The Shonen Where the Good Guys Lose

This is a thematic analysis and not a top ten list so if you are squeamish about spoilers don't bother reading. I will not divulge extraneous spoilers but if a spoiler is crucial to the direction and theme of the story I have to talk about it.

I've dropped better shows than Jujutsu Kaisen and never returned to them. Why would I revisit a show I hated? Partial blame goes to Japanese marketing in Japan. If I went to go buy breakfast at a convenience store, there were new release volumes of Jujutsu Kaisen and One Piece up at the counter. At the bookstore picking up Chainsaw Man volume 15 I noticed they'd set up a Jujutsu Kaisen table with a small LCD playing the JJK opening theme on loop. Loudly. Throughout the entire manga section. I could even count on Gojo's dead eyes staring back at me from the pencil box of at least one student in a class. But worst of all, I couldn't even get discussion of Chainsaw Man without memes and comparisons between the series. Memes particularly of JJK character Yuta were cropping up regularly in Chainsaw Man discussion. I knew he was the star of recent "best anime ever" movie JJK 0 so in a moment of weakness I watched it. I was surprised to find I liked it.

I'll try not to belabor the point that starting a story at chapter one is better than starting the story at chapter five. Zero is not a prequel but the actual start of the story the mangaka apparently had to break into two parts to get published. Pushing every episode of JJK down four episodes fixes a lot of structural issues that it has. Sudden swerves now have buildup. World building is suddenly sufficient. Characters are actually introduced. Gojo is shown as being friendlier and less immediately arrogant, making him easier to take. And most importantly, the main character, Yuta is still "the strongest" but now cursed with a power he can't control, a much stronger teen archetype that is immediately more sympathetic. There are no overpowered Isekai types, just troubled teens in a horror world. I especially liked the character Maki, an aristocratic faildaughter who overachieves out of pure spite. This is the kind of cynical yet lovable character in the mold of Nanami I felt the main series was lacking. The main story wraps up quickly, as expected of a four chapter short, and the last act of the movie adds fan favorite characters not present in the manga, but this is a series I could have liked from an author who actually knew how stories worked. What the hell had happened? Did the first MAPPA anime misread the tone so badly? I was prepared to chalk it up to Shonen Jump editorial ruining another series and leaving the series behind. Then I googled Maki Zenin fanart and immediately had more questions.

If JJK 0 is one anchor point to Jujutsu Kaisen that helps redeem the series, the other anchor point is the sealing of Gojo. Gojo is the worst part of Jujutsu Kaisen and the author agrees. This is completely lost on a substantial portion of the Jujutsu Kaisen fanbase to whom seeing a god mode character continue to win fights is apparently fun. But isn't this just Goku? JJK writes a Chimera Ant style story around the idea of how just awful it would be if Goku were real. After Zero in which Gojo rescues Yuta from being killed because he arrogantly thinks he can overpower him, we see he again pulls the same shit with Yuji. His taking extreme risks because of arrogance is Greek Tragedy Foreshadowing Writ Galactic Scale with stars in the sky and it still apparently catches people off guard. Read Gojo as Goku or Netero or Harry Potter or Abe or the US Military as you please, but in a unipolar world where only one character holds chaos at bay and that character disappears, what happens next?

With JJK0 and Gojo now forming two anchor points, it's easy to recontextualize everything that comes between. Yuji is the unusual fish out of water protagonist of pure goodness in a world where he doesn't belong. Everyone else is some degree of broken to some degree. Nobara's desire to move away should have hit me more personally, but the fandom's desire to make the characters cool friends to go to school with really takes away from the absolute desperation of that move. The school barely functions, there are no classes. There are maybe five students, three of whom are from aristocratic families hoarding their secret power to keep their bloodlines relevant. It's like Hogwarts except shown to be explicitly awful as it would really be. The only person holding the whole ridiculous edifice together is Gojo who, though benevolent, is so confident he is always willing to blow the whole thing up if he can't deliver a single time. And then he can't.

I've also always talked about the appeal of the "morally superior villain." This is an enemy with a far teaching plan to change the world instead of just loving evil for evils sake like Boris Badinov or in the age of the Joker, chaos for Chaos's sake. A villain doesn't have to actually be morally superior, I would count Griffith among this number even though he is irredeemable. These villains are just always more interesting, and I think it counts here too. While Mahito is obnoxious, he truly fits the bill as a spirit of humanity's self loathing. I could not think of a better characterization for such a being. But the spirit of the earth, sea, and nature all fighting for their dignity versus a corrupt and inept Jujutsu establishment in Shibuya makes for much more interesting conflict than people I've seen give credit for. It's really people's self destructive impulses versus people's self destructive impulses in battle royale, infinitely recursive in a battle the Jujutsu Sorcerers cannot win. And I feel like some of the smarter characters know this.

Japan has a lot of valiant losers media, mostly samurai movies but also anime like Space Battleship Yamato or GoShogun: Time Stranger or Gunbuster where the crew sacrifices themselves to save the day. The appeal of this in the west appears to be nil, where if everyone can't be happy, nothing matters. Look at a series like Cyberpunk 2077 in which characters die with their whole arcs achieved and everything they could have dreamed of and US viewers seemed traumatized. But there is something kind of engaging about seeing characters feel they are doomed, know they are doomed and then giving their all. And when all hell breaks loose, that is exactly the vibe that Jujutsu Kaisen hits like few other modern series.

Conversations from Geto, Nanami, and even Yuji hint that the real curses are not the googly eyed monsters, but the obligations we put on other people. I feel like this is a very Japanese way of looking at it, this entangling web of duty and obligation the Jujutsu Sorcerers, desperate with nowhere else to go, deciding on this stupid hopeless mission as their calling, forced by their dead friends to carry on and see this through. Of course this is shonen jump where hard work, friendship, and victory are the buzzwords all series are beholden to. (Except Death Note, which apparently got a pass on all three?) There will inevitably be a turning point where someone learns a super punch to cause someone to explode. But until then it's this odd, melancholy mix of duty, cynicism, and teamwork of knowing you're on the losing side but going out as hard as you can. The real curses are the friends we burden along the way.

Basically, it's the same kind of vibe of Himeno in Chainsaw Man, except every character is Himeno and that's the whole story. I love that kind of thing.