Jujutsu Kaisen: The Culling Game Part 1

In short, the only good episodes were EPs 1-2 and 12. For a new viewer, these are the only good episodes you should watch with the addition of EP 9. The rest are skippable and not only add nothing but deduct from the overall experience. For a complete overview of the story of the Culling Games, we are better off with the source material. So we have 3 good and 1 acceptable episodes out of 12. The rest are in terms of tonality and pacing, a complete joke. How did this happen? The more the season went on the more obvious it became that the director Goshozonoactually just took a massive spiteful shit on JJK in order make the 1st Part of the 3rd season his "artsy" directoral portfolio piece before fucking off from the studio after his contract expired. The weird "movie-like" angles, shots, the agony inducing "kill bill" scene, forced "funny" moments all scream of a pretentious wannabe creative millennial going rampant and just doing whatever he wants without any oversight. Obviously this makes the end-product feel like a disjointed mess, most notably in tone. Mappa has partial guilt by giving this animal full creative control rather than controlling him like during the 2nd Season (Shibuya Arc) . There should have been several other people next to him at all times to slap the pen out of his hand whenever he wanted to put his own bullshit in. At the very least the damage he has done is minimized to the 3rd Season 1st Part and the fans can have a directoral reset for the 2nd Part of this season.

There are seasons that entertain, and there are seasons that assert dominance. JJK S3 Part 1 belongs unapologetically to the latter. It does not merely continue a story ,it reaffirms its authority, and cementing MAPPA’s masterclass once again ,delivering a work so assured in its execution that it renders competition almost ornamental. What unfolds here is not chaos, but controlled devastation. The narrative moves flawlessly, balancing philosophical weight, character collapse, and escalating brutality without ever losing coherence. Every confrontation feels inevitable, every silence deliberate. This is storytelling that understands tension not as noise, but as architecture. MAPPA’s craftsmanship reaches a level that borders on indulgence. any commentabout the animation and how crazy it went will never scratch the surface of appreciation it should get. Motion carries intent, impact carries consequence, and choreography becomes a language of its own. Fights are no longer flashy visual effects ; they are statements to be understood. Each sequence is composed with an almost obsessive clarity, where destruction feels earned rather than displayed. And yet, what lingers is not merely the visual grandeur, but the atmosphere. The season breathes in dread and exhales inevitability. There is a quiet, suffocating elegance in the way it allows moments to settle, to rot, to resonate. It trusts the audience to sit with discomfort, and rewards that patience with something far more enduring than fleeting hype. Then comes the final course. MAPPA closes the season not with excess, but with refinement, an ending that feels less like a climax and more like a conclusion ordained from the beginning. A five star indulgence, plated with precision, leaving nothing wasted. And that final touch, Aizo, served not as spectacle, but as aftertaste, lingers with a quiet authority that says everything without needing to say more. “I’m with Ishigori: My stomach’s full.” Not because it overwhelms, but because it satisfies completely. At this point, calling it a contender feels almost dishonest. This is not a race. It is a coronation. AOTY. And it doesn’t ask for permission.

This is the 3rd season of JJK If you're a JJK super fan (probably a new anime watcher), you won't be disappointed. If you're a person who was critical of JJK like I was. This might be your breaking point. The Good: The animation presented here is a solid 8.5/10. Of course, no modern anime with their extremely heavy usage of CGI could receive a 10 from me. This season has some unique art-style direction choices. Some people will like it, some people will hate it. I like unique things, so I like it. What nobody will probably hate is the fights. The actual quality of thefight-animation is extremely good here (though I think the fights are weak overall due to reasons I will cover later). Once you get past the slog of the earlier parts of the season, nothing but cool-looking fights remain. Cool enough, that I'm giving this season a 7 rating (due to the animation) compared to the 6 I gave JJK S1. However, I do think the writing, story, and characters have returned back to JJK S1 levels. The Bad: Honest to God, have you ever heard the statement "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the victim?" The same logic holds true to a lot of things: "You either die obsessing a hobby, or get far enough into the hobby to become a critic." Shows like Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man separate the connoisseurs/elitists from the tourists. The intellectuals from the average intelligence. The most important part of any story is the plot, writing, and characters. 3 Categories in which Jujutsu Kaisen (in my opinion) almost completely fails. The characters are decent/mediocre. While the overall cast is bad, it does have a few standout characters (3 in my opinion). But the story/plot and writing are just abysmal. The story is so weak in this season. It's the weakest story I've ever seen in a mainstream anime. The plot is so non-existent, it's almost at the level of "God of High School." Literally the only reason to watch this show is the fights. If the fights weren't pretty, this show would be a mega-flop. Don't get me wrong, I'm not holding that against it. The show's primary purpose is to be an action show. But what separates the "excellent" from the "average" is execution. There's a reason games like Call of Duty MW1, COD MW2, COD MW3, COD BO1, COD BO2 are still remembered so fondly. Not just because it was a different time when people could actually trash-talk in the multiplayer. But also because they put serious effort into the single player, and the story was excellent. Go back and play those games, and you'll see that the gameplay, if we're being honest, isn't as good as memory would cause you to believe. But man, the vibes, the energy, the overall experience, the story, the characters, are so bloody good that those games are still talked about to this day. It's not just the gameplay that made those games memorable experiences. It's also the "The Numbers Mason," and the "Remember No Russian," and the "Ramirez," and the "Soap trusted you, I thought I could too," and the "Freedom for you Mason, not for me." Sure, we're playing for the gameplay (animation/art-style/pretty fights), but the story is important. It's what separates the "excellent" from the "average." In the category of story, Jujutsu Kaisen (outside of Season 2) just utterly sucks. And that's why, the show is just not that good, nor was it ever that good. The writing is also bad. Firstly, what exactly do I mean by writing? I mean the direction choices, the fight-direction, and the characters. First regular direction choices. As stated previously, they decided to make some weird decisions with the art style in this season. I appreciated what they tried to do, so I'm not knocking them too hard there. However, this season has some of the most atrocious info-dumps I have ever seen in an anime. Especially for an anime this big, to have such a novice and beginner way of dumping exposition is embarrassing. It's so bad, it's literally become a meme (RDCWORLD JJK). Secondly, the fight-direction. To be honest, it was absolutely amazing in this season. There are a few stand-out fights here that had some really awesome ideas about them. My only complaint is baby-sasuke's main fight. Yes, baby sasuke, I don't even know the character's name, and for reference, I've watched every single Jujutsu Kaisen episode as it has come out since S1 (S1, I think there were 6 episodes out when I started watching). The antagonist in his fight just straight-up ignored his ability and started using it without the necessary preparation. The overall fight-direction for that fight was abysmal, but I can't spoil anything so that's all I will say. And that brings me to the characters. You want to know why I specifically said that "the actual quality of the fight-animation is..." instead of just saying "the fights here are extremely good." It's because the characters in JJK are so WEAK that I literally couldn't give a damn about any of the fights. I'm here for the spectacle and nothing else. Like if somebody handed you NBA tickets and you don't even watch basketball, don't know the team, don't know nothing, and you still went to the game because you had nothing else to do. The fights aren't good, because I'm not invested in them at all. And i'm not invested in them at all, because I don't care about the characters. I literally can't be bothered to remember their names. Even if I don't care about the characters, if the writing was good like it was in S2, it could make me care about the way the characters themselves care about the characters (that's a tongue twister). That is to say, I could sympathize with the characters. But the amazingness that took place in S2, doesn't take place here. The character-writing is back to JJK S1 levels, hell it's even worst then that. In terms of mainstream anime, JJK probably has the absolute worst fight-impact/ emotional investment in the fights. The soundtrack is non-existent; it doesn't have an amazing soundtrack during fight-scenes to amp up the hype/moments. As corny as it is, characters yelling out their attacks really does add something to the experience. The voice actor is able to put an emotion in the voice that allows you to hear the struggle of the character. Like when Vegeta is charging up his attack against Cell, the music plays, and he finally yells out "FINAL FLASH" you hear something in his voice and it gives you goosebumps. JJK doesn't have the soundtrack, it doesn't have the "DETROIT SMASH" or "GETSUGA TENSHO" or "SPIRIT GUN" or "KAMEHAMEHA" or "FIRE-BREATHING FiRST FORM" or anything. The characters are boring and bland, and you don't care about them (or atleast I don't), and due to that, the fights just have absolutely 0 weight. It's pure spectacle, only pixels on a screen, and I don't feel a damn thing while watching it. Due to everything I've stated above, if you're tired of JJK not being an actually good show with good writing. You can go ahead and drop it. As for me, if a show has excellent animation/art-style, that alone I can give a show a high-rating. The fight direction in this season was really good, even if I think overall the fights were extremely weak. So off spectacle alone, I'm giving this a 7, but to be honest, it probably deserves a 6 just like JJK S1.

The second season of JJK was kind of poop but I figured I'd keep watching anyway, call it sunk cost fallacy if you want. This season was also mostly poop although for slightly different reasons. The premise is basically that everyone is playing Fortnite and there's this system where you get points when you kill people, and if you get enough points you can add new rules to the game. Yuji and friends enter the game so they can add a rule that allows people to escape the game, and also to search for someone who can free Gojo from the cube. Sounds pretty simple,right? Well, JJK doesn't seem to think so. Episode 3 of this season is maybe one of the worst things I've ever seen in a shonen series. The entire episode is basically a fucking PowerPoint presentation where the narrator explains how the game works, only they do it in the most confusing way possible. I don't think they even explain that it's essentially a battle royale, they basically go straight into rules minutiae, plus they feel the need to explain the motivation of every single character and what their plans are going to be for the rest of the season. It's the type of thing I'd expect to see in, like, Ex-Arm, not a big budget series from a fairly competent studio. Outside of Episode 3, which is pure ass, the season still suffers from several common issues. There are a lot of fights, but most of them suck because it's usually not clear at all what's going on. If you think of something like Jojo, the best Stands are the ones that have clear limits (ex: Mandom rewinds time 6 seconds, that's it, that's the whole ability), this is part of the reason Part 6 is so bad, you've got Stands like Diver Down where you think you understand what they do but then they do something completely new that makes no sense, and then you've got ones like Dragon's Dream where the ability is so convoluted that you stop trying to understand what's going on. JJK is full of shit like this, the fight with the woman that has the star ability legit gave me Dragon's Dream flashbacks with how much time the narrator spends trying to explain how the ability works. Any time domains show up it's the same thing, the narrator starts infodumping you almost as an acknowledgement that none of the shit on screen makes any sense. I think there are also a few different characters in this season but at this point it just feels kind of hard to give a shit about any of them. Yuji is there, I guess. The JJK version of Sasuke is there, too. I can never remember what his name is. Panda shows up. Maki spends one episode going on a Man of Steel-esque rampage that just feels like a bunch of meaningless shit happening. That might be it. There's also the dude from the movie. Just like Shibuya Incident, this is another "serious arc" so we can't have any of the fun character interactions that made the first season entertaining (most of the fun characters got killed off, anyway). Plus, it's another Avengers-level fight for the fate of the world so everything needs to be as bombastic as possible. If entire buildings aren't exploding, something's gone wrong. There are a few spots where the animation looks nice and you can actually tell what's happening, also the opening theme's pretty good. The last episode of the season is the only one that I would say was legitimately entertaining and it barely even feels connected to the rest of the season since it features Movie Guy. You could literally skip the entire rest of the season and watch that episode and not miss out on anything. The stupid narration is kept to a minimum, the powers of all the characters are pretty simple, minimal domain shit, not a lot of CGI outside of the one awful-looking bridge scene. It's not a good episode because of anything set up before it, it's a good episode because it's a dude fighting multiple other dudes and it looks cool. So you know what, that's my recommendation. Skip the entire season and just watch the last episode.