This last year of anime had a lot of returning series. A lot of anticipated series came back with great seasons, so today, for 13 Days of Otakutober, we thought it was only fitting that we review one of our most anticipated series–and one that truly traumatized us at the end of last season. Jujutsu Kaisen: The Culling Games. You can now consider this your spoiler warning.
So from what I understood about this season of Jujutsu Kaisen, it was highly anticipated. Some people told me that they really enjoyed this arc in the manga–others just wanted to see what happened after the Shibuya Incident. I personally had no expectations going in, but I’m rarely disappointed by Jujutsu Kaisen. With the season of Jujutsu Kaisen, I had a few thoughts though. The first thought? This season was absolutely gorgeous. I truly mean that. When it comes to animation, I felt like the direction was incredibly impressive–even moreso than past seasons. Star and I were thinking that the beginning of the season might have been so well done and animated due to the theatrical release of the first few episodes. We had been planning to see a clear jump in quality of animation eventually but instead, we were surprised that we weren’t able to identify which episodes were aired in theaters. This was really cool to see, and honestly probably my favorite part of the entire season. It really didn’t need to go that hard for so long.
In terms of actual storytelling…it honestly wasn’t the best. I felt like this season had some good memorable moments, but the actual narrative was very difficult to follow at times. For instance, Maki’s story of retrieving weapons from the family vault felt extremely jarring. At first I wasn’t sure if it was a flashback that had already happened or if it was presently happening. I also completely forgot she had a sister in Mai and was pretty confused but into it the entire time Maki was getting the weapons. I wish I could say that was the only time that this happened, but it honestly felt like a lot of things were almost being jump-cutted to without getting any actual background on what was going on. Luckily, things were somewhat easy to catch up with, but it was still very fast paced. Star mentioned that one of the fight sequences having to do with star constellations was also difficult to follow because it was fast paced and had too many pieces involved.
Interestingly, I think that might be the biggest problem in the season. At first it felt slow, but then it felt super fast-paced and we were being introduced to more moving pieces. Like the Culling Game rules were easy to understand, but the why for the Culling Game is something I feel went over my head. And like Kogane? Came out of nowhere and even though we were paying attention, it took a moment to wrap our heads around. But you know, one of the other best parts of the entire season was the friendship still between Itadori and Fushiguro. I feel like as long as they have scenes together, they are out there for each other as bros–I’m invested in the season no matter what.
Anyway, JJK season 3 had its ups and downs. I will say it definitely wasn’t as good as the Shibuya Incident, but it was still good. I look forward to seeing where the Culling Games goes, and if the narrative continues to be this jarring. Anyway, what did you all think of season 3 of the anime? And if you read the manga–was it a faithful adaption so far or was there more flow in the narrative? Either way, we’ll see you all tomorrow for day 12 of 13 Days of Otakutober!
xoxo
AishteLOVEru
Luna
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