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Disclaimer: English is not my first language. This review is 1961 words long and it doesn’t have TL;DR.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

This is the best animated action season ever. That’s right, there is not a single cartoon season that has a better action than Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2.

It begins with a prequel arc that many people find more favourable than the next one, but I don’t see it. It suffers from being a prequel, which means it’s really easy to deduce what happens in it beforehand, therefore twists and turns don’t hit as much as they’re supposed to. It has a good explanation of why ... Geto became evil and many people started to like him because of that, but actually, this way Gege Akutami just tried to fix a shittier and more cringe version of Voldemort he was in JJK 0. The real purpose behind it was to give us lore behind curses from Yuki. Many people hated that it was revealed that he was dead all along, but there were hints that he was fake since the beginning. It was a great twist that showed that there were no asspulls with Geto and that the situation is far more menacing that we imagined.

The next arc till the rest of the season is Shibuya Incident arc and it’s a pay-off to all arcs that came before. The whole first season, a movie and a prequel arc were just a build-up to this massive saga finale. Every Chekov’s gun shoots and everything comes together (like Mahito being able to give people cursed techniques, that’s why Fake Geto needed him). Apparently, a lot of people think that this arc has no story, which is insane to me, because it’s like saying that the Sun rises in the West. There are 3-4 times more plot-relevant events than in the whole first season! How can you not like what’s happening on screen? Everything that you wished to see happens here (Gojo vs disaster curses, Sukuna’s rampage, Yuji vs Mahito rematch), with things that you never expected to happen (Yuji being Choso’s brother, Nobara’s “death”, Fake Geto reveal). I will never understand this take.

Another massive pros of Shibuya Incident is that it is the best war arc in the anime industry. People are not sure what “war arc” actually means. But I think it means a decisive battle everyone vs everyone that goes on for at least 6 episodes. And the problem with many of them is that they are boring. It’s either separated fights, usually 1v1, that go on forever (like any big Demon Slayer arc, Wano and Dressrosa, 2 MHA war arcs), or it’s just a mess where the author throws tonne of characters into a one big bowl and starts to use a mixer on them (like in 4th ninja war arc or Marineford). However, Shibuya takes a different approach. It’s a series of small encounters that are united by a cause-effect chain. Many people complain that a half of fights are unnecessary, but that’s not true: apart from Locust and Smallpox Deity fights, if you take away any of battles, the whole structure is going to fall. One thing leads to another, back to back, everything is important.

What amuses me too is how tight this season is. It shoves so many events in a small period of time that it never becomes stale or stagnant; it always has you on the edge of your seat. If you give this arc to any other action shonen author (with an exception of someone like Fujimoto), they would write it in more number of episodes. Also, it seems like many people say that the arc has too many episodes, but I guess they never saw anything like it before, because, for example, the final fight from FMA:B is only one episode less, so I don’t know what their problem is.

Shibuya Incident is a masterfully crafted, very tight arc, with an incredible structure. I really love tight scripts where everything is in the right place and nothing is extra. It’s a massive web of characters that run into each other and are being separated again and it never feels like it’s lost in all of this. It’s like an organized mess, it’s insane. The story makes you go “ain’t no way!” at least once per episode. And what impresses me the most is that every time they up the stakes. You think they cannot outdo it, but they do. It’s like a snowball that right down the hill and becomes bigger and bigger. The whole thing is like a chart going from 0 to 100. First, we have Sukuna fights, that are the biggest in scale, then we go to the Mahito fight, which is emotionally cathartic (it is bigger by nature), and finally we have the Fake Geto fight that is extremely plot-important and gives us one of the most brutal status quo changes in the anime industry. I feel like only the basement reveal from Attack on Titan is bigger. It’s just a chef’s kiss.

By the way, we still haven’t talked about the most important thing: action. In order to explain why it’s amazing, it’s better to compare it to another insanely popular action anime nowadays: Demon Slayer. The action there is boring and repetitive. 90% of it is villains spamming the only attack they have, while heroes slowly, but surely go for their head. It’s all about Tanjiro screaming, running, swinging his sword and telling himself that he needs to breath. Mahito alone beats most of Demon Slayer in creativity. There’s so much variety and tactics in this power system. My favorite type of fights is when characters use their battle IQ to defeat opponents and when there are imaginative powers. That’s why my most loved fight in Naruto is with Kinkaku and Ginkaku, and among best power systems are Stands and Nen. Cursed Energy is similar to these, but with one big difference: they throw hands here, a lot. That’s why fights here are very entertaining. Where else can you see rabbits doing Kung-Fu stuff, a city block melting in lava and a meteor falling from the sky in one episode? This show knows how to balance exposition dumps and a pure spectacle, that’s why it’s like a rollercoaster going up and down. Apparently, some people were frustrated by the narrator, and I get it, really. But on the same time, Chimera Ant arc is not even an anime, it’s a whole damn audiobook, but a lot of people consider it to be the best shonen arc ever!

The weakest point of the season is Nobara’s “death”. It’s not bad, just controversial. Her super long flashback is frustrating, but if you have a DMSS (deep meaning search syndrome), you can say that it allies with a theme of living a good life, so that you wouldn’t regret a thing. She analyses her simple life and realizes that “it wasn’t so bad”. Her dying seems over the top, as if it’s not right, but it’s supposed to be like that. We are used to extras and mentor figures dying, but this is really memorable and impactful. Now, if Todo died there too, that would’ve been too much, that would’ve been edgy, but now Nobara is this generation’s Haibara: a signal that sorcerers do die, that their fate is too endlessly kill curses that humanity produces. This was one of the things that broke Geto, and Yuji to some degree too.

The whole Jujutsu Kaisen is not that great, but this arc, it’s like stars were aligned. I will never understand people who say that they hated it and wished for the story to go back. It’s like saying that they liked when Bleach was a high-school anime and about hunting hollows. And yet, here some people liked when it was about curses, even though only non-talking curses that were a threat are curses from episode 1 and 3, 2 fingerbearers and Smallpox Deity. If you wanted JJK to be about Yuji and Nobara having one braincell and annoying Megumi, it’s your right, but one arc of it was enough for me. People say that Shibuya came too early, but I feel like if Death Painting arc had been adapted this season, it wouldn’t have been the case anymore.

I guess people that doesn’t like the show did not pay enough attention. How can you say that the Mahoraga fight has no build-up, when Megumi tried to summon it around 6 times in the first season. Another example of how people don’t pay attention is in the last scene with Toji. Many said that it was anticlimactic that Megumi didn’t figure out who he was, but Megumi said that he didn’t care who his father was. No, this was not about Megumi, but about Toji. It was his character arc’s resolution. He checked on his son, realized he’s doing fine and it showed us that he actually cares about him. Also, I had to explain one guy on this site how Mahito’s powers work, and it’s a basic stuff. People don’t understand what’s going on, become frustrated, turn their brain off and think that it’s just action, no story. Well, spectacle is top priority for the author, but everything else is at worst serviceable. It’s way better than whatever the hell is going on in Demon Slayer. I understand that Gege explains things in a convoluted way, but that’s the fun part for me to figure things out. There is a lot of thought put into the power system and I see that Akutami cares about it. If he had created Hantengu, he would’ve set a maximum distance for bodies to be away from each other and it would’ve played an important role.

One of problems with his writing is that he makes a big build-up for a small reveal or vice versa, the build-up is too small for the big pay-off. For example, remember when Gojo resisted the prison realm and it took some time for it to digest him. Yeah, it’s going to be important in season 3. Also, sometimes people look at the thing they don’t like from a negative perspective. A take that disaster curses were wasted here is understandable, but I see it as Shibuya being just unbelievably important for jujutsu society and even the whole country. This event doesn’t make them insignificant, their demise shows how titanic this catastrophe is. Ultimately, it’s about how shit goes down, on any level, even for villains. And that’s one of the things I like about this arc: it is not afraid to take risks, to have consequences, stakes are real here.

Anyway, Shibuya is a masterpiece, it is already a generation-defining piece of media, and it’s going to influence future mangakas. The rant is over, peace.

Edit (28.08.2024): I saw some people saying that the Mahito fight was too long. It was only 3.5 episodes. For comparision, in KnY the fight with the Upper Six was 6.25 episodes, the fight with Upper Four was 5.5 (that's if you don't count Mist Hashira subplot, with it it's 8.5 episodes long). In MHA S6 the fight with Shigaraki was 5 episodes (and if you count Gigantomachia vs 1A and Toga vs Ochako, it's gonna be 7). I'm not even gonna talk about the next season. And the final fight in AoT was 3.5 episodes long (if you count Eren and Armin's dialogue). Also, I heard one guy having an insane take that fights in general were too long, that they would go on for 2-4 episodes, even though the only battle in the history of JJK anime that was >= 2 episodes was the Mahito one.

Destroying Steins;Gate with facts and logic.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

First of all, I am not a fluent English-speaker, therefore there may be mistakes and a lack of vocabulary. This is also my first review here. Secondly, if in order to explain plot holes, you need to come up with theories, then it’s not an explanation. You can’t solve a math problem by adding an extra variable. I am against it also, because it will definitely lead into fans being smarter than creators and fans wrongly thinking that creators are genius. And lastly, I don’t need to watch Steins;Gate 0 or play a VN in order to ... understand what is going on. Steins;Gate the anime is a self-contained project that is considered to be a masterpiece. It doesn’t need DLCs. So if SG0 explains something, I’m sure it also adds even more plot holes.

So, I think there are 2 ways of time travelling that make common sense: either it is impossible to change past at all (travelling is a part of Fate’s plan) or an alternative timeline is created where Grandfather Paradox doesn’t exist and where there may be two versions of one person (a time traveler and not). In other words, either Fate exists and you can’t defeat it or it doesn’t exist at all! Any other fictional rule of travelling will lead to questions.

This show tries to unite these two ways. You can’t change the past but if you change something drastically, then Fate is like: “Yo, I didn’t sign up for this! I’m out.”. If you already don’t smell some bullshit, then I don’t know how else to explain to you that there is one. Anyway, heroes didn’t win the lottery and they are still friends with Faris after her d-mail, so this system works pretty well until it suddenly does not.

Somehow, Faris’ dad’s life is less important than Mayuri’s life. And this guy changed the whole city’s infrastructure! I think that Okabe would still start a resistance against SERN even if Mayuri’s alive. And it doesn’t even have to be SERN who will kill Mayuri! So, why is her death so important!? And what’s with that nonsense car chase scene? Why was the driver doing this? Where did they go after killing the girl? Am I watching Final Destination?

Also, why Mayuri’s death’s date is always postponed 24 hours later? If an explanation is that it’s a timeline who tells protagonist that he is doing everything right, then **** this explanation. This means that Fate is too kind. And why did SERN tried to capture heroes one day later also? From their perspective nothing changed (heroes know too much and they built time machine). Why wait one day?

Another main question is what do SERN, Mr. Braun and Moeka know? And since when they start knowing? Well, they know that heroes were thinking of promulgation, so it must be Braun who heard about it through the window and he told about it to superiors. So SERN already knows about heroes, either because of Braun, or because of a secret database where a first d-mail is located or because they hacked Daru’s PC. Damn, they even launched an operation in order to capture them. So how, please tell me how deleting information from their database days later will change the timeline since SERN already knows that heroes have built a time machine!?!? And why later in a show they aren’t doing anything! They are just letting Okabe doing his timey-whimey stuff!

It seems that Moeka knows that SERN wants to build a time machine? Why does a pawn know that? Her only goal was to find IBN, she does not need to know about SERN’s secrets! Why did Okabe tell her everything after she mentioned FB? Why did Moeka visit the lab after Luka’s d-mail? Is this because of despair, because she hadn’t found IBN in a shrine (this is what I call “adding an extra variable”)?

Now, in second episode Makise proved that time-travel is impossible. We don’t actually see the discussion in class, just a board with pseudo-science stuff on it, but her statement proved to be right, because in the beginning heroes don’t travel through time. They send their memories through it. But then Amane shows up and boom: physical time travel! I thought that it was one of important world-building rules. Makise proved that it is even theoretically impossible, but no, she was just wrong. And why did Amane forgot everything after travelling to 1975 and remembered everything only and only 11 years before 2010? Is this because of year 2000 problem (adding variables again)?

And why, why exactly does Okabe remember everything? I find it interesting that after building Time Leap Machine our special protagonist is not that special anymore. Why was SERN sending threats? Why was time stopping during Mayuri’s deaths? There was no foreshadowing that Braun is FB, while there were a lot in Amane and Moeka’s cases. In twenty third episode there was a talking about a time paradox. Time paradox!? Damn, I hate when time travel stories tell that people are able to mess with time how they want, but meeting yourself is a huge “no”, somehow.

Now the most ridiculous thing: superstitions actually work in this anime! Right, Luka could change their gender with a help of superstitions! That’s it. I’m done! Steins;Gate lost all my respect as a serious, complex sci-fi project.

Well, no, when a series does something good, it does it good. For example, in first version of alpha timeline Amane didn’t exist. She couldn’t save heroes from SERN, they got captured and now we got a dark future. Amane was born, she travelled to past, saved heroes in thirteenth episode and we got a second version of alpha timeline where SERN is doing nothing to stop Okabe (they could steal the machine while he was not home or idk) and he successfully destroys this timeline. Now look, without future-Okabe’s scream, past-Okabe wouldn’t have noticed Makise’s corpse and wouldn’t have sent his first d-mail. He would just go home and wait for WW3. Then Amane is born, she goes to past and forces protagonist to save Makise, because he is her uncle. But there is no Operation Skuld, therefore he fails, screams and that’s when past-Okabe finds out the corpse, goes to alpha timeline, wins because of everything I described earlier and creates Operation Skuld. How do you like it? Well, actually it’s just one huge variable and we just see a Bootstrap Paradox without a beginning. Now let’s find out why in RadioKaikan there are only two Okabes, and not three.

What do I think of Steins;Gate as a whole? It’s OK. I always liked psychological thrillers and time travel stories. And a psychological thriller part is well-done. The atmosphere and color correction is great, the dynamic between heroes and jokes are good. If only plot and its holes weren’t bugging me that much. I watched SG first time 6 years earlier, because I was trying to find a great time travel project. Dark didn’t exist that time, so I watched SG and I remember not liking it much. When I created my anime list, I gave it 6 based on my feelings. And now, after rewatching, it’s still 6. Seriously, guys, if you want to see a good piece of media about time travel, go watch Dark or play Quantum Break. It just saddens me that many people praise SG and say that it’s perfect, while actually it’s the most overrated anime ever. I believe you can prove me wrong in one thing or two, but I think there are too many wrongs with this show. If you will somehow manage to explain everything to me, I will only be glad and will apologize.

P.S. Sadly, this review is invalid, because I like SAO2 more. Am I right, guys?