How Jujutsu Kaisen Lies to You

Jujutsu Kaisen isn’t a typical shōnen nor a typical deconstruction of shōnen. We’ve seen genre deconstructions before – Neon Genesis Evangelion, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Re:Zero, and many more – and the creative minds behind Jujutsu Kaisen are well aware of that. They know that it isn’t enough anymore to show what would realistically happen if you gave children superpowers and tasked them with fighting world-ending deities.

On top of that darker tone, they also take a more meta approach to subverting the audience’s expectations. Did you take for granted that the OP won’t mislead you? Or that once the end credits music fades in, everything will be fine until next week? Or that the world the characters live in won’t just reorient itself according to the whims of the plot? Let’s take a closer look at how Jujutsu Kaisen lies to you.

Spoiler Warning through season 2 of the anime!
Note: This is not an endorsement of MAPPA as a company. I support the supremely talented animators who work there, not the leadership that overworks them.

Building Up False Hope with Junpei

One of anime’s simple pleasures is how you can rewatch the OP each episode and recognize new characters as the series goes on. Sometimes, there’s even a group shot that adds each character as they’re introduced, and you get a sense of how far you’ve come as the whole squad slowly assembles week by week. Jujutsu Kaisen‘s first opening – “Kaikai Kitan” – follows this formula pretty much to the letter. It adds more and more cast members to the park scene at the end, surrounding Yuuji and Junpei, who are happily hanging out together in their Jujutsu High uniforms. Sure, Junpei’s story starts bleak, but if he’s in the OP, that must mean that he lives at least long enough to join the school and become better friends with Yuuji, right?

Well, no. Although it goes against everything we’ve expected from anime (especially shōnen), Junpei tragically dies before he can even properly understand his powers. Mahito and Sukuna laugh at Yuuji for trying to save the poor kid, and Junpei’s only lasting legacy is to be a sobering wake-up call for Yuuji that the world of sorcerers and curses is cruel. In the next episode, the OP adds a tear to Yuuji’s face in the train scene, showing that the idyllic park moment was just a fantasy.

I love how this long con ultimately tricked veteran anime fans into convincing themselves that Junpei would be okay. OPs can be abstract and non-literal, of course, but outright lying like that is insane. I can only think of one other anime that does something similar – School Live, which drops the act after it reveals its famous twist at the end of the first episode. Jujutsu Kaisen‘s manga does a more condensed version, with the title art for chapter 27 featuring Junpei as part of the main team of Yuuji, Fushiguro, and Nobara. Still, since this happens in the very same chapter where he dies, it doesn’t have as long to marinate in the audience’s minds. By casually including Junpei in the OP since the start, it hurts that much more when we realize that his life was snuffed out before it could begin.

Riko and the Last Second Rug Pull

You’d think we would’ve wizened up to Jujutsu Kaisen‘s tricks by season 2, but they somehow still know how to catch us off our guard. During the flashback arc at the beginning of the season, Gojo and Getou are tasked with protecting a girl named Riko until she can fulfill her destiny of merging with an ancient sorcerer to serve as his new body. Riko seems more or less okay with it, and the arc is called “Hidden Inventory & Premature Death”, so we’re prepared for her to go through with the plan.

But after she finally gets to live her life to the fullest with Gojo, Getou, and her caretaker Misato, Riko realizes she wants to stay as her own person. At the final precipice of the ancient sorcerer’s lair, she has a heartfelt conversation with Getou, and he reaches out his hand to take her home. The end credits music starts, and we can relax because everything will be okay…

And then a gunshot rings out. Riko falls dead. Somehow, the terrifying antagonist chasing after the group caught up to them and took Riko out by just walking up and shooting her in the head. Instead of a long, slow build-up of expectations, this scene works because of its sudden and shocking brutality. The manga is equally impactful since Riko reaches out her hand and replies to Getou in the very same panel where she gets shot.

When you reach the end credits of an episode, viewers expect that there might be a cliffhanger or a secret little scene afterward, but the main storyline should be over for the week. And when you see a speech bubble in a manga, you don’t expect the speaker to be shot dead at the same time they say it. We’ve gotten used to these conventions – non-diegetic structural elements that are separate from the story itself. It’s incredibly jarring when Jujutsu Kaisen messes with them, especially for seasoned anime fans. Since almost the entire point of the series is to make its audience feel just as disoriented as Yuuji, “jarring” is precisely what it’s going for.

Subtle Surrealism

Junpei and Riko’s stories are the two most overt examples of Jujutsu Kaisen catching its audience off guard by using their expectations against them. Still, there are plenty of smaller moments as well. These subtle details within the animation or the backgrounds make the anime’s world seem just a bit off.

During the fight between Yuuji and Choso, Mechamaru explains Choso’s techniques through an infographic that resembles the other subway signs in the room. However, when the camera pulls away, the infographic sign remains as part of the environment like it’s no big deal! At the end of the battle, the fake memory Sukuna implants in Choso’s mind has the choppy, washed-out quality of old-school anime on VHS. Later still, Naobito Zen’in’s Projection Sorcery is explained using storyboards that have the Jujutsu Kaisen logo on them.

I like how this anime breaks the fourth wall in ways that don’t distract from the main action. Nobody ever points out these strange occurrences, so they contribute more to a sense of underlying oddness than being used as jokes or plot points themselves.

Even the way certain characters and scenes are animated makes them seem otherworldly, like how the more monstrous cursed spirits tend to be drawn with thicker, wavier lines that stand out from the background. For example, when Yuta Okkotsu and the cursed version of Rika are in the same shot together, they look separated in different planes of existence. Cursed energy itself is also drawn this way, as a strange blue blob with blotchy linework that bubbles and boils with unknowable power.

And when two devastatingly powerful cursed spirits face off against each other, reality can’t seem to keep up. Sukuna’s battle against Mahoraga near the end of the Shibuya Incident arc starts with similar animation to any other action scene but distorts over time into something straight out of DEVILMAN crybaby. Proportions get squeezed and stretched, shadows become harsh black voids, and backgrounds turn into nightmarish collages bathed in red. This kind of animation style shift isn’t unique to Jujutsu Kaisen(Puella Magi Madoka Magica is famous for its bizarre witch domains), but it’s used very well here to underscore the malleable nature of the anime’s world.

Final Thoughts

Precisely because it aims to trip up its viewers, Jujutsu Kaisen can sometimes feel disjointed and hard to follow. However, that doesn’t stop the genuinely outstanding moments from hitting harder than a Black Flash punch to the face. Both the manga and the anime use the typical shōnen fan’s knowledge against them to significant effect, and I hope to see more of these memorable moments in the future!

What did you think of this overview? Can you think of any other moments in Jujutsu Kaisen or other series that play with the audience’s expectations like this? Let us know in the comments, and thanks so much for reading!