©芥見下々/集英社・呪術廻戦製作委員会
I think you can perfectly sum up the problems I have with this whole Shibuya Incident by the way Jujutsu Kaisen uses Miwa and some of the other supporting characters in this episode. Here we have a character who more or less has her emotional arc dictated: She discovers MechaMaru’s feelings for her too late to intervene in his untimely death. him, and now she’s one of the above-ground Mages moving in to try to sort out the mess in Shibuya, which allows her to step into the spotlight and exploit that anguish to kick in some evil ass. It’s a bog-standard way to handle this type of side character, but it’s also a convenient way to inject some emotional element into the proceedings, something JJK desperately needed.
So what does “Metamorphosis, Part” mean? What about 2″? It sends Miwa into the battlefield to clash with Brain Monster Getou, even going so far as to give her one of those little flashback monologues to tell the audience that something bad is definitely about to happen. out, and then…nothing. Getou easily stops the attack, Miwa has to be saved by Kusakabe and all the other even more minor characters who really have nothing to do this season other than stand around helplessly, and after that she didn’t do it anymore. appears once in the remainder of the episode. Choso shows up to scream about how Brain Monster Getou is actually his cursed father and Yuji his long lost younger brother, which I guess makes Brain Monster Getou our protagonist’s secret villain father, which is…okay? Certainly anything. The show has never given us a reason to care about Yuji’s family and origins outside of his grandfather, who died before the first episode of the first season was completed, but why not? Maybe Yuji has an evil Brain Monster Getou for a father, or maybe it’s just JJK pulling a prank on Todo again. Who knows! Who cares?
However, I want to return to Miwa. You might be thinking to yourself, “But James, didn’t we just spend two paragraphs demonstrating that Miwa’s scenes in this episode are completely unrelated to both the plot of this episode and the larger story of this season? Why? Yes, Hypothetical Reader, we’ve proven it, but it’s that puzzling nonsense that I find so fascinating. What was the purpose of including Miwa in this episode or even this season? Sure, I guess there could still be a scene coming up that’s worth all the time spent developing her and MechaMaru’s tragic dynamic, but let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that it absolutely isn’t. Is there anything that has happened during the past eighteen weeks that has produced results? We have reason to believe that will happen.
So if we go by the logic this one is running and assume that each piece of this over-complicated plot puzzle exists purely to serve the onslaught of endless battles that Jujutsu Kaisen became, all the time and effort spent setting up the arrival of the Kyoto School—and the entire Miwa/MechaMaru subplot served as the sole emotional highlight of the entire segment of the story — ended up contributing to this fight against Brain Monster Getou? As far as I can tell, the result is that a secondary hero we know almost nothing about tries to attack a main villain we also know almost nothing about. success, except for the fact that he is extremely strong and cruel, which… shows us that he is strong and cruel?
Honestly, I’m confused here, and I know that people probably want me to talk about the rest of the episode. However, the whole reason I’m so obsessed with this stupid no-moment is also the reason it’s hard for me to bother finding out the rest of what this episode is about. Not only was I finding it increasingly difficult to care about anything happening on screen anymore, I was also starting to wonder if Gege Akutami would ever care that much. The film’s previous installments aren’t epic masterpieces or anything subversive, but those earlier stories carry a lot of mood, heart, and humor and do so. with such cool ease that I’m sure Akutami must have gone to great lengths to plan and execute each scene and meticulously set it up. Now, though, it feels like we’re stuck with half-baked ideas that come from someone frantically trying to build tracks in front of a moving train.
Now I can imagine the Shonen Jump editors’ pitch: “Well, I guess now the real villain is an immortal body poacher who also happened to be the wizards’ Voldemort.” , Yes! And he is so scary and evil that he will eat old bad guys like Mahito and turn them into…Uzumaki! He will turn them into Junji Ito Uzumaki spirals! And, uh…maybe he’s Yuji’s dad too! So he’s like a body—the guy who kidnaps Voldemort, who’s also Darth Vader, who’s also this other super evil guy that I established, and then he’s going to fight everyone, and all of them would say,’Oh no, he’s too strong!’And other, less powerful bad guys were killed, like all the cool characters that everyone liked, so you know that this new bad guy ten times stronger. His special moves…”
Can you tell I’m tired of JJK? If all you care about is more sporadic spectacle, then certainly, this episode has more of that; Brain Monster Getou explodes, Choso explodes, Yuji probably explodes somewhere in there, and I think even that witch girl will explode at some point. However, if you were like me and sincerely hoped that Jujutsu Kaisen had something interesting to say amid all that outbursts, you’re probably feeling pretty exhausted by now.
(Okay, to be fair, turning Mahito into the Junji Ito Spiral is pretty tiring, so give it a go, I’ll throw in another half star.)
Rating:
Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other popular cultures, which you can also find on Twitterhis blog and podcast.