Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2

Episode 47

I want to hold off on dissecting the final episode of Jujutsu Kaisen's second season right now—because, I don't have a lot to say about it—and instead, I would like to take some time to reflect on this season as a whole, and where it stands in the bigger picture of JJK's legacy. The season can be neatly divided into two sections: The Flashback Arc of Episodes 1-5, and the Shibuya Incident Arc of Episodes 6-23. The Flashback Arc represents JJK at its best, in that it is filled with equal amounts of excellent action spectacle and intriguing storytelling, all of which is rooted in the fascinatingly diverse personalities of its central protagonists, Geto and Gojo. In contrast, I'd argue that the Shibuya Incident is JJK at its worst. The action is there, but every one of the Shibuya Incident's many fight scenes is sloppily and only just barely held together with a few meager staples of empty exposition and chaotic pacing.

Despite what at least some of the commenters in the talkback seem to think, I do not hate the show nor do I think that the Shibuya Arc is the worst thing ever (I started my career reviewing the likes of Big Order and Hand Shakers, after all). The storyline does have some major flaws, and it has resulted in what has turned out to be a merely average season of what had been up until this year an otherwise great show. After this finale, I am honestly beginning to seriously reconsider whether Jujutsu Kaisen is the show I thought it was when I fell in love with it during Season 1.

I'm not saying that a show isn't allowed to suddenly switch up its pacing or drop a whole mess of death and drama on its cast. What I am opposed to is sitting through a weekly television series for half a year and asking myself repeatedly, “What is the point of all of this?” Why introduce all of these heroes and villains and spend so much time building them up, only to have their unceremonious deaths serve as little more than “Oh Snap!” moments for the “real” antagonist that barely even gets a proper introduction before the series is over? Why spend weeks upon weeks showcasing all of these fight scenes, which, while cool on their own, do not add up to anything beyond “None of it mattered, since that brand new villain that none of you care about yet planned this whole thing with his Evil Brain Monster Powers, and our heroes were screwed from jump”?

If this Shibuya Arc had been even just half as long as it ended up being, I might have been able to brush aside my disappointment and frustration, since the next stage of the story still could potentially turn Brain Monster Geto into a character that is worth a damn, and it could maybe give me some new characters that are as fun to watch as all the ones who have either been murdered, trapped in a plot-convenience box, or otherwise imprisoned in Side-Character Jail for the foreseeable future. At seventeen episodes, though, the Shibuya Arc became utterly exhausting to experience, and all of the last two years of goodwill and anticipation that the first season, the movie, and the Flashback Arc had earned was squandered by too many weeks of getting a big fat “Nothing!” in return, except for more freaking fight scenes.

So, with all of that laid out once and for all, how does this final episode of a deeply disappointing storyline measure up? I'll give you three guesses.

To be fair, there is precisely one element of this finale that is genuinely quite cool and exciting, but to get to it, we have to wade through a solid fifteen minutes of Brain Monster Geto exposition and some barely animated scenes of people freaking out about the fallout of the Shibuya Incident. Like the Shibuya Incident Arc itself, none of this stuff is “terrible”; I just can't be bothered to give a damn about any of it. “Brain Monster Geto is powerful, you say, and his nefarious plans (that have superseded and invalidated the plans of every other villain up until now) are super scary and threatening?” Gee, you don't say.

Anyways, the truly interesting element of all this fallout has nothing to do with Brain Monster Geto and everything to do with the wily and ever-scheming leaders of the Jujutsu Schools. You know, the supposed good guys? Not only have they used all of this death and devastation as a convenient excuse to rid themselves of Gojo by outlawing any attempt to rescue him, but they've also revoked their prior amnesty and put a bounty on Yuji's head. Would it have been nice to receive this information in a manner more dramatically compelling than a slide show of title cards? Sure, but beggars can't be choosers, and I am dying for a reason, any reason, to be invested in this story again, and there's some potential here.

Plus, it just so happens that the Sorcerer hired to do the job of putting Yuji down for good is none other than the protagonist of Jujutsu Kaisen 0, Yuta Okkotsu. This is great because Yuta is the kind of character that I am interested to see more of because of his characterization and conflict, whereas Yuji is the kind of hero that only works when he is part of a group of compelling characters since his entire personality can be boiled down to “Is the main character of a battle anime.” I know that this is wildly wishful thinking, but I would love it if the next season of JJK flipped the script and made Yuta the protagonist again. Keep Yuji as the glorified plot device that he is, or make him a supporting character, which is where I think he would work better.

I am certain that will not happen, but this season has proven that JJK does not work as an ensemble show, and if we're going to right this ship again, we need to have a story that is rooted not just in a bunch of sick-ass fight scenes and cool monsters, but in characters we care about with goals that we can understand. The just-confirmed next season is called “The Culling Game Arc”, though, which does not fill me with a lot of hope. A guy can always dream, though.

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Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.