FIF#138-Jujutsu Kaisen

Yuki Itadori is a young man blessed with unnatural strength and agility, to the point where he doesn’t want to join any sports clubs so that he wont stand out.  When his grandfather passes away, he leaves Yuji with one final request, “Always help people and die surrounded by people”.  Yuji never imagined those words would play into him battling demonic curses with the help of his own inherited curse.  Now, Yuji is enrolled at Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High, where he hopes he’ll get his new situation under control.  But the road to that solution wont be easy and there will be plenty of demons and mortals looking to take him down.

 
While 2020 was a slow time for the entertainment industry around the world, Japan still kept up pretty well with its many Anime productions.  And while we’d have to wait a bit longer for new seasons of My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer (though the movie still arrived and ended up becoming one of the highest grossing films of 2020, no joke), there was one other series waiting in the winds to fill the void they’ve left vacant.  That show is Jujutsu Kaisen.  But based on the first episode, is this really a contender for THE next big thing in Anime since the aforementioned Demon Slayer or Hero Aca?
 
The first episode of Jujutsu Kaisen feels very, very familiar.  And now that I know it’s based on a long running Shonen Manga, I know why this is.  Not to say that every Shonen Anime is formulaic but after a while you do start to see newer titles borrowing from previous successes (Kind of like how Black Clover borrows from pretty much everything).  In this case, Jujutsu Kaisen seems to borrow heavily from Yu Yu Hakusho and Bleach with it’s main protagonist who doesn’t flinch at the sight of otherworldly monsters and gains the ability to deal with them via assistance from someone more familiar with them. Yuji is pretty much a slightly shorter version of Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach but seems far more chill and a little less passionate right up until the final moments of the first episode.  Honestly, there wasn’t much about the first episode to help it stand out.
 
And then came the final five minutes.  Yeah, it was still very by the numbers recluctant hero vs evil monster trying to eat his friends fight we’ve seen dozens of times before and will continue to see so long as there’s Anime in the world.  But Yuji’s solution to dealing with this curse was an interesting one, one that’s already showing signs of being a double edged sword he may or may not be able to control.  Suffice to say, it saved the first episode.  After nearly 23 minutes of, been there, done that, the final few moments had me sitting up and saying, “Ok, now we’re getting somewhere.”  Plus there’s likely a whole host of other characters (and potential cute girls) to liven things up.  Still need to see if they’ll help things along.
 
If the final moments of Episode 1 hadnt happened, I’d be willing to just write off Jujutsu Kaisen.  But now, I need to give it a few more episodes before I decide whether to continue with it or not.  It’s very by the numbers Supernatural Shonen but maybe with a little more distancing from previous successes like Bleach and Yu Yu Hakusho, maybe Jujutsu Kaisen can turn into a potential contender for a spot in the still mostly vacant (to my knowledge) Big 3 of Shonen…personally I think My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer have nabbed two of those spots but that’s a discussion maybe for another time.