Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3: The Culling Game Part 1

Episode 57

Okay, it is not fair that the funniest episode of Jujutsu Kaisen to release this season, if ever, would also be the episode with some of the least interesting action sequences we've seen in the franchise thus far. Fumihiko Takaba is a goddamn delight and his half-exposed cheeks bring about some levity that's sorely been missed in this season of JJK. Outside of his delightfully dry dramatic entrance, though, the rest of episode ten of this season of JJK felt fairly superfluous.

Returning to Megumi's storyline, the young man has been successfully lured into Reggie Star's territory by Remi and he now has to square off against a gang of sorcerers. He holds his own long enough for Remi to have a breakdown and realize just how out of her depth she is in this dangerous and fantastical situation, which feels like a weird resolution for her character. While she's sucked from the moment she was introduced, but seeing her suffer without reaching any kind of resolution feels mean-spirited and voyeuristic.

Upon getting the update that Yuji was successful in establishing the points transfer rule, Megumi is inspired enough by the progress to kill his current opponent and resolves to retreat from this conflict so he can achieve his broader goal of getting his sister out of the Culling Game. Reggie and company still want to fight him in spite of Megumi being a way bigger threat than what they likely bargained for, and then Takaba enters the scene!

His introduction line to these characters being a joke that falls so flat that all three just stand around awkwardly until the commercial break hits is both inspired and deeply hilarious! The gag of him being so unfunny that he breaks the animation style with a children's drawing filling the screen instead was also a delight, and I appreciate that his cursed technique pretty much just lets him break reality a la a gag manga character. Especially within the company of super serious, edgy, and/or gory characters, Takaba's entire schtick stole the show for me this episode and he's well on his way to being a highlight of the entire season.

Then Megumi's fight with Reggie Star continues and it's well animated but ultimately fairly boring. Structured as a chase scene, the two chase each other throughout the colony without exchanging much dialogue outside of Reggie explaining how his technique works. He can materialize the details of contracts, which also includes purchase receipts, that basically allows him to summon and spam random bullshit whenever he wants. I understand Megumi wants to neutralize him so he can't be a pain later on, but considering he could fly away from this situation at any time with his shinigami Nue, this feels like another unmotivated conflict this season so that there's an excuse for a cool fight scene.

With Megumi activating his incomplete domain at the end of this episode, though, hopefully this fight will wrap early in the next episode and we can get back to Takaba being the best, worst, comedian. While this episode is fine in the grand scheme of things with the peppy and dynamic doing a lot of heavy lifting, I think I would have much rather preferred to watch Takaba fail at standup for an uninterrupted 22 minutes instead of sitting through another forced fight. In short, someone get Takaba's agent on the line! I don't know what “it” is, but he's got it!

Rating:

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

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.