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 – 31 – Imminent Domain

Roughly two thirds of this week’s JJK is given over to the battle between Muta Koukichi in his Mechamaru Evangelion and Mahito, who is a slippery little punk who can expand his appendages and take the form of many animals. This results in an unrelenting feast for the eyes and ears, packed with beautifully detailed and fluid movement and concussive impacts.

However, because Mahito is so nimble and tough, even an Evangelion powered by literal years of Muta’s cursed energy has trouble pinning him down. When Mahito takes off the kid gloves and expands his domain, it looks like that’s all she wrote for Muta, but he has a number of trump cards, including a “Simple Domain” that overwrites and shatters Mahito’s.

It’s a very spirited back and forth, with Muta going full Shounen mecha pilot with his battle cries that synch up with Mechamaru’s. He became a mole so he could get this close to Mahito and Getou, all to protect everyone back home, most importantly Miwa Kasumi, for whom he clearly has a thing. Just as Kasumi voices her interest in visiting Mechamaru to his  dormant doll, we see that Muta has lost to Mahito, rendering her desire impossible.

Because Muta doesn’t prevail, he isn’t able to warn Gojou about the semi-titular Shibuya Incident to take place during a boisterous Halloween festival. Thousands of ordinary folks are gathered near the most famous intersections in all of Japan, when suddenly a giant 400-meter radius barrier comes down, and a large number of the bystanders are sucked up like “water going down a drain”.

Many of the people are made to demand that Gojou Satoru come to save them, even if they have no idea who that is. Grade 1 vets lead small teams of younger sorcerers being eval’d for promotion, including Megumi, Nobara, Maki, Panda, and Takuma (but not Yuuji). They’re on standby outside the barrier, while Gojou steps inside. If Getou’s mood days earlier is any indication, Gojou may wish he hadn’t answered the summons.