After six years, Shonen Jump’s mega-popular sorcery-fighting manga, Jujutsu Kaisen, will publish its final chapter on September 30. In the years since it began syndication, it was nominated for (and won) a few literary awards, and both seasons of its anime series brought home Crunchyroll’s Anime of the Year. But as a weekly reader, my “in memoriam” to the manga is that it hasn’t been very good for a while, and its end couldn’t come soon enough.
First and foremost, I’m not a Jujutsu Kaisen hater; I’m far worse. I was a huge anime fan and read ahead in the manga. And who could blame me? Its first season introduced a magic system that begged to be explored, its ensemble cast was charming, and production studio Mappa’s action sequences delivered without fail. While the first half of season 2 undoubtedly has the series’ strongest writing, its latter half is marred by a barely-there story and shock-value character deaths that fail to serve as connective tissue for its raucous action sequences. Like Jimmy Fallon and authentic laughter, its story never truly comes together. If anything, Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 is an empty spectacle that does a significant disservice to the groundwork of its first season.
If season 2’s Shibuya Incident arc was the wheels coming off the bus, the anime’s upcoming Culling Game death tournament is Jujutsu Kaisen barreling down the street rolling on tire belts instead of rubber. Knowing that its manga will conclude in just five more chapters is more of a mercy for readers than something to lament.
Read More: Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 Will Kick Off A Bloody Tournament Arc
The experience of reading Jujutsu Kaisen started as the first weekly updated Shonen Jump manga I’d eagerly dive into before shifting into the one I saved for last out of frustration with its monotony. It reached a point where reading Jujutsu Kaisen felt comparable to reading Rent-A-Girlfriend’s going nowhere fast trashy romantic drivel—a misfortune I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. To talk around manga spoilers for anime-only viewers, the problem with Jujutsu Kaisen’s manga is as follows:
- Hard-to-follow action sequences
- Mid-fight exposition dumps that would put Bleach to shame
- An overcomplicated magic system that seemingly retcons itself with each passing week
- Shock value character deaths and weaponized postpartum flashbacks
Each passing chapter felt like cracking open an SAT prep notebook of power systems in order to keep track of Jujutsu Kaisen’s exposition-heavy battles that seemingly improvise and change up how attacks and counter-attacks work every week. Instead of feeling engaged by the kaleidoscope-esque reveals of the manga, I routinely threw my hands up in frustration and said, “Sure, whatever,” at every convoluted plot development.
If anything, the goodwill Jujutsu Kaisen’s action has earned from its fandom is due to the heavy lifting of Mappa’s overworked animation department, which articulates movement with clarity, weight, and immaculate imagery—despite the production meltdown its animators withstood to make it happen. The manga’s portrayal of action, on the other hand, is uneven at best. While many of its two-page spreads are outstanding, the bulk of its action choreography made me squint to try and parse out the barely legible anatomy of fight scenes. This is further proven in the manga’s final battle(s), which see everything and the kitchen sink thrown at its titular villain, only for him to “Nuh-uh” his way out of insurmountable odds.
Unlike My Hero Academia’s manga, which concluded a month prior with a serviceable epilogue that tied most of its narrative loose threads together, Jujutsu Kaisen’s conclusion in just five chapters all but assures a rushed ending to a story that–-if we’re being honest—never felt truly realized in the first place. If anything, Jujutsu Kaisen’s ineffectual story serves simply as a vehicle to ferry viewers to the next fight scene.
All this to say, there’s still hope that season 3 won’t be as monotonous as its manga counterpart, seeing as how Mappa turned the narrative ship around with Attack on Titan’s controversial finale. But as things stand, five chapters won’t be enough to turn Jujutsu Kaisen into an emotionally resonant manga with fully realized characters. It will, however, still make for good out-of-context AMV fight sequence fodder for TikTok, if that’s any consolation.
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