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 – 34 – The Taste of Regret

A word from Gojou and the remnant of the real Getou’s soul still within his body starts to choke the person currently controlling the rest of his body, Fake Getou is impressed, but is able to regain control. The Prison Domain closes around Gojou and shrinks to slightly larger than a Rubik’s Cube. Unless Gojou kills himself (fat chance) the Domain is unusable as it only holds one.

One of now-dead Muta Koukichi’s “Insurance” devices drops into Yuuji’s ear and reports that the device would only be activated if Gojou is sealed. Mei Mei is initially skeptical, but Koukichi manages to convince her. She sends Yuuji out to warn the other sorcerers, holding off two high-grade cursed spirits closing on their position. Meanwhile, the three standby teams start to head into the first veil.

A pair of special grade cursed spirits roam Shibuya with the goal of killing all the assistant supervisors, i.e. suits. Yuuji emerges from the Veil, sees a horde of transfigured humans, and makes quick work of them, saving a handful of non-sorcerers.

He then climbs to one of the highest points in the district and shouts out a warning to everyone at the top of his lungs: Gojou has been sealed. As soon as Nanami hears this, he switches up the plan: he, Ino and Megumi will rendezvous with Yuuji.

As the Prison Domain processes all of the information that comprises Gojou Satoru, the cube is rendered too heavy to hold or move, making it vulnerable. Thanks to another Mechamaru device in the station, Koukichi is able to tell Yuuji that Gojou is immobile…but that likely won’t remain so for long.

Getou has to stay with the cube, so Mahito, Jougo and Choso all head out with one goal: kill Yuuji. Of the three of them, only Jougo wants to awaken Sukuna; the others just want to kill him. There’s also the matter of Mimiko and Nanako asking the Fake Getou to release his body, something he tells them he’s not going to do; he made a promise to them, not a binding pact.

Team Nanami meets up with Yuuji, and Nanami leaves Yuuji and Magumi in Ino Takuma’s care. Ino lays out the stakes: if Gojou dies, not only will the Gojou clan die with him, creating a massive political free-for-all, but the balance of power between sorcerers and curses will be upset, meaning the age of humans in Japan will be over.

One would hope Japan wouldn’t have to rely on one goddamn person to maintain its existence, but here we are. It’s up to Yuuji, Megumi, Nobara, and all the other sorcerers stationed there to rescue Gojou from the Prison Realm, or die trying.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 33 – Thirteen Orphans

Not gonna lie, while it was fun to watch Gojou have a little squash match—literally squashing Hanami into a thin paste on the wall—it was also a little unnerving.

For much of the battle, Gojou is sporting a giddy smirk usually worn by villains when they’re doing villainous shit. He’s enjoying this a little too much. And he’s also operating under the assumption that his enemies are underestimating him.

But as was mentioned last week, the reason they’re even there fighting him is because Getou is properly estimating Gojou and his power. He discusses the length of time and the amount of space within which Jougo & Co. have to keep him confined. Jougo thinks it’s crazy to think they can do that.

But Getou has this all figured out. While Hanami is lost, Jougo and Choso are able to keep their distance until a train finally arrives, from which Mahito and roughly a thousand transfigured humans alight. The crowds of people are slaughtered wholesale; those who fought to get to the front of the door first are killed first.

Mahito then destroys Hanami’s confining roots to allow another mass of people to fall to the level below, and Mahito and Choso combine abilities to tear them to shreds. There’s a method to this massacre: to further back Gojou into a corner where he can no longer logically calculate “acceptable losses”.

Once Gojou reaches that state, he unleashes his Infinite Void, instinctively only using it for two tenths of a second. For those two tenths, each and every man and woman around him will be in the hospital for two months…but they won’t die. It only takes Gojou 299 seconds to eliminate all of the roughly 1,000 transfigured humans. It’s Gojou going full Neo.

When he’s done, he’s out of breath and looking pretty haggard, and that’s when Getou gets him, revealing the proverbial “Thirteen Orphans” (his hand in the Mahjong game): the Prison Doman. The conditions are met, and Getou is in deep doo-doo. There’s just one problem: while the man before Gojou certainly looks and sounds like Getou Suguru, Gojou can tell it’s not really him.

Sure enough, “Getou” removes the crown of his head to reveal a brain with teeth; Getou’s body is only a host for that brain, and the person it belongs to. So that’s something. Even so, the brain’s owner is able to use all of Getou’s abilities, which is why he was able to checkmate Gojou here.

While still with Mei Mei and Ui Ui, Yuuji hears from a little Mechamaru earpiece that Gojou has been sealed. And since Gojou is the strongest of the sorcerers, it likely falls to Yuuji and his impressive potential to defeat the strongest alliance of enemies he’s ever faced. We’ll see if he and all the others can really make up for the loss of Gojou.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 32 – Between the Veils

Gojou arrives at B5 of Shibuya Station as requested, and sees that there are two distinct veils in operation. Waiting for him on the tracks are Jougo, Hanami, and Choso. We then switch POVs to Yuuji, the only one whose whereabouts weren’t established last week. He’s with Mei Mei and her relative Ui Ui near Meiji-Jingumae Station. Mei Mei gives him a choice: fight scores of humans transfigured by Mahito, or one big Cursed Spirit.

Yuuji picks the latter, and ends up facing off against a giant locust Cursed Spirit. He’s powerful enough to have limited speech, and claims to be “clever”, but while the destructive power of locusts in general is quite colorfully laid out by the narrator, the bottom line is that this guy is no match for Yuuji even before he gets properly warmed up. After a flurry of cursed energy-charged punches, the locust is out for the count, and the outer veil is lifted.

Hanami bars Gojou’s escape with roots, but Gojou has no intention of going anywhere lest they kill the hundreds of hostages in the station. Jougo shows off just how damn joyfully evil he is by killing a few hostages anyway. Jougo has set things up this way after Getou provided advice about how to deal with Gojou: he’s strongest when he’s alone and has space to do his thing. If he’s confined in a small space packed to the gills with non-sorcerers, he can’t go all out without severe collateral carnage.

After Choso distracts him by shooting a blood beam straight at his face, Jougo and Hanami rush in with their fists and domains, but Gojou is able to slip away, lowering his mask and asking if that’s the best they’ve got. He doesn’t seem to know that Jougo & Co. aren’t trying to give their best, nor are they trying to outright defeat him. They’re buying time for the boss, who said he needed twenty minutes before coming in with his Prison Domain. Gojou might just break a sweat at that point.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 24 (Fin) – Only So Many Open Seats

When Eso—who like his more monstery-looking brother Kechizu isn’t a cursed spirit but a physical being—unleashes his special attack Wing King, Yuuji grabs Nobara in a princess carry and uses his superhuman speed to flee Eso’s range of attack.

They’re then headed off by Kechizu, who douses them both with his blood. Eso then activates a cursed technique called Decay that ensures both Yuuji and Nobara’s skin will be rotted away until by morning nothing will be left but bones.

We learn that Eso, Kechizu, and their brother Choso comprise The Cursed Wombs: Death Paintings One through Three—the result of either failed or successful (depending on your point of view) experiments in cross-breeding humans and cursed spirits. The three see each other as one and are devoted to one another, as they are all they had when they were sealed away prior to Mahiru stealing and releasing them into the world.

Unfortunately, Eso and Kechizu fucked with the wrong jujutsu sorcerers. Nobara is one of the worst opponents they could have, as she can use her Straw Doll Technique Resonance on the blood splattered on her to turn their curse back on them. Yuuji is an even worse match, as thanks to being possessed by Sukuna he’s immune to all poisons and poison-like techniques.

Nobara makes clear that Yuuji still makes pain, but pain alone isn’t enough to stop the likes of Yuuji. Together the two bust out their own techniques and deliver crippling blows to Eso and Kechizu. Just as last week was Megumi’s time to shine, Jujutsu Kaisen saves its finale for some of Yuuji and Nobara’s most badass moments.

Eso can’t use Wing King unless he releases Decay, but when he fears his brother is near death he does just that, playing right into the sorcerers’ hands. Both he and Kechizu are killed—not exorcised—they are physical beings their bodies remain. Choso senses their loss while playing The Game of Life with Getou and Mahiru.

Yuuji and Nobara win the battle without suffering serious harm. Yuuji asks if Nobara is okay psychologically after killing a physical being. Nobara’s answer is superbly true to her character: when you’re a sorcerer, “these things happen.”

There are only so many people you can save, and as she puts it, only so many open seats in her life for people who will sway her heart. Yuuji just so happens to be the rare person in her life to bring their own seat and sit down. It’s her way of saying Yuuji is one of the few people she cares about, and it’s beautiful.

The two are initially distraught upon finding Megumi passed out under the bridge, and when he wakes up, they’re over the moon with relief. Megumi gives Yuuji the Sukuna finger he secured, but both of them are surprised when a mouth emerges from Yuuji’s hand and eats it. Thankfully, Yuuji’s body is able to withstand yet another finger. Then Nitta arrives and chastises them for not keeping in contact.

Yuuji, Nobara, and Megumi managed to defeat three Special-Grade curses, a feat for which Gojou claims credit for his diligent instruction as he chats with Utahime on her day off. Megumi and Nobara agree to keep the fact Yuuji “resonated” with Eso and Kechizu a secret to protect their bud. Toudou Aoi and Mei Mei officially recommend the three sorcerers—along with Maki and Panda—for promotion to First Grade status.

Maki and Panda spar together as Toge (who I assume is already a First Grade) keeps score; both of them determined not to get left in the dust by the three first year up-and-comers. Nobara then goes on a celebratory shopping spree with Yuuji and Megumi, using Yuuji as her pack mule.

Getou, Mahiru, Choso, and a host of other high-level baddies remain at large to be eliminated, while perhaps the greatest threat remains within Yuuji in Ryoumen Sukuna. A “To Be Continued” at the very end of the episode serves as a promise that at some point Jujutsu Kaisen will return to settle these matters with its trademark blend of bombastic action, heartwarming camaraderie, and rib-tickling comedy. I already can’t wait.