Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3: Get Ready for Epic Battles Like Never Before!

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Summary

  • Season 2 of Jujutsu Kaisen changed everything, setting the stage for bigger, bolder, and crazier events in Season 3.
  • The Culling Game commences, leading to a battle royale among curse users with new rules and higher stakes.
  • The upcoming season will introduce new characters with unique cursed techniques, promising creative battles with dazzling animation.
Title Jujutsu Kaisen: The Culling Game
Director Shota Goshozono
Studio MAPPA

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Jujujtsu Kaisen Season 2, now streaming on Crunchyroll, and minor spoilers for the Jujutsu Kaisen manga.

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 changed everything; it was the kind of bold, unflinching subversion that most long-running anime, especially shonen, would reserve for the endgame. Instead, the Shibuya Incident Arc marked the violent end to the first half of one of modern shonen’s most spectacular stories, and Season 3 is only going to get bigger, bolder, and crazier.

Gege Akutami’s shonen series begins by following Yuji Itadori, a young man who finds himself marked for death when he injests the finger of a powerful and dangerous cursed spirit. In exchange for prolonging his death sentence, he helps track down the rest of the cursed fingers, opening his eyes to a world of evil spirits and the sorcerers trained to hunt them down.

This Story Is No Longer the Same

When fans last saw Yuji Itadori, he was standing alone in a world that had completely changed around him. He had lost a precious friend, while his teacher, Satoru Gojo, was imprisoned by Kenjaku, who had put a grand plan into effect atop a mass grave. The aftermath of the Shibuya Incident resulted in a wave of curse-related incidents too severe for this secret society to keep a lid on things. Left with no alternative, they disclosed the existence of cursed spirits.

After such a devastating loss, nearly every foundational principle that the audience took for granted in the beginning has been upended. If Jujutsu Kaisen’s first season was about building up this world, then the second was about tearing it down. Now, no one is safe, no faction is untouchable, and nothing is set in stone. Even compared to Season 2’s biggest moments, the stakes have never been higher.

The Culling Game Commences

Jujutsu Kaisen is finally putting the power firmly in the protagonists’ hands.

Kenjaku’s master plan, the Culling Game, turns Japan into a battle royale between curse users, intending to optimize cursed energy through violent natural selection. It puts the onus on the heroes to contend with a new series of rules governing the game. Crucially, however, it also grants Yuji and his allies the power to create their own rules, and that’s more important in the grand scheme of this series than you might realize.

Since the beginning, Jujutsu Kaisen hasn’t been coy about the systemic flaws of its world and is often critical of older power structures that can’t adapt to the times. The Hidden Inventory arc, in particular, highlighted this society’s disregard for humanity. But with Season 3, viewers will witness the pillars governing jujutsu society start to crumble as our protagonists, many of them among the next generation, make do with what’s left.

Naturally, the odds have been stacked against them, and between Kenjaku, Sukuna, and countless other cursed spirits, it’s not going to be an easy fight. It is a condemnation of the power structures that fell, but by that same token, Jujutsu Kaisen is finally putting the power firmly in the protagonists’ hands. It makes every upcoming fight that much bigger and more meaningful.

The Powers and Participants

Putting aside Season 3’s thematic importance, the vehicle through which these fights will be felt the strongest is found in the characters and cursed techniques begging to be animated. There are more characters introduced more quickly and more often, and while Jujutsu Kaisen’s pace gets notoriously breakneck going forward, the impressions left by these characters are strong. Some of the most beloved or just flat-out interesting characters have yet to be introduced.

Characters like Kinji Hakari, a third year at Tokyo Jujutsu High who was suspended for clashing with high-ups and who spends his suspension hosting an underground fight club for sorcerers. There’s also Hiromi Higuruma, a defense attorney who awakens a cursed technique that lets him enforce real justice in a world he finds bereft of it. Charles Bernard is another great example – an aspiring mangaka who finds himself wrapped up in the Culling Game.

And those are just some of the humans partaking in the game. Season 3 will introduce a whole slew of characters who are “incarnations”, similar to Choso. This means that they are individuals who may have lived hundreds of years prior and are now inhabiting new bodies, opening the door to even more colorful characters. Hajime Kashimo is one notable example, whose battle with Hakari is sure to be one of the most anticipated fights of the next season.

Cursed Techniques Taken to the Extreme

The characters are plenty entertaining in themselves, but their cursed techniques are what take their times in the spotlight to dazzling heights. We’re talking JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure levels of creative, original, and compellingly utilized powers, and they only stand to become cooler when animated by director Goshazono and his team. There are gonna be a lot of memorable “battles of the week” in this new season.

For instance, Hakari’s cursed technique takes the gambling inherent to his character since his introduction and makes it the basis for a domain expansion unlike any other. Higuruma’s technique is similarly apt for his profession, as his domain expansion functions like a courtroom, in which the rule of law is king. A personal favorite of mine is Takako Uro, if only because of how it’s visualized when she bends and distorts space to defend, attack, or simply “clothe” herself.

Thematically, conceptually, and aesthetically, the Culling Game might just make the Shibuya Incident look like a playground brawl if the animation is anywhere close to Season 2’s quality. So many new and iconic characters to bring to life, and so many more cursed techniques to adapt cleverly for the screen. If you haven’t read the manga yet and have somehow avoided spoilers in this fandom (doubtful), you have no idea just how many cool things are coming when Jujutsu Kaisen finally returns.

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2025-03-16 15:33