Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2

Second season of Jujutsu Kaisen is truly astounding. It's incredible creative vision and ambition are only matched by disappointment coming from failures in achieving its enormous goals. To truly express my feelings about such a complicated piece of media I will have to go into spoiler teritory, but for now, until stated otherwise, I will avoid going in depth and assume you only watched the first season. So should you continue watching Jujutsu after its long introduction you had to go through that is the first season? It is hard to say as the continuation of this story is very... let's say uneven in its strenghts.To help you decide let me start with what I enjoyed the most which is the combination of courage and passion put into this anime by a team of some of the very best artists in the industry. Despite massive challenges (that I will disscus in a bit) this show includes one of the most stunning and creatively impressive tv animation highlights I've seen in a long time, with incredible directing too. The team of very strong and different animators make this season of Jujutsu a compilation of many different styles and approaches animation can take, the scale of which is rarely seen. Sometimes a whole episode will be keeping a quality worthy of being shown in cinema. Music was very fun with wide array of styles reaching some very jazzy places that I enjoyed greatly. Voice actors as always give their all in this series with many impressive performances throughout the show. Story wise author shows some of his best moments with the first arc and many creative ideas throughout the rest of the season, but unfortunately here is where I will start complaining, with all of the ambition in mind it is obvious to me that plot is the weakest part of this show. Lack of development for the many important characters is the most annoying problem. Even in the main trio only Itadori got sufficient level of development for me to care at least a little bit. Characters that are with us since a long time are still being neglected while new ones are being intruduced. Thanks to this problem author turns to a classic move of fleshing out a character right before his/her death, which I always hate to see, especially when they do it by having a long flashback. Antagonists are a very mixed bag. Sure Sukuna is great and I liked Mahito, but people like Toji or Geto are totally wasted which I will discuss in the spoiler section. Fights are mostly badly written. There are few very notable exceptions, but mostly we are putting an established character against some random while the narrator is boring me to death with expositon about said random dude and his power. Rearly do we put two known, major and developed characters against eachother and sometimes when we do it turnes out to be badly handeld (I will get to it later). 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. Many of those fights feel like being here mostly for show with not much being achived. Power system is convoluted, and thanks to the aforementioned narrator we often are just informed of what everyone can do taking out any mystery about some of those uninteresting opponents. Conveluted system also gives the author an opportunity to often get his characters out of tough and interesting decisisons like with Gojo who ended up breaking a rule to his ability just because he is that good. I don't really get what this series is trying to tell me. With no strong theme and lackluster plot, story of Jujutsu is just not very appealing to me. Now let's talk about the production problems and tight timelines, resulting inconsistency in quality can either be very annoying or fascinating depending on you. Sure it is sad that those amazing artists didn't get to achive their vision thanks to corporate greed, with many frankly ugly moments in the series, but it is very impressive to see what they managed to achive after getting to know a little about what kind of problems they had to face. I would love to see a documentary about how we even managed to get what we did. Should you watch season two? I would say most likely, but if you have problems along the way take a similar approach as one would in museum. This show made history and history while important doesn't have to be always pretty. Now time to get into detail with my more important problems, first one is with Geto and the bad structure of this whole story. If you, like me after watching Jujutsu zero assumed that Geto is dead and surely the one in the first season must be an imposter than chances are that the first half of this season will be very frustrating and will fail in many of the goals it is trying to accomplish. In the whole prequel arc I didn't care at all about Geto, problem which would be easly fixed by placing said arc at the begging of the story. This would also make Jujutsu zero a much better story. Unfortunately while the first arc impressed me the most it wasn't free of flaws as the fall of Geto himself felt very rushed and didn't convince me at all. Toji also feels wasted, with his only contributions being a power up for Gojo and a push towards evil for a dead soon to be antagonist. Let's talk more about Toji and Megumi. Their fight was one of the biggest let downs of this season. We basically got nothing out of our protagonist who didn't even realize he was fighting his father. How do you screw this up?! This by all means shoud have been one of the best moments in this series. While we are talking about the big characters Kugisaki and Nanami turned out to have practically no arcs at all. Sure Nanami had his epic anime rage against some random, but I don't care. Nanami got basically abandoned by the author in favor of developing Itadori, which I despise as a decision. To be honest woman in this show have always been disappointing either being just a variation of your typical smirki personality or underdeveloped and forgettable like the blue haired Gojo fangirl. While we talk about Gojo I also have to say that I really don't get the hype about the most prideful and unchanging character in this series, but that is me just ranting at this point. I haven't even talked about the many abandoned plot points. That will either be forgotten or reintroduced in the distant future, making me wonder why set things up like politics in the Zenin clan in the first season or other things like that when we barly even touched the subject. I hope that if you enjoyed Jujutsu Kaisen you won't come to my home and murder me in sleep as I've seen some very devoted fans of this show. Enjoy your show, know that I enjoyed it as well and have a great time.

Before I begin this review, I have a confession to make. After Episode 18 had aired, I felt honored as my home country was mentioned in the anime while also slightly amused by the idea the author included it. Hearing 2 different VAs having a vacation in a different country other than the usually portrayed countries like the US, Italy, France, or anything else is weirdly soothing. And yes, this is where I admit that I am a Malaysian. Witness the honored one. It's been difficult to approach Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 with an objective mind, given how it was produced with extremely tight scheduling (onlya week before the episode had to be aired!), and the studio's reluctance to pay its staff fairly. When MAPPA's working schedule is this bad, it's almost impossible to fathom how something like Jujutsu Kaisen could still look so good, despite the simplified look and some awkward drawings during action sequences. The staff had to give 120% of their potential to push out the episode for us, devoted fans of Jujutsu Kaisen, and to satisfy the company's greed for mainstream attention. At this point, it's hard to determine which approach is appropriate, as praising it would justify the decision MAPPA executives made and later encourage more situations like this for its staff, while criticizing it would discredit the effort of the staff, later proven by the cultural impact and media edits fans have posted for this season. The two arcs this season adapts, Gojo's Past Arc and the infamous Shibuya Incident Arc that had many leaks and spoilers from manga fans; were surprisingly handled pretty well for something that was rushed. Well, since the Shibuya Incident Arc took a delay after Episode 5 aired, and for as little time they made to create 18 episodes fully compassing it, it did not disappoint, to say the least. The magnitude of the fights JJK is known for has multiplied further. Not to mention, we see some of the best voice acting to compete for 2023. Honestly, it was difficult to choose who had the best voice performance between Enoki Junya and Shimazaki Nobunaga, since they put their heart and soul into their roles, not to forget about Gojo's VA though. Truly the perfect example of everyone using 120% of their potential. If there's any actual criticism I could give for this anime, it's the storytelling. While the set pieces are pulled off really well, it's at the cost of some brainless plot conveniences. While the action sequences and the payoffs are great, the story's logic is idiosyncratic, like the previous season. It takes plenty of time to elaborate the power system and techniques used by different people alike, but then allows some characters to ignore that logic and then proceed to explain it in the most general way possible as if it would accomplish anything. This kind of shenanigans can be a real pain in the head for people who are looking for actual grounded shows. The author follows the system until they say that something needs to happen regardless of the outcome. Well, it just means you're going to see some plot armor here and there. Other than that, feast your eyes on some of the most action-packed sequences we have gotten this year. There are still some legitimate criticisms with people claiming the animation looks like fan art (they're not wrong, sometimes the art does look rough and unpolished), but the cinematography and choreography do not miss. It's so fluid that the impact of each of their force is properly registered and does not feel awkward (well, excluding a few scenes that took shortcuts like Episode 17). Taking into consideration the intensity and stakes this series has introduced further, the payoff is immensely satisfying, even greater than JJK Season 1's action sequences. To summarize, Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is a product of great talent that has been stretched thin by tight deadlines. We might never see a sequel of Jujutsu Kaisen that reaches this level of quality ever again, due to staff leaving MAPPA and never to be associated with it ever again. To me, it seems like the swan song of MAPPA's glory, as it all finally crumbles down for the people to see what lies beneath their facade.

This review contains minor spoilers. Everyone told me to wait for the Shibuya Incident arc, that it is one of the best arcs in shounen and I have also seen people comparing it to the Chimera Ant arc from Hunter x Hunter 2011 (something I could almost consider an insult to Togashi's work). It is to no one's surprise that the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen retains many of the first season's flaws. It is still a work devoid of any substance and it contains many notable tone problems; when it tries to be dark it is ruined by the ridiculous monster design and the absolutelyidiotic decisions that the characters make, when it tries to be funny it is instead totally cringe and ineffective. It just feels so cheap, bland and shallow; Gege tries to be deep and psychological in this second season with Gojo and Geto's relationship, Geto's metamorphosis and the Hidden Inventory arc but it fails tremendously and instead turns into a show of mediocrity, superficiality and edgyness which I will talk about later. Of course, I cannot do a negative review without talking about Walmart Kakashi akka "Satoru Gojo" who receives a nice power-up to defeat an enemy; this is pretty annoying, he was a character with a lot of future to participate actively on other arcs and this is what I expected before starting this season, but the guy was dispatched in less than three episodes because Gojo gets a powerup out of nowhere with Hollow Purple; so sad bro, you were a victim of the white-haired generic prettyboy, the Gojo fapping session starts here and expands all across the Shibuya Incident arc; where despite being on a precarious situation he manages to still be asslicked by the rest of the character cast every single fucking episode. This review will be somewhat long and painful to write. First circle of Hell: Animation It is obviously not bad, in fact it is amazing; this is due to the fact that MAPPA has every worker on extra hours and working like cattle constantly so the studio can get more revenue from this thing without any substance, of course the animation will be very pretty.., but I still have a complaint, am I the only person who feels that this animation has no soul or inspiration whatsoever? Yeah, yes, it looks objectively cool, but I feel nothing watching Gojo take off his blindfold and reveal his eyes, I feel nothing watching the fights, I feel nothing watching the domain expansions, I feel nothing but utter apathy; there is no sense of any kind of soul behind the pretty things I'm watching, something that was a similar complaint to the one I had in my review of Oshi no Ko. This feels like you're putting lipstick, long eyelashes and pretty makeup on a robot that's constantly fighting another robot, to the point that by the time I watched the fifth fight in a row with pretty animation I was getting bored out of my mind, there is nothing in these fights that interests me. The choreography of the fights is weak and mostly consists of who can throw the strongest firework at each other instead of truly interesting and unforced tactics (I'll talk about what happens in the Shibuya arc later). Still, this is in the first circle of hell as it is obviously the strongest thing about this anime and it's still objectively nice and good, there are fights (especially in the second half of the anime, towards the end and climax of Shibuya Incident) that are visually spectacular and it is obvious theres inmense amounts of effort put into them. Second circle of Hell: Worldbuilding Jujutsu Kaisen's world is completely empty; yes, the worldbuilding in this anime is tremendously lame; the powers that be of Jujutsu Kaisen are explained on very silly and superficial ways, it does not feel like an actual world and it is more like randomly-chosen scenarios in which the characters fight, explain or resolve their problems on immature ways. It just does not feel like theres a true world or deep scenario surrounding our characters, there is no explanation or substantial attention to detail in how the authoritarian orders work in the Jujutsu schools or how the government acts in Tokyo at that moment, in the Shibuya Incident arc I was constantly asking to myself "how would high ranks of the government respond to a terrorist attack of such a big scale?" "why arent there any militaristic or police forces moving in when the attack is so notoriously obvious?" Even if they cannot do anything against the curse users or the monsters they can still help people out and let the Jujutsu sorcerers fight without having to care for harming innocent people. The worldbuilding feels extremely vague, the power system on Jujutsu Kaisen is still pretty basic and the curses are bland and not-interesting. It does not feel like there is a world beyond what the characters can see or something that surrounds them, there is not much else to say. Jujutsu Kaisen's Japan feels extremely artificial and it isn't more than a green screen or a chroma where the entirety of the plot happens, there is no depth or substance. Third circle of Hell: Atmosphere and tone The dark atmosphere that Gege tries to settle many times is ruined by his obsession to try and make his characters look "cool" constantly. Jujutsu Kaisen at some point becomes a competition of "who throws the nicest-looking fireworks" throwing powers everywhere, doing idiotic stuff because it is cool.., etc, it is extremely cheesy and I couldn't help but roll my eyes and get stressed because of the tenth time in which Gege used his lame excuse of a character cast and basically screamed at my face "LOOK HOW COOL MY CHARACTER IS WOW, LOOK AT HIS POWERS, IMPRESSIVE YOU HAVE TO BE IMPRESSED WOW" until it just became tedious and boring. This show is also sold as a shounen with a dark atmosphere and tone, yet it fails in establishing one correctly due to what I said in the first place and the ridiculous monster design; yet it isn't the worst thing in this anime and in some points the atmosphere is quite decent, like the discussion between Fushiguro Toji and Geto Suguru in the weird japanese-like halls or the big haunted house in episode one.., up until this last one is ruined by Satoru Gojo, of course, as he has an innate talent to ruin every single scene or plot that is minimally interesting. Fourth circle of Hell: Characters In this case, the worst circle of hell and the worst thing in the entire anime. One of the things that annoyed me in the Hidden Inventory arc is Suguru Geto's idiotic character transformation; he is taking a shower alone, he starts to say pseudo-intellectual nonsense and CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!! He suddenly becomes Jujutsu Kaisen's Adolf Hitler in basically 3 or 4 episodes; this is not character development yall, this is just a cheap and forced character metamorphosis so the plot can advance, you can't make me think that this guy goes from one pole to the other, completely radical only because one of his fellow workers died in a job where older people should be respected and because he failed a mission; have you not seen thousands of situations like this? Don't you think that people like you, in very emotionally-hard jobs like this, should have developed coping mechanisms to deal with work and emotional problems? Doctors, morgue workers, volunteer people in poor places, fireworkers, military, etc, workers on these lines of labour have ways to face problems on their work; Geto did not care at all, he suddenly decided to transform into Jujutsu Kaisen's third reich for an absolutely idiotic thing. Suguru Geto is a terrible villain, badly written and without motivations that inspire the viewer to be genuinely interested on him, he is your classic cliché BBEG who decides to become a fucking CULT LEADER and do a fucking massacre for dumb stuff that occured in the past. This guy decided to go thru wisest path and kill more than half of the population, become an authoritarian imbecile cult-leader and practice eugenics, it seems that he never thought that massacring most of the human population and only let a handful of people alive is a bad idea. Wow a girl you rescued from a hostage mission died, who cares? Like in the first season, Satoru Gojo is a character who leaves a lot to be desired and someone who Gege constantly puts in your face to try and impress you (in my case failing tremendously) with his OP powers and cringe attitude. Gojo has always been a terrible teacher and badly-written character, I will never understand people who like to pretend that hes a deep character. I particularly remember one scene in which Gojo could have ended the Shibuya Incident arc in only three episodes.., but the plot needs to advance and he decides to make the dumbest decisions known to mankind, an enemy is running away from Gojo and he decides to fucking WALK; bro, he is running away please just RUN AND CATCH HIM, it just doesnt make any sense, it doesnt even happen because of his mental state since hes able to carefully analyze his environment and the battle conditions, it is a scene that insults your intelligence; he could have killed all of the bad guys right there with ease, escaped from that situation and could have went vs Geto, yeah thats it Shibuya ends in fucking three episodes. Episode 9 is one of the worst episodes, since it is essentially a Gojo asslicking session where every character simps for him, saying how powerful he is and yadda yadda, of course all of the fights he has Gojo completely destroys them and he can only be defeated with a deus ex machina forced by Satoru Gojo's stupid decisions. TLDR is basically that Gojo is an extremely stupid character, ridiculous, overrated and badly-written; with inconsistent speed feats and incomprehensible decisions, who is absolutely obnoxious and cringe, I'll never understand the success of this character in popular anime culture. Gege has the tendency to mercilessly execute his characters before they can even get any type of character development or interesting plot, he has an obsession with killing them before the viewer can even feel anything for them and due to this their deaths and the things that happens during the Shibuya Incident are completely irrelevant and feel like nothing to me; it is this bad or I just don't have empathy, I'm not sure, I just cannot feel anything for such bland characters. This anime uses the "Kimetsu no Yaiba" tactic, which is inserting flashbacks and memories with sad music just before someones death so the scene can be sadder; of course it feels overtly artificial when you see a character who is clearly going to die and they suddenly insert a random flashback, no, I will not empathize with this character only because you're putting these flashbacks in their last moment. To empathize with a character and feel emotions the writer needs to build them in a correct way previously; the death scenes are good but they don't belong to anyone who feels human and thus they are very ineffective. Nobara is a nobody who has done nothing in every season and is absolutely bland as a character, Megumi is still the same Sasuke-trope guy from the first season and there is not a single type of development or change, they are still the same person they were on the first season and beginning of Shibuya, the Kyoto alumni are absurdly forgotten in a conflict which should involve both Kyoto and Tokyo schools (because of their danger and scale, it doesn't matter what Mechamaru thinks or does) and the rest of the secondary characters are the same cliché stereotype they were on the first season, there is nothing that makes them unique. Because of this, the death of people on Shibuya doesn't affect me on any way and thus Itadori's "development" feels forced and cheap, Itadori's trauma is treated in a very immature and short-lived way; as a viewer I wasn't capable of putting myself in the protagonist's shoes because I don't care a single bit about Jujutsu Kaisen's character cast, and this incapacity to empathize with such a bland cast is an enormous error on what should be a tremendously tragic and chaotic arc (Shibuya Incident) simply because they don't feel like real people, they are just stereotypes, it's like killing a bunch of NPCs without any relevance. The last episodes also have the tendency to disable and suddenly materialize characters out of nowhere in a way that is convenient for the plot, suddenly the strongest sorcerers appear in the battlefield and I'm asking to myself "where were these guys when we needed them???? why in the fuck do they appear in the ending of this conflict???" It is a terrorist attack of a great scale and these guys weren't even present here, they appear in the ending to throw around exposition dumps to the spectator and not help in anything, its ridiculous. The worst thing a storyteller can hear is: "I don't care for any of these characters" and it certainly rings true here. I don't care about anyone on here. Final Words: I didn't expect much but it still managed to disappoint me, the second part of Jujutsu Kaisen isn't more than the continuation of something tremendously mediocre and a shounen hidden under a veil of pretencious darkness. It is like if you turned a battle of edgy robots without any personality in japanese animation with generic anime character-designs, this battle will for sure look great but behind of that there isnt anything else; its just a show of pure style over substance and a show that is constantly trying to convice the viewer that it is more than it really is, a mediocre shounen show with generic, badly-written characters, stylish-yet soulless battles, stupid decisions, edgyness, pretenciousness and more; because of these reasons, it is interesting to me how people treat Jujutsu Kaisen as the last bottle of water in the desert, truly, I can't see how this is not less mediocre than, for example, Boku no Hero Academia or any shonen flavour of the month.

I've never seen a show more devoid of substance that's as popular. It's honestly mind-boggling! And clearly, this feeling is not mine alone (read some of the reviews here). The most heinous sin here is the incoherent storytelling and world-building. In fact, I think almost everything else about the show is equally bad too. World-building Starting with the world-building, how do you even make sense of it? Each episode you have the "opportunity" to see a new mechanic or some random gibberish being said about this mechanism. It's so lazy to have the characetr using a new power explain how he does it every time there'sa new power being introduced. And, none of it has to make sense or be consistent with the existing world building (the little there is). Characters I truly can't seem to care about any of the characeters. Yuji at the beginning of the show was traumetized by the kids being turned. At this point in the show, he's just so casual about it. I don't care about the people dying and neither do the characters. Every character is just so bland. I have no clue what anyone's motivation. Why are the villains bad again? They just are? Animation Honestly the only thing that might be keeping this show afloat is the animation. I painfully watch each episode just to see the cool animation and powers. I suppose that is indeed the apppeal. But then again, is that all it takes for a show to get a 8/9 on 10 on MAL??