This may come as a little bit of a shock to a few of you, however Jujutsu Kaisen is the preferred anime on this planet. I am not being hyperbolic, I am not simply being biassed and pulling out of my ass: the precise Guinness World Data mentioned so. The organisation shared final week {that a} data-science agency discovered that the sequence has a “international demand ranking 71.2 instances larger than that of the common TV present.” This demand relies on issues like “how a lot consideration, engagement, want, and viewership is expressed by shoppers for content material.”
Sure, meaning it is extra well-liked 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 well-liked present – in fact, that is simply earlier than season 2 kicked off with the immensely well-liked Hidden Stock arc. Since then, we noticed a whole 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 superb 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 actually? I can not consider a sequence extra deserving of its reputation.
I do perceive that Jujutsu Kaisen is not for every part. 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 those who it clicks with, like myself, it actually hits. Particularly, I feel Yuji is without doubt one of the finest shonen protagonists round, and possibly 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 technique 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There is a scene that occurred after Hidden Stock within the anime, the place Yuji runs into an outdated classmate of his. Notably, mentioned classmate was fats, ostracised due to her weight, however when requested about who Yuji would date within the class (although he wasn’t very enthusiastic about courting), he picked her. Not as a joke, not with any malicious intent, just because he sees individuals as they’re, not as some type of label the world may need positioned upon them.
Afterward, put up him turning into a sorcerer, he runs into the classmate once more, although she’s since misplaced the burden and appears utterly 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 instances 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 regularly risking their very own lives for the sake of different individuals, just because they care in regards to the high quality of everybody’s lives. There is a recurring concept of adjusting the established order, one thing that sizzling boy Gojo Satoru repeatedly tries to impress upon his college students, in a approach that can profit everybody, together with these on the perimeter of society, the rejected, the marginalised.
Whereas I might prefer 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 accomplish that, however regardless of many individuals’s impression that Jujutsu Kaisen is only a miserable battle shonen, it is truly 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 shall be miffed that their favorite sequence that they swear will get value 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 might stick with it.