It's been a good long while since I sat down and watched a big Shounen Jump shounen given how I've ended up feeling about the other ones I liked when I was younger. Don't talk to me about Bleach, I'm still kinda sad about it. But I'm really glad I went ahead and watched this show, because it's so good! It's SO good.

I should say one thing outright, and it's that it starts off a little rocky before a lot of the characters are introduced. I mean, it looks completely amazing and the OST is pretty great, but I do understand why people feel a little underwhelmed by the start of the show. It's not a super original concept, and the plot of the main character having a demon sealed inside him has been done before, but I think as the various aspects of said plot are delved into further it's done really, really well. The biggest strength of the show's writing is the characters and their relationships with each other, so I personally think it gets exponentially better as the cast fills out both on the sorcerers' side and the villains' side.

The characters are legitimately completely hilarious, and I love watching them goof around being friends. Like, there are post-credits gags after every episode, and the one where Nobara, Itadori, and Gojou show up to embarrass Fushiguro because they think he's asking a girl out perfectly encapsulates the main team's dynamic. I'm kind of surprised that the character I expected to be a gag character (i.e. Panda) felt like he fit in perfectly with the rest of the cast because he's not that much goofier than the rest of the cast. What I think is fun is that the villainous curses have an equally fun team dynamic where, much like the heroes, they do things like hang out on a beach and play board games together. One of them looks like an adorable squid creature and he spends all his screentime vibing in the ocean.

None of this takes away from the fact that the villains are a bunch of terrifying eldritch horrors out to eliminate humanity, mind. Mahito is a gleeful, fun-loving child whose superpower is inflicting body horror on humans he touches, and it's used to horrifying effect in the most emotional arc of the series thus far. The world of jujutsu sorcerers is dark and gory, and everyone's kind of messed up by their experiences fighting curses or by the internal politics of the Old Sorcery jujutsu families which are predictably really messy. I feel like the fact that there's a lot of genuine humor is a great way to humanize the cast and drive the emotional stakes home hard when things get dire.

One thing that I was personally pretty impressed by was how much I liked Itadori Yuuji himself. He's probably not my absolute favorite, but I'm usually not all that invested in shounen protagonists in comparison to the side characters. I feel like he can be criticized for feeling a little overpowered, but I think his personal internal conflict is really compelling in that he's a genuinely good dude who's been pulled into this world of gore and murder and death due to becoming the host of a genuinely evil demon. His scenes with Nanami in the first half of the show were really compelling, and I feel like what I got from them was, essentially, "How do you be a good person in a cruel, uncaring world?" And I do think that's kind of the larger theme of the show in general. It feels pretty resonant in the present day, and I'm not really surprised that this and Chainsaw Man both got big in this era of Shounen Jump.

Aside from my thoughts on the big themes, some more minor things I like: wow, the female characters are excellent! I don't think the show starts off handling them super well, and I was kind of worried Nobara would get sidelined in fights despite being a really fun, interesting character with good motivations, but I was SO pleased to see her get to be incredibly awesome in the end. The characters go absolutely feral when they power up and Nobara is no exception. I'm really excited to see where all their characters go in the future!

Speaking of, I'm not sure if this is something I'd necessarily consider a flaw, but I did find the way the show was paced to be kind of weird as a 24 episode anime. I don't think any of the arcs after the show gets going were bad, but the ending of the season felt like a character development arc in between two big bombastic arcs rather than a series ending. Given that I'd be really surprised if this didn't get a season 2, this doesn't bother me all that much, but it does feel like the show should continue with the next episode next week instead of going on break for however long.

I do hope there is a break, by the way. I'm really excited to see more of this show, but I definitely want there to be enough time in the oven to keep the show's production quality as good as it is. The animation is a big highlight, and there are a ton of really excellently animated fights scored to a fantastic OST. I think the recent trend in shounen to animate a few arcs and then leave off for a while is a good one for the industry compared to the older trend of having a series constantly running, surpassing the manga, and then needing to get bogged down in filler.

One other thing: the first OP and ED were really good, and while I liked the second OP and ED too I didn't like them quite as much. I expected the more soulful ED of the second half to be used to emotionally manipulate me after someone died painfully but it didn't happen. The initial OP's animation had some fun things to pay attention to, and the first ED was such a bop that I don't know how you'd follow it up. That's kind of a minor criticism but eh. Regardless, the show's good, I definitely recommend it!