©芥見下々/集英社・呪術廻戦製作委員会
I’m really glad we got those little timestamp headings near the end of “True and False” because it helps give a clearer perspective as to why some of the key elements of this Shibuya Incident Arc weren’t impresses me, even if we have a lot of individual pieces that I really love. As of the end of this week’s episode, we’ve reached about 11:30 PM on Halloween night, about ten minutes. When Gojo first came to Shibuya and started this whole mess, it was at 8pm? This means that Jujutsu Kaisen has covered a little over three hours in space in the past three months.
If you don’t include the time spent on commercials and the opening/ending credits, we’ve spent about four hours in real life—it’s time to recap the three hours or so that have passed since Gojo set foot to Shibuya. With all the slow-motion, narrative, monologue, cross-cut, and intercut elements that we’ve never even seen on screen, you can probably take a look at this season that sometimes feels like watching events at an agonizingly slow pace. This arc is not boring at all. The problem was that there was so much going on in such a compressed amount of time that I couldn’t know where to direct my emotional energy. It’s like watching a convoy of fifty cars stacked on top of each other at .0001x speed. There’s no shortage of carnage to witness, but there’s also only so much chaotic stimulation a guy can take in before his brain starts to completely tune things out, if only for the sake of self-consciousness. desperate protection.
This is all my long-term attempt at an in-depth analysis of why “Right and Wrong” at the end left me feeling a bit cold, despite the death of one of my favorite characters throughout the entire damn movie, not to mention the long-awaited rematch between an emotionally broken Yuji and the ever-happy Mahito. Out of everything we saw throughout the season, this should have been the episode that finally made me feel something about the Shibuya Arc. released at the same time; claustrophobic and moody battle with Mahito. Those are all things that would work as drills for me.
Yet despite everything, all I could find myself saying as the episode ended on the Hundredth Man arc was,”Damn, that was bad for Nanami and Yuji. And maybe Nobara, come next week. I guess we’ll see what happens next week.” The only conclusion I can reach as to why such a theoretically powerful episode came and went without much fanfare is that this episode simply exhausted me. strength. There have been a lot of twists, deaths, and unfinished stories crammed into just three hours of this story’s timeline, but we still don’t get the full scope of what it’s supposed to be. will happen. It’s just one car after another crashing into each other with no stopping in sight.
Still, there are good things here, despite the problems the arc’s larger structure creates. So far, Nanami’s death has impacted me more than any other emotional beat in this storyline, even if the contrast between his dream of vacationing in Malaysia and his violent death comes to a head. which risks crossing the line into self-parody. This is largely thanks to the expert voice acting of Kenjiro Tsuda, who captures the very human and worldly features at the heart of the character of Nanami, which has always been his greatest appeal; it keeps the whole chain from becoming too cluttered for its own good. I also quite like the atmosphere of Yuji’s battle with Mahito. Despite the sometimes bland background art and strong CGI, the excerpt makes good use of the frantic situation and limited geometry created by Mahito’s powers. I just wish it all added more. This should have been one of the biggest shocker moments of the entire season, if not the entire show so far. Instead, it feels like just another drop in the ocean of spectacle and intrigue. I guess we’ll see what happens next week.
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Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which you can also find on Twitter his blog and his podcast.