Welcome all, to the penultimate episode of Jujutsu Kaisen! This is… This is a rough week for me. If you’re a fan, if you don’t like it when I’m particularly negative about an episode or a series, it might...

Welcome all, to the penultimate episode of Jujutsu Kaisen! This is… This is a rough week for me. If you’re a fan, if you don’t like it when I’m particularly negative about an episode or a series, it might be best if you look away. Because I’m about to rant. If that’s what you’re looking for though? Well then lets jump right in!

Getting right into it, I realized something as I watched this episode. Our heroes… Haven’t actually finished any of the villains. Mahito? Geto just absorbed him. Jogo? Sukuna burned him alive and then annihilated the entire district before fucking off and giving the body back to Itadori. Dagon? That’s Toji, who in turn killed himself to save Fushiguro. Choso and Geto? Both of them are still alive and kicking, though I suspect Choso is about to eat it next episode. Even Hanami was taken out by Gojo, the OP teacher figure of the series. Aside from some random sorcerers like the old man or luck boy, the villains all killed each other while our heroes ran around getting their asses kicked. Even now, as Jujutsu Kaisen brings in more and more characters, the entire cast gets defeated/frozen by them in an instant! It makes them all feel… So useless.

Speaking of new characters, Jujutsu Kaisen keeps introducing/involving more! Who is the ice lady? Why is Todo’s teacher, Yuki, here? Why bother bringing the entire Kyoto school if they are just going to be useless for 5 minutes straight? I said it last week but Jujutsu Kaisen simply does not know when to let a fight end. It keeps extending it with new powers, new characters, new circumstances. Do we really care about the Uzumaki or Supreme Arts? It’s not like this power system has any sort of rules at this point. Maybe if it meant something, or if I had any hope of this fight ending, I’d care. It’s also funny to me how Jujutsu Kaisen comes up with excuses to keep the cast alive in this situation despite killing off Nobara, Nanami and many others for less. It’s very clear Gege sort of wrote Itadori in to a corner here.

Actually, tangent for a moment, this makes me think of Choso. What the hell is all of this brother stuff? Is this really a plot thread you want to drop on us with checks episode one episode left? That somehow, some way, Choso and Itadori are brothers? I don’t even hate it, I think Choso being so dedicated to the idea of family that any other moral question doesn’t even enter his mind is cool. But we only have one episode left. There’s no time to explore this. Why not bring this up during their original fight. Let this be something in our heads throughout the rest of the season, occasionally cutting back to Choso reconciling Itadori having killed his other brothers with this revelation. It would have made his arrival here work so much better and would have been an awesome turn for his character! Instead… We got this.

All of this is to say that, my exhaustion from last episode? It’s still there. And it’s getting worse. There were some things I enjoyed, Mei Mei fucking off to Malaysia realizing Japan is about to be a hell-hole was objectively hilarious. Also for all that I’ve criticized Jujutsu Kaisen for its schedule, the show hasn’t melted near as much as I expected it would have. It’s actually still rather solid, I enjoyed a fair bit of the animation this week. If nothing else, Jujutsu Kaisen has managed hold its production together. Narratively however? I’m just so… Tired. Jujutsu Kaisen really wanted a Marine Ford level event, something to shake up the state of its world. But it just hasn’t earned it yet. We don’t know most of these characters, and the ones we do haven’t been given enough time for us to really care. It’s a damn shame.

So yeah, in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not a big fan of this episode of Jujutsu Kaisen. Back when I was reading the manga, this is were Shibuya failed for me. The individual fights, the idea behind the arc, that was all fine. But the execution, the finale, what it was all leading up towards, just didn’t work. There was never any room to breathe, no time to process what was happening or for the characters to really grow. It does this in some places, like the Choso or Sukuna fight, and those are generally considered the best moments of the season. But just how many times do we have to watch Itadori hulk out, or for another character to randomly appear and save another? Personally, I’d say to many.

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