Jujutsu Kaisen

• 1. Introduction

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  Jujutsu Kaisen is a manga series written and illustrated by Gege Akutami that debuted in Weekly Shonen Jump on the 5th of March 2018, and went on to become one of the best-selling manga series of all time. By December 2025, it had over 150 million copies in circulation, counting related novels, digital versions, and its prequel volume. That number is not a steady climb. It is a story of near-vertical acceleration, and the speed of it says something about how the series landed with readers around the world.

  The central hook is both ancient and immediate. A high school student named Yuji Itadori swallows a cursed rotten finger and becomes the living vessel of a thousand-year-old sorcerer called Ryomen Sukuna. From that moment, two questions drive the series: can Yuji stay in control of his own body, and what does it cost a person to survive in a world built on hidden violence? Those questions would keep readers returning through six years of serialization, two anime seasons before its conclusion, a sold-out stage run in Tokyo, and a collaboration with McDonald's that put eight of the series' characters on dipping sauce lids. What brought Akutami to this story, and how did a four-chapter pilot from Jump Giga become something of this scale?

• 2. Origins and Influences

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  Akutami's path to Jujutsu Kaisen began with a four-chapter series called Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School, which ran in Jump Giga from April 28 to the 28th of July 2017. That short work would later be retitled Jujutsu Kaisen 0 and repositioned as a prequel after the main series found its footing. The serialization committee at Weekly Shonen Jump gave the series unanimous approval, according to chief editor Hiroyuki Nakano, which is a rare outcome and speaks to how clearly the concept translated on the page.

  Akutami has been open about the creative debts the series carries. Neon Genesis Evangelion shaped the series' mythological framework. Horror and found footage films fed its atmosphere. When it came to fight choreography and the underlying magic system, Akutami pointed directly to Yoshihiro Togashi, author of YuYu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter, describing Togashi's approach to battles as one that rejects emotional arguments in favor of tactical logic. Akutami described aiming for an art style as close as possible to Togashi's. The first chapter was framed as a blend of Bleach, by Tite Kubo, and Naruto, by Masashi Kishimoto, both of whom Akutami named as influences alongside Yusuke Murata, the illustrator behind Eyeshield 21 and One-Punch Man. Akutami and Kubo later sat down together for an interview in the series' official fanbook, discussing the similarities between their respective works. The fanbook, published by Shueisha on the 4th of March 2021, also included character profiles and author commentaries, and Viz Media licensed it for English release, publishing it on the 23rd of April 2024.

• 3. A World Built on Cursed Energy

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  Every living being in the Jujutsu Kaisen universe emanates a form of power rooted in negative emotions. Most people cannot control this energy and constantly leak it into the world. That uncontrolled release accumulates into Curses, malevolent spiritual entities whose designs draw on Japanese folklore, including onryo (vengeful spirits), yurei (ghosts), and yokai. Sorcerers are the rare individuals who can regulate this energy inside themselves and weaponize it.

  At the top of this hierarchy sit Sorcerers capable of performing Domain Expansion, in which the user conjures a pocket dimension that traps a target and guarantees that every technique inside it lands. The system governing all of this is the Jujutsu Society, a secretive organization led by a Jujutsu Commander appointed by the Prime Minister following nomination from three major sorcerer families: the Gojo, Zen'in, and Kamo clans. The Society operates educational institutions, including the Tokyo and Kyoto Jujutsu High Schools, and its principals are appointed on the recommendation of those same elite clans. Critics within the story point to the Jujutsu Society's rigidity and the disproportionate power of hereditary families as sources of internal conflict that shape the entire arc of the series. Those structural grievances eventually produce the Culling Games, a battle royale designed by an ancient sorcerer to reshape the balance of Cursed Energy across Japan, and the plot's most catastrophic single event.

• 4. The Shibuya Incident

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  On Halloween night in Shibuya, the central villain's plan reaches its pivot point. A group of intelligent Cursed Spirits, led by a figure revealed to be the ancient sorcerer Kenjaku inhabiting the corpse of Suguru Geto, executes a plan to seal Satoru Gojo, the most powerful sorcerer of the modern era. Gojo destroys the fire Curse Hanami before being sealed, removing the one figure whose power had kept the Jujutsu world in a kind of equilibrium.

  What follows in Shibuya is a cascade of losses that the story does not soften. Kento Nanami, Gojo's colleague and a mentor figure to Yuji, is killed. Nobara Kugisaki is severely wounded. The ancient sorcerer Sukuna briefly seizes control of Yuji's body after being force-fed ten of his own fingers, nearly destroying entire sections of the city in a battle against an uncontrollable shikigami named Mahoraga. Yuji, with help from Kyoto student Aoi Todo, defeats Mahito, only to watch Kenjaku absorb the Curse and advance a plan described as millennia in the making. The Shibuya Incident arc became the basis for the second anime season, which ran from July 6 to the 28th of December 2023, in 23 episodes titled Hidden Inventory / Premature Death and Shibuya Incident.

• 5. The Sales Surge

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  The series had 600,000 copies in circulation by December 2018, its first year of serialization. By October 2020, it passed 10 million, having grown 400% in a single year. What drove that spike was the first anime season, produced by MAPPA and broadcast from the 3rd of October 2020, to the 27th of March 2021. Within months of the anime airing, the manga crossed 20 million copies, then 25 million, then 30 million, all within the space of January and February 2021.

  In January 2021, fifteen Jujutsu Kaisen volumes, including volume 0, occupied fifteen of the top sixteen spots on Oricon's weekly manga ranking, the only exception being the thirty-third volume of Attack on Titan at the top. The series was the best-selling manga of 2021, with over 30 million copies sold that year alone, and repeated as the top-selling manga in 2022. Volume 18 was the single best-selling manga volume of 2022. Volume 23 had a first print run of 1.75 million copies, the second-highest first print run for a Shueisha manga volume in its publishing period. Volumes 29 and 30, which closed the series, each had initial print runs of 1.8 million copies, also ranking as Shueisha's second-highest first prints in their period. North American readers pushed the series onto Circana BookScan's monthly top twenty adult graphic novels list starting in January 2021, and onto The New York Times Graphic Books and Manga bestseller list the following month.

• 6. Expansion Across Media

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  A stage play adaptation was announced at Jump Festa '22 in December 2021, directed by Kensaku Kobayashi and written by Kohei Kiyasu, with Ryuji Sato as Yuji Itadori. It ran at The Galaxy Theatre in Tokyo's Tennozu from July 15 to 31, 2022, before a delayed Osaka run. A second stage play covering the Kyoto Goodwill Event and The Origin of Blind Obedience arcs ran in Tokyo from December 15 to 31, 2023, and in Hyogo in January 2024. A third stage play, based on the Hidden Inventory / Premature Death arc, ran in Tokyo in August 2025 and Osaka in September 2025.

  Universal Studios Japan hosted attractions from the 16th of September 2022, to the 2nd of July 2023, including an approximately 20-minute original animation with 4D effects and a roller coaster titled Jujutsu Kaisen x Hollywood Dream - The Ride (Kaikai Kitan), which ran until the 18th of January 2023. Universal Studios Hollywood separately opened a Jujutsu Kaisen: Hunger of the Cursed attraction from April 25 to the 18th of May 2025. A fighting video game, Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash, developed by Byking and Gemdrops and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, released on the 2nd of February 2024, across Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. On the 9th of July 2024, McDonald's released a limited-edition Special Grade Garlic Sauce through its mobile app, featuring eight series characters printed on dipping sauce container lids, with each purchase including a 30-day free Crunchyroll trial.

• 7. How It Ended

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  Akutami stated in October 2020 that the story's ending and main stages were planned, though the path connecting them remained flexible. By the 9th of June 2021, the manga entered a hiatus due to the author's health issues, resuming on August 2 of that year. At Jump Festa '23 in December 2022, Akutami asked readers to accompany the series for up to one more year, and at Jump Festa '24, hinted in a handwritten comment that it would likely be the last Jump Festa during which the series remained in serialization. The manga concluded on the 30th of September 2024, collected across 30 tankōbon volumes, with the final volume including 16 pages of newly drawn epilogues focused on Yuko Ozawa, Uraume, Nobara Kugisaki, and Panda.

  The ending sees Sukuna, who has transferred himself into Megumi Fushiguro's body, ultimately defeated through a convergence of Yuji, Nobara, Yuta, and Megumi himself resisting possession from within. Sukuna disintegrates after refusing a final chance offered by Yuji. Gojo, killed mid-series in a battle with Sukuna that he nearly won, does not return. Kenjaku, whose plan spanned millennia and included possessing Yuji's mother during conception to engineer Yuji's unique physiology, is beheaded by Yuta. The series left a short-term spin-off sequel in its wake: Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, written by Akutami and illustrated by another manga artist, ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from the 8th of September 2025, to the 9th of March 2026, and a fourth anime season has been announced following the third season's finale on the 27th of March 2026.