I was encouraged to see this movie because of how insanely popular JK is, and despite having read over 100 chapters of the manga, I don't think I connected with the story. But instead, what I didn't feel with several of the main story arcs, I felt with this cool and great 1.5 hour prequel.

The original draft had an apology for every time I said a negative opinion of JK, so to lighten things up, please don't read this review if you are a fan of JK and want to be annoyed or angry at every moment. I promise my indifference to JK is not because I want to be cool for not liking something that is popular, I just don't connect with the main story. But this prequel is another story.

There are several things I liked, so to start off on one hand, I'd like to say how very charming the "love is the most powerful of curses" theme is. It's so simple and made for a lot of drama and emotions, along with the ending with the revelation that it was Yuuto who unintentionally cursed his girlfriend. The entire plot of the movie is straightforward, simpler than the arcs I read in the manga, and yet I still consider this more to my liking.

One of the negative criticisms that many people have of JK is that the structure and tropes are that of just another shonen fighting story. I think that's true, but one thing I've learned from looking at so many stories is that execution is the most important thing. Zenin (I won't call her by her last name) and Toge have typical and simple roles in this prequel, and yet they are very charming and charismatic, I confess that here these two mattered and interested me much more than what I saw of them in the manga, especially Toge. "He can only speak with onigiri ingredients" made me think 'haha how quirky' but in the short collaborative fight with Yuuta he not only introduced his powers in a cooler way than in the base story if not made me empathize with him more with his personal decision of the way he communicates. Again, it's simple but so charming.

About the magic system... Here things are explained to you straight to the point and without complications and I loved it a lot more for that. There is no need to explain things in an unnecessarily extended way. What are the grades of curses? The higher the more dangerous, and the unusual ones are the strongest. Where do they come from? From the negative energies of people and places. How is Yuuta going to fight if he was told that Rika's curse is destructive? He can transfer Rika's energy to a katana and use a common weapon but empowered with cursed energy. In this prequel they present most of the concepts of the base story but in a simpler way (one drink for every time this review says 'simple') which to me is much more appealing and entertaining. Same with Getou, his ideals and his ways of being in the manga for me were just "like 2/3 arcs to explain something so simple? Um, ok." but here they show it to you in just two simple and straight to the point scenes, god it even has comedy, the woman saying "you're showing your true personality, Getou" and him putting a pikachu-surprise-face like made me laugh quite a lot.

Everything I liked about this movie can be summed up in that everything is so simple, so to the point, and at the same time so great and so cool. I dropped JK in the middle of the Shibuya arc because it got boring and I lost interest (sorry for swearing) but now I have the motivator to keep reading the story for many reasons: I remember Gojo said he wanted to overthrow the bigwigs of the cursed energy world, now I have much more interest in how he's going to achieve that. I want to see Zenin succeed in destroying her clan from within, I want to see Togo saying more onigiri ingredients, I want to see more of the panda because he's funny, Getou because he now seems like a cool villain to me, and, even though Yuuta already fulfilled his character arc, seeing some reference or cameo from him would make me happy because I love him so much.

Now I'm more interested in JK's world for a prequel than for the main story, damn, that doesn't happen often. But that's ok, the main point is to enjoy stuff.

Oh and the animation and the fights are of an otherworldly quality but I think that's something that everyone knows.