my enthusiasm for this season progressed. There is a ton to admire in here, which is why I leave a positive mark for this season, unfortunately to admire this I had to endure mistake after mistake, building up a feeling of unfortunate frustration that clashes with the respect for the creators of this flawed product.
I'll be the first to admit that I had unrealistically high hopes for the sequel to 2020's unexpected sucker-punch of a hit Jujutsu Kaisen which in no way did I realistically expect to be met - and yet, to my surprise, Jujutsu Kaisen's second season is just as big of a sucker-punch as its first, because it not only managed to meet them, but also _surpassed_ them; in more ways than one. And yet, it is heartbreaking to know that it could have done so _even further_, a thought that fills me with immense rage towards its production company MAPPA who, through poor management and a truly appalling lack of respect for their employees who possess once-in-a-generation talents, were able to destroy the production of the season so thorougly that, for example, the already episode-of-the-year material Thunderclap Part 2 reportedly only realised _30 percent_ of the original vision that was planned out for it. This inexcusable state of affairs is not only frustrating for viewers, but also for the artists involved - not being able to execute your vision to a satisfying degree, being forced to work on an episode hours before it airs and watching it be torn to shreds online for reasons completely out of your control (such as the aforementioned nightmarish scheduling or the ridiculous levels of ghosting and dimming being applied to each episode), actually _apologising_ for disappointing viewers for your "mistake" is something that no person should have to go through, and yet this anecdote and many similar were experienced by the Jujutsu Kaisen staff weekly. It is deeply troubling that this is how little one of the largest anime studios in the world respects their employees - and equally so, it is unbelievably impressive that those wonderful employees were able to produce such a beautiful work of art regardless. Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is split into two parts: Hidden Inventory - Premature Death, and the Shibuya Incident. Though I could spend many paragraphs discussing both at-length, I will try to reconcile the two in this review, as they share many of the same strengths; though I will say that the former of the two parts could have been extended from 5 to 12 episodes and I would have gladly watched it, it's just that good. Also, it works great if edited into a movie, a fun endevour I recommend anyone with a little time on their hands to work on. (It makes for a good double-feature alongside Jujutsu Kaisen 0, and also makes that tragically mediocre movie a lot better.) As for the season as a whole, the most obvious positive that can be listed is the god-tier animation - the staff have gone truly above and beyond, from elevating less important fights like Geto vs Toji and Mei Mei vs the Smallpox Curse to delicious eye candy, to making highly-anticipated sequences like Yuji vs Choso and Sukuna vs Jogo into legendary battles that will be talked about for years to come. Besides the quality of the animation, however, I also want to briefly mention the season's more manga-accurate, visually expressive artstyle, which now makes the first season's far more dull and rigid in comparison. Another very impressive aspect of this season for me was the soundtrack - Yoshimasa Terui did an amazing job with the OST just like his work in Season 1, and the two openings by Tatsuya Kitani and King Gnu are fighting to the death to be my top opening of the year; although one criticism I do have is that I felt the OST was used a little too often for my liking, with songs that didn't really work well together being played one after another in a lot of fights which made them feel less distinct overall. Not a huge gripe, but slightly annoying nonetheless. The one undeniable positive for the season, of course, is to the story that every other aspect works to tell, a constant thrill of emotions that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until all of your favourite characters are either dead or profoundly affected by its events, the world of the show has been irreperably altered, and your mind has been blown so hard by the twists and turns that your brain is leaking out of your nose - everything in the story has immense consequences, and this is reinforced constantly; no one is safe in Jujutsu Kaisen, not even the structure of its story, which takes an unimagineably dramatic turn from the start of the season to its end to the point where _anything_ could be on the table in the next season, which is also set up incredibly well - from the small hints to the future we get in the final episodes such as Yuta and Yuji's confrontation to Pseudo-Geto's mysterious plot, Season 3 looks to be just as exciting as Season 2. One aspect of the season I am mixed on, though, is some of those aforementioned character deaths, particularly the _big_ one - you know which one I'm talking about. This is primarily because I feel that the purpose it serves in the narrative feels a little... Misplaced? Especially considering the _other_ character death that takes place _right_ before it, it just feels a little unnecessary, almost as if the shock value of it took precedent over the actual narrative reasoning, a shock value that, mind you, is undone moments later when it is revealed the death _could potentially_ be reversed, leaving a confusing, sour taste in the mouth. However, where the storyline takes the implications of this death is up to the following season, and I don't think it's fair to judge this season based on the potential letdown of the next, so for now I'll just remain a little sceptical. Overall, I can say that despite all of the odds stacked in their favour, and a few small flaws, the Jujutsu Kaisen staff have created an immaculate season full of unimagineable highs and very few lows, and I greatly look forward to what they have to offer next, which they can hopefully bring us under far more acceptable conditions.
~~~img2000(https://media1.tenor.com/m/aeJBrxaaXBQAAAAC/gojo-satoru-gojo.gif)~~~ Tudo o que é construído do cenário de Jujutsu Kaisen, desde seu prólogo e até sua primeira temporada se encontram aqui, onde no meio de resoluções de diversas coisas ainda tem um espaço pra construir relações, e trazer dilemas interessantes dentro da obra como um todo. A segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen é tomada por inúmeras melhorias, seja no aspecto da tão aclamada porradinha pros shounen-enjoyers, mas principalmente dentro de sua narrativa tanto pra dentro da psiquê dos personagens, onde na primeira parte - o tal do Arco do Gojo, é inteiramente baseado nisso, ou seja na maneira mais externa da ideia, levando o conceito de consequências pra dentro do próprio mundo que Jujutsu Kaisen introduz. A sua segunda temporada é maior em escolpo, e de certa forma melhor em identidade - Gege Akutami entende o que de fato Jujutsu Kaisen quer fazer. A maneira como essa segunda temporada é estruturada é de certa forma um tanto curiosa, já que ela tem um arco inteiro de 5 episódios focado em narrativa e principalmente desenvolvimento de personagem, e na outra metade o que Jujutsu Kaisen consegue fazer de bom só que ainda melhor. Hidden Inventory/Premature Death é o melhor início que uma temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen poderia ter, ponto. Aqui toda aquelas lutas sem parar, batalhas desenfreadas são postas de lado em detrimento a um outro tipo de narrativa, e até de direção dentro dos "quês" técnicos do estúdio MAPPA. As coisas nessa primeira parte são o oposto do que foi introduzido em sua temporada anterior: seu pacing é mais lento, seu foco sai dos desenvolvimentos por meio das lutas, e entra nos desenvolvimentos por meio dos personagens, e o peso dado a muitas coisas aqui, principalmente sobre "O que é ser um feiticeiro Jujutsu" dentro desse cenário tão seco e cru que o anime tanto fala, mas tão pouco desenvolve sobre toma conta aqui. A história entre essa amizade de Satoru Gojo e Suguru Geto é tomada por levezas e brutalidades, trazendo inúmeros dilemas além de interessantes e um desenvolvimento que mesmo mais curto do que deveria, ainda traz provavelmente o melhor momento de narrativa da obra em um todo. ~~~img2000(https://media1.tenor.com/m/-mn3XFXWgnUAAAAd/are-you-satoru-gojo-because-you-are-the-strongest.gif) ~~~ Algo que me incomodava de Jujutsu Kaisen era sobre muitas vezes falarem muito sobre os perigos daquele mundo, mas não demonstrar aquilo da melhor maneira possível na primeira temporada; claro, teve o Junpei, mas sinceramente aquilo não foi algo realmente marcante pro público, pelo menos pra entender o perigo que o Jujutsu traz as pessoas. Aqui em "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death" além de fato mostrar isso e desenvolver o ponto, constrói e desconstrói a glamourização do papel de um feiticeiro, onde dando protagonismo por uma dupla tão oposta, introduz uma jornada o qual o quão mais profundo é caminhada, mais desiludida seus ideias tornam e sua índole é posta a tona de tudo isso. Satoru Gojo e Suguru Geto traz dentro de Jujutsu Kaisen dilemas, ideais e acima de tudo isso uma profundidade pra o papel de um feiticeiro jujutsu dentro pra aquele mundo. Mesmo que ainda enxuto, esse arco consegue trazer um desenvolvimento para ambos de uma maneira estrondosa, onde por meio do tom um tanto quanto leve faz quem vê engajar naquela amizade, naquela missão e tudo o que esse arco se propõe fazer. Porém quando tudo o que aquilo que não apenas quem vê e mas também os personagens é postos a prova, o que essa história até então mostra é virada de ponta cabeça, trazendo o maior sentimento de injustiça a todos. O final dessa história é provavelmente o momento mais forte de Jujutsu Kaisen, onde entre filosofias e ideais, o que realmente impacta é o conhecimento de que no final daquilo, as coisas nunca mais seriam a mesma seja a médio ou a longo prazo. A amizade nunca voltaria, e todo o sentimento de que aquele verão vivenciado por momentos felizes e sentimentos tão genuínos, foram arruinadas pelo o infortúnio que são os ossos de ofício de ser um feiticeiro jujutsu. O maior impacto não foi ter sido o fim daquilo, e sim que isso nunca mais voltaria a acontecer para todos, e isso é o que mais marca em nós como público, e também em toda a relação quebrada entre Satoru Gojo e Suguru Geto. "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death" mostra que nem os melhores momentos duram pra sempre, e o que vem logo após isso realça que depois daquilo, o "Incidente de Shibuya" seria um ponto o qual nunca mais traria esses momentos de volta, e que o desespero tomaria conta do mundo de Jujutsu Kaisen. ~~~img2000(https://media1.tenor.com/m/Mc7qeD231psAAAAC/jujutsu-kaisen-jjk.gif)~~~ E então nesse sentimento um tanto quanto pessimista que embarcamos a esse arco de apenas uma noite, porém com muitas coisas acontecendo ao mesmo tempo que é o "Incidente de Shibuya". Aqui, Jujutsu Kaisen volta ao habitual padrão de shounen, porém agora com o maior arco até então do tipo dentro da história, e também o mais maduro no que se diz a respeito de entender o que a suas lutinhas, porradas e coisas do tipo do gênero querem falar pra dentro de seu próprio mundo, e principalmente pra quem está embarcando junto aos personagens nisso. É interessante ver Shibuya em como ele é estruturado dentro de sua narrativa, principalmente levando em consideração ele como uma resolução de um plano que, pelo menos desde o início da série, é informado e dito entre os personagens ocasionalmente em alguns momentos. Shibuya demora para vir, mas quando de fato vem é algo estrondoso e que simplesmente nunca para, e que se tem algum momento de respiro é logo abafado por momentos ansiosos em lutas interruptas, ou em tensões por conta das consequências dessas lutas as pessoas ao redor dela. No final das contas, o interessante do "Incidente de Shibuya" não é suas lutas grandiosas, momentos épicos e cenas inesperadas mas sim o que traz o pós disso tudo, não só para apenas os protagonistas dessa história, mas também para o cenário que Jujutsu Kaisen traz pra dentro desse Japão feito no mangá. As lutas aqui de certa forma criam uma narrativa, talvez um tanto quanto baseada apenas pelo hype delas mesmas enquanto elas acontecem, porém logo após delas algo de interessante ocorre com a maioria dessas lutas, que é a questão das consequências mostradas por conta dessas mesmas lutas. É fácil de fazer o público se engajar com lutas em escolpos gigantes, com meteoros voando dos céus, criaturas quase imortais sempre voltando mais fortes, ou até em uma liberação de uma caixa de pandora repleta de maldições. Sim, isso é facilmente engajante a quem vê, o momento é épico, a animação é cheia de "sakugas" e coisas bacanas como coreografia e coisas do gênero, porém no momento que esse momento acaba o quem vem depois, em grande maioria não importa. Mesmo tendo um escolpo gigante, é normal ao público não pensar nas possíveis consequências de embates assim, afinal de contas isso não é algo que é tocado dentro do âmago de seus protagonistas, e não é aprofundado de uma maneira muito além do que acontece depois. Isso pode ocorrer em muitas obras do mesmo gênero, mas não da maneira que Jujutsu Kaisen trata o "Incidente de Shibuya" e sua reverberação mesmo após o término do arco. ~~~img2000(https://media1.tenor.com/m/JyVcFiqQupMAAAAd/jujutsu-kaisen-jjk.gif)~~~ A maneira que Jujutsu Kaisen trata as consequências dos embates no "Incidente de Shibuya" é interessante, principalmente levando em consideração o protagonismo de Yuji Itadori na história, e toda sua construção dentro dessas duas temporadas. Itadori cria esse complexo o qual ele não sabe se realmente valeu a pena salvá-lo, mas que ia aproveitar essa oportunidade para salvar o máximo de pessoas possíveis, o que traz um idealismo otimista nada convidativo pra uma temporada que olha para tais ideais, e bota personagens para duvidar se realmente este tipo de pensamento é correto ou se vale a pena. Da maneira o qual a temporada é estruturada, seria normal pensar que "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death" não afetaria a narrativa do "Incidente de Shibuya", porém o contrário ocorre e praticamente todas as conversas, dilemas e lutas morais ocorrem aqui, e todas elas caem em cima de Itadori, que até então é posto a prova a todo momento pra se entender como feiticeiro jujutsu, e acima disso, o seu propósito dentro daquele mundo repleto de maldições e feiticeiros. E esse teste de fogo o qual Itadori é posto durante toda a temporada, é reforçada pela a figura monstruosa que é Ryomen Sukuna, que nessa temporada tem um peso dentro da narrativa como nunca mais antes teve, fazendo o protagonista sentir das mais inúmeras coisas, e fazendo todo e qualquer tipo de destruição interno e externo dentro da história. Não seria exagero tratar Sukuna como essa calamidade dentro de Shibuya, onde com apenas com o que ele fez, consegue trazer mudanças gigantes dentro de Jujutsu Kaisen como um todo. Uma lembrança que mesmo com as inúmeras maldições, Ryomen Sukuna é uma força imparável que pode mudar o protagonista dessa história, mas também o mundo em sua volta. No final daquela noite, o que importou do "Incidente de Shibuya" foi suas consequências, e como isso afetou não só a história pessoal de cada um dos personagens, mas também como a história nacional dentro do Japão de Jujutsu Kaisen. O último episódio dessa temporada é interessante em tocar nisso, mesmo com todo o momento épico mostrado com a resolução de Shibuya, o episódio toma foco das consequências daquilo tudo nas pessoas, e na sociedade japonesa no geral. Isso é algo curioso, principalmente pra dentro do gênero de shounen, que na maioria das vezes não tem muito interesse em mostrar como as ações, consequências e coisas do tipo nesses grandes arcos reverberam dentro de seus cenários. A maneira o qual Jujutsu Kaisen trata sobre Shibuya nesse episódio, mesmo que curto, ainda é interessante remetendo um pouco de obras como Shin Godzilla de Hideaki Anno, retratando o que é de fato o pior desses momentos terríveis que são o que ocorre logo após eles, e como isso afeta as pessoas a redor desses momentos. Jujutsu Kaisen trata o "Incidente de Shibuya" como algo nada épico, e vai pra um lado trágico pra todos os envolvidos, fazendo essa tragédia afetar até aqueles que não estavam envolvidos, fazendo esse sentimento trágico ainda mais forte dentro não só do arco, mas sim de sua temporada em um geral. ~~~img2000(https://media1.tenor.com/m/E9sre0CTVbUAAAAC/yuji-itadori.gif)~~~ Porém largando a mão em questões narrativas, temáticas e coisas que abrangem mais esse lado, também vale a pena tratar sobre a questão técnica dessa segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen, que para mim foi a melhor que teve até agora. Deixando de lado todas as questões polêmicas do estúdio MAPPA, é necessário dizer o quanto que os profissionais envolvidos nesse projeto são incríveis, e conseguiram entregar algo muito refrescante e até inovador dentro da própria obra. A primeira parte dessa temporada, o qual retrata "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death" em questão técnica, é a coisa mais bem produzida de todo o anime, seja por sua escolha artística um tanto quanto acertada pro tom daquele arco, ou principalmente por sua direção um tanto quanto cinematográfica que serviu como uma luva dentro da narrativa. Essa primeira parte é criativa ao extremo, fazendo cenas com diversos ângulos diferentes tentando emular enquadramentos mais de cinema, ou até por seu ritmo um tanto menos frenético que permite momentos mais espaçados na animação, o que traz um dinamismo que era necessário pra um arco tão dinâmico quanto esse. E o "Incidente de Shibuya" é dispensável de qualquer elogio, porque o que é feito pra criar uma ação desenfreada que é pedida dentro do arco é feito com as lutas, onde que por meio de suas animações insanas de lutas, vidram qualquer um que pegam pra ver elas. Em questão de direção, a equipe também é inventiva com algumas lutas, principalmente com as que envolvem Sukuna, que conseguem criar um dinamismo diferente utilizando o aspect ratio de uma maneira criativa, conseguindo trazer o mais puro sentimento de ação para quem vê. A produção dessa segunda temporada bota tudo o que a primeira mostrou em outro patamar, fazendo momentos super criativos em direção, animação e principalmente quanto a como criar essa narrativa que, mesmo se baseando em porradas por porradas, ainda traz o impacto disso por meio de sua animação e o impacto delas pra história, servindo muito bem nessa temporada como um todo. ~~~img2000(https://media1.tenor.com/m/4Q3lwXcX0GsAAAAd/toji-toji-fushiguro.gif)~~~ E falando dessa segunda temporada como um todo, Jujutsu Kaisen finalmente se encontra como obra, e entende sua identidade sabendo o que quer dizer e mostrar ao público. Aqui, é onde a série encontra um amadurecimento muito forte em si, suas narrativas, e principalmente em como é construído os seus personagens. "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death" foi a prova viva disso, onde mesmo tendo poucos episódios conseguiu criar o tom certo não só a essa segunda temporada, como imagino para Jujutsu Kaisen a frente dessa adaptação. As temáticas envolvendo injustiças, juventude roubadas e coisas do gênero são fortes aqui, e digo isso pra ambos os arcos que compõem essa temporada, e falando sinceramente ela poderia ser mais frequente em ambos também. Essa segunda temporada tem um mal, que é a de infelizmente ser objetivo demais, e não dar tempo a construir uma narrativa um quanto mais impactante em suas temáticas, principalmente no que se diz a respeito de "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death". Bem, esse arco é ótimo por si só, mas sinto que se tivesse um pouco mais de episódios, e um pouco mais de desenvolvimento de toda aquela narrativa aí sim seria perfeito! O objetivismo em Shibuya serve, mas não acho que encaixa muito bem a um momento tão diferente no todo que Jujutsu Kaisen tem... Porém, mesmo com esse ponto, a segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen é além de competente: É fora de série. Mesmo com a segunda parte, que é a de Shibuya ter me interessado menos do que o arco anterior, é doideira pensar que o que seria menos interessante ainda é ridiculamente bom, e que de alguma maneira ainda tocaria nos assuntos tratados no arco anterior. A segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen entra ainda mais na cabeça de seus protagonistas, fazendo eles questionarem seus próprios ideais, dilemas e até a maneira que eles próprios se vêem dentro do mundo nesse jogo de maldições contra feiticeiros. E com tudo isso entregado da maneira mais ridiculamente bem feita possível, é impossível não gostar dessa segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen!
__Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 __is undeniably one of the most hyped-up shounen anime in the past couple of years. Before this season aired, I saw posts comparing the "Shibuya Incident arc" of this season to classic shounen arcs like the "Chimera ant arc" from Hunter x Hunter. Then while it was airing, I saw the words "masterpiece" and "peak fiction" being thrown around in the community. Now that the season is over, I can say that Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 was no masterpiece and isn’t peak fiction. It gets some things right and some things wrong, like how most shounen do, which I will now list: # What JJK s2 does right: __1. Animation__ As it’s from Studio MAPPA, high-quality animation is expected, and this season delivered on that aspect. There were some quality drops in fights around the middle of the season, but they never take you out of the immersion. Overall, I prefer this season’s animation style compared to the previous one, since the new simplified art style allows for much more expressive character movements. __2. Hype fights__ Most of the fights are quite entertaining, as long as they aren’t hindered by something I'll get into later. The powers allow for some interesting battles, and the locations of the fights are used very well in this season, with most characters utilizing the environment to their advantage. __3. Music__ The music in this season is outright incredible, with every music track being unique and fitting perfectly with the scene it’s paired with. There were many times while I was watching where my mind had to switch focus to how great the music was in the moment because it's genuinely that good. __4. Voice Acting__ The voice actor who voiced Mahito is definitely overqualified for his job. His voice is full of emotion and captures the essence of his character perfectly. All the other voice actors did a great job at bringing energy and life into their characters. # What JJK s2 does wrong: __1. Convoluted explanations and exposition dumps__ The explanations for a character's abilities and how they relate to cursed energy can be quite hard to follow, especially when that character is fighting on screen at the same time. This can hinder the enjoyment of a fight sequence since you need to concentrate fully on reading the subtitles to understand someone’s power, and if you focus on the action instead, you'll be watching a fight that wouldn't make sense to you. What makes it even worse is that these exposition dumps are said by a narrator that sucks out all of the energy of any scene she's narrating, unlike the narrator in Hunter x Hunter who made exposition dumps at least cool to listen to. __2. Character Deaths__ There are a lot of character deaths in this season with only one of those deaths which I consider to be a properly well written send-off. Other than that, there are three types of ways character deaths can be seen in Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2. a) Deaths for Shock Factor This happens when someone dies just to make the audience shocked and not because the character necessarily needed to die or should have died at that moment. These shock factor deaths tend to leave the viewer emotionally disconnected from the story, especially when those types of deaths are overused. b) Character revives just to die again This happens when a character you believe is dead appears again somehow and then dies once more. It's even worse when the method the story uses to temporarily revive a certain character was not revealed before its use. This type of death takes away the initial value of a character’s death and lessens the impact of the second death. It can also detract from character deaths later on in the storyline as you are now aware that anything is possible and any character could somehow come back to life if the author wanted to do so. c) Flashbacks before death This happens once to a certain character in this season and plays out similarly to how they do it in Demon Slayer. They give a flashback to a character before they die as a cheap way to try and make the audience care. The flashback in Jujutsu Kaisen was clearly used before the death because that character did almost nothing the entire season. It also didn’t even give us any information that really mattered and nothing we haven't already seen before. It just showed the character's life as a child which we had seen in the previous season, paired with some sad music, which could probably do a good job at making an emotionally fragile person cry. __3. Underdeveloped cast members__ Jujutsu Kaisen is filled with numerous characters, and like most shounen series, there isn’t enough time allocated to flesh out most of them and give them substantial roles. This results in a majority of the cast from the first season not doing much in this season. Some characters even show up to the battlefield only to do nothing and return home. Even when some cast members do get the spotlight, as a result of them not having much screentime beforehand, it can be challenging to develop a sense of attachment or care for them. __4. Uninteresting villains__ The villains of this season are basic and aren’t particularly well-written, with most of them being defined solely by their power and nothing more. The only interesting villain was in the flashback arc at the beginning of the season, but he doesn’t matter anymore as he had already been killed in the movie and replaced by some evil guy who lacks the motivations, personal connections, and charisma that the original villain had. Overall, __Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2__ suffers from the same problems as most other recent shounen series and only really stands out due to its production values alone. It is quite an entertaining watch for battle shounen fans, but for those seeking more well-written story like what this season had been hyped up to have, you won't find it here. __Final Scorings__ __Animation: 9/10__ (Mostly great with some inconsistencies) __Sound: 8/10__ (Good VA work and cool music) __Story: 4/10__ (Generic underground shounen 1v1 fights) __Character: 5/10__ (Charismatic but basic in characterization) __Value: 4/10 __(Most hyped up shounen arc, although lacking in longevity) __Enjoyment: 6/10__ (Fun when not killed by exposition) __Overall: 6/10__
_Sakiyama Soushi – “Before My Heart Breaks Down, I should have told you everything”._ ~~~youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSLmP-af8W0) The lyrics of the ED song “Akari” by Sakiyama Soushi. The lyrics have well delivered the inner thoughts of Getou Suguru. I am not sure if it was purposely done based on the original source, but this is something that attracts and excites us as viewers. Before going into the major arc of season 2, the Shibuya incident, the first episode that covered the Hidden Inventory/Premature Death arc was just sentimental and heartbreaking, just like the lyrics of “Akari”. The title of the arc in Japanese was written as 懷玉 (Kaigyoku) as hidden inventory and 玉折 (Gyokusetsu) as premature death. The word 玉 (gyoku) could mean jade in Chinese or gem or jewel in Japanese; both translations have a meaning that refers to precious stones. Hidden inventory indicates Gojo, who was born with a talent, is meant to be a potential gem that is on his way to becoming unbeatable. Meanwhile, Getou, who has gone the opposite and twisted way, has fallen to a premature death. img(https://64.media.tumblr.com/70f26fbe032897e4299e04fe5f280444/38ae095f2a74b6ae-8f/s640x960/a5de5755b7b78ba31ec602323d82850a46b2e75b.gifv) This arc was low-key depressing to see how Getou fell short of himself and didn’t manage to overcome his mental struggle or illness. This outcome could be due to the fact that he didn’t have a chance or person to express his struggle after going through Riko getting shot down, the unstoppable consumption of the negative cursed spirit alone, and the death of comrade. All these tussles have been diverted to his belief to protect the weak as a sorcerer for a long time, and eventually he was unable to stick with it anymore. In my opinion, Getou is a pessimistic character, and it saddens me to see him fall. The obsession with the character can’t get away from the successful depiction by the creator and voice actor, who perfectly presented the emotion of the character. The moment fake Getou revealed himself was kinda crazy, my reaction was the same as Gojo at that moment because I wasn’t aware that Getou was dead in the movie. Anyway, the delivery of Gojo’s high school memory was spot on yet poignant. youtube(https://youtu.be/5yb2N3pnztU?si=Klw68mYrUYGsJI8f) Moving on, the Shibuya Incident arc brilliantly depicted the vibe of the incident. From the moment the curtain (Tobari) is deployed until Gojo has dismissed from the fight, everything happens as if in an instant, yet well-scheduled and planned. The vibe of the incident I mentioned here is the creepiness and madness that is hovering within the silent Shibuya. The characters were in a place that was silent most of the time and it’s somehow creepy. However, the silence doesn’t last long. The force of the sorcerers began to shiver while confronting the unwanted madness and presence. Personally, season 2 has displayed the cruel side of the show that live up to the hype of JJK, and I just can't wait to see what is gonna happen in the consecutive season as the decision of the creator on characters' consequences has been a doubt. img(https://media1.tenor.com/m/3NSgZhrYw4kAAAAC/jujutsu-kaisen-shibuya-incident.gif) This is not a review from a professional animator’s POV but as an anime fan, the adaptation overall was merely exceptional. In this case, animation is beyond valuation that there is nothing you could complain about as it was as insane as the plot per se. The outstanding quality of animation has enhanced the show by presenting the plot seamlessly. The same goes for the opening and ending songs, which are a good match for the show and have enlightened the gusto in watching Jujutsu Kaisen (JJK). My utmost respect goes to the animators and staff who have been battling with time and the airing schedule day and night. JJK has been filling the Fall 2023 with excitement. ~~~ ~!PS: As a Malaysian, it’s good to see Malaysia being mentioned which is very rare in anime. !~
~~~__Note that this review is a critical review of the anime and not an elevator pitch for it, if that is what you're looking for, you should look at someone else's review.__~~~ Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is an anime with a lot to like. It has amazing animation with some outstanding scenes, great and fun characters who have cool designs and memorable abilities and a good story, however, it is held down by a few major flaws that affect its animation, story and pacing (unless you are looking for 6 hours of almost exclusively combat, in which case, watch this right this instant). Let's start by talking about the art of season 2. I adored the soundtrack, it's definitely worth a listen, so while you read this, go do that or something. Anyways, like I just said, it's great. The high energy-jazzy feel of some tracks massively amplify the spontaneous and chaotic feel of the fight scenes where the characters are always on the move and adapting their strategies to each other. The slower tracks similarly do a really good job at setting the tone and quickly dropping us off the incredible highs brought on by the faster tracks. It's just a really good soundtrack that is used to wonderful effect to set or reinforce the tone and feel each individual scene. Similarly, the voice actors did an amazing job at giving life to all the characters. Everyone sounds so genuine, allowing you to truly feel Nobara's determination, Yuuji's uncertainty, Mahito's insanity, Aoi's liveliness, and so on, I really loved all of them, there's nothing more to it! The art is also really good, however, it does come with a "but" and don't get me wrong, I loved the art. I think all the designs are great, every attack has a sense of power behind it (which is in big part thanks to the great sound design too), the fights feel dynamic (shoutout to the really great use of camera movements), I loved the use of color and lighting, everything looks incredibly fluid, it's great stuff all around! But... during the 6 first episodes, the studio used some really obvious 3D and, during combat scenes, a blur effect to everything that massively reduces readability and also removing a lot of the "oompf" the animation otherwise would have (it also comes back a few times later on in the season), making some combat scenes that could've been great feel very underwhelming relatively speaking. The story is also really great, but barely anything of note happens. I think this is not an inherent flaw with the show. The man who wrote this story clearly wanted to write a very combat-focused Shonen and the story does fill that roll really well, the fight scenes are great, and pacing is generally also good, but the problem I have with it is that it doesn't try to be anything more than a basic combat-oriented Shonen, which is a shame, cause it has a really cool world, characters and story. This season has essentially only 3 major plot points that aren't character specific which is barely anything for 23 episodes. This situation wouldn't necessarily make for a bad story, having 3 plot points could easily make for a great story as long as they are well thought out and developed over time, however, the author really doesn't seem to put much thought into the overarching story, as things happen or are introduced only when they are about to be used, which means that only 1 of those 3 points seems properly built up to, but even then, it comes at the very end of the season, meaning nothing much comes of it. That's where I feel the story kind of falters, it's really interesting and has some really cool character developments and plot points, but they are drowned in a sea of combat scenes meaning that very few of them feel fully developed or explored, which is a shame. Still, it's not all bad, the characters feel very dynamic, the few plot points that change the world the show takes place in fundamentally (which serve to progress the world) that we do get are very cool (though underdeveloped to some extent) and the moment to moment story (which serves as a backdrop for combat to take place) is actually very interesting. Though, the story also comes into the issue of having questionable pacing at times. When the show gives us back to back slow scenes, they flow really nicely, when the show introduces us to scenes that are more intense one after the other, they flow really nicely, but when the show tries to go from intense scenes to slow ones, it doesn't seem to be able to make it feel natural, it just suddenly puts a feet on the break with no warning instead of progressively slowing down, which can get jarring at times. Apart from that, there's little to note or dislike about the show really. It's a fun and engaging action Shonen with fun character interactions (and characters themselves) and jokes, cool use of the camera and environment during combat scenes, but the story feels somewhat disjointed at times and the last episode is a joke, instantly killing the fast pace the show has been keeping up for almost 10 episodes straight and ending by repeating the exact same plot point for almost 10 minutes straight. Mid 7, still better than Demon Slayer's Entertainment District Arc. Would've been a very high 7 if it wasn't for that last episode.
~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Jujutsu-Kaisen-S2-Banner.png)~~~ Lets not beat around the bush, you know what *Jujutsu Kaisen* is. Animated by studio MAPPA, directed by Shouta Goshozono and originally created by Gege Akutami, *Jujutsu Kaisen* is one of Shounen Jump's flagship series. Being the 3rd oldest currently printing series in the magazine behind only *One Piece* and *My Hero Academia*, it's built up its fair share of fans. Many of whom proclaim that it "Changed Shounen forever"! Is that true? I don't really know. So why do I bring it up, why is it relevant? Because this season adapts what is widely believed to be *Jujutsu Kaisen's* biggest and best arc, its Marineford, its Cell Saga, the thing that will define it for years to come: Shibuya. And we're going to talk about it! So without further ado, lets dive into this monumental season of *Jujutsu Kaisen* and see if it lives up to the hype. **Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for *Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1&2*. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents**. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Jujutsu-Kaisen-S2-5.1.jpg)~~~ #~~~__Narrative__~~~ With so much importance being put on the story, the best place to start is with *Jujutsu Kaisen's* narrative. This season can be easily split two main arcs: Hidden Inventory, taking about 1/4th of the season, and Shibuya, the remaining 3/4ths. Hidden Inventory is sort of a flashback arc, taking place in the past, expanding on Gojo's relationship with Geto and really just fleshing him out as a character in preparation for what is to come. Shibuya meanwhile returns to the present and is the "big fight" arc where all the heroes and villains get together in one location to beat the crap out of each other. There are a few one-off episode between the two arcs that work to either set things up or simply give us time to relax before the big fight, but for the most part this is the season. Of the two, and I'll just come right out and say it, I believe Hidden Inventory to be the better arc. In fact I think Hidden Inventory is the best arc *Jujutsu Kaisen* has ever had, and that includes manga arcs that have yet to be adapted. It's tightly written, with every part of the narrative focused towards a single goal. There are no unnecessary characters nor rambling and unnecessary side-plots either. The whole thing is a short, sweet, and to the point story of the last week of a young woman's life, as well as a young mans disillusionment with the world. It really is fantastic, and if you take nothing else away from this review, take this: Go watch the first six episodes of this season of *Jujutsu Kaisen*. Even if you aren't a fan of the rest of the series, you won't regret it. It's that good. Shibuya on the other hand... How do I say this in a way that won't get me lynched on the internet? Shibuya is kind of a mess. It wants to be this huge, world defining conflict. The sort of thing that the rest of the story revolves around. And in some ways, it does accomplish that, the status quo has definitely changed after this arc. But where Hidden Inventory was tight and focused, Shibuya has too many threads, tries to do too much, casts its net too *wide*, while not having developed things enough prior. It doesn't feel earned the same way Hidden Inventory does because half the characters are either new or given unsatisfactory resolutions. Think of it like this: Across the arc the villains defeat more villains than the heroes do. It's as if the entire arc exists to tear Itadori down, rather than build anything up. The reason this is a problem is because of just how *exhausting* this makes the arc. When a single fight goes on for five episodes, new techniques or characters or power ups dropping to keep it going over and over again, what excitement there was starts to wane and you just start wanting it to end. And that's the best way I can describe Shibuya as an arc: Exhausting. When the first fight started I was hyped and ready to go. When the third began I was enjoying myself but starting to check my watch. By the sixth, I was left *begging* for someone to just kill someone so we could go home. That's not how you want your season to end. So bogged down that what hype moments are left feel more like small reprieves from the tedium rather than memorable highpoints. To sum it up, *Jujutsu Kaisen* aired one of, if not *the* strongest arc in the entire series with Hidden Inventory, only to bundle it with an underbaked "battle royale" that relies more on spectacle than solid writing. One is worth watching even if you hate the rest of *Jujutsu Kaisen*. The other is probably the reason you hate it. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Jujutsu-Kaisen-S2-20.7.jpg)~~~ #~~~__Characters__~~~ With that out of the way you're probably left wondering about the characters, and how they fare in all of this. Well in Hidden Inventory, quite well! Gojo, Geto and Riko are all fantastic. Watching them interact, whether it be relaxing at the beach as they try to give the girl a few more happy memories or running and fighting against paid assassins, was a joy. Geto especially was a highlight, taking a two-dimensional villain we knew little about in season one and breaking him, as well as his relationship with Gojo, down to their bare bones only to rebuild him into someone simultaneously sympathetic yet irredeemable. It was great! Toss in Toji, who is my personal favorite villain, and you have an incredibly strong cast you can't help but love. Sadly while Shibuya can boast a similar number of great characters, the rest sort of... dilute them. What do I mean by "dilute"? Well the easiest way to explain I think would be to talk about the exceptions to this: Toudo, Jogo and Nanami. Out of everyone involved in Shibuya, the entire cast of twenty plus characters, these are the only three worth mentioning. Toudo, because of his sheer charisma and ability to turn any scene he's in into something fun and bombastic. Jogo, for single-handedly bringing heart and purpose to the villains. And Nanami, for being the only character in the arc to make me laugh, cry and cheer for all across the entire arc. Each them rocked it, from start to finish. Had the entire arc just been them, it would have been great. Outside of these three standouts however, the rest of the cast is either irrelevant, disrespected, poorly written or some combination of the three. For the irrelevant we have the Kyoto students and most of the additional sorcerers brought on to the mission. Some, really just Mei Mei if I'm being honest, get by with being sexy and a single good fight. For the most part though, whether it be Panda, Kusakabe, Naobito and Maki Zen'in, or the entirety of the Kyoto student lineup, they don't really contribute anything. They exist to be bodies on the board, to either get defeated to show how strong the villains are, to be comic relief in the background, or to just make the arc seem bigger than it otherwise would be. Do they *need* to be here? Not really. And while they don't actively bring anything down, they don't make anything better with their presence either. They just sort of exist, and we're expected to care about them. As for the disrespected, I can't really talk about this without diving into some major spoilers. So if you don't already know about Nobara and don't want to be spoiled regarding her, just know that it feels like Gege hates his female cast and that she got done dirty. Alright, disclaimer done, lets talk about her. ~!Nobara is... There's no other way to put it than Nobara got disrespected, *hard*. After showing up to fight Mahito, toughing it out against one of his clones, she gets one-tapped and removed from the series entirely. As if that wasn't enough, *Jujutsu Kaisen* then tries to dedicate an episode-long flashback to her, thinking that would somehow make up for her lack of development and how she was used to as nothing more than a means of pushing Itadori forward. And to make matters worse, *Jujutsu Kaisen* doesn't even have the guts to flat out kill her, instead saying she "May live" and then never giving us any further information, just dangling her in front of Nobara fans hoping it will keep them happy. To this day, the manga has yet to comment on her fate. And you know what? At this point I don't care. I'm just disappointed.!~ Finally we come to the poorly written, where Mahito and Itadori sit. I want to be very clear, Mahito's VA does a fantastic job with what he's been given. Nobunaga Shimazaki nails the character. Sadly *Jujutsu Kaisen* does not. Instead it spends half the season trying and failing to sell Mahito as this mirror of Itadori, going for this metaphor about how they are two sides of the same coin. But it doesn't work, because instead of being mirrors its more like they are both angled 45 degrees off of each other. It's like they are mirrors of what the author *wants* them to be rather than what he's written them to be. This leads to most of their big showdown feeling lifeless, both characters arguing for/against something that was never properly established to begin with. Suffice to say, for all that Hidden Inventory is incredible Shibuya is disappointing. The arc gets by entirely on the backs of the animators, taking lackluster and narratively uninteresting fights and turning them into showcases of animation. Take away the production, the internet hype, and you're left with a bland and poorly written arc that clearly needed a bit more time in the oven. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Jujutsu-Kaisen-S2-2.3.jpg)~~~ #~~~__Visuals__~~~ Speaking of production, lets talk about it! This at least is something we can be mostly positive about. At its highest of highs, *Jujutsu Kaisen* was gorgeous. There were numerous of what I would call "event" episodes. Episodes where, from start to finish, the whole thing was one non-stop blast of beautiful animation. If you've seen it, think like *Mob Psycho* S2 E5, that sort of thing. The ones that inevitably dominate twitter the day they air as everyone can't help but talk about the wild ride they went on. Those are incredible! And it's not like *Jujutsu Kaisen* stops there, like everything else sucks. No, in fact for the most part the season was surprisingly solid. Even with numerous reports of overworked animators and poor schedules, *Jujutsu Kaisen* managed to keep the melt to a minimum and remain solid through, with only a few unfinished sequences worth noting. This doesn't mean we should ignore the issues surrounding the schedule and working conditions. MAPPA is a sweat shop and we, as a community, need to recognize that. But we also need to recognize that, terrible schedule or not, those animators delivered. They take pride in their work, gave their everything, to make both Hidden Inventory and Shibuya look fantastic. And while Hidden Inventory is generally more consistent, I still want to recognize their efforts. What I'm saying is, when I praise this seasons animation, when I talk about how *Jujutsu Kaisen looked, for the most part, great, I want you to think not of MAPPA and their hellish conditions but of the individual animators who put their everything into the season. Animators like Souta Yamazaki, Vincent Chansard, Yooto, Hisashi Mori, and many many more. Preaching about production schedules aside, *Jujutsu Kaisen* really did look good this season. There were a few scenes during the big event episodes that looked unfinished, and as the season progressed more and more cracks did start to show. Things like weaker backgrounds, short cuts such as still or sliding frames, overuse of chibi animations, low-detail closeups or poor coloring, reused cuts to make sure the episode got out, stuff like that. But considering what we know about the production, I would say it held up surprisingly well. This is most likely due to the individual contributions of hundreds of supporting staff, but still. It didn't implode. A lot. *Jujutsu Kaisen* maybe have failed to make a statement narratively with this season, but I suspect clips and episodes of it will be talked about for a while yet. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Jujutsu-Kaisen-S2-21.2.jpg)~~~ #~~~__OST__~~~ With that we come to the OST and sound design! Regretfully at the time of writing this, *Jujutsu Kaisen's* OST has not yet been fully released. Only the Hidden Inventory tracks have been given to the public. That means I am severely limited in the tracks I can point to and discuss directly. Luckily though, I don't believe *Jujutsu Kaisen's* OST isn't anything particularly special, so its not like you're missing out on much. Composed by Yoshimasa Terui, the best I can say for *Jujutsu Kaisen's* OST is that it does its job. I can't think of any moments while watching where the music took me *out* of a scene. On top of that, I think the way it was used was pretty good. MAPPA knew when to go big and loud, or when silence was more impactful than any track they could have played. That's a solid accomplishment! To illustrate what I mean, lets take a look at a few of the tracks we *do* have available to us, mostly from the Hidden Inventory arc. Some, like "Elegant Time" or "Attack By Storm", are pretty standard examples of their archetype. You can tell immediately that one is meant for "High Class" locations or people while the other is a rather normal "Battle" track. Both are fine, they do their job. But neither is particularly memorable. There are plenty of other tracks out there that sound just like them. Others, like "Hidden Inventory", are just discordant and unpleasant to listen to on their own, even if that's their purpose in a scene. In fact, there are only a few tracks I would say stand out as worth listening to solo, those being "No Hesitation" and "Delirious". Oh an "You Jerk", because I absolutely love funk. Long story short, *Jujutsu Kaisen's* OST is neither terrible nor particularly memorable. It neither hurts nor hinders the series, managing to do its job and little more. However where *Jujutsu Kaisen* does manage to excel is in how it uses this otherwise average OST. It knows when to go loud, blasting guitar and drums to whatever fight is happening on screen. It knows when to quiet down, or even remove it entirely, so as to not ruin a poignant moment. What I'm trying to say is, they played it safe it and used what they had to the best of their ability. And to me? That's worth more than an above average OST used mediocrely. ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Jujutsu-Kaisen-S2-14.4.jpg)~~~ #~~~__Too Big, Too Early__~~~ With that we come to the personal section of this review. It's where I take the time to talk about something random, something specific to my experience with a series. This is no-holds-barred spoiler territory so if you haven't finished the season and don't want to be spoiled, skip it. Don't worry to much, it's mostly going to be me ranting about where this season of *Jujutsu Kaisen* fell short. So without further ado, lets go! ~!So what do I mean by too big, too early? Well I mentioned it earlier in the intro where I talked about Marineford and the Cell Saga. And what those arcs have in common with Shibuya is that they were these big, world changing, dynamic shifting, *culminations* to parts of a story that had been built up for years. Marineford was the capstone to the first half of *One Piece*. The Cell Saga was much the same for *Dragon Ball*. The Sasuke Recovery Mission arc from *Naruto* was the same. This is what Shibuya wanted to be for *Jujutsu Kaisen*. The only issue is that those arcs occurred much later in their respective series. Marineford started in chapter 550, earlier if you include Sabaody. Cell Saga was chapter 337, the Sasuke Recovery Mission 172. As for Shibuya? It started in chapter 79. Now I get it, these are just numbers, they mean absolutely nothing. What I'm getting at is that *Jujutsu Kaisen* jumped into this arc involving basically every character we had come to know and love, as well as many new ones, and expected us to care about what happened to them. To be invested in them, their fights and the arc in general. But because of how little time the series spent establishing them, in allowing us to get to know them prior, we couldn't. Take Nobara for example. She's the premier female lead, her death should have *meant* something. Instead, all you see is everyone raging about how meaningless it was, about how little development she got, about how she might as well have not been there at all. Instead *Jujutsu Kaisen* gets rid of her, drops a bottle of copium that she might still live, then never mention her again, even in the manga. It's not like *Jujutsu Kaisen* can't do it right. Nanami and Jogo are two fantastic examples. Both of their ends were *earned*. We got to spend time with Nanami as he trained and taught Yuji, he got multiple scenes across this entire arc of just him talking to himself and explaining how he feels to the audience. So when he died, when he passed that torch, *it worked*. *And it was good*. It's the same for Jogo, who has been built up through his interactions with the villains across both seasons. These are characters, ends, that *Jujutsu Kaisen* set up and *earned*. You know what wasn't earned? Nobara. Fushiguro with Toji, who never truly interacted. Choso and that whole "Little Brother" thing. Hanami. Dagon. Naobito Zenin. Maki. Mechamaru. Miwa. The list goes on. *Jujutsu Kaisen* wants these characters to mean something, but refuses to spend the time needed to do so. That's what I mean by "Too big, too early". My experience watching this arc of *Jujutsu Kaisen* was one of frustration. Hidden Inventory was phenomenal. And early Shibuya was fun, because Gojo is fun. But after Gojo got sealed, as the fights wound down to become nothing more than spectacle, I started to get tired. There's only so many episodes of flashing lights and characters screaming 8th grade philosophy at each other, yelling about how they are mirrors despite being nothing of the sort, before you start to want it to end. So by the time Geto arrived, by the time Mahito was absorbed and the fight was over, I wasn't in awe or in fear of what was happening to this world or these characters. I was *relieved*. Because it meant the story was finally going to move on to something hopefully more interesting.!~ ~~~img(https://starcrossedanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Jujutsu-Kaisen-S2-4.3.jpg)~~~ #~~~__Conclusion__~~~ So yeah, all in all this season of *Jujutsu Kaisen* started phenomenally well, destroying any expectations I had and getting me hyped for everything to come, only to eventually end with a whimper and an echo of lost potential. Had the series waited a season before doing Shibuya, had *Jujutsu Kaisen* taken the time to properly flesh out characters like Miwa, Mechamaru, Fushiguro and Nobara, this could have been something special. Instead what you're left with is an arc propped up by spectacle and flashing lights. Spectacle which is itself the product of poor production schedules and overworking animators to the point of exhaustion, such that it could have collapsed at any time, the only reason it didn't being the hard work of the individual staff members making the best of a bad situation. I can only hope season three does better, in basically every way. Thanks for reading! If you want to leave a comment, positive or negative, you can leave it [here](https://anilist.co/activity/667131125).
Jujutsu Kaisen is a very frustrating show to watch. The production is top-notch—something that unfortunately isn't entirely a positive given the terrible working conditions the animators were forced through. For every clip of jaw-dropping animation, of which there are many, there's an animator having a mental breakdown on twitter for not being good enough. MAPPA is a studio that has long had accusations of overworking its employees, this production only amplified those to a new extent. But all that aside, it's undeniable that the finished product is beautiful. Unfortunately, the story is lacking. The reason I used the word "frustrating" is because it's clear that Gege Akutame is capable of good writing. There are bits and pieces of it strewn about the clutter of mediocrity. The first and shorter of the two arcs this season is an example. While nothing mind-blowing, it's a competent, self-contained segment of story. Gege can breathe life into some characters in a way that feels effortless and natural (an example from this season is Toji. A character with not much screen time, so I found myself shocked when I found myself loving him as much as I did), but then he drops the ball when it comes to trying to develop or add depth to others (ironically enough Megumi is a decent example there). Much of this season was contrived action for action's sake. "What's the issue?" You may ask, "This is an action show after all." (And indeed I have heard this sentiment). The problem is that action—good action—is more than just action. It serves the story. But much of the action here was filled with stretched-out and weightless moments. Not that all the moments were weightless. Again, Gege has moments of greatness, but they are fleeting. Almost accidental. Jujutsu Kaisen is a series without an identity; I don't get the sense it knows what it's trying to be and I can feel the story fight itself. The polished and energetic animation presents the muddled and confused story in a way that hopes to convince you it's more than that. That it knows what it's doing. The result: The Shibuya Incident arc is one of the most "hyped up" shonen arcs in quite some time. "Look at this action," it says, "It looks so cool, doesn't it. If the action is well done that must mean the story is good. Look at this character death. Wow, this action must mean something, because look: it's so emotional." I've heard JJK compared to Hunter x Hunter a lot. It's a comparison I don't entirely understand as a lot of what worked well in Togashi's series isn't present here. The reason I love nen as a magic system is completely absent from cursed energy, and yet the two are compared. The Shibuya Incident arc felt like an attempt to replicate the palace invasion from the Chimera Ant arc of Hunter x Hunter without understanding why it worked. Both are chalked full with dynamic action that has been meticulously chronologized. Both have major character deaths and emotional beats. But Shibuya lacks the heart of Chimera. There is no strong thematic backbone or throughline. The action in a series like Hunter x Hunter is more than just flashy animation. It says things. This didn't. Action and shock value. That's what this season was. Some of it was even earned, but some of it wasn't. If you had a fun time with season one, you'll have a fun time here. Just don't expect too much.
I loved the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen. It had everything: interesting complex characters, an interesting world, great fight scenes, clever writing... It had the potential to truly be one of the all-time Shounen greats. Instead, what we got in the second part of season 2 completely undermines everything the first season carefully set up. img1220(https://staticg.sportskeeda.com/editor/2023/11/f8531-17008047242343-1920.jpg) ---SPOILERS AHEAD--- It started off pretty well - with a look into the very interesting past of Gojou and Getou, their friendship, and what caused it to all crumble in the end. And the Mechamaru story was also very interesting. Unfortunately, straight after that, we get to the problematic part - the Shibuya Incident Arc, or as I'd like to call it the show-killing disaster. The biggest threat yet is upon our heroes, the curses prepared their biggest attack yet, with a very sly plan of also trapping Gojou so that he can't influence the events. This idea sounds interesting in theory, since Gojou is too OP removing him from the picture should make things way more dangerous. However, it also makes Gojou look pretty weak. He can just be imprisoned that easily? Really? And then he doesn't show up at all again in the season? What a waste. img1220(https://editors.dexerto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/21/jujutsu-kaisen-anime-gojo-sealed.jpeg) But okay, sure - let's go with it for now you might say. But what happens here as a consequence ruins the show completely for me. So many characters that had interesting stories and potential for way more are simply killed without a thought. And since so many characters are separated, the story feels very fragmented - and not in a good way. You don't get a good feeling of what everyone's up to while others are fighting, it feels like some characters are just standing there doing nothing while something big is happening elsewhere. Sukuna is also released here, and he spends way too much power on a curse that should be nowhere near his power level while destroying a huge chunk of the city. Some might say that's impressive, but it makes everything feel a bit too grand for only the show's second season. This whole arc feels like it should have been somewhere towards the end, and yet here we are mourning many great characters and witnessing power levels unseen before... while the most powerful character is trapped in a cube... Also, there is a huge fight between Itadori and Mahito that lasts way too long and becomes so boring with Mahito having seemingly infinite tricks up his sleeve. It drags for so long that it makes Mahito less interesting as a character. He can seemingly do anything, but his motivation and character are very weak. img1220(https://cdn.oneesports.gg/cdn-data/2023/12/Anime_JujutsuKaisen_Season2_ClosingTheGate_Finale_Geto.jpg) Finally, when it's finished we get to the fake Getou character again. We're told that he's some legendary evil sorcerer. Bleh. Never mentioned before, and this should mean something? At least set him up cleverly, mention him at least _somewhere_ before. [EDIT: I've been informed he has been mentioned in season 1. Still, a bit more build up would have been great. Not sure if that part was as forgetable for everyone else as it was for me?] In the last two episodes, so many bullshit explanations are given, and so much information is presented in such a short time that I became overwhelmed and very bored. None of this matters, it was just a bunch of uninteresting deus ex machinas. I can't even pretend to say I understand much of anything that happened here, but I can for sure say that it was a bit much. Way too much for the show's second season. We didn't get enough time to appreciate the little things, which is something the first season did so well. I'm extremely disappointed, and never before was I this disappointed with a show's continuation. I'm not sure if they can save it from here, I've lost faith in this story, and I say this with great pain in my heart.
Miren les voy a ser súper honesta, yo empecé a ver jujutsu kaisen por un meme que me topé en twitter, con la primer temporada todo indicaba que sería su típico shonen con comedia y poder de la amistad, pero cuando empezaron a aparecerme spoilers del manga supe que nunca debí haberme involucrado con esta historia. ALERTA SPOILERS Seré lo más breve posible y ni esperen una review sustancial porque it's just anime y es como revivir el trauma. El arco de HI fue en efecto una pequeña dosis de felicidad antes de saber lo que desencadenaría la llegada de Toji, la calma antes del infierno y el momento que cambiaría la trayectoria de la vida de todos y cada uno de los personajes. Bueno ya mucha vuelta, en resumidas cuentas considero que el arco de Shibuya es de los más devastadores y mejor hechos en la historia del anime, el desarrollo de la trama y de los personajes es tan bueno y bien planteado que a pesar de que se lleva a cabo en una noche tiene la cantidad suficiente de peleas y sucesos para mantenerte en suspenso y con los nervios de punta. Hicieron un excelente trabajo con los pequeños momentos de comedia que aunque fueron varios antes de sumergirse de lleno a lo grave no fueron suficientes para balancear el PTSD, y nunca había querido, deseado, anhelado tanto tener relleno en un anime, cualquier tontería en verdad, lo mucho que me hubiese encantado ver a los personajes ser más mundanos más domésticos MÁS NIÑOS ELLOS SON SÓLO UNOS NIÑOS Y LOS ADULTOS TAMBIÉN ERAN UNOS NIÑOS CUANDO HIDDEN INVENTORY POR LOS CLAVOS DE CRISTO GEGE QUÉ TE HICIERON ESTOS ADOLESCENTES PARA DARLES UNA VIDA TAN DOLOROSA ES LO QUE ME CUESTIONO CADA DÍA. Creo que el motivo por el cual el fandom de jujutsu kaisen está tan dividido entre "buenos y malos" es por lo excelentes que son los personajes, lo bien detalladas que son sus personalidades, la manera en la que puedes palpar la maldad, las matices en la personalidad que puede tener el ser humano al igual que la manera en la que pueden ser corrompidos dependiendo la situación pero de igual manera tenemos la bondad, el estoicismo, la valentía pero sobre todo el amor y cariño que existe entre ellos. Es una historia que hace reír hasta llorar y también duele hasta los huesos, personajes tan humanos y normales con quienes puedes empatizar e incluso identificarte a un grado muy personal están disponibles en cada momento de la historia, independientemente de si te hace feliz o miserable, definitivamente no se van a aburrir con jujutsu kaisen, es una historia increíble y siempre la recomendaré aunque llore cada mes al recordar todo lo que ha sucedido hasta el momento.
# _Jujutsu Kaisen 2 nas mãos de Shōta Goshozono se mostrou de alta qualidade técnica para o anime!!_ img2200(https://media1.tenor.com/m/hp1qKBQclPMAAAAC/jujutsu-kaisen-shibuya-arc-sukuna-domain-expansion.gif) _Episódio #17 - Shibuya Incident_ No desdobramento narrativo de Jujutsu Kaisen, desde seu prólogo até o desfecho da primeira temporada, os alicerces são meticulosamente construídos. O cenário da obra não apenas proporciona confrontos intensos, tão apreciados pelos entusiastas de shounen, mas também se aprofunda nas relações entre os personagens, introduzindo dilemas cativantes. A segunda temporada eleva ainda mais o patamar da série, não apenas na entrega das esperadas sequências de ação, mas principalmente na exploração da psicologia dos personagens. O início do arco centrado em Gojo, revela-se como um mergulho profundo nas mentes dos protagonistas, inserindo o conceito de consequências não apenas como um elemento externo, mas como parte integrante do mundo que Jujutsu Kaisen meticulosamente concebe. Nessa nova fase, a narrativa expande-se significativamente, ampliando o escopo das histórias e aprimorando a identidade da obra. - Gege Akutami demonstra uma compreensão mais profunda do propósito central de Jujutsu Kaisen, apresentando uma trama que transcende a mera busca por confrontos épicos. As melhorias são perceptíveis não apenas nas cenas de ação, mas na habilidade do autor em conduzir o enredo de maneira mais intrincada e envolvente. img2200(https://media1.tenor.com/m/aeJBrxaaXBQAAAAC/gojo-satoru-gojo.gif) _Episódio #2 - Hidden Inventory/Premature Death_ A segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen apresenta uma estrutura intrigante, dividindo-se em dois arcos distintos. O primeiro, "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death", destaca-se como um dos melhores inícios possíveis para a temporada. Este arco de cinco episódios se afasta das habituais batalhas incessantes, proporcionando uma narrativa mais centrada no desenvolvimento de personagens. A mudança de ritmo, mais lenta e focada nos dilemas e na mente dos feiticeiros "mais fortes”, oferece uma visão mais profunda do que significa ser um praticante de jujutsu nesse mundo tenso e impiedoso. A relação entre Satoru Gojo e Suguru Geto é explorada com maestria, mesclando leveza e brutalidade. Este arco não apenas desconstrói a glamourização do papel dos feiticeiros, mas também introduz uma jornada na qual os ideais são testados e a índole dos personagens é exposta. Apesar de sua brevidade, esse arco alcança um desenvolvimento impressionante, culminando em um dos momentos mais impactantes da obra. O que antes incomodava na falta de demonstração dos perigos do mundo de Jujutsu é habilmente abordado em "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death" e depois ainda mais demonstrado em “Shibuya Incident”. O papel do feiticeiro é desconstruído, e a história evidencia os perigos e as consequências da prática do jujutsu. O arco não apenas cativa pela amizade entre Gojo e Geto, mas também pela virada de perspectiva, revelando a desilusão e injustiça inerentes ao universo da obra. O ápice desse arco marca um ponto de não retorno, onde a amizade se desfaz e o impacto do "Shibuya Incident" começa a se manifestar. O sentimento pessimista permeia a narrativa, enfatizando que os melhores momentos nunca duram para sempre e que o desespero tomará conta do mundo de Jujutsu Kaisen após esse evento. img2200(https://media1.tenor.com/m/qoJSJXvSIX4AAAAC/satoru-gojo-toji-fushiguro.gif) _Episódio #4 - Hidden Inventory/Premature Death_ Em seguida, o "Shibuya Incident" mergulha no padrão mais convencional de shounen, mas com uma maturidade notável. Este arco, o maior até o momento, destaca-se não apenas por suas lutas grandiosas, mas pela forma como aborda as consequências desses confrontos. Shibuya é estruturado de maneira envolvente, oferecendo um equilíbrio entre a ação intensa e as tensões pós-batalha. O impacto do "Shibuya Incident" não reside apenas nas cenas épicas, mas nas mudanças que provocam não apenas nos protagonistas, mas em todo o cenário do mangá de Jujutsu Kaisen. As lutas em "Shibuya Incident" não apenas proporcionam momentos épicos e cheios de ação, mas também contribuem para uma narrativa mais ampla. Enquanto é fácil se envolver com as batalhas em um cenário de grande escala, repleto de meteoros, criaturas poderosas e liberações de maldições, o diferencial de Jujutsu Kaisen está nas consequências pós-luta. A obra não se limita ao espetáculo das lutas, mas explora de maneira significativa as ramificações desses confrontos no mundo dos personagens. Ao contrário de muitas obras do mesmo gênero, Jujutsu Kaisen não deixa as consequências de suas batalhas em segundo plano. O "Shibuya Incident" não é apenas sobre a grandiosidade das lutas, mas também sobre as transformações e impactos duradouros que esses eventos acarretam. Ao término do arco, as reverberações continuam a se manifestar, proporcionando uma profundidade narrativa que vai além do espetáculo visual das lutas. O enfoque nas consequências torna a trama mais envolvente e leva o público a refletir sobre o verdadeiro preço das batalhas épicas travadas pelos personagens de Jujutsu Kaisen, assim como os próprios personagens também vão ter seus ideais destruídos. img2200(https://media1.tenor.com/m/C2ukgYwk58IAAAAC/yuji-clap-jujutsu-kaisen.gif) _Episódio #23 - Shibuya Incident_ A junção dos arcos "Hidden Inventory/Premature Death" e "Incidente de Shibuya" na segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen proporciona uma experiência narrativa rica e impactante. Enquanto o primeiro arco mergulha nas profundezas da mente dos “mais fortes”, desconstruindo o papel dos feiticeiros e explorando dilemas morais, o segundo arco, "Incidente de Shibuya", eleva o padrão das lutas shounen ao abordar as consequências pós-batalha de maneira excepcional. O conjunto desses arcos não apenas aprimora a identidade tanto visual quanto narrativamente de Jujutsu Kaisen, mas também eleva a série a um patamar mais profundo e reflexivo. O público é levado a questionar não apenas o significado das lutas e dos poderes, mas também a encarar as complexidades morais e as consequências inevitáveis que permeiam o mundo dos feiticeiros. Em última análise, a segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen não apenas entrega ação e emoção, mas também constrói uma narrativa que ressoa além dos momentos épicos, deixando uma marca duradoura na experiência dos espectadores. ~~~ ANÁLISE TÉCNICA ~~~ __TEMPORADA 1 (Sung Park)__ Ao analisarmos a primeira temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen, é crucial destacar que, embora tenha apresentado uma qualidade geral sólida, a direção permaneceu em um patamar considerado mediano. A abordagem adotada não ousou se arriscar ou inovar no conteúdo da história original, resultando em uma execução que não trouxe elementos "únicos" além das cenas de ação. A direção da primeira temporada não se destacou por sua originalidade, deixando a sensação de que faltou um toque distintivo para elevar a experiência narrativa. A qualidade visual, embora tenha momentos lindos, foi comprometida por ocasiões em que a animação e composição foram apagadas ou prejudicadas, prejudicando a coesão estética da obra. Isso ocorre pelo mal uso excessivo de efeitos visuais. Além disso, a qualidade dos cenários deixou a desejar em alguns casos. Entretanto, é importante ressaltar que, mesmo com essas críticas, a primeira temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen não deixa de ser considerada boa. Ela possui méritos, como uma fotografia bonita e o uso de efeitos visuais que, quando bem empregados, adicionam camadas interessantes às cenas. A temporada foi bem-sucedida em manter um nível sólido de entretenimento, especialmente nas sequências de ação, que se destacaram positivamente. __TEMPORADA 2 (Shōta Goshozono)__ A experiência com a segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen é, sem dúvida, uma jornada transformadora que eleva o anime para o topo. A mudança na direção é a peça-chave que trouxe uma reviravolta incrível e cinematográfica para a série. Esta nova abordagem revelou-se uma adaptação perfeita, corrigindo as falhas da primeira temporada e proporcionando uma composição visual notável. O estilo de animação simplificado de poucas linhas renovado estabeleceu uma relação mais estética com o mangá, capturando fielmente o espírito da obra original. Essa sintonia entre a animação e o material de origem contribuiu significativamente para a qualidade geral da temporada. Além disso, a equipe de produção explorou trabalhos mais amplos, resultando em cenas que não apenas cumpriram as expectativas, mas também geraram um nível de hype impressionante. Destacando-se de maneira especial, a ação é trabalhada de uma forma inédita, já que Gosso se importa muito com ângulos complexos e amplos, suas construções de cenas de luta nesta nova temporada são verdadeiras obras de arte, repletas de criatividade, sua equipe de animação também optou diversas vezes a aplicar o jogo complexo de câmera de Gosso. A habilidade em transformar os confrontos em experiências visuais memoráveis demonstra não apenas maestria técnica, mas também um profundo entendimento da essência da narrativa. O resultado é um espetáculo que vai além da mera ação, elevando a série a um patamar em que cada cena de luta se torna uma expressão artística por si só. img2200(https://media1.tenor.com/m/RAp5YpmEH5EAAAAC/jujutsu-kaisen-shibuya-arc-sukuna-shibuya-arc.gif) _Episódio #17 - Shibuya Incident_ A liberdade artística concedida aos animadores na direção de Shoto Goshozono emergiu como um elemento fundamental e distintivo nesta temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen. Essa autonomia permitiu que cada animador trouxesse seu valor único, exibindo estilos de animação individuais e incorporando uma variedade de referências de animes, tanto antigos quanto novos. A presença de liberdade artística é perceptível em todos os episódios, mas alguns se destacam notavelmente, como os episódios #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #9, #13, #15, #16, #17, #20, #21, #22 e #23. A grandiosidade do clímax em Jujutsu Kaisen foi aprimorada graças à abordagem distinta de sombra e iluminação adotada pelos diretores. A escolha deliberada de jogos de câmera complexos por Shoto Goshozono, diretor renomado nesta temporada, adicionou camadas de profundidade visual aos momentos cruciais. No episódios #13, com seu destaque no rim light e na luz. img2200(https://media1.tenor.com/m/jiCM88VhuVUAAAAC/jjk-jujutsu-kaisen.gif) _Episódio #13 - Shibuya Incident_ Já no #16, com a ênfase nas sombras e o conceito de Kagenashi/Zenkage, testemunhamos a versatilidade dessa abordagem. img2200(https://media1.tenor.com/m/tn29WoRcKIgAAAAC/sukuna-ryomen.gif) _Episódio #16 - Shibuya Incident_ É válido notar que, embora alguns episódios, como #8, #11, #14 e #18, possam ter mostrado imperfeições visíveis, não é justo atribuir a responsabilidade aos diretores ou aos animadores. A má gestão de cronogramas por parte do estúdio MAPPA foi um desafio evidente, resultando em falta de polimento e cenas menos elaboradas devido à limitação de tempo. No entanto, apesar desses obstáculos, a equipe demonstrou um incrível esforço, superando as adversidades e entregando uma produção global marcada mais pelos pontos altos do que pelas dificuldades enfrentadas em meio ao caos da produção. Já na parte da trilha sonora da temporada, e simplesmente surreal o trabalho inteligente que Yoshimasa Terui faz mostrando momentos caóticos com utilização do jazz, momentos frenéticos com um rock, em cenas dinâmicas com músicas divertidas/envolventes, e se mostrou bastante talentoso também nos momentos de tensão da série. Agora as trilhas sonoras para o clímax do arco são surpreendente, trazer a trilha sonora de superioridade, caos e terror como no #16 e #17 foi incrível, também em destaque os episódios #4, #5, #7, #9, #13, #20, #21, #22 e #23 que tiveram a trilha sonora perfeita. A opção de mudar a animação para a segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen revelou-se, sem dúvida, a escolha acertada. Essa transformação foi liderada de maneira magistral por Shota Goshozono, chamado de "Gosso", que não apenas enfrentou os desafios de uma produção caótica pela MAPPA, mas também se destacou como um diretor ativo em todos os episódios. img2200(https://media1.tenor.com/m/7WuLlu25xV0AAAAC/jujutsu-kaisen-shibuya-arc-jogo-shibuya-arc.gif) _Episódio #16 - Shibuya Incident_ Agradeçamos a Gosso por sua abordagem que permitiu a expressão da liberdade artística de diversos talentos, garantindo que cada animador trouxesse sua singularidade para a série. Sua orientação quanto ao posicionamento de câmera demonstrou ser fundamental, contribuindo para um trabalho divertido e único, repleto de animações incríveis. Apesar do ambiente caótico imposto pela gestão de cronograma da MAPPA, muitos talentosos animadores expressaram sua vontade de colaborar novamente sob a direção de Gosso. É inegável que Gosso desempenhou um papel crucial ao salvar e elevar ainda mais o hype da segunda temporada de Jujutsu Kaisen. O sucesso desta temporada, tanto em termos de animação quanto de direção e adaptação, é um testemunho da dedicação e habilidade excepcionais de Gosso e da equipe. Em meio às adversidades, eles não apenas entregaram uma experiência visual excepcional, mas também solidificaram a posição da série como um destaque no cenário dos animes. Esta temporada, sob a liderança de Gosso, é um triunfo que merece ser celebrado por sua notável contribuição para o sucesso contínuo de Jujutsu Kaisen. Obrigado por aqueles que leram minha review!!
Hmm where to begin: I walked into JJK S1 expecting your standard shounen, and that's mostly what I got. An optimistic young protagonist finds himself in a previously unseen and unknown world of supernatural power and danger. He takes on the challenges presented to him with vigor and a youthful naivete; more characters are introduced to give this world depth; powerful battle scenes capture the viewer's attention and leave them excited to see how the characters grow in strength. All in all, standard fare shounen. I finished S1 thinking eh, this is all fine and good and I'm not too invested in these characters to really care if any of them die, but this world is interesting enough to immerse myself into at the end of the workday. Fast forward to S2, and lol did my previous assumptions come back to bite me. The only comparison I can make to the emotional effect Hidden Inventory has had on me is to that of deeply and intensely falling in love with someone who had previously just been a regular acquaintance. Suddenly, characters who had barely made an impression on me in S1 leapt into life and light. Suddenly, I found myself returning to random episodes in S1 for additional tidbits into their motivations and personalities. Suddenly, all I could think about was the grief, sadness, and loneliness that would accompany someone as already solitary as Gojo at the loss and betrayal of his closest friend. What had previously been generic shounen now became a story that stood rank to rank with great novels. And yet... it is hard, after all, to strike gold twice. The character work and writing in Hidden Inventory is so shockingly well done that it makes the rest of the season feel like an afterthought, a lengthy footnote to the high drama of Geto and Gojo's relationship. Nothing that happens in Shibuya is able to match the emotional ferocity of the KFC breakup, or of the Shakesperan tragedy of Riko's last words. It's actually almost jarring how completely the season diverges from its masterful beginning arc - in Shibuya, we are subject to unending battles that for the most part do not carry significant emotional stakes; almost no inter-character work; and random bouts of exposition as opposed to actual world-building. This is not to say that the Shibuya arc is in itself a bad story - it is just to point out that after experiencing Hidden Inventory, watching Shibuya is like checking into a 3-star hotel after you've spent two weeks at a 5-star. Despite all that, it is impossible to think about anything other than Jujutsu Kaisen after this season. Having seen the heights the author and the anime storyboard writers and directors are able to reach in Hidden Inventory, I know they are capable of recreating that magic, of going beyond the formulaic conventions of the shounens on whose shoulders JJK stands on. Even if they never do, though, Hidden Inventory will always dazzle on its own.
I'll start this with a statement that can be seen as somewhat controversial, but let me start by saying JJK as a whole has a milder form of Demon Slayer Syndrome, or DDS for short. Now, I coined that term for myself to, in a nutshell, describe a show that is mostly carried by the technical aspects of its adaptation cause the underlying source - manga, light novel, visual novel, regular novel, video game... - is pretty... meh. As a mental note, if you will. Mind you, that doesn't mean the show in question is bad or anything. Both JJK and DS are enjoyable shows to watch and listen to if you don't think too hard about what's happening. So, with that established, let's get going. Oh, and also - this is NOT spoiler-free. __Characters__ Firstly, let's talk about the characters. They're... there. Or in the case of Satoru Gojo, luckily not anymore cause by GOD IS HE INSUFFERABLE. There's another insufferable character later on who for some reason also has a strong following, but more on him later. For now, I wanna bitch about Gojo. You know, I have a strong hatred for characters who know they are super powerful, literally borderline unbeatable gods who won the super-power lottery multiple times - and know it - and that's pretty much all they are. Yes, Gojo got a bit of character development in the Hidden Inventory Arc, but even so, it didn't make him any more likeable. And worse yet, kinda ALL of the second half of the season boiled down to get him back out cause he's oh so powerful. And... That's all he is. I'm sorry fans, I just don't see it. I cheered when Geto sealed him - there, I said it. Oh and naturally I got spoiled, but I already thank Sukuna for his actions in the manga later on. As for the rest of JJK's more important characters... I don't know, also aren't all that noteworthy? Yuuji is still a good kid who hits and kicks really really hard and is tormented by Sukuna living in him. I admit I felt bad once Sukuna left him back in control and the flashbacks of what happened came rushing into Yuuji, though. Up until that point, when he decided to deal with the ramifications of Sukuna's actions, there wasn't anything he did. Sure he fought the bad guys but... eh. Megumi is still the brooding loner kid who inherited strong curse power and lots of ways to use Shikigami alongside that weird link thing he got going with Maki. It was kinda nice to see him show traits of going full-blood knight in his last fight of the arc though. Nobara (RIP(?) Best GIRL) is still the sassy former country bumpkin who is just too cool to get the screen time she deserves. And then she kinda-maybe dies. Great. Gotta admit, her backstory and final words stung. She seems to be another case of Shounen authors not knowing what to do with their female characters most of the time; the only exceptions to this phenomenon I know seem to be Tite Kubo, Hiromu Arakwawa and Hirohiko Araki. She was a really enjoyable no-bullshit character with cool powers that was just killed off to traumatize Yuuji... not cool, Gege. Megumi and Nobara also are perfect cases of wasted potential that could have been fleshed out so much better... Nanami was one of five characters I had any emotional attachment to - besides my aforementioned rant against Gojo and my dismay at Nobara's untimely demise. Nanami just clicked. I didn't really know what to make of him in S1 but here he shone and demonstrated equal measures of ruthlessness when crushing that annoying motherfucker with the ponytail (you know, the one he pulled up by the hair which made tons of girls cream their panties fsr), and the way he fantasized himself on that beach thinking about how he'd like to spend his life only to be then killed in a gruesome way. Seeing this badass curse-killing machine broken down into a half-dead body giving a last stand before being deleted by *that* maggot really didn't sit well with me. Then we have the best boy Todo, nothing needs to be said about him. Episode 21 is the best in this season if not for the sheer comedic absurdity and simultaneous BRUTAL beatdown he delivers while one-armed and thus losing the ability to use his awesome Boogie Woogie technique and a fair chunk of his immense power. Todo's always been my favourite JJK character and he continues to do so. He's just pure fun in an otherwise bleak world. Now, lastly, the character I DESPISED the most this season - Mahito. Yes I know he's a curse, he's supposed to be evil, yes he's on a self-discovery trip and doesn't seem to understand certain stuff yadda yadda but for the love of all Gods in the universe - can you finally shut up, stop screaming and laughing and killing of actual characters? Mahito's only there to raise the kill count, kinda like blood-thirsty filler, with no particular other reason. A cheap ploy to drive home the point that the story is becoming darker and more mature now. And this motherfucker also doesn't die. His design, demeanour, "characterisation" and voice acting is just... ugh. I cheered when Geto absorbed him, even though it was a cheap and unsatisfactory solution to a season-long pest but I was just so happy that he was gone. EVERYTHING about this dude just rubbed me the wrong way. __Plot & Story__ Speaking of season-long struggles, Hidden Inventory is better than Shibuya by a country mile. It's better written, it's much better paced, it has a more interesting idea behind it instead of "hehe mass desctruction and murder of countless civilians / bringing about a world without mugg- non-sorcerers" and has much fewer bullshit moments, except for Toji somehow surviving having half his body blown off my Gojo. Oh speaking of Toji, he's cool as an arc villain and it was so satisfying to see him absolutely wreck Gojo. Hidden Inventory It also had a pretty well-done start-of-darkness-arc for Geto, something that was somehow somewhat believable in this crazy world. It was a solid descent into madness, if nothing else. As for the lion's share of S2, I'd heard mixed things from manga fans before I started watching and many were like that Shibuya is JJK at its peak and others claimed it was JJK at its lowest and I don't know if I'm supposed to have high hopes for the rest of the manga or if it's just gonna go downhill from here. Guess we'll see. Shibuya so far doesn't give me high hopes that the manga manages to escape the "too bleak stopped caring" trope, to be honest, though. __Sound and Visuals__ Now, finally onto the things that I think still make JJK decent - sound and visuals. If the plot and characters both average a 6, the Audiovisual spectacle gets full scores. Mistreating their employees seemed to have done it for Mappa's animation department as it was pretty much flawlessly executed. The fluidity of the fight scenes, the subtle use of CGI, the overall expressiveness of the characters and in later episodes the mix of rough, scratchy and sometimes off-model action scenes with clean closeups of characters was just a sight to behold. Pretty much every episode starting with Episode 16 just upped the ante and kept going and going, delivering visuals that went harder than arguably anything last year. Plus the direction, use of camera angles and the generally dynamic feel of the fights just ticked all the boxes. Plus the colour choice, compositions, choreography etc. etc... They knocked it out of the park with this one and I don't need to say anymore. Just as amazing as the animation was the sound design. I watched episodes in Japanese, English Dubbed, German dubbed and French dubbed and all voices just fit supremely well. That is INCREDIBLY rare for me to say as I usually refuse to watch any Anime outside of Japanese or English, but I got curious and I was blown away. Besides the stellar Japanese cast I like Yuuji's, Geto's and Mahito (the only good thing about him)'s voices in English, Gojo's German voice and the narrator and Nobara's French voice actress. All in all, no voice seemed out of place, completely overdone or underperforming and everyone just brought their A-game. Bra-vo! Oh, and the rest... The sound effects of the curses were delightfully disgusting and creepy, punches, kicks and impacts with weapons had the necessary oomph to them and then some and the music was fantastic as well, even though I think the Hidden Inventory Opening is the weakest so far while The Shibuya Ending is the weakest - I daresay nothing in JJK will ever beat the iconic S1 Op1/Ed1 combination. And yeah, that's it, my not-so-short write-up of my opinion on JJK S2. It was decent popcorn cinema but it's not the saviour of Shounen some people claim it to be. I'm curious about the future of the show and I will pick up the manga - I read somewhere that chapter 168 is the starting point - cause I don't wanna wait another 3 years and forget everything I learned to like or dislike about this series. Overall, solid 7.7. Toodles!
NOTE: This contains spoilers for Season 2 and potential spoilers for Season 1. Firstly, Todo appearing in the fight in general is pretty lame. What I think is the creator wanted to have a character with a strong connection to Itadori helping him in the fight, except any other character would be better if only he didn’t kill them off, it’s like they wrote themselves into a corner by Todo being the only option left here. The problem with this is Todo is not a good person or friend, the only reason he’s Itadori’s friend is because he objectifies women the same way Todo does. There has been, what… three scenes total with Itadori and Todo together? The first appearance, the fight against the curse during the training/battle thing, and here at the end of the fight against Mahito. There has been no development with these two characters, maybe except Todo teaching Itadori the Black Flash. Don’t get me wrong, I really like Todo when he’s not a shitty person, and I think he has the most interesting power since he’s very creative with it, but there is no importance to him being in this final fight with Itadori outside of him being literally the only other character Itadori knows enough (barely) to help him in this fight. Then you have the whole narration thing trying to explain every single action the characters make. I really don’t see how this is ignored, if you have to TELL your audience what’s happening then that’s pretty bad choreography in the fights, and at worst a bad power system. I shouldn’t have moments that stop me from enjoying the fight scenes, both a lack of understanding the scenes and the narration do this. I think this could’ve been solved if the power system passed the “show don’t tell” test; if you can have a character do something on screen and I understand it by visuals then that’s good, but if you just have a narrator tell me what this character is doing then that’s pretty bad. The only exception to this is if we are first being introduced to the general power system of the series. This is just an idea though and I’m not a writer or anything, but I feel like that’s common sense. Mahito is very inconsistent in the show, in Season 1 he was near death by Nanami and Itadori (correct me if I’m wrong, been a while since I seen that part) and yet fighting Mechamaru he’s incredibly overpowered. Here in the final fight is the worst case of inconsistency; he seemed to be on par with Mahito during the beginning until we find out he’s at half strength because of his clone. Itadori pulls through though but instead of, you know, clapping his head with his fists until it explodes he just keeps pummeling his chest and face. He somehow comes away from what looked like one hell of a beating to a full on sprint to his clone, no damage has really been done on that half of Mahito if he can run at the same pace as his mostly unharmed clone. Let’s ignore the fact Nobara could’ve done something to stop him or herself from getting injured (dead?) or even figuring out that Mahito could make clones and that might be one (I think it’s pretty obvious considering his power). He goes onto this final fight with some greater strength he had before, even getting a transformation out of nowhere. It’s almost like Todo being there made Mahito look too weak and so they gave Mahito some buffs here. Buffs can be fine if there’s a reason for them, but Mahito has no real motivation outside of wanting to kill everyone and have fun doing it. Because of this there’s no reason he should’ve gotten stronger, why would he need to be? It’s not like the character to increase in power since he’s been shown to be full of himself. Mahito has inconsistently been average at worst and incredibly overpowered at best, making the fight feel like there’s no real tension or intrigue as I feel like anything could happen at this point. My only motivation for the main character winning comes from Mahito being the worst character so far and overstaying their welcome. I really wanted to like this show, especially after the first season and the movie (I LOVED the movie). Things I wanted to happen never have, development between characters doesn’t exist, killing off a main supporting character can happen at any point while having no real purpose while simultaneously removing all potential that character had, the antagonist I actually care about is still half-assed and barely appears in this season, all my favorite characters have died without amounting to anything. I really, and I really mean it, wanted to like this show and I did for a while. I don’t think I’ll be continuing it as with the past several episodes I’ve been getting an incrementally worse taste in my mouth. Good chance I’m just incorrect, it’s just what I had in mind while watching up to the point I left off.
I'll start by saying that I'm writing this review to voice my opinion and not to change anyone's mind or discount anyone else's opinion. That should go without saying but you'd be surprised how many people need the reminder. I wish I could take the whole series of Jujutsu Kaisen apart then rearrange all of the pieces in a very different configuration and then view it again. I'd bet that version would get a 10 from me. My issue with JJK is not the story, or the characters, or the pacing, or even the animation. All those things are top tier. I do believe, however, that the structure of this anime failed the narrative. Let's talk about it. Why would any story play a narrative out of sequential order? To build tension. Tension is the magic sauce that makes us want to watch a show from beginning to end. It is what makes is watch at the edge of our seats and exclaim that what we just watched was a "masterpiece." And I am aware that even though I'm about to go on a rant as to why I feel that this season of JJK lacked tension, most people watching the series did not have that same experience. I still feel like I need to vent, so I shall. For JJK S2, it seemed like all the non-linear storytelling did was make stuff completely lack tension (in places where we knew people who were alive and well) or make more confusion (in places where we had forgotten the status of things due to the time shenanigans). There wasn't a single moment in which I felt like there was information suppression that led to more tension... hell, I didn't feel like there was any information suppression period. Isn't that the idea behind non-linear storytelling? You are supposed to withhold some information that then becomes relevant at the point in which you go back into the timeline. But this didn't feel like it was the case for any of JJK's seasons. We knew already that Gojo and Geto had been friends and although we didn't know the details of their fallout (and it was fun to see) that whole plot would have been great as a way to round out Geto's character and have him evolve and regress in the current timeline, but the answer actually is that none of that Geto backstory matters to the current situation AT ALL. If Geto isn't Geto, does it matter why Geto went rogue? Another serious issue I have with S2 is the poor way that escalation of conflict is handled. I do get that the whole point is trying to bombard the senses, but I do feel that in any kind of narrative that kind of over-stimulation rides on a very fine line that if crossed, results in diminishing returns. I loved everything that had to do with Sukuna and what that would mean for Itadori. I looked forward to seeing the aftermath of that (as it pertains to Itadori's development, I mean) but it was cut short -- not even short, just cut-- due to our main character having to deal with Nanami being in trouble.... okay. Fine. At this point, I still feel like we are in a good place and that I understand everything that is happening, and that hey, maybe we deal with helping Nanami now and the ramifications of Sukuna later.. but after Nanami.... another issue arises and now we haven't dealt with 2 very important situations. And we can't because we have YET ANOTHER situation to take care of with Mahito and our teammates. And here's where I felt like none of the cool concepts that the situations brought up would be addressed in a meaningful way (( I do understand that they might be addressed -- probably WILL be addressed-- in future seasons, but the impact that a more immediate reaction would have had on the viewer cannot be discounted)) If all these impactful situations could have been separate events instead of one big cluster... I think the impact would have been more pronounced and more.... FELT. I didn't feel much. Everything looked good, I understood what they were doing, but I stopped feeling anything past Nanami's "vacation" ((hell, I was already disappointed after Sukuna's visit, let's be honest)) I struggle with my review of this season because I do see where they were trying to do something, and I do appreciate it, but the structure of it all left me feeling more disappointed than energized. Maybe a second watch would be a better viewing experience since you'll be more resigned to what is coming next... but I wish I could review it in a different order and with a lot more time to reflect between earth-shattering events.
I don't usually write reviews. Actually, this is my first. And, spoilers, it's going to be largely negative. I'm aware that makes me seem like a pessimistic douchebag. But honestly, that's just because it is largely the negative aspects of the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen that got me so worked up to the point of finally breaking out of my short note comfort zone. And maybe I am a pessimistic douchebag. Certainly some people who know me wouldn't be so quick to disregard the notion. Anyway, before getting to the meat on this metaphorical bone, let me exclaim that this review will not be breaking Jujutsu Kaisen apart, aspect by aspect, discussing and grading each separately. I will not be talking about the plot itself, much of the character writing, how this adds to the first season or how it will play into future entries. Really, I won't be talking much about the actual content of the show at all. The show is popular enough, and I am late enough to the party, that there are enough people that have already done that. People with much greater passion towards the series than I. Nor would anything along those lines get me worked up to such a degree. Instead, what I will be talking about here are largely the technical aspects of the show, for better and for worse. Now with that out of the way, I would like to start off by mentioning a feat so extraordinary that even in this cynical review of mine I couldn't ignore it: ___ # Animation I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this season of JJK is probably the peak the medium has to offer in terms of technical animation prowess. I couldn't argue it to have the single highest peak, as I think that is a largely subjective concept tied to both taste and emotional attachment. But I am certain it is at least in contention for the top spot for its consistency in delivering what would be single episode or even single scene sakuga moments anywhere else, legitimately every episode. It is just unreal, and deserving of proper applause. HOWEVER, I think this is the first time I got the feeling that perhaps every animator wanting (or being instructed) to go their absolute hardest on EVERY scene, on EVERY episode, is maybe a recipe for disaster. Which leads me to my next point: ___ # Direction, Storyboarding, and Everything Else (Part 1) Let's start by finishing the previous thought; Grandiose animation sequences, or sakuga, are typically reserved for the explosive payoff that comes after an emotional buildup spanning somewhere between a couple episodes to the entire season up until that point. This, of course, is a result of budgetary and time constraints, but it just so happens to work out nicely in differentiating that great moment through a distinct improvement in animation quality. I think this is a natural conclusion our brain makes, and maybe expects. Directors, episode directors, animators not excluded. Super impressive flashy visuals = Big emotional payoff But, wait, if every fight scene is worthy of being called sakuga, is every fight scene also expected to carry a big emotional payoff? Well, typically, no. I think it's safe to say anyone you ask will answer the same way. Unless fights are few and far between, not all of them can leave an emotional impact on the viewer. That type of thing takes time. But, what if the answer was yes? I can't speak with certainty without asking the production staff directly, but I can definitely say that it feels like that is what was in mind here. But we of course know, according to our own answer, that that shouldn't work. And indeed it doesn't. I don't think more than two episodes pass between fights throughout the entire season, if even. And it feels like every one of them is supposed to carry emotional weight behind it. Keyword: supposed "Wow, that is a CRAZY fight between those two. Really tilting the scales of good vs evil. Huh? ___ - kun is dying? Noooo!!!!!!.............. wait, what was his name again? And his powers too. And, actually, what was the deal with that villain? Ah, I guess a quick trip to the wiki won't hurt" .............. Rinse and repeat. Frankly, if that was the most of the show's issues, I wouldn't be writing this. In fact, that was a last second addition cause I felt it worthwhile. Really, this next topic is what got me out of bed. --- # Direction, Storyboarding, and Everything Else (Part 2 - Motion Sickness?) Despite what are clearly the best efforts of the animators, watching this season, I can't help but wonder if a director was present at all in its making, or if a storyboard had been made for the show at any point in time. Never before in my life, no matter how bad the anime I was watching, did I get motion sickness from watching it. And when I say motion sickness, I don't even mean from the animation (you know, the motion), but from a complete lack of coherency in its structure. Not on an episode to episode basis, but a SCENE to SCENE basis. Attempting to be different is good, but you can't overdo it. You can't have EVERY transition be a jarring jumpcut. You can't have an episode where EVERY new scene jumps back and forth on the timeline. You can't have flashbacks feel like they make up damn near HALF of the entire season. I could go on. At some point these creative decisions stop making you stand out for the better, and start being nausea inducing. Just like I can't follow what's in front of me when hurling down a 50 story tall rollercoaster, I couldn't follow what was in front of me watching this. So I experienced what felt like a strange case of stationary motion sickness during the worst the show had to offer. >Despite what are clearly the best efforts of the animators, watching this season, I can't help but wonder if a director was present at all in its making, or if a storyboard had been made for the show at any point in time. I'd like to hone in on this point further in a way that is more tangibly relatable, and might also connect it to the previous point about animation. Throughout my viewing, it felt as if every individual animator had been instructed to create the finest work their hands would allow, but when it came time to putting it all together, there was no home. As if the works of all the individual animators had just been glued together in what was seemingly the correct order, without caring for transitioning the show along in a coherent manner. What we're left with is just over 9 hours of nonstop "Avengers Assemble" moments. Sure, they're individually exciting, but one must first plant the seeds and care for the plants before he can reap what he's sown. My unwarranted theory is that perhaps, as a result of the known production issues, there was no time left to bring it all together properly. Maybe they didn't proof watch it as a final product. I don't know. I just have a hard time believing talented professionals in the industry could watch this jarring mess and think it's ready to ship. It needed more time to cook. ___ # Conclusion? I'd like to clear up what I feel are potential misunderstandings before letting you go. 1. I don't think a show with consistently top tier animation must be bad. Hell, that idea sounds amazing when you apply it to your favorite show. I just think it was misused here. 2. I have nothing against esoteric direction and presentation. In fact, it's those exact novelties that I often look for in shows today. But, yet again, I think such creativity was greatly misused here. Not just because the oversaturation of esotericism drowned out its positive potential, but because it actively made for a worse viewing experience. Now, after all of that negativity, seeing the score below, surely you must think I'm some cynical bastard who thinks he's too good to have a proper look in the mirror. However, I'd like to reiterate that this review was written largely for the purpose of speaking of the bizarre downfalls of the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen. Which is to say, it's not all bad, and you can so very easily find much, much worse anime out there. The unreasonable animation quality alone makes it worthwhile to an extent. But this here is a unique case of such extremities that I had to talk about them. Peace
I should preface this review by stating that I am not someone who sang the praises of Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1 unequivocally. By some people’s standards I would even be deemed a “hater” of season 1. I felt that, while solid overall, it was flawed. If you would like more of my thoughts on the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen feel free to check out my review of the series. That being said, for anyone expecting me to bash on this season of Jujutsu Kaisen you will be very disappointed. For the longest time I have heard the praise of Jujutsu Kaisen’s Shibuya Incident Arc (every episode in season 2 beyond episode 7) and how it was one of the greatest battle shonen arcs of all time. I heard this so much that I ended up reading Jujutsu Kaisen after finishing season 1 of the anime. However, I intentionally did not read the Shibuya Incident Arc because I wanted my first experience with it to be through the anime. I will also say that it is extremely important for someone who is going into season 2 of Jujutsu Kaisen to understand that Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is split up into two separate arcs. The first arc, Gojo’s Past Arc, is the first 7 episodes of this season of Jujutsu Kaisen. The remaining 16 episodes of this season cover the Shibuya Incident Arc. __It is important to make this distinction because the difference in quality between these arcs is very evident. __ I like to think of myself as someone who can admit when they are wrong. In the case of Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 I was extremely wrong. Many of the critiques I had for season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen are resolved in season 2.__ In this review I will be talking briefly about the Gojo’ Past Arc, the first 7 episodes of this season, but the vast majority of this review will be addressing the Shibuya Incident Arc.__ I will give each arc their own independent score and then averaging those two scores to give Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 a score as a whole.__ As with all of my reviews I will be keeping the review primarily spoiler free and when I do mention spoilers they will be marked accordingly. You will be able to read on without concern over whether or not you will be spoiled. __ # ~~~Gojo’s Past Arc: ~~~ ~~~img620(https://www.dexerto.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=3840,quality=60,format=auto/https://editors.dexerto.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/10/jujutsu-kaisen-season-2-key-visual.jpeg) ~~~__Animation and Soundtrack: __ The Gojo’s Past Arc and the Shibuya Incident Arc are both riddled with fantastic animation, fight scenes, and soundtracks just like season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen! That being said, that was never an issue or concern I had with Jujutsu Kaisen so it isn’t really something that I am going to go on at length about in this review. All of those elements of Jujutsu Kaisen are fantastic and I fully anticipate they will remain fantastic throughout the duration of Jujutsu Kaisen. ~~~youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQcOdxEmfEg)~~~ __Story:__ Gojo’s Past Arc takes place prior to the introduction of Yuuji Itadori. The story is told with an emphasis on both Satoru Gojou and Suguru Getou and their mission to protect Riko Amanai from assassins. While simple in premise, the story of this arc does its job and delivers a very enjoyable 7 episodes to watch. What I found to be enjoyable about this arc’s story was that it gives the viewer additional understanding of Gojo and Getou’s relationship to one another prior to the first season and prior to when Jujutsu Kaisen 0 takes place. You get to know more about these two characters and who they were prior to where we left off at the end of Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1. __Characters: __ ~~~img420(https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/jujutsu-kaisen-season-2-pv-toji-fushiguro.jpg) img220(https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:736/1*GHQ2nQfaZyF81STYtlmAyA.jpeg) img220(https://thicc-uwu.mywaifulist.moe/waifus/satoru-gojo-sorcery-fight/bOnNB0cwHheCCRGzjHLSolqabo41HxX9Wv33kfW7.jpg?class=thumbnail)~~~ The main issue I had with the Gojo’s Past Arc was that we really didn’t get to see nearly enough of the surrounding cast of characters beyond Gojo and Getou. I understand that this arc was created in order to further iron out those two characters but it takes away one of the series’ greatest strengths, its fantastic cast of characters. That being said, this arc also introduced the antagonist who I believe to be the third best antagonist of the series, Touji Fushiguro. I will also say that if you read my previous review of Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1 you would know that I believe that Jujutsu Kaisen’s biggest weakness as a series by far is its antagonists. That being said, the three antagonists I found to be most impressive (Suguru Getou, Touji Fushiguro, and Sukuna) are dramatically better written and far more believable than the cast of antagonists from season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen. __Posing a Question: __ This arc also does a fantastic job posing the overarching question presented throughout this season of Jujutsu Kaisen. That question being, “When the existence of an individual becomes too impactful to the world they live in, what is the result?” Jujutsu Kaisen presents two answers to this question throughout the two arcs covered in season 2. In the case of the Gojo’s Past Arc, Riko Amanai is the target of countless assassination attempts and she is deemed someone who must be eliminated in order for the present hierarchy of jujutsu sorcerers to remain stable. In this way the Gojo’s Past Arc presents one of the two possible solutions to the question I previously mentioned. That solution being proposed by the Gojo’s Past Arc is to ~!remove the person of importance in order to maintain order and balance.!~ The second of these solutions I will talk about in my review of the Shibuya Incident Arc. __Score for Gojo’s Past Arc:__ This arc honestly delivers on nearly every level. It gives the viewer more information about existing characters while also introducing an antagonist who is leagues better than anything present in season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen. It also poses a very interesting question inside the world of Jujutsu Kaisen which is something that season 1 never even attempted to do. It does stray a bit from the strong cast of characters it has established but for good reason. Thus far, this is my third favorite arc of Jujutsu Kaisen that I have seen besides Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and the Shibuya Incident Arc. I give the Gojo’s Past Arc an __82/100__. # ~~~Shibuya Incident Arc:~~~ ~~~img620(https://64.media.tumblr.com/f0f0e58f32f50b1c5864a1f9d9951d18/e7e6a405246874ff-3e/s540x810/32dfeaabcc577a66ebc93eb0d258ead779c51fb0.gif)~~~ __Animation and Soundtrack: __ The Gojo’s Past Arc and the Shibuya Incident Arc are both riddled with fantastic animation, fight scenes, and soundtracks just like season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen! I will say that the Shibuya Incident Arc also makes some very unique artistic choices throughout the season as well that I actually really appreciated as well! That being said, that was never an issue or concern I had with Jujutsu Kaisen so it isn’t really something that I am going to go on at length about in this review. All of those elements of Jujutsu Kaisen are fantastic and I fully anticipate they will remain fantastic throughout the duration of Jujutsu Kaisen. I will say that the Shibuya Incident Arc also makes some very unique artistic choices throughout the season as well that I actually really appreciated as well! ~~~youtube(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjkNwuPcl50)~~~ __Story: __ We are now back in present time for Jujustu Kaisen where we left off at the end of Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1. The group of antagonists have launched an attack on Shibuya with the intent of capturing Satoru Gojou and helping Sukuna completely take over the body of Yuuji Itadori. Once again, the premise of this story is simple but the story and conflict present in this arc are used as a means for character and world development more than anything else. While the overarching story of Jujutsu Kaisen does progress, it is the growth of the characters and the furthering of the question posed in the Gojo’s Past Arc that make this arc the best that Jujutsu Kaisen has offered thus far. __Characters: __ ~~~img620(https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/jujutsu-kaisen-s-shibuya-incident-arc-opening-song.jpg)~~~ This was by far Jujutsu Kaisen’s greatest strength during season 1 of the anime. The cast of characters are all unique and likable. Furthermore, they each get their moment to shine. That being said, my three largest issues with Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1 stemmed from its characters as well. __Those three issues were as follows:__ 1. The cast of antagonists in Jujutsu Kaisen are not realistic threats to the cast of protagonists and as a result they are not believable or interesting. 2. Yuuji Itadori is an overall pedestrian main protagonist without any real character traits or moments that make him someone I want to cheer for. 3. While Satoru Gojou is extremely cool, he is so extremely overpowered and strong in comparison to everything else inside the Jujutsu Kaisen universe that any threat against the cast of protagonists feels unrealistic and completely unconcerning. I’m going to talk about how the Shibuya Incident Arc completely rectifies all three of these issues I had with Jujutsu Kaisen Season 1. __There will be spoilers related to these three points so please do not click on spoilers if you do not want these changes spoiled. __ Starting with the first point, __“The cast of antagonists in Jujutsu Kaisen are not realistic threats to the cast of protagonists and as a result they are not believable or interesting.”__ Put quite simply, the cast of antagonists have not changed from season 1. You are probably asking, “So how does this point change?” There are three reasons that the antagonists become more believable this season. ~!The first reason is that the antagonists capture Gojo early in this arc. This completely removes his influence from the remainder of the arc, in turn making each of the antagonists a more viable threat to the remaining casts of protagonists. The second reason is that Yuji Itadori loses control over Sukuna because he is forced to eat two of Sukuna’s fingers during this arc. This causes Sukuna’s power to become too much for Yuji to contain given his present abilities as a jujutsu sorcerer. Right off the bat, we see that Sukuna’s level of power is far greater than any other antagonist we have seen thus far in the series and his impact is felt in a very real way. He may not collaborate with the other antagonists but his power is so great that it honestly doesn’t matter! Third and finally, Touji Fushiguro returns in the later portion of this arc. I have already touched upon how he is my third favorite antagonist in the series but the difference in believability between him and the fourth best antagonist in the series, Mahito, is honestly so dramatic it’s hard to put into words. Having him around makes the threat to the protagonists that much more believable. !~ Now onto the second point, __“Yuuji Itadori is an overall pedestrian main protagonist without any real character traits or moments that make him someone I want to cheer for.”__ Looking back on my review of season 1 of Jujitsu Kaisen I really didn’t hit home hard enough on this point. Yuji really is generic in every sense of the word in season 1. He does nothing to stick out at all and honestly just feels as though he is along for the ride. In the Shibuya Incident Arc that could not be further from the truth. One of my biggest issues with Yuji’s character in season 1 was that there was no way that Yuji, a brand new jujutsu sorcerer, would have the power necessary to withhold an all-powerful being like Sukuna. It made Sukuna look weaker as an antagonist and it made the idea that Yuji had to be killed once he ate all of Sukuna’s fingers seem outlandish. ~!That all completely changed once Yuji consumed two more of Sukuna’s fingers. Sukuna immediately takes control of Yuji’s body and completely destroys Shibuya along with countless lives, both human and cursed spirits alike. Yuji only finally once again gains control of his body after the entirety of Shibuya has been completely devastated. In this moment of gaining back control of his body is when Yuji’s character actually becomes one where the viewer can cheer for him. Yuji is finally faced with the gravity of what his continuing to live means in regards to the safety of the rest of the world. So long as Yuji lives Sukuna could take control at any moment and the world simply is not safe when Sukuna is alive in it. The despair Yuji feels in this moment was the kind of moment I was waiting for to give me a reason to root for Yuji.!~ It took him from a character I could honestly care less about to one of favorite characters, if not my favorite character, in the entire series. Finally I want to address my third point, __“While Satoru Gojou is extremely cool, he is so extremely overpowered and strong in comparison to everything else inside the Jujutsu Kaisen universe that any threat against the cast of protagonists feels unrealistic and not even remotely concerning.” __To grossly oversimply this point, Jujutsu Kaisen had a Gojo problem. Damned if you do address him as a major plot hole because you would piss off the massive fanbase who loved Gojo as a character. Damned if you don't address him as a major plot hole because then no one was a realistic threat to our cast of protagonists! I will say in some ways this does get addressed and in other ways it does not get addressed. ~!The manner in which Gojo gets sealed by the cast of antagonists does not seem very realistic at all. I have a hard time believing that a person who acts as logically as Gojo does during fights would put his guard down in order to protect some people when he knows that if he falls nobody in the world would be safe. That being said, once Gojo is sealed, the threat of every antagonist in the series becomes far more realistic and felt. In a sense, despite being one of the series’ most beloved characters, Jujutsu Kaisen could never truly excel until Gojo was removed from the series (not that he is actually dead). !~ In solving those three issues I had with the series, the cast of characters in Jujutsu Kaisen really get their chance to fully shine and Yuji becomes a protagonist worth cheering for. __Increased Stakes:__ One of my most common criticisms for shonen anime, especially battle shonen anime, is that the stakes in these anime are never really felt. Sure, you can say a mission is life or death in an anime is life or death but until I see some actual death the stakes aren’t believable to me as a viewer. I won’t go in depth about who in the series dies or why they die but the stakes in this arc of Jujutsu Kaisen are very real. No character is safe in this arc and the lives of countless civilians are lost. In series like battle shonen anime, you must give the viewer a reason to care about battles or else they lose a large portion of their impact. It is for this exact reason that many of the fights, which were already brilliantly animated and choreographed in season 1, in the Shibuya Incident Arc hold far more gravity and hit that much harder! ~~~img620(https://media.tenor.com/B61VWJ0QlscAAAAM/jjk-jujutsu-kaisen.gif)~~~ __Posing a Question: __ If Gojo’s Past Arc did a good job addressing the question, “When the existence of an individual becomes too impactful to the world they live in, what is the result” then the Shibuya Incident Arc did a brilliant job addressing it! ~!For the longest time in Jujutsu Kaisen the viewer is left asking questions like, “Just how powerful is Sukuna actually?”, “Why is it so important that Sukuna be killed?”, and “Does Yuji actually have to die or is this whole thing being overblown?” What the Shibuya Incident Arc does perfectly to address these questions and the overarching question of this season is to show you the answer rather than tell you the answer to these questions. We get to see what happens when Sukuna goes unchecked. We get to see why Yuji must die in order to prevent Sukuna from coming back to life.!~ Most importantly we get to see what happens when the importance of one individual eclipses that of the whole world. In the Shibuya Incident Arc we get to see that utter devastation is the result of unchecked power. It is through this showing rather than telling that the Shibuya Incident Arc became the best that Jujutsu Kaisen has to offer! __Score for the Shibuya Incident Arc:__ This is without a shadow of a doubt the best arc in Jujutsu Kaisen. What makes this arc difficult for me to rate is that it's impossible to know whether or not the results of this arc are felt throughout the remainder of the series. If what happened in the Shibuya Incident Arc has a lasting effect on the remainder of Jujitsu Kaisen then this is absolutely one of the greatest battle shonen arcs of all time. However, if what happened in the arc is immediately rectified then the arc loses its staying power and overall impact on the series as a whole. It is for this reason that I can not give the Shibuya Incident Arc a 100/100 but I will without hesitation give it, as a standalone arc, a __92/100__. # ~~~Overall Thoughts:~~~ For the longest time I have not been the biggest fan of Jujutsu Kaisen. I felt as though many of the praises and awards the series received were undeserved. While I still do feel that season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen is given too much praise, season 2 is absolutely worthy of praise. Many of my complaints for season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen have been corrected in season 2 and I can genuinely say I am looking forward to watching season 3 of Jujutsu Kaisen when it does come out!__ If you liked season 1 then you will love season 2 and if you didn’t particularly care for season 1 like me then I would implore you to give season 2 a try! __ ~~~img620(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ew47FPyWYAALSlB.jpg:large)~~~
#__Jujustu Kaisen review: The weight of expectations__~~~~~~ DISCLAIMER: Contains spoilers of JJK season 2 (_obviously_) It is without question that JJK season 2 is one of, if not, the most hyped up shonen anime in recent years. Once the season finished airing, many posts spread proclaiming the ‘Shibuya Incident arc’ as one of the greatest shonen arcs of all time. Many of these posts frequently contained words like ‘peak’, ‘masterpiece’ and ‘goated’. This theme of JJK season 2 supposedly having achieved unanimous GOAT status caused me to become extremely excited to watch the show and see what all the hype is about. As I was watching the show, I was eagerly waiting for any scenes or moments that justified all the hype. Minutes passed. Episodes passed. Nothing… JJK season 2 was not peak, it was not a masterpiece and I believe it’s misleading to say so. By giving JJK season 2 all these labels that address it in such high regard, the weight of expectation becomes too heavy of a cross to bear for the show. All of the hype surrounding JJK season 2, all of the comparisons to all-time great shows such as HxH and One Piece’s Marineford. All of this hype and comparisons are likely to place unfair expectations onto some viewers who watch JJK expecting something that matches said hype. Did all the comparisons and comments surrounding JJK season 2 negatively affect my viewing experience? Yes, yes it did. All the talk about it caused me to expect greatness from a show that had no reason to have these expectations to begin with. Regardless of all the comparisons, it’s clear that to many people JJK season 2 was able to successfully execute the expectations a significant proportion of fans had for it. And that’s where the issue inherently lies with this season. JJK season 2 faced overwhelmingly significant hype and expectations, which cultivated an environment where meeting everyone’s expectations would be near impossible. For instance, the comparison between JJK’s Shibuya arc and HxH is completely misleading and unfair. This is because when I think of HxH, I associate well thought character arcs that reveal deep psychological and moral layers. In HxH this is achieved by delving into complex, slow arcs coupled with intricate world-building and character development. Consequently, I approached JJK season 2 with expectations of storytelling similar to HxH, which as a consequence led to a feeling of dissatisfaction. JJK’s Shibuya arc has a completely different almost ‘messy’ narrative which tends to heavily focus on immediate plot developments. However, a ‘messy’ narrative doesn’t immediately mean that the shonen plot is bad. Going back to one of JJK’s many comparisons, HxH is a great example of what some consider a ‘messy’ plot. HxH consists of diverse and distinct story arcs such as Heaven’s arena, Greed island and Chimera ant. The way the characters interact within the world allows for the plot to be pushed in wild directions, yet these storylines are meaningfully interconnected which contributes to a cohesive overall narrative. So despite HxH’s messiness, its author never fails to neglect the benefit of excellent character development, world-building and strong thematic consistency of personal growth and friendship throughout the show even during tonal shifts throughout the story arcs. This ultimately helps mitigate any perceived messiness due to the well-designed plot which adds layers of depth and richness to the story. The same unfortunately cannot be said about JJK season 2. While HxH can be considered deliberate in its ‘messiness’, JJK fails to achieve a similar feeling. It doesn’t feel meaningful, it feels somewhat… vague. Perhaps it’s due to a large proportion of the manga waiting to be adapted, but nonetheless, certain plot points feel open-ended and incomplete which contributes to a sense of vagueness. This leaves the viewer with many questions and a desire for more context. The conflict within the Zenin clan, Megumi’s connections with the Jujutsu world and the organisations within the Jujutsu world are some examples of plot points that aren’t really explored. These elements are briefly touched upon, leaving questions about their significance to the overarching storyline. Maybe in future seasons, these plot threads are fleshed out and explored, making my comments invalid, but as of right now the plot seems to lack clarity and is personally hard for me to engage in. Another issue with JJK season 2 are the underdeveloped supporting characters, so while some characters like Gojo, and Geto receive considerable development and insight into their characters, the same cannot be said about many of the characters that appear in the show. Since many characters are not really fleshed out, it may give the viewer the impression that these characters are mere plot devices for action rather than fleshed out individuals that have purposeful roles within the story. Furthermore, while some characters show growth and development, much of it is linked to immediate plot needs/events rather than ongoing personal character arcs. Combine this with the quick transitioning between characters and their different involvements in the plot, it leaves minimal opportunity for deeper exploration of character growth and personal development outside of immediate plot needs. This can make their development feel superficial and rushed, which I personally find frustrating. I say frustrating because the author is clearly capable of bringing characters like Toji with very little screen time to the forefront through a blend of distinct personality traits and connections to other characters within the series. The way the author breathes life and a memorable identity to Toji creates a character that demands the viewer’s attention every time he appears on screen. So, it’s a shame that this feeling of interest and attachment to Toji could not be replicated across some of the other cast. Leading on from my earlier point of character development feeling superficial is my opinion on JJK’s missed opportunities to properly develop characters. In particular the Shibuya arc has moments where in-depth exploration of a character’s past or internal struggles could add substantial depth to the overall plot, but these chances are not effectively used. For instance, for me the relationship and interactions between Miwa and Mechamaru felt underdeveloped and as a result their scenes struggled to evoke any strong emotion within me. Their interactions are thinly scattered throughout the season, with only a few scenes dedicated to their relationship, so there isn’t sufficient time to fully develop their dynamic or reveal the depth of their connection. The same can also be said in season 1, where Miwa and Mechamaru often engage in shallow conversation that focuses on the current plot point rather than possible exploration into their thoughts. Bringing this Miwa x Mechamaru romantic subplot to the limelight out-of-nowhere solely due to Mechamaru’s inevitable death feels somewhat out of place due to the lack of any significant scenes of the pair in the past. This ultimately prevents me from building an attachment to their relationship, so it makes their interactions feel much less impactful. So, while I praise JJK season 2 for its visual appeal, I feel that it falls short in terms of providing comprehensive character development, which is made increasingly challenging due to the involvement of a large cast of characters. The author cannot throw these underdeveloped characters into the spotlight and expect the viewers to quickly build an emotional attachment towards them. To add to this, the frequent use of flashbacks to provide character backstory and exposition can be seen as a crutch which tends to feel like the info was just thrown in rather than being smoothly integrated. Okay, that’s enough criticising, I will now talk about things I really liked about the show. Firstly, the most obvious positive aspect of the show is its artistic excellence. The fight scenes are meticulously choreographed and fluidly animated. Many battle sequences throughout the season involve dynamic camera angles which creates a more interesting and immersive experience. In particular the Choso vs Itadori fight (especially the bathroom fight) was sensational and one of my favourite battles in the show. The way the camera closely follows the characters, rotates around them and shifts perspectives amplifies the intensity of the combat which is just really engaging to watch. The silky smooth animation is a significant factor that contributes to its visual appeal, but the importance of the chosen colour palette is overlooked by some. The dark colour palette contributes immensely to the aesthetic of the season, where the colours complement the darker aspects of the story such as the theme of inner turmoil which is pivotal in this season. These muted or desaturated colours help highlight the sheer gravity of the situation for the characters, which helps immerse the viewer into the world of JJK. Adding onto this, the consistent use of dull, dark colours creates a sense of tension and imminent danger. This feeling of uneasiness helps keep the viewers engaged and invested in what happens to the characters. Another enjoyable scene of mine is Sukuna’s entrance. Sukuna’s appearance in JJK season 2 is wonderfully executed with the use of various cinematic techniques to accentuate his menacing presence. By framing Sukuna from low angles, it portrays him as an overwhelmingly dominant force to be reckoned with as he towers over and looks down on the other characters. Sukuna is also accompanied with ominous sounds such as deep resonant tones and eerie effects that create a sense of dread upon his appearance. All these techniques combine to create a memorable and intriguing impression of Sukuna in season 2, strengthening his reputation as a formidable character in JJK. Moving on from the visual appeal of JJK season 2, the voice acting throughout is spectacular but in particular, Mahito’s voice acting stood out. His voice has a distinct tone and is full of emotion which captures the essence of his character perfectly. The VA perfectly conveys Mahito’s malevolence and sinister intentions and also his moments of uncertainty and vulnerability towards the end of the season as Mahito’s demeanour changes. __My Concluding thoughts: __ Currently, JJK consists of a lackluster story that has been gifted with an absolute masterclass of creativity and artistry. JJK is a fairly mediocre story that has soared to extraordinarily high heights primarily due to the visual brilliance on display which acts as a veil to the story which pales in comparison. However, this being said, I don’t hate dynamic, high-energy battles. In fact I thoroughly enjoyed them, but after hearing all the comparisons and praise of the show I developed the expectation of witnessing intricate storylines like some people have claimed JJK to have. Thus, I couldn’t help but feel slightly dissatisfied since what I was told about the show was not completely accurate. But despite my prior comments, I’m not trying to discredit the work of JJK, I just believe that JJK season 2 was unfortunately subject to misleading expectations and comparisons by some fans which negatively impacted my viewing experience. That being said, I still found JJK season 2 enjoyable, despite my personal issues, so I will give it a modest 7.5 out of 10. Thanks for reading (￣^￣)ゞ