Jujutsu Kaisen – 28 – There Has to Be a Point

I’m a little mad at Jujutsu Kaisen. If it were a person, I’m not sure I’d be talking with them at the moment. It digs the hole a little deeper by making us relive the terrible moment of Amanai Riko’s death.

While I appreciate Suguru’s rage, and he clearly knows his way around summoned cursed spirits, his entire battle with Touji seemed futile; pointless. The mission failed, the damage done. Touji even told Suguru he was free to go. But of course, he didn’t go.

But once more, Touji is a tough customer. At first Suguru’s onslaught of spirits seems too much to handle, but then Touji slashes Suguru’s ace, the Rainbow Dragon, right down the middle.

When he summons a spirit that freezes time, Touji overcomes that too, and Suguru is left with a huge, nasty X-shaped gaping wound that doesn’t kill him, but sure as shit puts him out of comission, along with Satoru. It’s also heavily implied Kuroi is dead too.

What makes Touji’s easy victory so maddening is that he has absolutely no philosophical horse in this race. He’s simply an assassin hired by the Star Church to kill the Plasma Vessel, and the job is done. He delivers Riko’s body as proof, and it’s clear the church rep who receives it fell off the deep end a long time agooo.

The one single, insufficient consolation we can glean from this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day is that Touji’s mediator straight up declines the offer to take him out to dinner, saying there are only two reasons for him to see him and no more: for work, and in hell. Touji seemed genuinely hurt by that rejection.

And then Satoru appears for round two.

Something’s off, Touji repeatedly says in his mind. This Satoru is different; more serene and unhinged…maybe even high. We learn that, after using the reverse cursed technique to heal, Satoru is currently at a state of being beyond simply seeking revenge for Riko. If he’s high, he’s high on the world itself.

And while Touji knows quite a bit about the Zen’in clan and Satoru’s Limitless abilities, he doesn’t know everything, and that’s why he dies. Satoru has his Red, and he has his Blue, and Touji is confident he can deal with both. But Purple? He ain’t ever seen that, and it puts a gaping hole in him.

With his last words, Touji mentions that the Zen’in will be taking his son Megumi in two or three years, and Satoru can “do what he will” with that info. But Satoru’s primary concern is recovering Riko’s body from the church. When a healed Suguru enters the church, there’s an eerie bluish-white light and constant applause from the brainwashed flock.

As Satoru somberly carries Riko out, he asks Suguru if they should kill everyone there. Suguru considers this, but says there’s no point; these aren’t the bigwigs who ordered a hit on Riko. But as Satoru walks into the blood red hallway, which might as well be hell itself, he asks if there really has to be a point to killing the followers.

Suguru insists that there absolutely has to be. After all, Jujutsu Sorcerers aren’t supposed to harm non-sorcerers. But in his current state, it’s clear Satoru doesn’t care about that, or much of anything.

This was another tough watch, packed with beautiful combat animation which only served to underscore how pointless it all was. Amanai Riko is dead, and for all their combined power, there’s nothing her former protectors can do about it, except grieve her if they wish (or can) and move forward.

Undead Murder Farce – 04 – Staking One’s Reputation

It’s time for everyone’s favorite severed head-tective to reveal the identity of Hannah Godard’s murderer. Everyone is assembled in the study as Rindou Aya begins by reiterating her seven starting seven problems, five of which rule out an outsider doing the deed. As innocent as everyone looks, the killer is in this very room.

The sixth of the seven problems has to do with the sound of the murder. Hammering a silver stake would have made a sound. But whether someone heard that sound depends on the time. The seventh problem solves the problem of the sound: the silver stake was merely planted in the storage with the madame’s blood to look like it was the murder weapon.

In truth, the weapon no longer exists. It was a stake made from frozen holy water, which melted upon being thrust into the madame’s chest. An empty bottle was left at the scene, but it had dust on the inside, meaning there was never water in it. She even determines that the killer arranged the scene to trick Lord Godard into thinking the murder took place while he was hunting, when it really happened before then.

Put it all together, and the only person who had the strength to stake Hannah without a hammer and break the storage room lock to plant the stake…is Godard’s younger son, Raoul. His last line of defense is that his hand doesn’t bear the burn marks from handling the silver stake, but Aya chalks that up to him cutting his burnt fingers off with a sword. Because he’s a vampire, his fingers would regenerate without the burns.

When he has no other avenue of escape from Aya’s accusations, Raoul rushes to attack her, but is stopped dead in his tracks with Tsugaru’s free hand. He hands Aya, who is disappointed Raoul outed himself before she finished her conclusions, to Shizuku, then kicks Raoul out the window.

As for the motive, both of Godard’s sons didn’t share their parents’ desire to ally themselves with humans. Raoul was the more disillusioned of the two, such that he acted to make it seem as though a human hunter had killed his mother so Godard would end his pro-human practices.

But now that he’s been caught, there’s no escape for Raoul. He may be a vampire, but he’s no match for the Tsugaru, who toys with his prey with a florish of step-right-up showmanship, applying precise yet devastating blows with all the ease of cracking his knuckles. Before killing Raoul, Tsugaru tells the tale of a band of “ruffians” hired by the Meiji to purge all supernaturals, called the Oni Killers…and Tsugaru’s one of them.

For her part, Aya is apologetic that things might not have worked out so well for Lord Godard, but at least the wool was pulled from his eyes. Vampires living in harmony with humans is a nice ideal, but clearly much harder to pull off than he imagined. Before the sun comes up, Lord Godard sees Aya, Tsugaru, and Shizuku off, while Miss Annie from the press shows up for interviews.

While Shizuku chases Tsugaru with their trunks, she gives Lord Godard some parting words of advice not to give up the good fight. Even if his son is outed as a murderer, there’s nothing stopping the lord, who is undying, from trying again to be a credible ally to humans.

She also confirms that the man who stole her body and half of Tsugaru’s—London-based, professor, cane with an “M” engraved on it—visited Godard before she did. This is clearly Professor James Moriarty, who has definitely messed with the wrong immortal detective woman.

I didn’t expect Raoul to be the culprit, but Aya did a thorough job laying out the facts of the case and burning away all of the irrelevancies until naught but the truth remained. It’s talky for sure, but like Kitou Akari’s Kotoko in In/Spectre, it helps that Kurosawa Tomoyo’s Aya is very fun to listen to, and her words are accompanied by visuals and fun camera angles to kept me engaged.