Movie franchises has become the recent trend in the industry. Following the huge success of Dragon Ball Super : Broly, everyone wants their big (especially shônen) IP to have their own box office hit and Demon Slayer paved the way for entire chunks of the canon story to be adapted in feature length form.
Jujustu Kaisen is no exception. Sung Hoo Park, and his team at MAPPA, comes back with a well-crafted piece of animation that feels more like an 1h30 episode rather than a film on its own. Indeed, many of those type of movies fall into the same pitfall : their movies are indistinguishable from their TV show counterpart. This may not be that big of a deal for the rabid fans of those franchises, but for a passionate animation fan such as myself, it is rather disheartening to see the path the animation industry is heading towards.
Nonetheless, Jujutsu Kaisen manages to provide some amazing setpieces, and the avan feels like they tried to put a true cinematographic vision into motion, but it sadly only lasts for about 5 min.
Now it may feel like I hated my time watching the movie, but it was actually quite entertaining.
JJK always had solid writing, it rarely enters stellar writing territory, but it was always competent at presenting interesting plotlines and engrossing fights. In this prequel we follow Yuta Okkotsu, a wimpy but kindhearted highschool boy who’s bound to the spirit of his dead childhood crush by a curse. Before going further, I must note that Megumi Ogata is a wonderful choice for the voice of Yuta, as he bears obvious resemblace to EVA’s Shinji.
The movie is in a bit of a weird spot. It’s a prequel but doesn’t feel like one, moreso like a introductory piece for Yuta. The rest of the cast are pretty much sidelined, their development (and especially backstory) being left for later in the story. This isn’t really a problem for some of them, with Inumaki being more fleshed out in the span of 20 min than his entire contribution in the manga, but for others it becomes quite a handicap to the movie.
Suguru Geto, a racist guru and one of the few S-class exorcists, serves as the main antagonist of the story. Those who’ve read the manga are familiar with his backstory and they have a full grasp of his motivations. But in the movie we get none of that. He appears as shallow both in his writing and his combat capabilities. Even if we know he’s supposed to be one of the best exorcists alive, what we see from him in the movie is pretty lackluster, even going as far as showing him summoning a S-rank curse for it to be blasted 20 seconds later.
The rhythm is also all over the place with the entire movie covering one year in universe. I feel like the story wasn’t suited for restricted format like an one-shot and it does bear glaring flaws in the presentation of its story. The entire evolution of Yuta is being presented with non-stop fastforwards, and the fruits of his labor, his incredible feat of strength against Geto, do not feel earned.
We barely see Yuta and Rika interacting which does hinder the emotional investment one could have in their relationship. Unfortunately, the big reveal surrounding the whole Rika incident comes at the end of the story, which leaves no time for the story to offer a compelling narrative with Yuta’s guilt. It would’ve been a great opportunity to show a new perspective on the whole «weight of one’s heritage» theme (one of JJK’s core ones) but instead we only get a cheap emotional conclusion.
The animation was really good as always. Interesting action setpieces, with dynamic camerawork (especially during Geto’s fight), intense and snappy choreography, courtesy of director Sung Hoo Park’s sense for adrenaline inducing action. Some really cool winks to some of first season’s most memorable scenes (e.g. Gojou’s beatdown of Miguel was very reminiscent of Sukuna’s beatdown), and the avan is still a really cool glimpse of what the film could have been visually with a lenier schedule and a true cinematographic approach to the production of the film.
In the end, Jujust Kaisen 0 is a fairly good movie (following a dismal MHA World Elite Mission), with pleasant character interactions and wonderful action scenes, but suffering heavily from the shallowness of the format which doesn’t enable its material to attain the height of its potential.
