Jujutsu Kaisen

First, one must consider that it's a weekly published shounen manga with its stereotypical flaws and pitfalls, and readers should expect that they exists here as well. Considering that, Jujutsu Kaisen is overall a very engaging story, with great characters, great consistent themes and a fun power system. The characters are very engaging with good narratives and arcs. But most of all, I love how so many characters parallel, mirror and contrast each other, giving each other more depth and showcasing the circle of violence, isolation and negativity that the new gen has to break. The themes are very consistent throughout with good conclusions and are very enjoyable,like connection and love vs isolation, or perseverence through dark times vs getting lost in the past. Of course it has flaws. There are some pacing/sequencing issues, some set ups and plot points are dropped, some ass puls or a lack of foreshadowing for certain events exist, and the ending is very rushed. Because it's rushed the last 5 chaptes have a weird pacing and often seem more like cliffnotes which makes it lackluster, but it ties off the themes in a satisfying manner. (Many of those same issues can be found in other weekly published shounen manga. As I said: expected flaws). But still, despite it's flaws overall it's a fun and enjoyable manga.

It pains me to say it, but this manga got popular off of Mappa's flashy art style, hot male characters and fan service. None of which even is in this manga. You can tell this is the first big project by this author. His inexperience makes it very obvious. This manga starts slow, painfully similar to any other Shonen. It's nothing special. Then Shibuya Incident arc is incredible, beautiful and so so interesting, and then it's a nothing burger till the end. Its author shows no respect for any character or structure he has put in place, disregards all logic and mostly does whatever the heckhe wants just because he wants to. He also seems to be so painfully aware of his fanbase, because every and all decisions seem to be done just to shock it. It's almost like he was toying with the reader, just for the sake of it. He owes all his success to Mappa's brilliant season two, because if there's a big reason why JJK is this popular, it's because of the fan service, not because of whatever he thought he was cooking, story wise. The fan service overshadows the characters he himself created, mainly Gojo Satoru (and his relationship to side character, Geto Suguru)*, being probably the only good thing to come out of this mess. It seems like he hated how strong he made Gojo because every single fight Gojo finds himself in shows him having trouble he shouldn't be having at all, logically speaking. Getting sealed? Don't make me laugh... *I have to say, even though the Hidden Inventory arc has a lot of issues structure wise, making it absolutely not perfect by any means, it truly does make you long for how good this manga could've been. The potential is truly all there. As another review said, this manga makes you feel just a tad smarter than you actually are, because out of all the theories being made online as the chapters were actively coming out, not one of them was worse then whatever crazy direction JJK ended up going. Every second spent reading the chapters past Shibuya was painful for me and all the people around me who were also reading them at the same time. There's much more to say but I will limit myself to a general overview of this manga. The absolutely incredible, massive and devastating wasted potential of this series is truly what upsets me the most. For this reason, I can't help it but go with the lowest score possible.

It's a disaster, where the Author is way too hung up over the worship and screen time of his antagonist character, to the point where every other character suffers from a lack of exposition and the Author's lack of understanding of his own set up systems and logical orders of how things work with Cursed Energy and Cursed Techniques. It's hard to get behind the thinking process between the various death and revival writing decisions, this Manga also severely avoids and rejects the golden rule of "Chekhov's Gun", because sometimes fights can start, certain things are implied to be done, or there is a loomingthreat about to come just for it to be either; Forgotten and 40 chapters later quickly wrapped up, completely side lined till the end, or just the means of things getting exciting completely erased through the acts of killing characters off. This Manga will give you the feel you are marginally smarter, and could imagine something MUCH more interesting, fun, exciting, and technically sound than whatever shit the Author stirred up. I believe whoever has written this is also was greatly aware of its target audience, and monitored them closely to intentionally "shock" them with certain writing off decisions. Anything that seems out of the ball park or you think will be explored in a cool way you can forget about because you likely will never be satisfied if you have self-respect for your intellectual standards. During the time this Manga was still continuing, rooting for any character is met with a fear that they die because of some bullshit reason, anyone else got akame ga kill flashbacks? Either way, you could genuinely read ANYTHING more worth your time, than this where an Author is too hung up on exquisite fancy powers, or making his antagonist a unique force of nature that is like a god with the random diablos ex machina shit he can do until at least some point the author had to conclude the manga in 5 chapters and decided to just make it utterly filled with nothing but slop because the author likely achieved all he wanted to do and probably needed to just clean up a bit. I would rather eat my own shit than read a single chapter of this Manga again.