Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3: The Culling Game Part 1

Episode 55

Maybe I should have expected Jujutsu Kaisen to return with what might be the strongest episode of its third season after a week off, but I think this episode would have exceeded any expectations I had for it! While it's been clear for a long time now that the team on this at MAPPA were great at animating fights, it was a delight to see them apply their talents to a more ambient episode. This combined with JJK returning to its roots of using the aesthetics and narrative framework of shonen battle series to explore societal failings made this episode a homerun on every level.

While Megumi getting tricked into fighting an incarnated sorcerer and having the purpose of the culling game called into question in the process was a solid payoff to last episode's cliffhanger, Hiromi Higuruma stole the show this episode. Jujutsu Kaisen has been in need of a “Business Daddy” type since Nanami died last season, and this lawyer is perfect for the role as he works through the early stages of his midlife crisis. The opening act of this episode explores his last trial, where his obviously innocent client was found guilty of murder largely due to the social stigma of being accused of a crime in Japan and the institutional push to keep the conviction rate as close to 100% as possible.

Witnessing Higuruma's mental break in response to this bogus verdict and the related awakening of his cursed technique is the most affecting and interesting Jujutsu Kaisen has been since the first season. Junpei and Mahito being introduced to this story as a means to explore bullying in Japanese schools was a powerful distillation of those social dynamics, and I've been wanting for JJK to get back into sociopolitical commentary ever since. The anime cutting between lower detailed scenes with fluid animation to hyper detailed stills also really drove home Higuruma's faith in society collapsing. What most appealed to me about JJK's cursed energy power system early on is how it incorporates social stigmas and people's disillusionment, and that's utilized brilliantly here as Higuruma's loss of his core beliefs transforms him into a powerful sorcerer.

This is the most thematically cohesive Jujutsu Kaisen has been in a long time, and the animation in the third act turns a great episode into an amazing one. The use of color, changing perspectives, and the equal parts humorous and tone setting projection screen behind Higuruma drives home that the lawyer is really going through it and making it everyone else's problem. I also really appreciated the use of sound in this episode, from the reality breaking cracks of Higuruma pounding a gavel to the squish of his shoes as he gets out of a bathtub while fully clothed. These touches made the events of this episode feel so much more real, and feel far more intense in the process.

Put simply, this episode is everything I want from Jujutsu Kaisen and it would be my favorite anime of all time if every episode were this good.

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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.