Jujutsu Kaisen – 47 (S2 Fin) – World of the Future

It seemed like Tsukumo Yuki had come to save the day, but she only buys a little bit of time, which turns out to be pointless, as “Getou” has already accomplished everything he needs to implement his grand scheme. Yuki still wants to rid the world of cursed energy, but “Getou” wishes to optimize it. That means changing the world into one big cursed energy laboratory.

Using the Idle Transformation he just gained by absorbing Mahito, “Getou” remotely changes two types of non-sorcerers (those with cursed techniques and those who have consumed cursed objects) into sorcerers, dramatically shifting and complicating the balance of power. He’ll have these two group kill each other so he can learn more about cursed energy.

“Getou” asks Yuki to consider that he just unleashed a thousand malevolent Itadori Yuujis. In any case, even he cannot predict the chaos that will ensue, which is the whole point. Even though Yuuji and the others are freed from Uraume’s ice thanks to Chousou’s poison blood, there’s nothing for them or Yuki to do.

“Getou” tells Yuuji, Sukuna’s vessel, he has high expectations for him; he then declares that the world of the future will turn back the clock to the Heian period, which in this universe was the golden age of jujutsu. After unleashing a horde of cursed spirits, he snatches up the Prison Realm with Gojou still inside, and slinks away.

What follows is a montage (or if I’m less charitable, a slideshow) documenting the non-sorcerer world’s reactions to the Shibuya incident. There’s a power vacuum in Japan, but those still ostensibly in charge are going to reveal the existence of cursed spirits.

Jujutsu sorcerers like Yuuji were trained and sworn to protect the ordinary people from cursed spirits, but now there aren’t enough sorcerers to go around. As such, ordinary individuals, groups, couples, and families going about their lives are now potential targets at any moment. It’s hunting season.

These developments really kick up the bleakness level of a season that was nothing but devastating losses for the “good guys.” When a little girl who is apparently on her own is chowing down in an evacuated store, she’s beckoned by a cursed spirit to run outside.

This girl’s reaction is almost serene as the immense monster that nearly swallows her whole is killed by a sorcerer with a katana. That sorcerer is Okkotsu Yuta, and while he’s not precisely the cavalry, he’s not about to let a little girl die on his watch.

Title cards lists five new declarations from Jujutsu HQ: Getou’s death sentence is reinstated, Principal Yaga is sentenced to death, Gojou is exiled from jujutsu society, Yuuji’s death sentence is reinstated, and Yuta is dispatched as Yuuji’s executioner.

These announcements could have been made with visuals, but weren’t; I can’t tell you if this was an intentional creative choice or made out of necessity due to the tight studio deadlines that have plagued the whole season. All I know is it feels like the latter, and that’s not great.

In fact, from the moment “Getou” leaves Yuki, Yuuji and the others in the lurch, this entire episode felt like an extended preview for a confirmed sequel. My three and a half star rating is a product of my mixed feelings about this episode. It was wonderfully bleak, unrelenting, and at times downright creepy. But it was also little more than an ellipsis when I was hoping for more closure after twenty-three weeks.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 46 – Who’s the Boss?

Before getting back to “Getou” interrupting Yuuji’s defeat of Mahito we check in with other parties still breathing after this ordeal: Kusakabe and Panda (now in Gorilla Mode), Meimei, who is in Kuala Lumpur with Ui Ui telling a friend to divest from Japan, and Chouso is skulking in some subway crawlspace.

Yuuji’s plan is very direct, and dumb: Run as fast as he can towards “Getou” so he can punch him really hard. This doesn’t work, because “Getou” is too clever, and has all of Getou’s tricks up his sleeve, including cursed spirits that make Yuuji think he’s falling into a massive chasm that doesn’t exist.

“Getou’s” battle with Yuuji is suddenly interrupted by Mahito trying to grab him. Instead, “Getou” turns Mahito into a tangle of ribbons that are absorbed into a glowing orb “Getou” identifies as Uzumaki, a Supreme Art that enables him to compress many spirits into one dense attack. In the time it takes “Getou” to explain all this, he and Yuuji are surrounded by members of Kyouto Jujutsu High. The cavalry has arrived.

After Momo gives the signal, Kamo and Mai unleash their ranged attacks, while a Kasumi who just may have revenge on her mind comes in close with her sword. “Getou” shatters her blade, and prepares to unleash Uzumaki on her, but she swept away to safety at the last moment by Kusakabe, Utahime, and Momo. Kamo and Panda prepare to press their attack to get Gojou back.

The battle is interrupted unexpectedly once again, this time by Chouso. Under the influence of those weird grainy dreams of halcyon days that never were, he declares Yuuji his little brother and swears to protect him. He also enlightens everyone by identifying the entity within Getou’s body: one Kamo Noritoshi.

No, not that one; apparently another Noritoshi who was disgraced and would be 150 years old. He’s been extending his life by taking Getou’s body, and there’s every indication Getou wasn’t his first host and he’s a lot older than 150. Chouso unleashes the full power of his blood manipulation, unfazed by the arrival of Uraume, who is apparently on “Getou’s” side as well as Sukuna’s.

Uraume uses ice-based techniques to freeze everyone in place, but Yuuji isn’t affected (probably due to Sukuna) and frees Chouso. Momo, who was airborne, joins them, but Uraume simply uses a even more powerful ice technique to immobilize them.

They would be goners were it not for the timely arrival of one more player: a woman we haven’t seen since the Star Plasma Vessel arc: Tsukumo Yuki. If she’s confident enough to blow “Getou” a kiss, she must be pretty powerful. We’ll see how she and the others fare against him.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 45 – Another Cog in the Wheel

The battle with Mahito continues on street level, and the iconic 109 tower is finally collateral damage. Yuuji doesn’t let the sign go to wast, as he ends up throwing it at one of Mahito’s mouth snakes. Mahito beheads himself and the head runs around while his body continues fighting. He creates some super-offensive transfigured humans, but while they pack a punch they can’t take but one from Toudou.

Up against the wall and running out of options, Mahito uses Doman Expansion, hoping that 0.2 seconds will be enough to unleash Idle Transfiguration, or something. Honestly I’m so focused on keeping up with the splashy battle animation that the narrator’s attempts to explain what’s going on goes mostly over my head. That said, it is fun to watch Toudou and the towering Takada-chan pair up to beat the shit out of Mahito in Toudou’s imagination.

By slicing off one of Toudou’s hands, Mahito thinks he had the guy beat, only for Toudou to clap Mahito’s hand. This fucks up his one remaining hand, but lets him swap with Yuuji, who delivers one hell of a punch directly to the face. Mahito, apparently sufficiently warmed up, casts Idle Transfiguration, and reaches the “true form of his soul”, which is a lot more monster-y and tough. Yuuji’s punches bounce off his skin like it’s hardened steel.

Mahito drives Yuuji underground, creating a massive sinkhole that reaches several hundred feet belowground. But Mahito ended up creating the perfect enclosure for his demise, as this sufficiently beaten-up Yuuji discovers he can pop off a Black Flash at will. Toudou returns and claps with his stump, switching Yuuji back into the perfect position for a decisive blow.

Now apparently running on soul-fumes, Mahito is suddenly terrified of Yuuji, who declares he no longer needs a reason to kill him or any other cursed spirit; he’ll simply kill and kill and keep killing until he “rusts” away to nothing. The setting changes to a cold snowy forest, with Mahito scampering away with rabbits while Yuuji and pack of wolves slowly stalk him. Ya know, subtle stuff.

Then Yuuji makes the mistake of hitting Mahito in such a way that he’s driven several dozen (or hundred) feet away from him. That allows Getou—or rather the entity that has hijacked Getou’s body—to appraoch Mahito and consider whether he should “save” him. I vote “nay”.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 44 – Brotherly Love

JJK twists the knife one more time to open this outing, showing us a random but beautiful memory of Nobara spilling coffee on Gojou’s $1,700 shirt, then hard-cutting to Juju looking down on Nobara’s lifeless body, a gaping bloody hole where her left eye once was.

Yuuji is, as you’d expect, extremely torn up about this, to the point he loses all will to fight or even dodge Mahito’s blows. Mahito, who has already well outstayed his welcome this season, starts waxing philosophical at the top of his lungs while beating Yuuji to a pulp.

His main point is that this is a war, whoever wants it more wins, neither of them have counted the ones they’ve killed, and eventually Mahito will even forget Yuuji. But before he can deliver a fatal blow with an arm-blade, Mahito hears a “clap” and suddenly Yuuji’s on the other side of the platform. His big brother, Toudou Aoi, has arrived.

Yuuji tells Toudou how not only Nobara, but also Nanami died, and he himself killed countless others as Sukuna; so many that he may never be able to save enough people to even it out. His convitions turned out to be nothing but an excuse.

Toudou, accompanied by first-year Nitta Arata (probably Akari’s brother), tells Yuuji what he needs to hear: the two of them are Jujutsu Sorcerers, not bound by “sin” or “punishment” like ordinary folk. And even should their comrades die, they are never truly defeated as long as they keep fighting.

Buoyed by Toudou’s inspiring words and partially healed by Arata (who also “freezes” Nobara in her current condition, telling him she has a “non-zero” chance of surviving), Yuuji snaps out of his funk and joins the fray, delivering Black Flash body shots to Mahito while Toudou keeps the two of them clean with clap switches.

Whither Miwa, Mai, Kamo, Nishimiya, and Utahime? Mechamaru made sure they were on a mission south of Kyoto on the day of the Shibuya Incident. He tells Miwa this while she and the others are on a train (presumably headed further away from the battle). In the last moments his device is still activated, he essentially tells Miwa he did what he had to do to protect the girl he loved. Now that he’s gone, he wants her to find her happiness anew.

Then we’re back to the beefy Toudou (who naturally shed all clothing above the belt) and a revitalized Yuuji continuing to go at it with Mahito, whom I am now on record as being completely and utterly done with. I’m just so sick of any and all attacks seemingly having no effect on him.

At least we hear his thoughts as he assesses the situation: Toudou’s at full strength, Yuuji’s around 10%, and he’s down to 40%. So even if he doesn’t look it, he’s in pretty bad shape. Of course, that’s when one needs to be most on guard against someone as crafty as Mahito. Toudou rises to the occasion, using a Black Flash for the first time (though it apparently doesn’t affect Mahito’s soul).

He decides to take things up a notch, summoning a whole damn train made out of transfigured humans, eventually forcing the battle to the surface right by the 109 building and coming at Yuuji and Toudou with a many-headed monster. Here’s hoping we can wrap this up soon.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 43 – Harder to Be Strangers

Outside the veil, outside of immediate danger, an injured Nitta insists that Nobara heed Nanami’s words and stay put. But Nobara was never one to stay away from danger; of all the callings she could have pursued, she chose the life of a jujutsu sorcerer, likely the most dangerous job a mortal human could have.

And as long as her two friends Yuuji and Megumi are still in there fighting and she can still fight herself, she’s going back in, leading to her duel with Mahito’s double. As an anime-only viewer, I didn’t know she wouldn’t be coming back out.

Nobara fights with calm focus, her eyes always locked on her foe, and her nails are always probing for weaknesses and strategies for victory. All of her careful preparation and diligent execution pay culminate in the use of her special skill, Resonance, which not only wounds her Mahito, but the one about to kill Yuuji, who had messed up and was on the back foot.

Nobara allows herself a wry grin at the discovery that this is not Mahito, but only a double who can’t use his full repertoire of techniques. In this scenario, one could imagine Nobara doing pretty well in this battle, as a double of Mahito isn’t on the same “special” level as Mahito Prime.

Unfortunately, their battle is cut short just when she declares it to have just begun, as Mahito’s double skitters away. Nobara follows him underground, where he crosses paths with the real Mahito that Yuuji is chasing. Mahito’s double lines up his pursuer perfectly to be in the direct path of the Real McCoy. Yuuji and Nobara spot each other, but it’s too late. The real Mahito places his hand on her face, I knew it was all over for her.

Appropriately, Nobara’s life flashes before her, and thus our eyes. Specifically, we go back to when she was just a first grader in her tiny village. Told from the point of view of a bullied girl named Fumi, Nobara likes her blue backpack all the other kids hate, and beats up her bullies. Nobara and Fumi become fast friends, and soon Nobara introduces her to Saori, an older girl who is a newcomer to the village who serves them tea.

The more time the two younger girls spend with Saori, the more Fumi notices a change in the gender-creative Nobara, no doubt due to the older girl’s influence. In the parlance of former times, she gets a little more girly. But one day they arrive and Saori’s house is covered in graffiti and intentionally buried in snow. Saori’s family eventually leaves town. Fumi holds Nobara’s hand, and witnesses her crying for the first time. Not just crying, but bawling her eyes out.

Some years pass, and Nobara is the next to leave the village to attend high school in Tokyo. Nobara puts up a brave face that initially has Fumi worried she wouldn’t cry for her like she did for Saori. It isnt until Nobara turns around just as the train doors close that Fumi sees the tears welling up; tears followed by her own as her best friend is bourne away from her.

Back in the present, Saori is now an salarywoman working long nights by the glow of her computer. When a co-worker hands her some tea, she reminisces about the younger girls who used to visit her when she lived in a tiny village (her mom was apparently a spiritualist kook who was run out of town).

Just as Nobara was changed by spending time with her, Saori, an only child, regarded Nobara as her little sister, and as such acted in a more mature manner. She wonders what Nobara would think of her if she saw her now; if she’d be disappointed in what had become of her.

The present Nobara finds herself in a white void filled with chairs, most of which are empty. But Yuuji, Megumi, and Gojou are sitting on a couch being their usual selves, and high-school age Fumi is looking at her with the last expression she saw: on the verge of tears.

Both of them revert to kids, and Nobara apologizes for not being able to fulfill her promise for the two of them and Saori to reunite someday.

Nobara, who knows full well what it means to have been touched on her face by someone like Mahito, uses her final few moments to smile back at a petrified Yuuji and say “I’ve had a pretty good life.” And then that life ends.

Two things I’m comfortable saying I hate: when a non-male character dies simply to fuel the flames of motivation for a male character, and when a character who didn’t get their due finally receives a backstory right before being killed off.

I’ll also admit that, due to carelessness, I learned just before watching this episode today, and not before, that Nobara would die. And I should have hated everything about this episode, but I couldn’t. My cynicism melted as soon as I saw young Nobara’s brightly smiling, then sobbing face.

JJK was able to introduce Amanai Riko, get me to care about her, and make her demise resonate deeply, all in just the space of a couple of episodes. Meanwhile, we haven’t seen or learned nearly enough of Kugisaki Nobara for my taste in the past forty-two episodes, but I saw and learned enough both throughout those and here in “Right and Wrong, Part 2”, that her unfair, premature, heartrending, noble end hits that much harder.

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST

Jujutsu Kaisen – 42 – One Mahito, Two Mahito

As voices from the past go through Yuuji’s head as he wanders Shibuya Station in search of another battle, a half-burned Nanami also shambles along, both in the station and in his Happy Place: a pristine Malaysian beach. When he finds a huge mass of transfigured humans, he pounds them all into jelly, and then Mahito shows up, just moments before Yuuji does.

Unlike countless humans he’s transfigured and used as tools and weapons, Mahito actually gives Nanami a relatively clean and quick death, perhaps in deference to their previous fights. But yeah, that’s the end of Nanami Kento (RIP), whose last words to Yuuji are “Take it from here.” Yuuji is certainly game, but he’s also a hothead, and Mahito knows exactly what buttons to push to throw him off balance.

A battle against Mahito is a battle of millimeters, so any adverse change in balance can get one killed. Fortunately, a Yuuji apparently healed and energized by Sukuna’s brief awakening manages to keep up with Mahito’s grotesque nonsense, enduring being pushed against one wall by another wall made of flesh, and Mahito even leaning in for a kiss only to shoot his mouth out like a deadly blade.

Mahito knows Yuuji has a kind heart, and uses un-transfigured humans to trick him, delivering a blow that stuns him. Meanwhile, we learn that several hours ago Mahito split himself into two, with one going down into the station and the other prowling at street level.

While the former is the one fighting Yuuji, the latter encounters Nobara, who is eager to kill him for Yuuji’s sake. Mahito has other ideas, like dragging Nobara’s lifeless corpse before Yuuji in hopes of breaking his brain for good. One can simply never underestimate Mahito’s level of unhinged depravity.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 41 – My Neighbor Mahoraga

First, I wanted to address the fact that Studio Mappa has been running its animators absolutely ragged and not paying them what they deserve. I’m joining the chorus of viewers and fans in calling for more realistic deadlines and better pay for the staff of massively talented but massively overworked creatives. If that means longer delays between episodes and seasons, so be it. We can’t have animation houses full of Akiras from ZOM 100.

With all that said, what an amazing episode of television this was, especially when it’s likely it was still being drawn hours or even minutes before it aired in Japan, which is just nuts. One fine sunny day, Gojou basically told Megumi that he had the potential to beat him someday, if he was ever able to subjugate the most powerful shikigami in his Ten Shadows repertoire.

That shikigami’s name is Eight-Handed Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga, and this week, stalked and bloodied by Shigemo Haruta, Megumi summons him as a last resort, promising Shigemo that he’ll die first. It’s pretty clear Shigemo is no match for Mahoraga, but when Sukuna arrives fresh off his win over Jougo, he tells the virtually unconscious Megumi that he still needs him for his plans, so he can’t let him die.

That means Sukuna must defeat Mahoraga, which is no easy feat. Every attack Sukuna throws at him, Mahoraga adapts, becoming faster, stronger, and even growing to kaiju size. It must be said that Sukuna looks like he’s having the time of his life fighting Mahoraga, which tracks since he rarely goes up against someone who puts up a fight. Jougo, for all his smoldering flames, was a pushover by comparison.

As the battle progresses and gets more and more insane, buildings crumble to the ground and large swaths of innocent bystanders are massacred. This culminates in Sukuna using his domain expansion, Malevolent Shrine, which is different from other domains in that it doesn’t create its own space, but exists in the regular physical world, thus increasing its range.

In this domain, Sukuna is able to unleash enough attacks in quick enough succession to outpace Mahoraga’s adaptation. Mahoraga perishes in a cataclysmic explosion that creates a huge expanse of nothingness where Shibuya once stood. When Sukuna returns to the ground, a cowed Shigemo is overjoyed to have survived, but even he ends up slice up like a Christmas ham. I won’t miss him.

Sukuna leaves the battered Megumi he saved with Ieiri, then withdraws back into Yuuji, telling him to “savor” the rush of memories of everything Sukuna did when he was in control. Yuuji is overwhelmed with grief and guilt as all of that hideous imagery washes over him and causes him to vomit.

He then resolves to keep fighting; otherwise he’s nothing but a mass murderer. I think he’s being a bit harsh on himself. He’s a good kid, and what Sukuna did while in his body wasn’t something he could have controlled, or even been expected to control. He was caught up in what happens when any system relies on one person (Gojou) to maintain balance.

That said, with presumably no hostages left alive after Sukuna’s battles, this “Shibuya Incident” has devolved into a complete and unmitigated disaster. The only “wins” that can really be derived are that Yuuji, Megumi, and Nobara are still alive, and most of Tokyo still stands…but for how long?

Jujutsu Kaisen – 40 – We’re the Ants

Megumi can’t compete with Berserk Touji’s speed and power, so he tries to use fleeing hares to cover him while he puts some distance between them and formulates a strategy for victory. Unfortunately, Touji is so goddamn fast and so goddamn strong, he’s able to kill every single one of Megumi’s thousands of hares with flung bits of debris,

Kusakabe, who has Panda assigned to him, is absolutely determined not to get into a fight he won’t survive. He abhors a hassle, and thankfully Panda doesn’t know Shibuya well enough to locate B5 on his own, which is the one place Kusakabe is certain they’ll both get killed. Touji and Megumi continue their cat-and-mouse, with Megumi trying to use office sprinklers and Nue’s lightning to zap Touji, to no avail. Worth some style points, however.

Knowing Ieiri Shouko is somewhere on site to patch him up, Megumi decides to push his limits a bit for an all-or-nothing last-ditch attack against Touji. Of course, even with near-perfect timing he fails, but demonstrating his skills jolts the real Touji, whose body is being borrowed by another curse user, back into lucidity. He realizes this is his son he’s fighting, and when he learns his name is Fushiguro (and not Zen’in), he stabs himself in the brain to break the curse user’s link and end their fight.

That’s probably as close as we’ll get to Megumi meeting his father, because there are much bigger fish trying to fry each other. Taking up Sukuna on his offer, Jougo throws everything he’s got at him, but his attacks and defenses are just as ineffective against Sukuna as Megumi’s were against Berserk Touji. That said, two Special Grades going at it certainly makes for some striking visuals as they tear through downtown with no regard for collateral damage.

Kusakabe, delayed by Getou’s secretary Suda Manami, is the first to sense they all need to get the heck out of there, but they’re too late: as Jougo brings a freaking meteor down on top of him, Sukuna insists everyone remain still until he says so. He finally tells them they can go less than a second before the meteor falls on him, but it still misses, and Sukuna decides to whip out his own flames.

The result is academic; Jougo perishes, and meets his departed friends in a white void, lamenting that he lost and that only Mahito is left. Sukuna even invades this void, but not to continue the fight; instead he tells Jougo that in a thousand years, he was one of the more entertaining fights he’s had, so he should be proud he lasted as long as he did. This moves Jougo to tears.

Then someone named Uraume, perhaps drawn to Sukuna’s presence comes to his side, apparently ready to continue serving him. Sukuna seems pleased to see him at least. I’m not pleased to see ponytail guy, AKA Shigemo Haruta, still alive, but after bashing Megumi’s head in it looks like he won’t be for long as he’s being stalked by a hulking (and pissed) cursed spirit.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 39 – Murder Machine

Rather than escape Dagon’s beach domain through Megumi’s hole, Touji enters and joins the party. Only he’s not quite himself; the Old Lady’s technique was left on after she was killed, so he’s in a continuous state of murderous frenzy, drawn like a guided missile to the strongest one in range—in this case, Dagon. He “borrows” Maki’s staff then gets to work.

It’s a pretty fun (and very wet) battle, but we all knew it would end with Dagon gone and the beach domain with him, and what seemed like a temporarily alliance would break down. After all, this version of Touji likely wouldn’t join forces with the Zenins if he was in his right mind. He isn’t, and his next target is Megumi, apparently the next-strongest.

Just because he tosses Megumi out onto the street and joins him there doesn’t meant Nanami, Maki, and Naobito are in any better a way. In fact, this just isn’t their arc. Were it not for Touji, Dagon would have killed them all. But now that Dagon is dead, Jougo shows up to mourn his comrade’s death, then burns Nanami, Maki, and Naobito to a crisp. Then he senses Sukuna, or rather one of his fingers. Sure enough, Nanako and Mimiko are feeding one to an unconscious Yuuji.

Jougo shows up in a hurry and burns the girls, but they survive thanks to Nanako’s cameraphone. Jougo feeds Yuuji ten more fingers, so Sukuna can be temporarily awakened while Yuuji’s body takes time to repress him. It works, and Sukuna’s first act is to cut Jougo’s arm off then slice off the top of his head for not bowing low enough before him.

The Nanaba sisters raise their heads when ordered to and make their case: if Sukuna kills the fake Getou, they’ll give him another finger. This displeases him, and he beheads Mimiko in an instant. When Nanako screams in anguish, and prepares to attack him with her phone, he slices the top half of her head off, then cuts her into a gory fine dice.

RIP Nanako and Mimiko, trapped between allowing the fake Getou to continue desecrating the man they loved, and having to ask Sukuna for help. I guess they figured it was better to at least try with Sukuna. He wasn’t interested in helping them, but he tells Jougo he’ll fight for the cursed spirits if Jougo can score one hit on him. Like the sisters, Jougo prepares to go for it, because what the hell else is he going to do?

Jujutsu Kaisen – 38 – Mollusk Melee

When we left Mei Mei, she had been sealed in a coffin and buried under a giant gravestone within the domain of one of Fake Getou’s cursed spirits. While she’s able to break out of the coffin in under three seconds, thus avoiding her guaranteed hit of the disease curse, she knows she can’t keep it up indefinitely.

She determines that the attack targets the greatest concentration of cursed energy, so she momentarily diverts all of her cursed energy to one of the two crows in the domain. Then she asks Ui Ui if he’d die for her, and of course he will, because he’s infatuated with her, so he makes his cursed energy loud while Mei Mei turns hers off.

As a result, the spirit puts Ui Ui in a coffin, but in the moments before he’s buried and killed instantly by the disease curse, Mei Mei uses her remaining crow as a kamikaze bullet. In both Ui Ui’s and the crow’s case, putting their lives on the line is rewarded with a boost of cursed energy.

Mei Mei and Ui Ui make it out of Getou’s cursed spirit’s domain, but their reward is having to go up against him directly…but that’s for another week. The balance of the episode deals with Nanami, Maki, and Naobito doing battle against an octopus cursed spirit named Dagon.

Initially, it seems like a weakling. Nanami and Maki are certain the drunk Naobito will be of no help, but are shocked as he makes the first move, sealing the diminutive octopus in a flat frame and tossing him across the platform. A swole octopus man emerges from a great rush of water. The little guy was still in a larval state…but now he’s all grow’d up.

Naobito then exhibits his other superpower: being able to talk someone’s ear off. He has a particular axe to grind about the default settings of 4K HD televisions, specifically the “soap opera mode” that eliminates motion blur and the like. As someone who immediately turns all that shit off when I buy a computer, I felt seen. I like this guy.

But his ranting is germane to the battle, because his technique involves splitting seconds into 24 frames and being able to track and move within and through those frames. Contacting Dagon places him in the same time space as Naobito, only without the tools to operate. In this way, Dagon mops the floor with Dagon.

Unfortunately, Dagon isn’t damaged, either by any of Naobito’s attacks or Nanami’s, despite the two of them being Grade 1. When they and Maki try to launch a three-pronged pincer attack, Dagon uses Domain Expansion, which is appropriately a tropical beach.

Within this domain, Dagon can summon virtually infinite stream of sea creature shikigami. Naobito is able to hold out longer than the others with his anti-domain technique, but eventually all three end up mobbed by the shikigami feeding frenzy.

Maki manages to escape the first wave, already ashamed that Naobito had to save her earlier. But it’s okay, Maki isn’t Grade 1, after all. She’d be a goner a second time were it not for the timely arrival of Megumi, bursting through the wall of the domain and giving Maki a three-section staff to stay in the fight.

As Megumi fights to keep his domain within Dagon’s domain active, he’s an easy target for Dagon’s shikigami, but fortunately Nanami takes care of them for him. He’s missing his glasses and most of his shirt, and Naobito lost his right arm, but both are still able to fight, and do.

Nanami feels good about the current state of affairs, but he knows it won’t last. That’s when Megumi tells him his actual goal isn’t to play tug-of-war with Dagon’s domain, but punch a hole in it, large enough for Nanami, Maki, and Naobito to escape.

Lacking any better options, Nanami makes Megumi promise he won’t leave himself behind alone, he beckons for Maki and Naobito to hurry over. Before Dagon can respond in time, Megumi makes a hole in his domain. But before anyone can jump into the hole, someone else emerges…Touji. That’s…certainly not ideal!

With Yuuji KO’d and in Nanako and Mimiko’s hands and now this situation, the battles keep getting tougher and tougher. A lot will depend on what becomes of Yuuji and how well Mei Mei fares against Fake Getou, because I don’t see a battered Team Nanami being able to make a much of a dent in Touji.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 37 – Less Chatter, More Splatter

Yuuji heads for the station where Gojou is being held, but on his way he encounters a huge mass of people getting cut to ribbons by transmogrified humans and other cursed spirits. Being Yuuji, he can’t just run past all this and do nothing, but he also has a job to do, and it’s not this. Thankfully, Inumaki Toge appears and is ready to “salmon, salmon”, i.e. take care of this situation so Yuuji can go to ground…where he encounters Choso.

Even when he exhibited his ability to kill civilians with blood bullets, I’ll admit to having allowed Choso to fly under my radar. After all, he’s not Getou, or Mahito, or Jougo, or even Hanami. But he does have an axe to grind with Yuuji personally. He’s motivated and focused on getting revenge for his brothers, and he achieves first blood…never what you want from a blood manipulation user. Yuuji suffer multiple wounds but is so goshdarn tough he’s still able to get a couple licks in before he’s cornered.

His Mechamaru talisman speaks up again, telling him to go to the bathroom. When Choso follows him he finds all of the sinks and toilets are broken and the sprinklers are on. This dissolves his blood and makes it impossible to use his most lethal abilities: his hypersonic blood beam. Yet even with the odds seemingly evened a bit, he still proves deft at close-range hand-to-hand combat. He can also still use his blood manipulation for other things.

Choso doesn’t take Yuuji lightly. His brothers wouldn’t have lost to just anyone, and even though Yuuji only gets a grand total of three good hits on him, those three hits hurt Choso bad. At the same time, once Yuuji’s liver is pierced, he knows he can’t hold out long, but is resolved to kill Choso or die trying, giving others the opportunity to save Gojou. It’s a knock-down, drag-out fight that brims with evocative imagery, inventive acrobatics, punishing impacts, and masterful use of camerawork, lighting, sound, and color.

Then suddenly, when Yuuji can’t get up anymore, everything goes quiet and the camera goes still. We get a wide shot of him in the bathroom doorway, and hear Choso’s slow, measured steps before he appears from behind the wall like a specter. He’s about to deliver a killing blow, and Sukuna is disgusted. But Choso’s blow goes wide. His head filling with fuzzy VHS-quality memories that never happened, he loses control of his blood manipulation, and he wigs out. It seems Sukuna did Yuuji a solid…I wonder if he’ll ask for something in return.

Choso wanders off in his distressed fugue-like state, allowing Nanako and Mimiko access to Yuuji to “begin”…something. They seem like wild cards, what with the sense of betrayal they must feel towards whatever took over Getou’s body. Whatever they’re up to, Yuuji is in no condition to resist, or even get up.

This was a thrilling, immersive, and hugely entertaining tour-de-force of sight and sound throughout. The only two demerits that keep it from five stars? 1.) Some cheap-looking pans across still shots of the murder mosh in the beginning, and 2.) the narrator chiming in too often to deliver inessential details on the mechanics of Choso’s abilities, which I felt that hurt the flow of the battle.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 36 – Hammering In My Head

Mei Mei and Ui Ui had no trouble at all with the curses they fought, while Yuuji and Megumi have to catch a KO’d Ino out of the sky. He’s alive, so Megumi will stay with him while Yuuji heads back to the station. As for the people who did this to him, Granny gets her comeuppance when it turns out Touji’s soul was able to overpower her grandson’s body. She ordered him to kill sorcerers, and Touji starts with her.

Finally, Maki sends Nobara back up to street level with Nitta Akari to assist Ijichi, after word came down that supervisors were dropping like flies. They encounter the kid with the creepy hand-sword and blonde ponytail, whom Nobara assumes got to Ijichi. But the kid is sharper than he looks, and sends his familiar-like cursed tool after Nitta and handles Nobara with relative ease.

I’ll admit that watching Nobara get jobbed in the first time in forever we’ve even seen her fight is not the coolest, nor is watching blondie repeatedly stab poor Nitta in the leg and backside. But at least he pays dearly for these heinous actions when Nanami struts in, ready to rumble. He has no patience whatsoever for word-sparring, and instead just bashes the kid into oblivion when it’s clear he has no useful intelligence.

With the veil that was keeping sorcerers out lowered, Mei Mei and Ui Ui’s next opponent is a bit tougher: Getou, or as Mei quickly realizes, the fake Getou. She’s ready to fight him, but he summons a Special Grade Disease Curse called Smallpox Deity, who is able to use Domain Expansion to shut her in a coffin.

Mei Mei gets a kick out of having her life be seriously threatened for the first time in years. Nanami prepares to head down, and brooks no argument from Nobara when he tells her to stay put: she’s not Grade 1, which is the minimum level needed to fight the guys down there. That includes Choso, whom Yuuji runs into when he arrives at the otherwise eerily deserted station. Nothing’s going to come easy from here on out.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 35 – The Slow Blade Penetrates the Shield

Takuma, Yuuji, and Megumi determine that the ones who lowered the veil keeping sorcerers out is actually positioned outside that veil, from a conspicuous vantage point. That point turns out to be Shibuya Central Tower (AKA Cerulean Tower), where they find and engage the three curse users stationed up there.

Using Megumi’s shikigami Nue to fly them up, Takuma engages the granny and her grandson bodyguard, while Yuuji and Megumi snatch up a swole mustached guy and send him plummeting to ground level.

Takuma demonstrates his ability to summon the powers of the Four Auspicious Beasts by donning a hood and serving as a medium. It’s a nifty ability, but the grandson proves adept at protecting his granny from harm as she chants.

Meanwhile, Mustache guy proves quite a tough cookie, as he suffers no ill effects from the sudden 41-story drop, while hand-to-hand conflict proves just as fruitless. Yuuji even gets scratched by his dagger, and he should consider himself lucky it wasn’t poisoned.

When Granny finishes chanting, her grandson transforms into Touji. In a flashback to 1989, we see her using the corpse of a target’s daughter to get close enough to stab him in the neck. She and Mr. Mustache were “free” back then to do as they pleased, and licked their chops at the prospect of earning a huge bounty from assassinating the newly-born Gojou.

Unfortunately, by the time they’re able to get close to him, his aura and mere gaze are so powerful they have no choice but to retreat. When Gojou was born, it upset the balance between cursed spirits and humans, and virtually everyone else has been paying for that ever since.

Back in the present, Mustache is in no hurry to retire or surrender; not as long as these whippersnappers don’t know his technique. Unfortunately for him, Megumi is quite astute, and correctly surmises that it’s Inverse, which reminds me of how personal shields in Dune repel bullets and knife strikes that are too fast.

Basically, the harder you hit him, the weaker that blow is, and vice-versa. After summoning a horde of hares to surround Mustache so they has time to strategize, Megumi and Yuuji then come at him with full force, to make him think they haven’t discovered his ability.

They then attack him simultaneously with both weak and strong attacks, and in this way they’re able to negate his Inverse and deliver critical damage to him for the first time.

Unfortunately, Takuma fares far, far worse atop the tower, as Touji pulls off his hood and proceeds to mop the floor with him. If he’s even still alive up there, he could use some backup from his underclassmen.