If you read my Demon Slayer review for both anime and manga, you should be familiar with my hate for those two. Well, here is the thing. Jujutsu Kaisen what I am currently going to write about is far worse. I bet you didn't see that one coming huh? To explain my reasoning, I am going to compare the two in some way. If you are easy to trigger, don't care about a different perspective with proper reasoning, then be my guest. Scroll down to the bottom while you are on crack like an angry kid and smack that dislike button with all your might. But in the process, giving me further solid reasons to justify my points. I will tell you this now, that I am not a manga reader as I dropped it 20 chapters in because of the tediousness of the story, inconsistent direction, stagnant and horrible paneling, and the shoddy art style making it hard to make out what's happening. My belief is revolved around anime. Well, let's get going.

There is a misconception going around the community of top-notch visuals and art is equal to good when it's not even close to the truth. I feel most don't realize it themselves unless someone points it out for you. I don't blame them either. I was riding the Demon Slayer hype-train for a while before taking a step back and looking it from my own heart. Rather than being influenced by other words, thus being a slave to their bloated opinions. Yes, I am saying that Jujutsu Kaisen's overwhelming popularity stems from its lush and stunning production value, nothing else. Do you want proof? Where was Jujutsu Kaisen before the anime happened? Just like Ufotable for Demon Slayer, Jujutu being touched by the hands of the passionate and hardworking staff at Mappa got the same prescription due to its insane production value, despite mediocre to dreadful writing.

Well, that's kind of wrong. I won't deny the fujoshi details of glossy lips of the male characters and creating them to be so handsome is another core reason people cannot stop the shill. Seesh, I lost count of the number of times I saw someone simp for a character through a global post, activity, and other means. I don't think I have ever seen someone make a valuable point about the story, crack out some theories/predictions, only a ton of simping. Say, Gojo alone got far more favorites than his worth if you exclude his appearances and look at him from a personality standpoint. The guy is literally a man-child that doesn't even know how to crack out jokes. Remember that awful scene when he wore Nobara's skirt and tried to make a joke out of it? I felt my life slipping from the amount of cringe the scene exuded. There was also that segment with those curses doing a one-note shoujo play. That was so unnecessary and awful. In any case, I liked Gojo at first but the community made me not care about him anymore. Now I only see cringe which was always there. Thank you me for waking up. Well, he's at least not the worst character in JJK even if he is high up there. That title goes for Yuuji the stoic immovable cringe-ass dried face wall.

Yuuji was introduced as this guy who was already incredibly powerful from the getgo. Guy could literally run marathons in a matter of seconds, dent football goals with his abnormal wrist powers batting a baseball, plus he was plenty agile, acrobatic, and got immense jumping power. This was all there before he got a hell of an insane powerup by eating a cursed finger belonging to the king of curses Sukuna. Which led Yuuji to have Sukuna as another lifeform inside of him and not just anyone. A powerful ancient demon essentially boosted his already haxed stats. I don't mind any of this personally. This is a shounen so expect illogical writing and lots of things served on a silver platter for the MC. I enjoy my fair shares of OP characters if they are executed rightly but most Shounen tends to something more than letting them feel like a concept, that's what Yuuji genuinely is. He is not even fit to be called a character. His motivation is as flimsy as himself, he wants to save people and that's where it ends. There is no why or other clarification. You could assume it's due to his grandpa's last words, but a guy we barely knew for a second death does not accomplish anything other than being wasteful baggage. I am sorry to put it like that but it's the cold hard truth. Yuuji is very much the same guy we know and in my case hate as he was introduced in the beginning. A wall with little to no substance outside of being crazy powerful and wanting to save people for whatever reason.

Did you know Yuuji at the beginning of the story was even able to throw cars around casually when that should not even be possible? Do you know how many tons a vehicle even weighs?. If you like Yuuji, be my guest but please don't tell me he is a good main character or any of that nor is Tanjiro that. Both are flimsy and boring. Tanjiro is consistent at least but nothing special in the grand scheme of things and Yuuji is just a ball of mess. The only thing Mappa accomplished by animating this wall was giving it some colors, but at the end of the day, a wall is a wall no matter how many colors you use. Yuuji is no doubt the worst shounen, no protagonist, in general, I had the absolute worst displeasure of seeing. Why do I think JJK is worse than Demon Slayer? Here's the thing. Tanjiro who was portrayed as this fantastic human being and was boring outside of being consistent and having the clear motivation to do things is far better than someone who's there just to be there.

Sure, it's simple but there is a clear why Tanjiro became a demon slayer. It's to save his sister and return her to human again. And unlike him being totally overpowered from the getgo, there are things about Tanjiro that make no sense but do not become clearer before long. These details about him become clear as foreshadowing as we learn things about him. Well, doesn't change the fact the ending is a disaster, but hopefully, my points got across well. Now JJK is not entirely hopeless as it did try to explore and show us Yuuji's character as more than this overpowered boring beast. When he got acquainted with a guy, became friends shortly after only to die it definitely hurt Yuuji. He got swallowed by rage, it was conveyed on the dot through the visuals. It was the only point I remember Yuuji showing some level of personality besides spamming that stoic face all the time. Not that it matters in the grand scheme, nothing that transpired there was ever put to use again, nor did Yuuji feel any less than a wall from that point on.

Besides, the glaring flaw of Yuuji, there is no flow in the writing or the direction of JJK for the most part. We've been jumping places one after another and quite abruptly. Our main idiot trio got introduced in a rush and was barely fleshed out during their first exorcism job together. It was also against a special grade and here they tried to explore Yuuji again and show him he can be afraid when faced with a monstrous beast beyond anything he imagined. I enjoyed the moment of seeing Yuuji terrified for his life, but it quickly got shafted to the side as Yuuji used Sukuna to get out of the hell hole after making a contract with him. After that, it was never touched upon again. Yuuji had supposedly deceased but was gaining training under a poor man's Kakashi. Nothing like the aloof, hilarious, charming fella we know and love from Naruto.

Entering Kyoto arc where a bunch of characters was introduced and was given the same formulaic backstory as we saw them fighting against special grade curses. Here the author clearly tried to flesh out our cast through a segment of backstory, playing out their sad moments to make us feel sympathetic for them and give us wishy-washy reason to care about them. I never did. But I did think the stark contrast that was shown between Maki and Mai and how they were the complete opposite of each other, basically portrayed as yin and yang respectively was interesting. Plus, the matter surrounding how one cannot use curse power, but is plenty strong and crafty in hand-to-hand combats and with weapons. While the other is not quick on her feet nor good any sort of combat but can use curse power was a good idea by the author. I also adored Miwa, she might've been my favorite character. The fact Gege played her out like she was useless and her being self-aware about it was charming. Dare I say unique? I have not seen many characters like her, plus this thing about her being afraid of not being useful gives room for strong character direction for adorable and air-headed Miwa. There is one more character I liked in Jujutsu Kaisen and thought should've been the main character personally. It's Megumi. Just his name alone got lots of story intrigues plastered over it. He was far more interesting than Yuuji and had felt slightly layered. In what way, you ask? Megumi was obsessed with making his own decisions and being powerless gave him the right motivation and feasibility to become stronger.

I am not the first to admit JJK's production is stunning and Mappa knocked it out of the park. There are many good moments. One of which for me was Gojo's attack, but more than that Megumi scene of destroying that curse as he manically laughs. It's very vibrant in showing his personality and the animation to the direction was immaculate. The same goes for the scene with Yuuji fighting against Hanami in tandem with Todou. The acrobatics and the fluid of their movements were absolutely insane even if the soundtrack was misplaced and kind of killed the experience. I won't deny the scene was eye-candy but Yuuji nor Todou ever showing any expressions other than that blasted stoic immovable face kind of killed it for me and didn't make me care for it as much. Another good use of directing was Nobara moment when she shafted that one-note awful villain clown. It showed her proud and arrogant personality clearly and the facial expression on her face was satisfying. As noted previously, the way the soundtrack, insert song was used in JJK just felt off and weird. It honestly made me cringe on multiple occasions.

It's too bad the inconsistencies about JJK still manages to overshadow the few goods I have seen. What issues are you talking about? I mentioned Yuuji already, the flow of the story being erratic and the direction being random, feeling unplanned and at times even forced. I can't count the number of times JJK failed at comedy. To be fair, it's subjective but please tell me I am not the only one in the world who found the "funny bits" obnoxious and honestly cringe? None of the scenes with Takeda and Todou made any sense to have, I even heard that in the manga most of it was only 3 pages but the anime made it feel like an eternity by extending it without purpose. Tell me what did add? Besides telling us the comedy of JJK's absolutely is asinine and a mess. That's not even counting the time when Yuuji and Gojo tried to make a surprise out of the Wall being alive but it didn't hit the right notes. It was brushed off to the side the moment Yuuji opened his cringe-ass mouth. I am still highly disappointed in what could've been a passionate and sentimental moment being done nasty like that. The thing is Nobara was seen crying when she heard Yuuji died and both she and Megumi was clearly depressed. But when the cringing lad was shown to be alive it was like nothing happened. Pun intended. All of the emotions the character shared become null and void. Hell, it was done so it never existed in the first place.

It's time to touch upon about Jujutsu Kaisen power system, which seems easy and straightforward at first glance before getting overly complicated and illogical. To put it simply, cursed energy is a phenomenon nurtured from anger and sorrow. This allows the user to create and manifest unnatural things and apparently nurtures a broken ability that makes not even slightly sense. Take Black Flash as an example which was introduced into the story as this flashy and impressive attack that most users are unable to pull off. All the while contradicting itself by having Nanami explain most users can only pull off two attacks in a single day, while he shows off and says on a good day I could do four. Later, Yuuji the Wall uses this attack multiple times against a curse without any backlash. Not to mention, this attack that was hyped up was no doubt one of the most anticlimactic things I had seen in JJK. It was like there was no weight behind those punches. Not even after few arcs, JJK even forgot the fact it's an exorcism story. I never got those vibes. To me, it felt more like a shounen anime about slaying demons masqueraded as an "exorcism" story just without any sense of direction, value, or reason in the thing it with does. If you want exorcism there is Twinstar exorcist and Ao no Exorcist which most definitely sticks to its themes presented in the first episode.

Another notable negative and problematic thing I have noticed about JJK is the vast amount of dialogues. It's clear the author cares more about "telling than showing". During a time the scene of the characters running toward each other to throw an attack got significantly reduced to throw a bunch of nonsensical exposition that will get forgotten in the next moment. It's part of the reason I felt it was exhaustive at times to watch Jujutsu Kaisen and this has nothing to with me not tackling heavy works. Look at my favorites. I love my complex and dialogue-heavy stories, but when it's useless it just becomes a massive pain. Not to mention, while I was flipping through the pages of Jujutsu Kaisen out of curiosity to see if anything catches my eyes. I get hit by an extensive amount of dialogue boxes with nothing but text. This was on the level of Hunter x Hunter. To be fair, it's clear JJK takes some elements from there, like the expansion ability which is a more simplified version of a variation of Nen. Sadly, it took inspiration in the wrong things as well like its dullness in exposition. No, I read those boxes and it was literally just explaining the thoughts in the character's head. It was wasteful. It's something that shows the author is struggling to write interesting consistent characters and stories.

My final point is the potential with Sukuna being shafted after having few moments to shine in the story. Sure, it's early but he never really felt like part of the crew. Just a means to an end. If you have seen Naruto, you know how much personality Kurama had. It was one of the best execution of a demon residing in someone else, making their life living hell at every chance he got. While Sukuna just gets forgotten by the Kyoto arcs comes around. My favorite part was arguable during the times Yuuji and Sukuna monologued with each other. I enjoyed Sukuna's arrogant and prideful self and I was curious what the author was going to do with him. He is probably the biggest potential in JJK considering there are many routes the author can take with Sukuna. I don't know if I will be there to see it though as I have little to no motivation to pick up the sequel when it eventually rolls around from the corner.

I don't think Jujutsu Kaisen deserves a silver of the hype it's receiving. It's filled with nothing but issues and again discrepancies, no flow in moments, besides few stunningly produced cuts. Thanks to Mappa. It got an obnoxious cast of characters who are acting in the same way with meager differences, some potential solid ones but it doesn't seem like JJK seems to care about them much. No logic behind its power system which feels to me more like convenient writing. The author literally explained in detail about Gojo's broken ass ability in the extra chapters, not even during the main manga story. To me, it says the author doesn't have things planned out or rather doesn't have an idea in which direction he is heading. I am happy for them to see their work being praised and getting recognized even if I think there are far better stories out there deserving of that. I cannot deny that. However, I don't get why the community calls this messy travesty a masterpiece, excellent, best shounen of all time, let alone of the decade. Nothing has touched the big three yet in terms of writing. Really everything. I hope one day that work will come but Jujutsu Kaisen is far from ever. This is another example of anime being shilled due to it having crazy production value even when it's not worth it as a whole. I don't recommend this to anyone who wants a solid cast and writing. If you want your flashiness and lifeless light hype, sure knock yourself out. But still not worth it at all. Jujutsu Kaisen? More like Pooputsu Shitaisen.