Jujutsu Kaisen

Review (Season 1 + Jujutsu Kaisen 0):

Recommended by my coworker and cousin Nate, also found through the hype behind it. 

I really, really enjoyed this show. I went into it with really high expectations and came out very satisfied. The concepts, characters, and pacing of this show are all insane, especially for a shonen. I really wanted this to place above Death Note because my gut is telling me that, but the music category is lacking and I don't want to lie to myself by boosting it too much.

First, I wanna talk about the concept of the show and how much I love it. The concept of a school reminds me of Mid Hero Academia, but this show does a lot of things better and differently. The power system, and the power scaling are so god damn cool. Gojo is the All Might of this show, but I like Gojo a lot more because of how laid back and mysterious he is. MHA has tons of tropes that make it cringy and the concept is super lazy, it's just superheroes. With JJK, the concept of curses is super unique and creative, and makes for a very interesting power system. Similar to breathing in Demon Slayer, it uses a real world concept and adds supernatural elements to it. Seeing everyone's different powers and techniques is really cool. The domain expansions are also super interesting and it just makes the fights that much cooler. This is by far the most interested I've been in a shonen since Demon Slayer.

The characters in this show have gotta be the best part. There are few characters that I dislike, almost all of them are awesome. My favorite has to go to Todo. I love his personality, he's super funny, and his power is fucking epic. They teased it at first in the forest, but then when he started using it against Hanami, I really started to appreciate it. Every other character has their own cool powers to them and their special personalities are really likable most of the time. The best thing about the characters in this show is how they are introduced and expanded upon. Demon Slayer throws all nine Hashiras at you and explains next to nothing about them besides their basic personality traits, and from what little I remember about MHA, there are like 3 classes and there are like 18724972841 students. I hate when a show throws so many random characters at the viewer. AOT S1 did this and that was the part I hated most about that season. JJK does an absolutely incredible job at easing the characters' way into the show and explaining most of their backstories and fundamentals. I had almost no problems with any of the characters and I love almost all of them. 

Let's talk about the pacing. This show kept me interested for all 24 episodes. Like, for a shonen, that's insane. AOT and Demon Slayer had dull moments, but this show was just paced so well. The only reason the pacing isn't 10/10 is because the story is pretty basic so the pacing wasn't actually perfect. However, moments like the baseball episode or the sister exchange event are things that in normal shonens act as filler episodes. This show uses those concepts and makes them really cool. Speaking of the training arc, MHA does this thing where they have a training arc and then a villain intrudes, and JJK did the same thing, but better. The main concern of the viewer was that there was a semi-first grade curse that was supposed to be used on Itadori, but then they just dropped Hanami on the viewer's head like an anvil and started the best fight of the season. That reveal literally had me so fucking hyped. A training arc. I was literally dreading watching this weird "sister school exchange event" but it was by far the best part of the season. Amazing pacing and writing.

Now, as I mentioned before, the music in this show is the weakest part. There are a few cool tracks, but most of them are generic and don't stand out. Luckily, this show doesn't need an atmosphere on the level of Demon Slayer to make a cool fight scene, but I still value music in a show a lot. That's pretty much all I have to say for that category.

The visuals in this show were really good! I think the blue cursed effect looks really cool, the CG was good for the most part, and when a Black Flash user goes black and white for a second, it looks sooo fucking cool. The only complaint I have about the visuals is that in S1, there are some really high speed running scenes that are watered down visual wise a lot because I'm assuming they had a low-ish budget. The visuals in the movie were perfect though, more on that in a sec. But yeah some scenes were drawn shitty or VERY low FPS, im talking like 5-10 FPS sometimes idk why. Anyways, pretty good visuals for the most part. I really like the way they draw the eyes.

Finally, I wanna talk about the movie. I think the fact that it's a prequel and that you can technically watch it before you watch S1 is very interesting. Yuta was such a cool character and seeing his growth throughout the movie was awesome. His story, power, and development make him an unforgettable character and I wish we could have seen more of him in the show. We also got to learn a lot more about Geto, his motives, and his powers which was cool. The pacing of the movie was really good, and the visuals were definitely mappa quality. Like holy shit it looked so good. Definitely had more of a budget for this, it is a movie after all. Music wasn't anything special in the movie.

Overall, Jujutsu Kaisen probably deserves to be above Death Note, but I just can't find a way to get it in that spot without giving it unfair ratings. For now, it'll sit right below Chainsaw Man, which is not a bad spot for it to be honest. Chainsaw Man is REALLY good. Like there is almost nothing I disliked about Chainsaw Man. This show was so good and I will be watching Season 2 as it airs (right now). Hoping for some good stuff! Looks like Gojo is in for a tough ride at Shibuya based on what the arc is called :)

Review (S2):

Full disclosure: I had read the manga of almost all of this season ahead of time, so I knew what was going to happen.

This was a masterpiece. After reading this arc, I was shocked because of how good it was this early on. Not even Attack on Titan had this much of a tone shift in their series by only season 2. The Shibuya Incident Arc alone clears anything in the Demon Slayer anime, possibly even going toe to toe with the Infinity Castle Arc for me.

The actual events of this season were amazing. From Gojo being "killed" by Toji in the past arc, to insane fights with the disaster curses and heartbreaking character deaths. This season took everything to another level of intensity. One of my favorite episodes has to go to episode 15, where Toji negative diffs Dagon, attacks his own son, Jogo shows up and negative diffs two grade 1's and Maki, and then Sukuna shows up and puts him in his place. Like I don't think anything EVER in Demon Slayer happens like this in such an intense and fast paced fasion. And in my opinion, this arc doesn't even have the craziest moments in the manga. I do have to say my favorite episode by far was episode 17, where Sukuna fights Mahoraga/Makora. That fight was so insane, the storyboarding was the best I've seen in any show probably. Absolutely phenomenal. I'll talk about the visuals later, but just the storyboarding alone was insane.

The characters this arc grew a lot! I think there were some interesting new ones, but seeing everyone go to their absolute limits was awesome. Seeing the disaster curses fight was really cool, and of course we got some awesome Todo action. Choso was a very interesting yet confusing character, but I like him a lot. Nanami and Nobara's deaths were done rather well in my opinion, but it's still so cruel to see them go. I would've loved to see what they could've done in the coming arcs. Yuji obviously grew a lot here, having his entire view of the world changed with his friends dying and Sukuna destroying most of Shibuya. Overall, really cool character interactions, fights, and developments this season. 

The pacing in this season was just super good. Even the Gojo past arc was fun to watch. Every episode had something exciting going on, whether it was a fight, a character death, or any cool reveals. The story telling just had me on the edge of my seat at all times.

The visuals this season were unfortunately the worst so far in this series. MAPPA worked these animators to their absolute limits, barely meeting deadlines. Some episodes were apparently only 30% finished. And I have to say, I commend them for making it look so good under such insane pressure. However, I cannot ignore the absolute joke of visuals in the Jogo vs Sukuna fight. It looked so sketchy and it was obviously unfinished. It did not look polished at all and it just didn't meet my expectations. However, I don't think it took TOO much away from the fight, even when visuals are really important to me when creating an atmosphere. I will say that after the Jogo vs Sukuna fight, the visuals started to improve, and I was very impressed with the Sukuna vs Mahoraga fight visuals after comparing it to the Jogo visuals. However, even with these improvements, they were just coming back up to par with the standard that they created in S1. The blurring and dimming in the first half of the season was really annoying as well, even if they stopped doing it so much in the 2nd half.

The music and audio this season were better than ever. Some tracks like Nanami's dance on the beach, Mahoraga vs Sukuna, the Mahito's Domain Expansion remix when he's fighting Yuji, and so many others really impressed me. Overall, some very strong music this season.

This season blew my expectations away. Even after reading the manga, I was screaming when watching the Mahoraga vs Sukuna fight. This is by far some of the best anime I have seen and I really hope MAPPA takes their time with the future arcs because they are absolutely insane. Good work overall!