https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2023/12/JujutsuKaisenS2Banner.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 Jumps flagship series. Being the 3rd oldest currently printing series in the magazine behind only One Piece and My Hero Academia its built up its fair share of fans. Many of whom proclaim that it Changed Shounen forever Is that true? I dont really know. So why do I bring it up why is it relevant? Because this season adapts what is widely believed to be Jujutsu Kaisens biggest and best arc its Marineford its Cell Saga the thing that will define it for years to come: Shibuya. And were 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 1amp2. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2023/08/JujutsuKaisenS25.1.jpg Narrative With so much importance being put on the story the best place to start is with Jujutsu Kaisens 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 Gojos 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 oneoff 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 Ill 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. Its tightly written with every part of the narrative focused towards a single goal. There are no unnecessary characters nor rambling and unnecessary sideplots either. The whole thing is a short sweet and to the point story of the last week of a young womans 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 arent a fan of the rest of the series you wont regret it. Its that good. Shibuya on the other hand... How do I say this in a way that wont 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 doesnt 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. Its 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 thats 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. Thats 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. https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2023/12/JujutsuKaisenS220.7.jpg Characters With that out of the way youre 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 twodimensional 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 cant 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 hes in into something fun and bombastic. Jogo for singlehandedly 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 Im 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 Zenin or the entirety of the Kyoto student lineup they dont 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 dont actively bring anything down they dont make anything better with their presence either. They just sort of exist and were expected to care about them. As for the disrespected I cant really talk about this without diving into some major spoilers. So if you dont already know about Nobara and dont 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. Finally we come to the poorly written where Mahito and Itadori sit. I want to be very clear Mahitos VA does a fantastic job with what hes 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 doesnt work because instead of being mirrors its more like they are both angled 45 degrees off of each other. Its like they are mirrors of what the author wants them to be rather than what hes 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 youre left with a bland and poorly written arc that clearly needed a bit more time in the oven. https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2023/07/JujutsuKaisenS22.3.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 nonstop blast of beautiful animation. If youve seen it think like Mob Psycho S2 E5 that sort of thing. The ones that inevitably dominate twitter the day they air as everyone cant help but talk about the wild ride they went on. Those are incredible And its 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 doesnt 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 Im 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 lowdetail 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 didnt 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. https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2023/12/JujutsuKaisenS221.2.jpg OST With that we come to the OST and sound design Regretfully at the time of writing this Jujutsu Kaisens 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 dont believe Jujutsu Kaisens OST isnt anything particularly special so its not like youre missing out on much. Composed by Yoshimasa Terui the best I can say for Jujutsu Kaisens OST is that it does its job. I cant 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. Thats 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 thats 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 Kaisens 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 Im trying to say is they played it safe it and used what they had to the best of their ability. And to me? Thats worth more than an above average OST used mediocrely. https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2023/10/JujutsuKaisenS214.4.jpg Too Big Too Early With that we come to the personal section of this review. Its where I take the time to talk about something random something specific to my experience with a series. This is noholdsbarred spoiler territory so if you havent finished the season and dont want to be spoiled skip it. Dont worry to much its mostly going to be me ranting about where this season of Jujutsu Kaisen fell short. So without further ado lets go https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2023/08/JujutsuKaisenS24.3.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 youre 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 didnt 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 herehttps://anilist.co/activity/667131125.