Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3: The Culling Game Part 1

Episode 54

Boy, it sure didn't take much convincing for Hakari and Kirara to join up with team good guys, huh? Ordinarily, I wouldn't gripe about this too much, but I'm noticing a recurring issue with season three of Jujutsu Kaisen where a fair amount of the conflict feels unmotivated. Naoya didn't have much motivation to fight Choso, I still think it was out of character and unnecessary for Yuta to fight Yuji, and it now feels like Hakari would have been open to working with Megumi if the latter had opened with throwing the Zenin clan's name behind the former's social reform efforts. Don't get me wrong, the action animation continues to be fire this season — and this episode is no exception — but I really wish there was a bit more weight, logic, and consequence behind the cool animation on screen.

Thankfully, episode seven of season three finally sees the main cast enter the colonies that host the titular culling game and the organic action and intrigue starts immediately! While Megumi and Yuji enter Tokyo Colony No. 1 together with the intention of finding the hundred-point-earning player Hiromi Higuruma, it never occurred to them that they'd be separated upon entering the playing field nor that players trying to score easy points would be waiting to attack them. After so much careful planning in the past few episodes and so much discussion over how the rules of this game and universe work, it feels so good to see our heroes have to deal with an unexpected curve ball!

Sure, the various rapscallions that attack Yuji and Megumi are obvious jobbers, but it's still fun to see them quickly dispatch these unexpected foes. Seeing the usually grumpy and generally asexual Megumi interact with the flirtatious Rumi was particularly fun. Him dismissively shutting down all of her honey pot advances harkened back to the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen, where there was more breathing room for characters to bounce off of each other and further establish themselves through juxtaposition.

The cliffhanger at the end of the episode setting up that either Yuji or Megumi are being lied to by the guides they've found is also a great way to keep the tension up going into the next episode. The team at MAPPA also manages to use their animation prowess to fill this cityscape combat zone with a sense of uncanniness and unease. Tokyo Colony No. 1 feels tense and like a threat lurks around every corner, because there's a very real possibility that one does! While Hakari's expedited team-up opened this episode on a sour note, the following two acts brought me all the way back in! This is the most excited I've been all season to see what happens next in Jujutsu Kaisen, and it feels like the crux of this season is finally starting in earnest. Shonen battle action has long been JJK's strong point, and I'm eager to see the show tilt all the way into what it's best at in the episodes ahead.

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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.