©芥見下々／集英社・呪術廻戦製作委員会
We’ve officially reached the point of the Shibuya Incident Arc where a single fight can last multiple episodes, and we’re talking about fights between random Curse User mooks who we’ve never even met before, too. This week, Megumi and Yuji have their hands full dealing with a foe that I’m just going to call Old-Timey Bodybuilder Guy (or “OTBG” for short), while Takuma gets to take on Granny Curse User and, uh…I guess we’ll call the third guy “Grandson”? Let me know if any of this gets too vague or confusing.
Anyways, so far as fights go, I guess this one was pretty solid, though nothing too spectacular. Yuji and Megumi’s bout with OTBG is certainly a step up from that boring locust fight from a few weeks back, though it doesn’t contain any of the stakes or gravitas as Gojo’s fight with the main Curse User heavies. It doesn’t help that OTBG is a fundamentally goofy and non-threatening mook, either. His “Inversion” ability makes for a challenge that the boys have to think their way through a little bit, sure. Still, it’s hardly a brain-teaser that can make up for the fact that the dude they are fighting looks like he belongs on the label for a late-nineteenth-century brand of opioid-infused “strength tonic.” At least we got to see Megumi use a bunch of cute little bunny rabbits to fight.
Takuma’s foes are a touch more interesting. However, this episode mostly just sets up their combined threat rather than making any particularly great strides toward developing Takuma into a character that we can give a damn about. Granny, in particular, has spooky shapeshifting powers that feel right at home in her autumnal environs. The flashback to the time she murdered a guy while posing as her recently-also-murdered daughter is the creepiest moment of the episode as a whole, even if it only exists to transition us to the flashback of the Curse User’s good ol’ days (aka the days before Gojo arrived in the world and upset the balance of universal power with his latent abilities). Granny also uses her transformative powers to turn her grandson into Toji of all people, which…well, Takuma has no idea who Toji is, so it doesn’t affect anything on a narrative level, but it’s cool to see Toji, I guess?
The jury is still out on whether Granny/Grandson’s buildup will pay off. For that, we’ll have to wait another week until Jujutsu Kaisen (hopefully) wraps up this battle and moves us along to another.
Rating:
Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.
James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.
