JJK SEASON 2 SPOILERS AHEAD, NO JJK MANGA SPOILERS

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 - The show that had my jaw on the ground every week.

I want to start this off by saying I do not stand by the way Mappa treats their employees and I believe a serious change is in need. I eagerly await the Chainsaw Man movie, Hells Paradise season 2, and Mappa's other projects, but it wouldn’t feel right if there’s not a change in the way this company is run.

After becoming one of the most popular Shounens of this generation in 2020, Jujutsu Kaisen is back for a season 2. Season 1 left JJK with high expectations, as I said before, it is one of the most popular Anime of this generation, season 1 is the 5th most popular anime on this site and the manga is also the 5th most popular on this site. On top of that, season 1 is the #43 highest-ranked anime and the manga is the #78 manga. So with all of these expectations, so how did it go?

I am caught up with the JJK manga (chapter 244 as of this writing) so when I say that this show had my jaw on the floor pretty much every week, this show had to be really something. We start with the Hidden Inventory/Premature Death arc which follows Gojo and Geto in 2006 when they were still in high school and Geto wasn’t attempting genocide. This arc follows the start of Geto’s transition from someone who gave everything they could to protect normal people to someone who realized that those normal people are the problem. Gojo and Geto were assigned to protect the Star Plasma Vessel, Riko Amanai, a 14-year-old girl who is to become the vessel for Tengen, an ancient all-powerful Jujutsu sorcerer. Plenty of people want to kill Amanai for one reason or another, mostly for money from the people who want her dead. Right as they reach their destination, they are ambushed by Toji Fushiguro, the father of Megumi, who doesn’t even have a trace of cursed energy, which shouldn’t be possible. Geto runs off with Amanai while Gojo attempts to hold off Toji. The fight between Gojo and Toji is a good one, an inexperienced Gojo vs. someone who has zero cursed energy, meaning Gojo is unable to track him. I think the fight was animated well and Toji was made as intimidating as he should be, especially since he “killed” Gojo. Back to Geto and Amanai, they are right outside of “Tengen’s Territory” when Geto asks if Amanai really wants to do this, saying he and Gojo would protect her if not. In a change of fates, she confesses that she wants to spend more time with people, not be stuck as a vessel for the next 1000s of years before passing off to another vessel. As she says this, the outro music begins to pick up. “Lets go home” Geto says when BANG! A gunshot goes right through Amanai’s head and breaks her headband. This scene was evil, with the outro music picking up like the two were about to leave before Amanai was dramatically shot. You can see the shock in Geto’s face before he turns to the killer, Toji Fushiguro, and you can feel Geto’s anger when he says “Then die” after asking Toji what happened to Gojo and being told he was dead.

After escaping Geto, Toji goes to claim his bounty with Amanai’s body. On his way out he sees a familiar tall, confidant, white-haired man that we all know and love. I know they messed up some of the angles from the manga but this scene was beautifully done. The lighting of the scene and tone that was created by Gojo’s voice actor is something we could only see in animation, and it was wonderful. Gojo then uses hollow purple on Toji for the first time in his life and it's as destructive as we last saw in season 1. Gojo is able to retrieve Amanai’s body and as he leaves a thunderous applause arises from a group that wanted Amanai dead. When he reaches the end of the room he runs into Geto and asks if he should kill them. This is the first time we see any fluctuation in Gojo’s character and morals, in season 1 he was just the relaxed overpowered teacher but here he is still a kid honing his power. Ghetto tells him that killing those people wouldn’t mean anything.

We then jump to a year later where Gojo has become “The Strongest” something that was used in unison when talking about Gojo and Geto a year ago. But since Gojo was so powerful, he was sent on more missions by himself, meaning Geto did the same. Through this time we can see Geto has become sick of doing the same thing over and over “Exorcise. Absorb. Exorcise. Absorb.” “No one else understands what cursed spirits taste like. It’s like swallowing a dirty rag that’s been used to clean up shit and vomit.” He starts to question who he’s fighting for. You can tell he’s still affected by the scene of a crowd of people applauding the death of a 14-year-old girl from a year prior. He then runs into Yuki Tsumiko, who we know as Todo’s mentor from season 1. She tells Geto that she wants to rid the world of cursed spirits, which is a shocking statement to Geto who’s been stuck in a loop of fighting cursed spirits. Yuki tells Geto that there are two ways to eliminate cursed spirits from the world: 1. Eliminate cursed energy from mankind or 2. Make it possible for all of humanity to control their cursed energy. But both of these would be almost impossible. There is no known way to get rid of cursed energy with Toji Fushiguro dead and teaching every person to control their cursed energy would take forever. So the easiest answer is to kill everyone who doesn’t know how to control their cursed energy. Yuki says she’s not crazy enough to try that but on his next mission, Geto kills an entire town of people to protect two girls who don’t know how to use their cursed energy. This leads us to maybe the most famous scene from the season, at least from this arc. Gojo finds Geto in the streets of Japan and we see an angry, confused Gojo. So much pain is in Gojo’s voice and animated into his face, this is a wonderful scene that sets the table for the rest of the season.

Before we get to the main event, we get a little detour and get to see the fate of the student who was giving information to Geto and his friends. We find out that Mechamaru has been giving away information about the schools and in return, Mahito would fix Mechamaru’s broken body. We also see a relationship form between Mechamaru and Miwa, so despite the fact that he betrayed our main characters and has put them in trouble more than once, we still desperately cheer for him as he tries to survive Mahito while Geto watches. Mechamaru knows what they are planning so as he fights Mahito he tries to send a warning to Gojo or any sorcerer of what is to come. These two episodes are really entertaining, the fight is well-animated and easy to follow and there is emotional value in it, watching Miwa talk to Mechamaru’s robot body while the real Mechamaru fights for his life.

Then we reach the main event of the season that takes up the last 16 episodes of the season, the Shibuya incident. The first 7 episodes were really good, the story was intriguing and the animation was beautiful, but the Shibuya incident took everything to the next level. I read the manga at the beginning of 2022, so I knew what was coming (Kind of, I read the entire Shibuya incident in one night while tired and on vacation) yet every single week from the beginning of July to the end of December I spent waiting for Thursday and the new Jujutsu Kaisen episode, and every single week my expectations were shattered and my jaw was on the floor. It started with Gojo arriving in Shibuya and absolutely demolishing curses that we saw characters in season 1 struggle to survive against and some we haven’t seen in action yet in Hanami, Jogo, and Choso. This scene kinda reminds me of Optimus Prime in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (If you know, you know) because both are in a 1v3 and are absolutely schooling the trio before losing. Gojo decimates Hanami in just a few seconds, and it is beautiful to watch. Gojo is completely feral the entire fight and pushes the limits of the sorcery that we saw before, and Mappa pushes the limits of their animation. You can truly feel the power of Satoru Gojo. Gojo then gets trapped in the prison realm, but before he gets locked up he talks to the only person that could break through the invisible barrier around Gojo which is infinity, Geto. Gojo immediately realizes this isn’t the actual Geto, and it is revealed to us that Suguru Geto did in fact die on December 24th, 2017 after the events of Jujutsu Kasien 0, and the curse known as Kenjaku took over his body and his cursed technique. This is certainly an emotional scene, as Gojo gets locked up and it is made apparent that he won’t be able to break out by himself. Shibuya then turns into chaos, with the sorcerers trying to retrieve the prison realm with Gojo inside and save as many civilians as possible, while the curses try to escape with Gojo.

The first season of Jujutsu Kaisen was mostly a success, but if you ask people what the biggest issue was, a good amount of people would say the pacing was not well done. In season 2, the pacing slows down a ton, the last 16 episodes take place within a few hours of each other, meaning we got to see a ton of fights with different characters and powers and flashy scenes. So much happens in this season it’s hard to go over it all, so here are some quick highlights. Nanami getting pissed at Haruta (The one lucky guy) and beating the shit out of him was so satisfying to watch, Yuji vs Choso was absolutely raw the whole fight felt dizzying and intense, the fight between Dagon and the combination of Maki, Nanami, and Naobito Ze’nin really put it into perspective where even powerful sorcerers stand against powerful curses. Dagon is able to handle the three of them easily until the reincarnated Toji Fushiguro enters and kills Dagon within a minute or two. Toji then runs off to fight Megumi, as the only thing he can think about is killing the most powerful being near him. Jogo, someone who has been clowned by fans for being clowned by Gojo twice then enters and “Kills” the remaining 3 sorcerers in the room, Maki, Nanami, and Naobito, in seconds, really putting into perspective how much more powerful these curses are compared to humans. This was an extremely shocking scene and really still just the start of what was to come later in the season.

Jogo feeds Yuji ~10 fingers which means Sukuna arrives in Shibuya and shit goes down. First, Sukuna challenges Jogo to a fight, basically just for fun which leads to one of the more destructive fights in anime. An entire city gets wiped out in this fight, and Jogo still isn’t able to land a hit. The city ends up in flames before Sukuna drops a large piece of land on Jogo then burns him to a crisp using his own technique. Sometime after this fight Megumi summons Mahoraga, an extremely powerful cursed spirit which he cannot control so he knocks out Megumi himself and almost kills him before Sukuna saves him, realizing he has to keep Megumi and Haruta alive and defeat Mahoraga in order to keep Megumi alive. So Sukuna challenges Mahoraga and we get to see one of the most beautiful fights i’ve ever seen. Every detail was so well done but the animators have said that this fight was about 30% done. The restrictions and overworking done by MAPPA was at the forefront at this point as animators started talking about how they were exhausted on X and in other platforms, with some even saying they considered suicide. So not only was the animation worse than it could’ve been but there was a bad taste in my mouth whenever I watched a new episode knowing a group of people had to work their ass off in an amount of hours that shouldn’t be aloud just so the episode could be ready on Thursday. The season still continued despite this on and it just got better.

Yuji finally gains control back and is greeted to a horrifying scene, a giant crater has been made in the middle of Shibuya by Sukuna and Yuji blames himself, because if he wasn’t there Sukuna wouldn’t have been able to do that. A lot of people had an issue with the opening [Specialz] playing as Yuji was having a mental breakdown, but if you look into what the song is about, it makes more sense. The song is the curses singing so you could say that the song playing now could be Sukuna mocking Yuji, and if that is the case I think that was a good decision by the studio. Yuji regains he resolve and decides he has to try to make up for what Sukuna did by saving as many people as possible, but that’s when he runs into the bastard that is Mahito. As Yuji runs into Nanami, Mahito has his hand on his back and since Nanami took a big hit from Jogo earlier Mahito is able to easily kill him. After a satisfying fight where Yuji has control for most of it, we cut to Kugisaki who is also fighting Mahito, or a duplicate Mahito, who then leads her to the actual Mahito and gets her mixed up and touched then killed by the actual Mahito. So within like 15 minutes since taking control back from Sukuna, Yuji had a breakdown because he blamed himself for killing thousands of people in Shibuya, lost one of his mentors, and one of his best friends. In each event we see a broken Yuji and each time his voice actor nails the pain that Yuji feels and makes us the viewers feel awful not just because we just lost some of the best characters in the show but because this 15-year-old kid lost two people who were very important to him and his transition into the Jujutsu world.

In the next episode, we see a completely discouraged Yuji completely give up and just let Mahito have his way with him until he is saved by an old friend. Aoi Todo comes in at Yuji’s lowest point and not only gets him back on his feet but also gives us some of the best scenes from the season. Todo is able to use his technique to throw off Mahito, as he did to Hanami in season 1, and watching Mahito take the wrath that is these two brothers is so satisfying. The scene with Todo fighting with an imaginary Takada is one of the funniest and out of place things I've seen, and that’s why it’s so great.

The season ends with a fight between Geto and Yuji with Urame joining Geto and the Kyoto students and Yuji Tsumiko joining Yuji. Geto is intimidating and his powers are beautifully animated in the last 2 episodes, including him releasing thousands of curses. The last episode is depressing, no normal person understands what’s going on and we see shots of the abandoned Shibuya as people try to explain what’s going on in a news broadcast. Geto, Principal Yaga, and Yuji all get sentenced to death while Gojo is named an enemy of the jujutsu society and any attempt to free him from the prison realm is punishable by death. The person assigned to execute Yuji is none other than Yuta Okkotsu, who we last saw in JJK 0. The last scene of the season is of Yuji unveiling a large group of curses that came from Geto earlier in the episode.

Final thoughts

This is one of the greatest seasons of anime that I've seen, the animation was beautiful the story was riveting every single week this just got better and better every Thursday I said next week wouldn’t be as good just for it to blow my mind once again, and it could’ve been so much better. I can’t imagine what this could’ve been like if Mappa gave their employees time to actually make this. We can only hope that something changes by the time season 3 comes and hopefully even before that for Mappa’s other projects.