It’s hard to know if the Japanese animated fantasy “Jujutsu Kaisen 0” might be a good entry point for anybody who hasn’t already either watched the recent anime series or read its battle shonen manga comic-book source material.
This new feature-length prequel doesn’t deliver much more than what the anime series already has: a satisfying, faithful, and hormonal action-drama about teenage “jujutsu”Martial-artist exorcists/martial-artist sorcerers and their ongoing (in manga comics at least) quest for destruction of monstrous sentient curses.
This was about a year prior to the events in the anime and manga. “Jujutsu Kaisen 0” presents a self-contained story about Yuta Okkotsu (voiced by Megumi Ogata in the Japanese-language version), a young jujutsu sorcerer who’s haunted by the cursed spirit of his childhood sweetheart Rika (Kana Hanazawa), who died in a hit-and-run accident shortly after exchanging engagement rings and lovers’ vows with Yuta.
Yuta’s one-and-done narrative might help uninitiated viewers to understand the series’ appeal since he, like the series’ main protagonist Yuji Itadori, has a mysterious symbiotic relationship with a powerful and apocalyptically dangerous cursed entity. Some allusions and appearances by characters, objects and events from the anime will be of interest to only the initiated. These well-timed callbacks can be satisfying, but they also illustrate this new movie’s limited appeal.
As in the anime series “Jujutsu Kaisen 0”Sometimes it feels too much like Cliffs Notes, despite the fact that there is more interaction between the supporting characters & the main protagonist than in the original manga. There are a number of characters to keep track of, and they only tangentially help to develop the main hero’s story. So it’s not surprising that Yuta barely learns how to weaponize his relationship with Rika –who usually appears as a hulking, eyeless demonic wraith whenever Yuta’s in danger — by training with the same Jujutsu High students that befriended Yuji in the anime series: Panda (Tomokazu Seki), Maki (Mikako Komatsu), and Toge (Koki Uchiyama).
Still, “Jujutsu Kaisen 0”This serves as a nice showcase for the entire world of “Jujutsu Kaisen,” since each new battle highlights individual characters’ abilities and personalities through a series of light, well-paced, well-choreographed fights. There’s also about as much purple monster blood and overheated declaiming throughout these monster battles as in the anime, too.
“Jujutsu Kaisen 0”The movie ends with a huge, splashy monster fight led by Suguru Geto (Takahiro Sakurai), who has a Magneto-like belief. “survival of the fittest”He is the natural antagonist to the insidating, but optimistic Jujutsu High teacher Satoru (Yuichi Nagamura)
The fight scenes might appeal to some fans. “Jujutsu Kaisen 0”They are known for their neat creature designs and well-mounted action. It’s harder to know how anyone else will feel about fan-service–y references to, say, Panda’s “gorilla mode” fighting style or the Kyoto-based rivals of Jujutsu High’s Tokyo students. These references stand out since they serve as mini-peeks in a few set pieces’ rising action. Despite these references, they are still a reminder of the “Jujutsu Kaisen” series don’t do much to advance Yuta and Rika’s lightly likable doomed romance subplot, they do speak to the series’ general focus on the sort of involved backstories that only fans could really love and/or take seriously.
“Jujutsu Kaisen 0” could also be off-putting to viewers who aren’t used to the anime’s convoluted expository dialogue, occasional shifts in tone, and general focus on the guilt, jealousy, and petty rivalries that motivate individual characters. The anime series is similar. “Jujutsu Kaisen 0”This works well when there are a lot of dramatic gestures that are supported by detailed plot-pushing dialogue.
You don’t really need to know that evil curses are like jujutsu sorcerers in that they’re both ranked on a power scale of 1-5, with 1 being the second-highest grade beneath “special.” Still, it’s hard to imagine being impressed when Tamamo-no-Mae incarnate, an antagonist that Yuta must defeat at movie’s end (who’s shoehorned into a sprawling melee with dozens of other sentient curses), when we’re told that it’s one of only 16 special-graded curses. At the moment, this explanation seems to work since Tamamo no Mae incarnate is a heavy-duty tool Geto uses in order to attack Yuta. Then again: Who cares what happens to Yuta, knowing that he’s not only not part of either the “Jujutsu Kaisen” anime or manga, but also doesn’t really add much to viewers’ understanding of the series’s main characters?
Your enjoyment “Jujutsu Kaisen 0” probably depends on how much you like its action scenes, as fans know to expect given their presumed familiarity with not only the source manga, but also its genre’s battle-focused conventions. The best set pieces in “Jujutsu Kaisen 0” — particularly Toge and Yuta’s team-up fight, as well as the very ending of the climactic group brawl with Geto and his cursed minions — not only accurately represent the “Jujutsu Kaisen”The anime series may not only offer viewers the opportunity to see more of this saga for their teen years, but it also provides enough information to help them decide if they wish to continue reading.
“Jujutsu Kaisen 0”March 18th, in US theatres