Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3: The Culling Game Part 1

Episode 52

I don't think Jujutsu Kaisen has put enough work into making me care about Panda, and it ESPECIALLY hasn't put enough work into making me care about Masamichi Yaga, for this episode to land. Nearly a third of its runtime goes towards giving Yaga pathos before killing him off, and I'm not really sure why the show did that in terms of world building or character development. Although Yaga hasn't participated enough in the story for his death to feel inherently meaningful, it does reinforce the cruelty of the Jujutsu government...but that's already been made abundantly clear, and his death making Panda cry doesn't hit all that hard since Panda has purely been a comic relief character. The only motivation for this event that I can come up with is that Yaga's powers would have trivialized some element of the Culling Game but, if that's the case, then killing off a character unceremoniously to unwrite the story out of a corner is pretty lazy writing.

Following this left field opening, the rest of the fifth episode of Jujutsu Kaisen's third season focuses on Yuji and Megumi infiltrating the Tyler Durden inspired Hakari's fight club so that they can recruit him for the Culling Game. While fairly straight forward, the absurdity of this situation helped me appreciate this episode more. It's funny in a meta sense to listen to the poser-ass, nineteen-year-old Hakari wax poetic about past relationships, how to live a fulfilling life, and maxing out credit cards. It's also great to see Panda deployed as a literal circus act, and the fake fight he and Yugi put on goes on for just the right amount of time and is just the right amount of ridiculous.

Also, while the episode is playing coy with Kirara's pronouns and gender identity, I love them and want to see them continue to encourage Hakari's dirtbag behavior.

The final scene of this episode features Yuji being invited up to Hakari's room and given the pitch on why he should roll with Hakari's crew until the jig is up, and I didn't really care for it. The team behind this episode at MAPPA were clearly trying to ramp up the tension in this scene by having it play out as a single shot in a claustrophobic space, but Jujutsu Kaisen's characters and writing aren't really well suited to this kind of subtle and ambient direction. Just last episode we saw Maki dismantle the patriarchy by LITERALLY attacking and dismembering every patriarchal figure in her family. JJK is best when it's big and direct, and this scene just felt sluggish compared to what I'm accustomed to from the show.

Still I appreciate that MAPPA tried something to make this set-up episode more interesting, even if it didn't land. Once the action ramps up I'm sure JJK will be in top form again, but there are more affecting ways to get an audience through the episodes in between big fights. If nothing else, I'm excited to see all of the Hakari x Kirara couples-cosplay this episode is sure to inspire come convention season.

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While he's indifferent to curses, Lucas DeRuyter has long believed that he could achieve complete emotional fulfillment if demons were real so he could dedicate his life to fighting them. That not being the case, he instead focuses on entertainment writing, contributing to ANN's This Week in Anime column, and posting about these and other exploits to his Bluesky account.

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3: The Culling Game Part 1 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.