Jujutsu Kaisen (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  In 2024, Guinness World Records and the data-science firm Parrot Analytics named Jujutsu Kaisen the most in-demand animated television show, taking the title from Attack on Titan. Jujutsu Kaisen is a Japanese anime series produced by the studio MAPPA and adapted from a manga by Gege Akutami. Its hero is a high school student whose life changes when he swallows a relic belonging to a legendary sorcerer. That path, from a magazine announcement to the top of a global demand chart, raises several questions. How do you stretch a long manga across seasons of television? Who shaped the series, its sound and its worldwide reach? And why did critics who admired its animation argue so fiercely about its storytelling?

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• 2. A Vessel for Sukuna

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  Ryomen Sukuna is a legendary and immensely powerful sorcerer from ancient times, and some of his fingers have been preserved. Yuji Itadori, a teenage boy, eats one of them. The act makes him the vessel for Sukuna, who now lives inside him.

  Itadori then joins an organization of Jujutsu Sorcerers. Their enemies are Curses, monstrous forms taken by negative human emotions. The sorcerers fight them with Cursed Energy, a supernatural source of power.

  Itadori's own assignment is to find the rest of Sukuna's fingers and take them in. The plan is meant to stop Sukuna's full resurrection, and it ends with Itadori being executed together with him. That is how the world is spared a catastrophic threat.

  The premise proved strong enough to support a prequel. Toho released the film Jujutsu Kaisen 0 in Japan in December 2021, adapting Akutami's prequel manga of the same name.

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• 3. Adapting the Manga

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  Director Sunghoo Park held meetings with Shueisha and with Akutami to work out how a long-form story could fit the seasonal rhythm of television anime. Park said MAPPA's staff faced real challenges in adapting the designs, building the characters and creating the Domain Expansion scenes. Each of those, he said, took detailed discussion with Akutami and Shueisha. He compared the job with his earlier series The God of High School, noting that he now worked with different teams whose techniques and creativity made the action scenes possible.

  Scriptwriter Hiroshi Seko spoke about the handling of drama and of the comic banter that passes between teenagers, adults and cursed spirits. Most of that material, he explained, comes from the original manga.

  Toho producer Hiroaki Matsutani described a small addition to the series called Juju Sanpo. These post-credits shorts began as an idea from Akutami, who drafted it and then submitted it to the staff. They appear from the third episode onward and follow the characters through their daily lives.

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• 4. Seasons on Screen

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  Weekly Shonen Jump announced the series in November 2019, and on the 22nd of December 2019 Akutami and the main cast appeared at Jump Festa '20. MAPPA produced the first season with Park directing and Tadashi Hiramatsu designing the characters.

  Viewers got an early look on YouTube and Twitter on the 19th of September 2020. The regular broadcast followed on MBS and TBS, in the Super Animeism block. It ran for 24 episodes, from the 3rd of October 2020 to the 27th of March 2021.

  The 12th of February 2022 brought the announcement of a second season. Park did not return, and a new director took over. Sayaka Koiso joined Hiramatsu on character designs. The season aired 23 episodes from the 6th of July to the 28th of December 2023, across two continuous cours. The first five episodes covered the Hidden Inventory / Premature Death arc, and the remaining 18 covered the Shibuya Incident.

  Two compilation films reached Japanese theaters in 2025. The first, a feature version of Hidden Inventory / Premature Death, premiered on the 30th of May. The second, which joined the Shibuya Incident to the first two episodes of The Culling Game: Part 1, premiered on the 7th of November.

  The Culling Game arc had been announced as a sequel right after the second season ended. In August 2025 it was confirmed as a third season. It opened on the 9th of January 2026 with a one-hour special containing the first two episodes. The season ran for 12 episodes and closed on the 27th of March 2026 with an extended episode of 27 minutes. A fourth season was announced the moment that finale ended.

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• 5. Across Borders

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  On the 20th of November 2020, Crunchyroll premiered dubs in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German. The company holds the license for streaming outside Asia, and it later added the second season. The English dub also arrived on HBO Max on the 4th of December 2020. Viz Media released the first part of season one on home video on the 28th of February 2023.

  In Asia-Pacific, the license belongs to Medialink. The series streamed on iQIYI and on the YouTube channel of Ani-One Asia, which later offered it to Ultra subscribers. Netflix began carrying it in Southeast Asia, India, Hong Kong and Taiwan on the 3rd of June 2021.

  By January 2021, Crunchyroll's figures showed the series as the second most-watched anime of 2020 on the service, behind only Black Clover. Viewers in 71 countries and territories had watched it. Later that year, Tumblr's Year in Review ranked it second behind My Hero Academia among anime and manga shows. Satoru Gojo placed fifth among characters.

  On Twitter, Jujutsu Kaisen became the second most discussed television show worldwide in 2021, ahead of Squid Game. It also placed nineteenth at Twitter Japan's Trend Awards that year.

  The rating behind the 2024 record stood at 71.2 times the demand for an average television show. Demand peaked on the 29th of December at 128 times the average. Viewers aged 13-22 made up 71.3 percent of its audience, against 56.7 percent for One Piece and 64.4 percent for Attack on Titan.

  In April 2024, analyst Miles Atherton compiled social media engagement for the previous 30 days across top anime and network dramas in the United States. Jujutsu Kaisen led with 11.2 million, ahead of One Piece, Young Sheldon and Grey's Anatomy.

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• 6. Sound and Song

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  Eve performed the first opening theme, "Kaikai Kitan". Its official music video reached 100 million views on YouTube in April 2021, one of the fastest anime openings to hit that mark. "Lost in Paradise", performed by ALI featuring Aklo, served as the first ending theme. The second opening, "Vivid Vice", came from Who-ya Extended, and the second ending was performed by Cö Shu Nie.

  Hiroaki Tsutsumi and Yoshimasa Terui share the credit for the first season's original soundtrack. Matsutani said the studio had first assigned Yoshiki Kobayashi as composer before the role passed to those two. The soundtrack came out on a 2-CD set on the 21st of April 2021. Anime Limited released it digitally in North America, Europe and Oceania that same day, and on CD and vinyl on the 31st of January 2022.

  Terui returned as the only composer for the second season. Tatsuya Kitani performed the opening for the first five episodes, which covered Hidden Inventory / Premature Death. From the sixth episode, as the Shibuya Incident began, King Gnu performed the opening "Specialz" and Hitsujibungaku performed the ending "More Than Words".

  King Gnu returned for the first part of the third season's Culling Game arc, with the opening "Aizo". Kitani, meanwhile, recorded an acoustic version of "Where Our Blue Is" for the Hidden Inventory / Premature Death compilation film. That song was in contention for Best Opening Sequence and Best Anime Song at the 8th Crunchyroll Anime Awards.

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• 7. Critics Divided

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  Micah Peters of The Ringer argued that the series takes familiar shōnen habits and executes them with such focus that it becomes endlessly watchable. What made it exceptional, he wrote, was its specificity, personality and ultra-slick style. He added that, as with Park's earlier The God of High School, motion capture made possible a lavish, expensive-looking style of animation that delivered the action the manga promised.

  Paul Thomas Chapman of Otaku USA called the series a case of average material lifted by excellent execution, and he set it beside Bleach and YuYu Hakusho. He praised Park for moving smoothly from goofy comedy to chilling horror. MAPPA's crew, he said, made that shift look effortless.

  Rafael Motamayor of IGN reviewed the Shibuya Incident arc of the second season and praised its animation. He found the story meandering, called the relentless fights a slog, and described a run of senseless battles with little emotional depth.

  A reviewer named Beckett took aim at the apparent death of Nobara Kugisaki. Too little was known about her for the flashback to land, Beckett wrote, whereas the death of Kento Nanami worked better. Beckett compared her fate to the "women in refrigerators" trope, arguing that it mainly existed to shock Yuji Itadori. Another review echoed the shock and pointed to a jarring detail: she still appears in the ending sequence beside the survivors.

  Bolts of Anime News Network praised the backstory of Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto. Yet Bolts felt the Shibuya arc mishandled Itadori, portraying him more as a victim than as an active participant.

  Ana Diaz of Polygon singled out the seventeenth episode of the first season. She praised the series for treating its female characters differently from other shōnen series, giving young women room to disagree and fight for their viewpoints. Its wide success, she concluded, showed that audiences were craving such change, and it gave other creators a green light to write diverse women into their shows.

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• 8. Trophies and Prizes

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  At the 5th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, Jujutsu Kaisen won Anime of the Year. Ryomen Sukuna took Best Antagonist, and "Lost in Paradise" by ALI featuring Aklo won Best Ending Sequence.

  In 2021, Japan's Character Brand Licensing Association gave the series its Character License Award at the Japan Character Awards. The Newtype Anime Awards named it Best TV Anime that year, and Hiroshi Seko won Best Screenplay. It also finished second in the anime category of the Yahoo! Japan Search Awards, which measure how much a search term grew compared with the year before.

  The Tokyo Anime Award named it Animation of the Year in the television category in 2022. In 2023, it became one of three recipients of the Special Achievement Award at the 65th Japan Record Awards.

  The sixth Global Demand Awards in 2024 gave it two prizes: Most In-Demand TV Series in the World 2023 and Most In-Demand Anime Series of 2023.

  At the 8th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, the second season won eleven of its seventeen nominations. One of them was Anime of the Year, which made the series the first to win that top prize more than once.

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