It’s fitting that Jujutsu Kaisen was the first series to surface this season (it was available for free on YouTube over the weekend), as I’d already seen it. That was at Kyoto Manga and Anime Fair, and while it was raw this isn’t the sort of series that requires massive amounts of dialogue to explain itself. I liked it well enough then, and I liked it well enough when the subs confirmed about 80% of what I thought was going on. But I’d by lying if I said I saw huge upside to it.
I haven’t read the manga, but based on one episode at least I’d say Jujutsu Kaisen is a test of how interesting a show can be while at the same time being totally derivative. There’s a quality of “insert generic Shounen Jump adjectives here” about it – once you started listing the series it seems to borrow from you’d be at it for hours. But that’s WSJ to an extent – most new mangaka (like this series’ Gege Akatumi, a nom de plume if I ever heard one) get their first serialization by delivering something that checks the right boxes for the editors. Formula works for WSJ, and it’s only the really exceptional series that get greenlit without adhering to it.
I don’t think Jujutsu Kaisen is exceptional, but it does have a certain snappy energy to it. High school freshman Itadori Yuuji is a great athlete who dislikes sports, and joints the occult research club to avoid having to play them. His parents are dead or missing (because animanga) and his guardian seems to be his grandpa, who’s dying. Grandpa also seems to know more about the parents but Yuuji expresses no desire to hear it. The club has gotten its hands on a cursed object of considerable power, much to the display of his classmate and curse expert Fushiguro Megumi, who’s been sent (by someone) to find it.
The conceit here is that whatever shadow society Megumi belongs to places these objects around places of intense negative energy – like high schools and hospitals – to absorb the evil and prevent it from doing harm. But eventually the objects weaken and start attracting curses, and need to be destroyed and replaced. But Yuuji ends up swallowing this one – a finger apparently belonging to Suwabe Junichi – in order to try and power up and save his club sempai and Megumi from a rampaging youkai. Also, his grandfather dies.
So all in all, you’ve got a mishmash of some very familiar elements here. Curses, fighting demons, possession, a simple yet courageous protagonist thrust into a world he never knew existed. The execution seems fine, both in terms of the writing and direction. Veteran Seko Hiroshi is handling the adapting and the director is Korea’s Sung Hoo Park, who’s shown with The God of High School that he can deliver an interesting visual style but not that he can make a boring plot seem interesting. We’ll see how he does with Jujutsu Kaisen, which at the very least seems less inane than TGOHS, though that’s a low bar.
BluBlu
September 23, 2020 at 4:47 amI was waiting for that “first impressions” as I could already guess what you would have said and so would have led me to ask that question that I have in my minde for a long time. How BNHA seems to have what I name a free pass for being 100% shonen jump battle manga formula when any series doing the same (at the surface) receive (even before they start) the formulaic/derivative label as an “already dead” mark?”. I mean, are you sure that having read many manga chapters before does not have any influence? (now that I think about it, maybe a question for the podcast XD)
And do not get me wrong, because… (surprise) I am no defender of “Jujutsu Kaisen”, but neither I am of BNHA, in particular because they are…rightfully formulaic! (so do not want to sound as hater of the latter. Just curious. And yeah I remember your preview and “first impressions” of BNHA, that is in part my point).
But well, coming back to Jujutsu, as I already said, while being formulaic (especially at the beginning as 99.99% of WSJ battle series), I should give it a very interesting fighting system (but not now) and interesting supporting characters.
And as we could expect from the person in charge, the job is well done for that episode, even though as usual with manga/anime disparity, manga with “particular art” lose their originality/charm.
Krize
September 23, 2020 at 5:43 amYou’re never really going to get a satisfying answer trying to play “gotcha” with people on shows. At the end of the day, some shows connect with people and some don’t, even if they may have a lot of similarities on the surface.
One thing BNHA does is that, whatever you want to level at it for being similar to this show (I haven’t watch it yet, so I can’t say), is that it tackles the distinctly western version of the superhero from a Japanese perspective, which many people find interesting. The only other show I can think of that does something similar is Tiger and Bunny, so even if everything else BNHA does is deeply generic and formulaic (i’d argue against that, but let’s just pretend), it still has that in its pocket.
Guardian Enzo
September 23, 2020 at 7:38 amFirst off, I agree with Krize on the Western superhero element. Horikoshi’s hybrid of East-West is very distinctive, I would argue. I would also note that BnHA resonates with a lot more people than Jujutau Kaisen, FWIW.
We all have our own take, that’s all. I don’t personally find BnHA to be generic so much as a deconstruction of superhero and WSJ battle manga tropes. And it doesn’t hurt that the execution is very high-level compared to most of their series.
ibtachi
September 23, 2020 at 2:38 pmI’m going to agree with Enzo here, the genius of BnHA is 3-fold.
1. You have the exceptionally unique world, which makes it stand out either side of the hemisphere.
2. Nearly every “derivative” element is deconstructed and recomposed in a original way. Its utterly ambitious and no small feat. Horikoshi has been toeing the line that capture the essences of a great shonen but imbuing each beat\trope with a fresh take that is tonally consistent with his unique world.
3. Perhaps most importantly, at least for me, its got that certain “je ne sais quoi”. Its got a heart. You can tell he respects and cares for the characters, world and story he wants to tell. This is what separates the enjoyable, well-executed Shonen (Demon Slayer, Death Note, Attack on TItan, Tower of God) from the truly great Shonen (One Piece, Haikyuu, Hunter x Hunter, BnHA).
Guardian Enzo
September 23, 2020 at 2:39 pmThat.
Simone
October 5, 2020 at 10:10 pmAbout Jujutsu Kaisen, I see it celebrated a lot among manga readers. The difference there might just be that one has had 4 seasons of anime – and thus has a much wider audience – and the other did not. Though something a lot of people seem to appreciate about Jujutsu is that apparently it develops a cerebral and deep fighting system (á la HunterXHunter), so that’s something I’m looking forward to, if true.
Mus
September 23, 2020 at 1:00 pmGoHS mediocrity and JJK’s formulaic beginning are sure the biggest deterrent to new watchers. And to an extent, Demon Slayer either already filled some people’s cup to the brim for ‘great shonen’ or made sure a similar show never fill someone’s cup again due to ‘ehh shonen’. Comparison is rarely healthy.
Lots of obstacle for JJK imo, so I wouldn’t be so surprised if watchers including you drop it halfway. Lets see how this another shonen do in the animanga landscape.
BluBlu
September 23, 2020 at 5:56 pmFirst of all, being non-English speaker, I don’t know what’s “playing gotcha means” but anyway if I believe Google, it was far from being my point (. Just found that it was an opportunity for me to know a bit about your definition of “formulaic/generic” (I said “know”, not “discredit”, “make fun of” or I don’t know what “playing gotcha”) which clearly cannot just being a feeling that we cannot explain or to quote someone “makes you feel more than think” but well, that is personal opinion (“universe”, “characters”, “topics”, etc.).
Thanks for the answer 🙂 . I could elaborate on it for longer times but as I said, it was not the point here. Thanks again ; )
Yann
September 27, 2020 at 12:22 pmNot a good start for me. It should be right up my alley. I’m pretty easy to please… I see “youkai”, I click! I totally loved Kimetsu no Yaiba for intense. Even though it had some pretty obvious shortcomings and it doesn’t get any more formulaic than that… The execution was unique flavor and had some flair. This jujutsu thing has neither.
Hopefully I’m wrong. I’ll stick around for a couple more episodes because… Youkai! But my spidey senses are tingling all over this thing.
I seriously doubt it’ll turn out to be good…
Yann
September 27, 2020 at 12:25 pmSorry about the broken English above… Something went wrong in the submission. And edit button would be nice! 🙂
Yukie
October 4, 2020 at 2:32 pm” a finger apparently belonging to Suwabe Junichi” this had me ROFLing xD
As you said, there was nothing really exceptional about this premiere. We have all the tropes here, and they were executed..well..in a rather forced fashion. I’m slightly more optimistic than some of the comments above though. Like Demon Slayer, we have another female mangaka, and I’m always interested in what they bring to the table. I also tend to give shounen a little more time (instead of the 3-ep rule, I always look at the first two arcs as indicators, because that’s usually where the mangakas’ vision and storytelling really comes out).
One thing I’m concerned about is the characters. They can really make or break a series for me, especially when the plot is as derivative as it gets in a shounen franchise. It’ll take a few more episodes to see whether we’ll get some development on the character front or if this is just an all-action-no-heart type of series.
Rean
October 7, 2020 at 8:06 amFunny how BnHA’s name is being invoked here, given that both mangas are in the midst of very large-scale and ambitious arcs that could very much be make or break from a creative standpoint, particularly BnHA.
Their worldbuilding has a few key similarities from a macro perspective as well.
I have some complex thoughts on BnHA overall, it does a lot of things really right and a lot of things really wrong, and that is probably why it’s the subject of such intense debate. Maybe I will find the time to expand more on a dedicated post somewhere.
Enzo, One correction I would like to make is that Fushiguro is not a classmate of Itadori’s, the next episode will expand on that a bit.
Guardian Enzo
October 7, 2020 at 8:18 amThanks, duly noted.