This would possibly come as a little bit of a shock to a few of you, however Jujutsu Kaisen is the most well-liked anime on the earth. I am not being hyperbolic, I am not simply being biassed and pulling out of my ass: the precise Guinness World Information mentioned so. The organisation shared final week {that a} data-science agency discovered that the sequence has a “world demand score 71.2 occasions better than that of the common TV present.” This demand relies on issues like “how a lot consideration, engagement, need, and viewership is expressed by customers for content material.”
Sure, which means it is extra standard than heavy hitters like Assault on Titan, and long-running sequence like One Piece. In reality, up till about July final 12 months, One Piece was the extra standard present – in fact, that is simply earlier than season 2 kicked off with the immensely standard Hidden Stock arc. Since then, we noticed a complete season of impeccable animation, greater than one cosplay from Megan Thee Stallion, and a complete meme tradition born from intense weekly chapters on Twitter and TikTok. It has been a very good time for Jujutsu Kaisen, a sequence that’s near becoming a member of the likes of My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, and Assault on Titan on the 100 million+ manga volumes bought membership. And fairly truthfully? I am unable to consider a sequence extra deserving of its reputation.
I do perceive that Jujutsu Kaisen is not for all the things. It has a number of upsetting character deaths, it feels like every precise wins the characters have do not final lengthy, and a few do not even like Yuji Itadori as a protagonist, discovering him to be a bit plain. However for people who it clicks with, like myself, it actually hits. Specifically, I feel Yuji is without doubt one of the finest shonen protagonists round, and perhaps one in all my favourites ever.
A touchstone of shonen protagonists is that they are sturdy, joyful, will not be ashamed to cry over their associates, and at all times handle to discover a solution to come out on prime. Yuji is actually the primary three issues, however he is probably not managed that final one, and I feel he is much more than the archetypical shonen protagonist anyway.
There is a scene that passed off after Hidden Stock within the anime, the place Yuji runs into an previous classmate of his. Notably, mentioned classmate was fats, ostracised due to her weight, however when requested about who Yuji would date within the class (despite the fact that he wasn’t very all for courting), he picked her. Not as a joke, not with any malicious intent, just because he sees folks as they’re, not as some type of label the world might need positioned upon them.
Afterward, submit him turning into a sorcerer, he runs into the classmate once more, although she’s since misplaced the load and appears fully totally different. Yuji recognises her immediately although, as a result of once more, he sees her very soul, and it is a genuinely considerate second, and a thousand occasions higher than the ways in which many shonen earlier than it have dealt with fatness.
I feel that fairly deeply ties into the themes of the present, the place the characters are ceaselessly risking their very own lives for the sake of different folks, just because they care concerning the high quality of everybody’s lives. There is a recurring thought of fixing the established order, one thing that sizzling boy Gojo Satoru repeatedly tries to impress upon his college students, in a means that can profit everybody, together with these on the perimeter of society, the rejected, the marginalised.
Whereas I might wish to go additional into how these themes are explored, I might be veering into manga spoiler territory, so for the sake of anime-onlys I will not achieve this, however regardless of many individuals’s impression that Jujutsu Kaisen is only a miserable battle shonen, it is really fairly a subtly however powerfully anti-conservative textual content in methods I’ve not seen a lot in mainstream manga. So sure, I do know that One Piece followers will probably be miffed that their favorite sequence that they swear will get price it after the primary 300 episodes is not on prime proper now, however personally, I am fairly happy that place belongs to Jujutsu Kaisen. Let’s simply hope it may stick with it.
