As some may have gathered by a lot of the anime I review on this site, I like a good action Shonen show, dramatic bloody fights of good versus evil often (but not always) based around the idea of overcoming the odds through will power and the want to do good. Classic popcorn entertainment. What Jujutsu Kaisen’s Shibuya Incident Arc has shown me though is you can indeed have too much of a good thing, because by the end of it I was actually kind of fed up of large-scale and well animated fight scenes and for the first time I can remember I was “wondering where the plot was”, which is not something that normally bothers me when watching a show like this (see: my love of the Dragon Ball franchise). Well, with that initial thought out of the way, let’s take a deeper look!
As some of the core student characters are in talks to be promoted we find out that Kokichi Muta, otherwise known as Mechamaru, has been in league with Goto and his Curses in order for them to restore his body, which they do leading to an immediate face-off between Kokichi in a Evangelion-inspired (right down to the soundtrack) giant mech and Goto’s favourite insane Curse Mahito. After a quick battle Mahito wins and Kokichi is killed, lamenting that he won’t be able to warn Satoru Gojo about the plans they have for him. That little prologue leads to the core plot of this arc as Shibuya has a “veil” set around it on Halloween night trapping thousands within it at the mercy of Goto’s full Curse army as they declare that they’ll only let them go if Gojo appears. Despite the obvious trap Gojo strolls in as other Jujutsu Sorcerers camp outside the veil in teams of three, waiting to jump in if necessary. Our way, way overpowered “cool teacher trope” makes it all the way down to the subway where he is confronted by Curses Jogo and Hanami, the latter I forgot was still alive but it didn’t matter as it was Gojo’s first victim! After a crazy fight where Gojo took out a thousand transformed humans in 0.2 seconds (again, overpowered!) he confronts Geto, though immediately reveals that his old friend isn’t whose in front of him and it immediately reveals that it’s actually a Curse that looks like a brain with a mouth that has been implanted in Geto’s corpse in order to access the body’s Curse Manipulation powers. Gojo falls for the trap due to exhaustion and cockiness and is sealed away in a “Prison Realm” so the bad guys actually have a chance…
See you in a few Arcs time, Gojo!
So at this point the main story strand of the arc is sorted, so it switches to main protagonist Yuji and the rest of the Jujutsu Sorcerers to claim the Prison Realm artefact and free Gojo, and that’s the plot done until the final episode… Pretty much, anyway. The first fight sees Yuji, second place protagonist Megumi and Ino (who I didn’t remember) fighting a trio of powerful Curse-using humans, with Yuji and Megumi defeating one while Ino is beaten by one of the others after one transforms into Toji Zen’in from the previous flashback arc via a special “séance”. Weird seeing him again already! He is able to take control of the body though and kills the other Curse user before heading off with a single-minded goal to kill all Sorcerers. At the same time Nobara, the main female lead, takes on crazy killer Haruta and ends up saved by everyone’s favourite disgruntled middle-aged office man Nanami, who brutally beats the evil spirit around the place in possibly my favourite scene of the arc. Yuji on the other hand has to fight Choso, whose brothers he killed in a past arc and to my surprise it was actually mostly one-sided in favour of Choso, who inflicts several fatal wounds to Yuji and only loses when he suddenly gets strange visions of himself, his two brothers and Yuji all hanging out as a family and runs off. We then switch to Nanami, who along with a couple of other Sorcerers ends up sucked into the domain of a fish-based Curse called Dragon and are therefore at an extreme disadvantage. A way out presents itself when Megumi arrives and provides one but before they escape Toji arrives and beats the ever-loving hell out of Dragon until its death undoes the Domain, and then knocks his son off into the distance and follows him, but stops his assault when he realises who he’s attacking, smiles that Gojo kept his promise and then kills himself, much to Megumi’s confusion.
Yuji and Megumi attack… that Sorcerer guy from early in the arc. Literally seems like months ago rather than weeks…
Meanwhile Nanami and the other Sorcerers are burned half to death by Jogo, who then catches some crazy Sukuna followers force feeding the unconscious and near-death Yuji another Sukuna finger, and then Jogo proceeds to force-feed him ten more (!) which makes Sukuna awaken and take over Yuji’s body. So that’s the whole “hunt for Sukuna’s fingers” side of the series plot pretty much done in one go! Sukuna kills the girls and eventually Jogo with literally zero effort despite the fire-based Curse nearly melting all of Shibuya in his effort to land a single blow. Megumi meanwhile unleashes the most powerful of the “Ten Shadows” that nobody in his line of users has ever been able to tame called Mahoraga in order to defeat Haruta, but that spirit is “saved” by Sukuna, who is entertained by the idea of such a powerful creature and wishes to fight it (for the record Haruta dies anyway…) We get a Shibuya-levelling battle between the two that Sukuna naturally wins but he had enough fun that he decides to keep Megumi alive for future joy. His energy expended Sukuna once again fades into Yuji’s mind, who wakes to see all the death and carnage his body has been responsible for and freaks out.
What’s that? Take a break? Oh no, we’re then right onto Nanami staggering into the subway station half-burnt who then takes out a bunch more transformed humans before encountering Mahito himself, who kills him but not before Nanami has a few “was it all worth it?” flashbacks and manages to tell a newly arrived Yuji that the “rest was up to him”. Damn, always annoying when your favourite side character is killed off… Oh well, no time to mourn because we’re right into Yuji fighting Mahito, though at the same time a double of Mahito he created to help search for Yuji meets Nobara, who begins to fight him herself…
Like I said I can’t fault the animation (which is a miracle because of how over-worked the animation team was, by all accounts) but it was just bloody battle after bloody battle with no reprieve and it just got to me in the end, I began to dislike it a bit. Now my two favourite Shonen shows/stories in Dragon Ball and Bleach have arcs that end up in the same way and I forgive those due to bias, so I’m not being hard on anyone who loved this arc. I get it! I do, but for me I guess I’m just not invested enough in Jujutsu Kaisen to be so forgiving…
Overall Thoughts:
So satisfying, at least Nanami got to have a few more great scenes before his death…
While I can’t fault the “Shibuya Incident Arc” for its animation quality or fight choreography I can fault it for its overabundance of fighting. Like over-eating on sweets I had too much of a good thing by the end and was tired of it all. I do like where the series is left off on so I will be watching Season 3, but I doubt I’ll ever give this a rewatch…
Nobara and the other Mahito meet up with Yuji and the main (I guess?) Mahito and the latter rejoins with himself and touches Nobara’s head, causing it to partially explode after a few life-affirming flashbacks. This possible writing out of the main female lead hasn’t gone down well, I’ll admit not having one of the main trio of students be active going forward for at least the next arc or two is a blow alright. Yuji’s “brother” Todo then appears and uses his clapping teleport move to rescue a traumatised Yuji and pep talks some sense into him while the man who Todo brought with him says that he stopped Nobara from dying but she’s not likely to recover. The two then enter a two versus one battle with Mahito that sees plenty of close calls from all three but ends with Todo wounded and minus a hand, thus he can’t do a clap any more, and Mahito achieving a new more powerful form.
This isn’t even his final form! …. Oh wait, yes it is. Never mind.
Yuji fights the new Mahito head-on and manages to eek out a win (with help from Todo clapping his hand against his stump, which is just… unpleasant to think about) causing the Curse to flee in terror only to find Geto, or Geto’s corpse with the other spirit inside I guess. Yep, we’re not done yet! “Geto” absorbs Mahito into himself claiming that Mahito’s new, true form is what he needed to absorb all along for his grand plan, and then turns his attention to Yuji and the few other remaining Sorcerers who have appeared. Choso of all people then reappears and takes on “Geto”, who he names Noritoshi Kamo (though apparently that was just the name of another body the spirit had inhabited in the past) all for the sake of “his brother” Yuji. He fails of course, but gets some good fight scenes before doing it. Eventually Geto/Kamo whatever he’s really called uses his new power to unlock the hidden Curse energy within people of Japan who have consumed cursed objects or have latent curse energy to either turn into a deadly Curse or just get enough power to eventually kill each other, and then leaves. A quick post-arc recap tells us that most of Tokyo becomes overridden with Curses and is shut off to the public, the existence of Curses and Sorcerers has to be made public, and finally the Jujutsu top brass decide to once again sanction the execution of Yuji for their own protection, and enlist Yuta Okkotsu of “Jujutsu Kaisen Zero” as the executioner to do it…
Hogan Reviews 