Midterm Winter 2026 Jujutsu Kaisen
For my midterm I went with the second option, which was a currently streamed show. For my show of choice, I went with Jujutsu Kaisen. I have been tapped in with the most recent season which was released, January 8th of this year! I first watched season 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen back in December of 2023, however the show struck the air for the first time back on October 3rd, 2020. In this blog post, I will be focusing on the most recent season that I have been watching on crunchy roll, " The Cullen Game" which has been releasing one episode per week, since January 8th.
Jujutsu Kaisen, or "JJK", has a relatively complex plot when it comes to release dates of certain seasons or movies. JJK is a simple action-based shonen, with some supernatural twist to it. The latest episode I have watched of JJK would be episode 4 of this season. For background, the main character of this high-action anime is named Yuji Itadori, a young high schooler who gets entangled within a world of sorcerers and supernatural beings that in the show, are called curses. These curses spawn from negative human emotions. The world they live in contains artifacts and other kinds of objects that carry these curses in them. Very early in the show, Yuji swallows one of the most powerful objects there is and overtime gains non-human strength from doing so. Yuji then takes on a whole new world of taking out the evil and protecting the innocent, and in doing so he meets a boat load of other sorcerers, one of those sorcerers being Maki Zen'in, who is the center stone to the master piece I watched in season 3, episode 4. Maki comes from a clan of high grade sorcerers, all of which come from the same Zen'in bloodline. In this episode, Maki takes a visit to the outskirts of Japan, where the Zen'in clan resides at, Kyoto Japan. In this compound that Maki grew up in, she was brought up being abused and rejected for lacking something that was key to the rest of the Zen'in clans abilities, which was cursed energy. This time around, Maki returned utterly transformed, with physical abilities that the clan had never seen or expected from her. In attempt to return and get her cursed tools back for fighting, she was confronted by the rest of the clan including people like Ogi Zen'in, her father, as well as Naoya, and several bloodline members from the kukuru and hei units. In attempt to regain her tools subtly, her long gone family members wouldn't allow it, coming at her with foul language and harsh attacks. Maki, who possesses raw strength surpassing the rest of the clan, takes on her whole clan at once, eradicating the hierarchy and surpassing the families obsession with cursed energy. In doing so, the power structure the clan once had, collapses, to the hands of the one that was once casted out. This is definitely of the most dark, and most defining moments of character development in the whole series, and I enjoyed every last moment of it.
In JJK, there is a certain swagger to each character that I sincerely enjoy. Compared to other Anime, I believe the ability of Gege Akutami, ( the manga creator and writer), to shoot scenes that are super action packed and yet followed up by an extreme amount of graphics and narration, is unlike anything I have ever seen! From characters like Toji Zen'in who is considered the "Ghost" of the Zen'in, to a character like Panda, who is literally a panda that lives off of cursed energy, I believe the depth of character development and the niche backgrounds each character gets is amazing. If I could compare JJK to any other Anime, especially this episode, I would have to say the Itachi Shinden arc in Naruto, primarily because of the harsh background of the clans and the upbringing of Maki, and in the case of Naruto, Itachi's upbringing. However, the biggest difference I see in JJK, is the ability to tie it all together. Now as broad as that sounds, it is primarily due to Maki's screen time in the first couple seasons, and what it consisted of. She was weaker, and always had some resentment to bring up regarding her former clan.
A strong target audience for this show would generally be people who enjoy highly action based Anime, but to dive deeper I would say those who get a kick out of vengeance, and ultimately enjoy seeing the right things happen. In Maki's case, she faced backlash by simply being a female from the Zen'in clan, and on top of that she was weak, without cursed energy. In her case, the clan got what they reserved, they didn't see her for what she could have been, but for what she was at the time, and they resented her for it in this harshest ways possible.
I can't say the show depicts " real life" very well, due to the fact that it is animated, however, in this episode, the idea that women can be viewed as, "weaker" or "less capable" is put on full display. The mysogony that Maki faces her whole life is unlike anything compared to the battles any other character faces. Her comeback is beyond fulfilling, and I understand why she commonly states, " I don't go by Zen'in anymore" so often in the first couple of seasons. I believe that she had been plotting on such a vengeance from early on. The whole show is put together very well, I believe that there is a perfect balance of seriousness and no seriousness at all, even in heated situations! From my research, the analytics aren't very opposing to my views, in the first article I researched states that this most recent season surpasses the first two, and I couldn't agree more! The article states that the culling game has been long awaited by fans, and I was certainly apart of that crowd.
I engage with this show primarily through Crunchyroll and occasionally TikTok. I first came upon it after it being mentioned to me by a dear friend from home, and I couldn't be more grateful!
In watching this new season, that even if you read books regarding films that you plan to later watch, you never know how it all might unfold on film! As someone who has read manga, I expect to know what I am getting myself into when tuning into the series through film, but I can sure say I am always caught off guard by something, and this time it happened again!
https://youtu.be/y20M9pCZO18
https://gamerant.com/2026-frieren-rotten-tomatoes-score-2026-anime/
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