For starters, Jujutsu Kaisen is an anime I got to watch through a coincidence, but I was inclined due to witnessing all the hype and positive statements across all kinds of social platforms in the last year, so I decided to dive in.

To give a very short summary, we have our protagonist, Yuuji Itadori, a fair and athletic young boy witness his grandfather dying, telling him his wish that Yuuji should save as many people as he can. It is otherwise revealed that he lives a quite ordinary school life, and even with his fitness and strength displayed, instead of being part of a sports club, he decides to be a member of a very small occult club. A incident with a local cursed artifact leads into Yuuji's friends being attacked, and in order to save not just his friends, but also a newfound acquintance, Megumi, he swallows said artifact, becoming a host to the contained curse. Just with the thinnest length of a hair he gets spared of then being sacrificed himself and it's decided that he goes into training as a Jujutsu Sorcerer, just as Megumi is one, to source cursed items and fight rampant curses.

The premise of the show isn't bad, but it isn't anything special either. It's a run-of-the-mill "each cast member is growing in their own way" storyline. One of my first criticisms of the anime is the way how the story was told, and its pacing. Maybe it's a personal thing, but having a story that constantly very obviously foreshadows itself isn't really enjoyable. Throwing in a twist or two more would have made things way more captivating than having an episode start with a claim from which you can basically figure out how it is ending.
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Let's take a look at our cast of characters and their presentation__, starting with our protagonist-quartet. Yuuji, which I already introduced. Next up is Megumi, a more reclused, but powerful jujutsu sorcerer, who was initially tasked to retrieve the artifact that Yuuji then ended up swallowing. Nobara, a very stern girl, saying what she thinks and not refusing to use her fists (just as her words) if she needs to. To round the main cast up, there also is Gojou, a teacher at Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School, who more often seems to take things relatively lax and making fun of people whenever there's an opening.

So, we have a energetic all-positive protagonist, a introverted partner, a stern girl, and a white-haired teacher with an eye mask? I don't know, but the constellation reminds me of something else...

Of course there are many other people that are also present in the school that Yuuji gets to meet over the course of time, but I'd be endlessly busy writing over each single one of them, and generally I must say that of the cast in general I only really liked a few, mostly Yuuji in itself and for the other hand the people that barely spoke a word.

While the story didn't really do much in terms of subversion of expectations, the characters moreso did, and not in a positive light. I must say I felt quite dumbfounded when a extremely buff character depends his choice on beating you up solely on the question "What type of women do you like?". My humor is absolutely crude at times. but the entire comedic makeup of this character just wasn't fun, it got annoying rather quickly. And Jujutsu Kaisen did this pretty often, it tried to be funny, and ended up mostly failing at it.

To get to the more positive things of the anime, the animation was superb. MAPPA did a really great job on the fighting animations and the flow and fluidity just made those a joy to watch and got me hooked to the screen when those were happening.

Mostly. I know it probably is one of the battle shounen things, but so many of the great fights, especially at the later part of the series, get interrupted by in-fight analysis of the fighters. And that takes the entire energy out of those fights. Don't get me wrong, a flashback/realization before a hit strikes can be a nice stylistic touch, but if this is used several times in a single fight it grows tiring fast. That's eventually why I also ended up getting a liking of characters who spoke less, because those engaged more in their fighting, rather than talking about it.

Another great thing was the soundtrack accompanying the anime, the tracks fit the situation and helped conveying the feelings to the viewer. The openings and endings were fine, but personally not so catchy that I'd end up listening to them outside of the anime.

Personally, I didn't enjoy Jujutsu Kaisen that much. If this was just about the presentation, it wasn't bad, actually really well done, but the story, characters and general way everything was laid out just dragged it down a lot.

Especially if you are not new to the genre of battle shounen, this is just one of the many, but if you never watched one or adore them, this might be just for you!