@@Lineproof loads of Jjk fans are hella toxic ,like hating on other anime sayin stuff like it has better written characters then all of dragon ball ,JJk fans have just filled the new spot that AOT fans had
They gave Itadori a romantical interest for no reason, bro was looking forward to watching that movie with somebody and homegirl was trying to spend time with him, so I was like "great, it's date" and then they say good-bye to each like ?????????? BRO, WASN'T YOU GOING TO WATCH A MOVIE????!????????
Forfeit the game before somebody else takes you outta the frame, and puts your name to shame, cover up your face, you can't run, the race the pace is too fast, you just won't last!
@@thelordz33 @guilhermeteodosio40 you guys are so fucking stupid It shows that Itadori recognizes people by their soul, not their looks or appearance. That's why Ozawa says at the end that it was selfish of her to think Yuji would see her in a romantic way now that she looks like this. It is used as one final showcase of Yuji's character before he is forced to question everything before the events of shibuya. You really think this show was going to explore some romantic subplot? Please read the story
@@thelordz33that was added by the editor for down time given the constant rush of season 2 material. Gege wanted the series to begin with culling game stuff. People claim it’s mid early on as it’s generic but he was asked to make school setting since it eases people in. The girl also could be a theme of the simple vs complex lifestyle choices he had and how anyone even those that feel insignificant are important lives. As expressed in a recent chapter he’s not a cog in the wheel of life and a proper death is different for everyone but there all valuable nonetheless and he went through so much fast loss of life to see that. Making it the way you all want and fairy tail like with climactic goodbyes tons of long lore dumps and him directly tell no jutsuing the themes every chapter and going on long sukuna isn’t evil flash backs wouldn’t be what he was going for and it’s something we can get else where. It’s like asking blue lock to be more about team sports vs ego. You can go read team sports stories this is a new fast paced genre. Hate it go read old stuff your nostalgic about.
I consider Gege to be an impulsive writer. He is all too quick to throw characters away, throw plot points away, throw cool abilities away, etc just to make for a cool fight or interesting moment. There is little room for fleshing things out and developing things, which is why so many things are just told to us or explained to us. It sucks too because he's really good at coming up with interesting stuff, but it doesn’t seem like he has placed any real value into it. Sometimes it feels like he doesn't care.
what if gege purposefuly make it that way. it's not like he doesnt care about jjk but its the "world" of jjk that doesnt care about jjk cast. each cast are competing to be the main character of this world and we (as a reader) just happen to be seeing it from yuji perspective mostly. but I do agree that there is not enough time to invest in jjk character.
The thing is, gege didnt want to do a school setting but the editor at jump said thats the only way to move forward. So gege just did the bare minimum for the school part.
Everytime i hear about Gege and the editor i get more the impression that he(?) was cooking a monster of a story but all the restrictions within the manga industry have vastly changed it for the worse. I hope he gets the chance to write what he intended someday, maybe in a seinen mag
Jjk character cycle: cool guy introduced.. cool guy doesn’t get fleshed out at all but at least he’s cools.. cool guy dies due to terrible plan because there’s no leader.
he is human and understanding that gege has little energy seeing as how his dialogues are more than panels is why the potential of jjk isn't reached, jump releases caused the same problem like with kishimoto stress schedule
To be fair, it could also do more with its runtime if it didn't have to split it between way too many characters. The Culling Game arc really was the key to this problem, it introduced a shit ton of new characters that we just didn't need at that point, and instead of spending more time with the ones who already had way too little opportunity to shine we got more and more randos show up for a short while and then dying or becoming irrelevant again.
If I could wish it like a genie JJK would be twice as long. This gives adequate time for its characters to be fleshed out a bit more in the early parts (including Hidden Inventory), the Shibuya Incident to leave a greater scar on the cast (it could honestly go the exact same way it did) then the Culling Games would allow for the cast to have more interactions greater exploration of their themes and ideas, the Shinjuku Showdown could be the same length for Gojo v. Sukuna and I'm not sure about after that.
I think the hardest part in criticizing JJK is how the fanbase react, this is true to anything, but for this context specifically, let's say it is hard. I don't know why it's the case, but it seems it is because they see criticism as a form of "hating" the series, despite a lot of these criticisms comes from fans who truly like JJK. As you said, JJK fans seems to counter argue a lot of criticisms purely by regurgitating what the story said. If you criticize the lack of depth and screen time a character have, they'll use "Oh, it's because of series theme about death, therefore characters die prematurely without any ounce of development is because that". The most recent one is the Nobara situation. People point out how her come back felt rushed and how it feels like an a*spull. The counter argument they use is "Oh well, she just woke up tho, she's in a coma". Like, yeah we get it, but that's not why we have a problem with it. The reason why it's a problem is that Gege decide to "wake" her up, conveniently at a time when Yuji need help, with only 4 chapters left. It seems like they will counter argue any criticisms based on what the story told, rather than seeing it in a writer perspective, which is the problem with a lot of JJK fans.
Not to mention they also call you an illiterate moron for not mindlessly glazing their half baked series you make it sound like they arent that rude but man ive gotten some hate online for having any criticism for the series
I think my problem with jjk is just that it should be longer, I love how gege writes his characters (at least when he feels like it), but I feel like the pacing sometimes can just kill the series. Which is why I was really hoping for the 1 month interval to be the point for a lot of character writing worldbuilding, build up, and also pay offs of the tons of mysteries that were introduced into the story, which is why it sucks that it was skipped. Though the series is not over so, hopefully there is a time where we get a bunch of character writing because when gege does I really love it.
@ben99ny69 Some stories need more time than others. For jjk this comment is completely true because its issues are less about what happens in the story and more about what did NOT happen. The story is too fast paced at times and speedruns a lot of elements that it should’ve taken the time to explore and expand upon.
let’s hope the anime extends on this and extends some fight scenes like kashimo vs sukuna and such. the mahoraga vs sukuna fight was only like 8 pages long and got turned into a 20 min fight so it’s possible
I missed when JJk had those calming moments before the storm. You know when we used to see the bond between Yuji,Megumi and Nobara. Those unimportant slice of moments,the bonding moments that made team ups between Yuji and Nobara some of my favorite moments. Now it’s nothing but fights ,fight with no real emotional value. Is JJk terrible no I still like the series but I’m no longer in love with it.
Totally agree on this. Season 1 made me love the series. After Season 2 I immediately fell out of love. The vessel is just like baked in the story to have a plot. Even her death is not that much impactful to me unlike other characters we have invested in the series.
I've been told that's it's editor that forced him to do them. Then he got fired and guess what we got next? A skipped Culling Games reunion. The more I learn, the more I see Gege's success as a fluke carried by subverting expectations (which he overdid, didn't understand the consequences of it and neglected good story clichés).
I think this is why i get more jaded toured JJk has it goes on. I series is great at introducing interesting ideas but never flesh them out beyond that making it feel surface level. I look back pre shibuya and i see so many things that didn't develop it's transparent how little gege cares about his cast. Probaby why Yuta my favorite because volume 0 was solely detacated to his arc
The fact we know nothing of Gojo's family is shocking to me. We don't know how he was raised and how that impacted the power dynamics in his clan. Furthermore, why the Gojo clan didn't Say anything when he was dead? Are they dead? If so, how? This is just Gojo. There are many examples of that. We still don't know anything about Sukuna and why he had four arms.
@@CurryForceOfficialonly member is wild cause what happen to the rest of his family 😂 like that's something I'd like to know. Cause if he's the only member and he's dead, doesn't that mean six eyes will never be around again. Although tengen did say her and six eyes was tied by faith so since she's dead guess that means no use for the six eyes anymore 🤣 shit still wild with the lack of backstory
I feel most things in JJK are surface level, it's so rushed. I feel like so many people overhyped it and added so much depth to something that isn't there. In hindsight, the story is just all about Sukuna and getting to this Sukuna fight. Yuji was made for a vessel for Sukuna, Kenjaku was an evil genius but he just pushed the plot along and bring Sukuna back, Megumi was literally just there for Sukuna to take over and make our hearts hurt, same with his sister. There's also Jogo, Kashimo, Hiromi.
THIS bro, the plot of this series is so malnourished imo. I dont really see any of what people see ln it at all, all I see is just a half baked story with not much to offer other than some cool fight scenes and nice looking character designs
The school setting definitely could've been used better. Maybe by bringing in the Kyoto gang to Tokyo, it helps fill up the classrooms cuz they are so barren the majority of the time, with 3-4 students at most in a class. It also opens up certain character dynamics. For example, Nobara and Miwa could've had an interesting friendship, with Nobara's high self esteem clashed with Miwa's low self esteem, fighting for more vs settling for less. There is some potential for interesting stories of self perception focusing on these two. Maybe Nobara helps Miwa have faith in her abilities while Miwa teaches Nobara not to overestimate her own. Maybe end it off with them going shopping, Nobara showing Miwa the joys of life in the city that she's too poor to afford. Idk I'm just spitballing here. You could also have some of the adult sorcerers be instructors that teach students certain aspects of the power system: Utahime: Basic Cursed Energy Manipulation Gojo: Cursed Techniques Shoko: Reversed Cursed Energy Mei Mei: Binding Vows Nanami: Cursed Tools Kusakabe: Domains Yaga: Cursed Corpses/Dolls Yuki: Body and Soul Not perfect but I think you get the gist. You could have some students having better relationships with one of the instructors, either because their personalities mesh well or the student excels at the teachers class. Gojo-Megumi Mei Mei-Nobara Yuki-Yuji Nanami-Maki Kusakabe-Miwa Yaga-Panda Utahime-Mai Shoko-Noritoshi This could help make the school setting more than just a gathering place for characters, where the audience learns about Jujutsu society in a more organic way by having the students serve as vehicles in which they can experience these elements of the story.
i agree with the teaching. completely disagree with the "friendship" stuff you are talking if you maybe watched jujutsu kaisen you would understand why its dumb
@@poulpouler What ? Friends Can't Happen Because Characters Like To Die Or Because The Power System is Built On Hate ?? If Either Reason, It's Only A Better Reason To Involve Deeper Relationships. Imagine How Much Harder Nobara And Nanami Would Have Hit Yuji(And The Fans) If They Had Some Real Buildup
The school setting things is that the editor forced Gege to have it. Gege never wanted to have the school setting and he wanted to go for much darker vibe but the editor was against it. I definitely feel like in a world like jjk, I think school setting doesn't make sense to me honestly. Not every story should have a school setting like just look at chainsaw men or demon slayer. Jjk could had have something like what chainsaw men has and it would have been great. I mean we still could have mentor and student relationships but not the school things like Kyoto festival.
i tried to like jjk, i really did. because the premise seemed like something i should like, the introductions of characters made me think 'yeah this is a character i can get into'. and then nothing came from it. i adore hxh and let's just say there's a reason it is still so loved despite the literal years of hiatus. because the characters are just so good that as soon as you pick it up again you're back with them and you need to know what happens next. there's a reason the chimera ant arc managed to hurt so many readers and it's that you care. you care about these characters, even the ones only introduced in this arc and you feel for them. im getting emotional just thinking about it rn
That arc seriously made me care about an ant that reads books!!! It’s crazy how well written it is! Even characters like the women imprisoned in the palace. They were not forgotten when shit went down. Togashi thought through every single aspect of it. It’s one of my favourite anime arcs. 🙌🏽
Same. I've read 150 chapters and anything past like the first 5 was a slog. I really wanted to be a part of the hype. The only interesting character was Toto, and that was because he has a little more than zero personality like the others. Nobody has interesting motivation or backstories. The MC is the most bland MC I think I've ever seen. And the magic system sucks. It feels so tossed together and random with how it works, and it didn't help that like every 10 chapters there had to be something added to explain something or make a change to how it worked. The only reason people like it is because of the good animated fight scenes. Thats it. Take away the animated fights and you have nothing. How this even got an anime adaptation is beyond me.
Gege writes like someone who grew up with manga and thought "I could do this better." His love for subverting the tropes like having smart and strong villains but he didn't understand that you need to know what to do with smart villains. Never mind his dislike for pretty much all the characters except for Sukuna and Toji.
Gege just takes the troupe of when the protagonist is a smart and OP and everyone else works to elevate the protagonist's deeds and have cool baddass scenes of him but changed it from the good guy to the bad guy(s).
You made me remember Kurapika which means I'm gonna go on a rant about HOW FUCKING GOOD HE IS AS A CHARACTER. So, calling out a comparison between Kurapika and Megumi; one has lost his clan and wants revenge and to restore the eyes of his clan, and the other wants to find a cure for his sister. Both are self-destructive due to their morals, Kurapika wants to protect his friends and get revenge. Megumi wants to protect his friends and cure his sister. Now, Megumi's motivation leads to him summoning mahoraga which he has tried on many occasions, that's all and as a reader, we can hold onto this as yeah this guy risks his life for others there is no way he would ever stop doing it when it is needed the most, right? right? *sigh* "why should I help you? Why does it matter?" are the words megumi said to yuji when his refusal to help means the destruction of the world. going to Kurapika he is helping a stranger on the ship in the selection war arc and he slowly starts caring for them and is risking his life with each of his powers cutting away at his life, phantom troupers are on the ship and so is the dark king. Kurapika insures the woman that his priority is to protect them and keep them safe no matter the cost. We know Kurapika is dedicated because of how the chapters play out. It's just that Megumi feels so boring and unexplored that I feel like he was just a fucking plot device to get taken over by sukuna to kill gojo because that's the only way to kill six eyes user with infinity and yet still he was off screened and then Megumi was just thrown out of the story like a used cloth.
@@Arukitsuzukeru We can all see that he's arbitrarily dedicated to a random ideal (his ideal being "me help people - will kill myself"), but so what? We don't know WHY he holds this ideal, we have no meaningful backstory to make him think this way, we don't explore how it differs in any interesting way from the "let's save people" mentality of a stock-standard shonen protagonist and in fact, we see Gojo telling him his ideal actually sucks and that it's holding him back (which is proven correct when Megumi beats the Finger Bearer). And the whole sister thing? Is she supposed to be some moral compass for him, because we get exactly ONE scene of them interacting and it's her throwing milk in his face and telling him not to get in fights. Woowwwwwwwww, what a rich relationship they have, I can totally see why he's so driven to save her /s.
@@biscobisco1882 >>We can all see that he's arbitrarily dedicated to a random ideal (his ideal being "me help people - will kill myself"), His ideal is that life is unfair to all and because he can only save so much people, he'll choose to save people unequally, only according to his own whims. Thats why even though hes very much a pragmatic person, he goes out of his way to protect Yuji, despite the threat that Yuji causes to everyone around, and especially himself(since Sukuna is invested in him) >>We don't know WHY he holds this ideal It's explain in the first arcs of the series....his sister, who's very altruistic, fell victim to a curse for no other reason than that life is unfair...so he saves people unfairly, since he can only do so much. >>we don't explore how it differs in any interesting way from the "let's save people" mentality of a stock-standard shonen protagonist An "interesting way" is subjective, but its explored in the first arc + and in CG. He has an entire argument to Yuji about bringing back the dead bodies out of the prison since it would be a waste of time and the people weren't good anyways, and he shows how ruthless he is in the CG. Yuji generally goes out of his way to avoid killing humans, Megumi specifically said that hes not like Yuji and ends up killing two of the people who attacked him. He even went out of his way to hunt down Remi after the fight(who did screw him over, but shes also a defenseless girl who cant fight) and only avoided killing her because he thought of Tsumiki at the last second. >>in fact, we see Gojo telling him his ideal actually sucks and that it's holding him back (which is proven correct when Megumi beats the Finger Bearer). His self-sacrificial has nothing to do with his ideology of saving people unequally, it has to do with his confidence in his own abilities. >>Is she supposed to be some moral compass for him, because we get exactly ONE scene of them interacting and it's her throwing milk in his face and telling him not to get in fights. It's his sister, and its explained very explicitly in the cursed womb arc + origins of obedience his relationship with his sister and how she molded his ideology...if you wanted more, thats whatever, but dont pretend the story didnt do anything
Smth I noticed is that JJK is carried so immensely hard by its own fandom. The characters are so much easier to enjoy and dissect when you ignore the canon storyline that does nothing to flesh them out. It’s easier to love the main trio when you look at fan works of them actually hanging out, instead of watching the two whole minutes we get from Gege’s own storyline. Hell, a lot of the anime only fans don’t even touch the manga and instead believe a lot of the high quality fanart to be canon.
Im actually so happy you put this out cause this is exactly how i feel about JJK as well. I dont want to commit to a series that has such heavy themes and questionable character deaths. And while i understand that morality and death are key themes in JJK, i want to know what is the point allowing the antagonists thrive while the protagonists die? Are you trying to make this story grounded in reality? Because if so, most people come into this awareness of the dark world pretty early in their lives. Is it to subvert our expectations? Because the surprises and unpredictability get old pretty quickly... like you said, it just hard to invest in a story that doesn't allow you time to connect with its characters and how they represent the ideals the author wants to make...
I always wondered how come everyone is hyping JJK up and yet I can't seem to get invested for some reason. You perfectly described my problem with JJK. No matter how hyped up the fights are, no matter how godly the animation is, that all goes out the window when you don't care about any particular character.
Yup I'm in the same boat, I literally tried to loved jjk because of my friends but it's just hard to comprehend it, I don't get why some people get hyped with the scenes when all of its about is just fighting scenes... It's just bland... There's not much part where they enjoy their time with each other, the sad parts are too sudden, I didn't even get any chance to grow fond from the other characters or any interest
This video definitely voices a lot of the concerns I have personally with the series. I like JJK, but realistically, everything that has happened after the Shibuya Incident (Which is easily the biggest highlight of the entire series, bar none), has seemed to have absolutely undermined anything that Akutami has built up, if he's even bothered to do it, with little to no pay off. Characters like Yuki get shafted all for the villains to be on top once more, instead of actually giving her any legitimacy outside of her getting relatively close to finishing Kenjaku off. And it's not just her, we're seeing it with everything that's currently going on in the recent chapters. Characters getting undermined for highlights, but the highlights, ironically enough, being undermined because there's no major pay off. And I don't even think it's JUST characters, but everything else. Everything from the magic system, to the actual setting itself is ultimately undermined and confusing, because Akutami can't be bothered to just flesh things out, and provide answers and good conclusions to the "payoffs", if we can even call them that, that we're seeing. It's all just nebulous, and we only get highlights that have lackluster build up. No disrespect to Akutami, but it really just seems like he's only emphasized his love for Togashi through referencing his work constantly, but without understanding what makes Togashi's work WORK, or at the very least if he does get it, then he's just not expanding on it enough for JJK to have its own identity, aside from "I like Nen so lemme make a magic system based around it, it's cool, right?" Like I said, I like JJK, but with where it's headed so far, I find it difficult to care about any of the established aspects of the series, when Akutami, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't care enough to make the story any better than what it is. It's clear that it can be so much more than what it is, and it's not. And it's just disappointing.
Shibuya was only a highlight because it was a pseudo-ending. A ton of stuff set up from S1 was resolved in Shibuya at a short time span but S2 didn't really bother setting up enough for the future or for itself. This is typically what you do in an ending where you try to resolve all loose threads but well, Shibuya is not an ending
@@phobics9498 Thinking about it, I see what you mean there. ESPECIALLY with all the breadcrumbs that have been spread out through stuff like cover pages, Gege's not doing a good job at being able to convey the ideas he wants adequately. I'm sure it's because of time constraints and whatnot, but even then, as far as I'm concerned, JJK shouldn't be a shonen manga. It is, but it's clearly doing things that Gege likes in people like Togashi. But Togashi can get away with a lot of the stuff he does narratively with his characters, like the video brought up, because of how they're set up in the grand scheme of things. Gege's foreshadowing of stuff like the mummified corpse, and how people respond to things like that with "HE COOKED!" sometimes makes me confused, because, at least if I'm not smooth-brained for it, it was never mentioned or implied to exist in series. Just because an author can foreshadow stuff, doesn't mean that the payoff is good, or that it's cooking. Even now, I'm confused what to think about Gege's writing, because he's just very difficult to decipher. But that may be mainly because of how fans have created theories, that Gege has that allure about him. Though, it's not doing him any favors as far as I can see, especially with all the stuff he admits he wish he could have done better on.
Literally been rereading berserk and I’m invested in it when I already know what’ll happen, but reading jjk weekly just feels like I’m waiting for something good to actually happen😭
I've only seen season 1 of jjk so far, but that feeling of waiting for something to happen is strong for me. I watched the 0 movie, and I call that my favorite jjk episode. It just delivered its themes and plot so well . Some comments to this video say the series needed to be longer. The movie proves otherwise.
For the people going "Akutama didn't want to do the high school setting, it isn't what he wanted it's what his editors wanted", do you have any idea of how well editors can influence a story, or just how necessary they are in general? Let's look at a classic example, Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball Z, and his editors. Toriyama's most well known and influential editor, Torishima (From OG DB to the Frieza Saga) helped Toriyama get the story off the ground by suggesting that it should be based around martial arts. During the entirety of the Android/Cell Saga, Torishima (who wasn't his editor at this point anymore) would call up Toriyama and say "The villains are just some old and fat guys, really" and then Toriyama would adapt and Torishima would call again saying "Now they're just some brats" which made Toriyama decide to create Cell. The funny thing is, once he created Cell he then got ragged on by his current editor at the time, Kondo, who said things like "This bug is so ugly, but he can transform right *wink wink* ", and "He looks like an idiot in his second form, just make him perfect already". Unlike Gege Akutama, who decided to put in as little effort as possible with the editor's requests, Toriyama sensei decided to "roll with the punches", he didn't take the criticisms too personally, he just adapted to the situation and, eventually, made the (imo) best arc of DBZ because of his editors criticisms, not in spite of them. As a mangaka, you can "buck the editor" like Akutama and try to write the story you want to, or you could do what greater mangakas have done and adapted to what the editors said and change your story or evolve your story into one that you want to write (Toriyama and Togashi respectively). TLDR; Using Akutama's editor as an excuse for Akutama fleshing out the school or backstory or worldbuilding isn't fair, as multiple mangakas have proven that you can adapt your story to include those things or use them as a launching point to tell the story you want to tell, their suggestions/criticisms aren't supposed to be "roadblocks" or "obstacles", they're a resource the mangaka should use or at the very least consider.
That’s is true and rarely do you get to do whatever you want. Gege could have used the school to help train and understand jjk world way more than he actually let it be
This is something that I would describe as a... Anoyance for me I guess. Mangaka that are good at writing and being good just don't seem to have any level of adaptability or being able to look past their own original vision. I look at Naruto as an example of this and more specificaly how some characters were used. Originaly Neji was planned to die in the Sasuke retrival arc but his editor made him (The author Kishimoto) keep him alive due to his popularity. And what does Kishimoto do wtih this now living popular character.... Nothing. He and so many others that he didn't originaly have a vision for ended up being cast aside without any thought of how they could help the story.
Exactly 💯 Gege could've given way more effort. Another great example is the Chinin Exam arc in Naruto. While Kishimotos original plan was to have team 7 go to different villages, like in the land of waves arc. His editor told him to do a tournament arc, so he rolled with it and he gave us one of the best arcs in OG Naruto.
The cell saga the best arc of dbz ? 😂😂😂 This arc has the most bullshit because Toriyama changed the story all the time . The namek arc was the best I don't know why it is a debate .
I’ve felt this way for so long and people continue to deflect every criticism justifying it by talk about how subversive it is but it’s clear to me that akutami doesn’t care and is just trying to finish the story and show cool looking fights so why should I care why should anyone care
Gege really fumbled JJk. It could've been something better to the likes of HxH The hunt for Sukunas fingers This was basically the main premise of the manga, it has been completely thrown aside, and at this point was basically was completed off-panel. Our heroes actually learning Jujutsu Sorcery Every main character (except Gojo who is a teacher) is a STUDENT at Jujutsu High, one of the earlier arcs was an inter-school competition. Yet after Yuji gets a basic handling on CE and some training before the aforementioned arc, we are done with any schooling, any training. If you set your manga in a magic school, and make all your character magic students, people expect you to do stuff with that. The politics of the Jujutsu world This has been a thing that was foreshadowed from the get-go as well. The staunchly traditional higher-ups are introduced basically from Chapter 1 - Gojo laments that they would have Yuji killed immediately out of fear and incompetents and that only he is there to oppose them. This gets later reinforced by Gojo's speech about the new wave and how he wants a revolution led by the youngsters etc. But this also gets put to the side - all higher-ups are killed (again off-panel), and the one guy from the traditional faction that we knew gets kinda 'redeemed' bcs he was just following orders or whatever and done. The time skip before the finale fight Is just a clear f*ck you, to any reader who wanted to have any of the aforementioned plot lines be addressed in anything but a throw-away line. You can see this, especially in Chapter 225 where half of the chapter is talking about basic concepts that should have been addressed beforehand - like how will Gojo's DE interact with Sukunas open-border DE. So the author clearly sees a need for this topic to be addressed but can't be bothered to do so when it would have fit story-wise bcs he is rushing to the end fo the manga. Military plot wtf was it? Waste of Yuki. Fucking Yorozu. Gojo unsealing rushed and anticlimatic. Time skip that happened because Gege didn't want to write any character interactions between Gojo and the rest of the characters. Think what you want about the quality of the fight, but it was massive waste of time because Gojo achieved nothing and died for nothing which made his whole character useless. And don't make me start on Kashimo and his "usefullness"
They can say anything but the truth is there in the manga. How tf did gojo the guy with six eyes not see Sukuna’s chant. But the others with regular eyes can see them 🤔. Nahhhh, I really didn't care that Gojo died , come on everyone knew it was gonna happen sooner or later but like that, and offscreening the attack, f that I rather hear Jimbei speak about Akainu and Aokiji fighting for 10 days straight than this bs. And now he's using miguel 😭
My sister made me watch jjk this summer, and i just struggled to stay focused on it...i had to be told to pay attention at certain important moments so i could understand what would be happening but I WAS SO BORED😭 and i love so many battle shonen series.. The fights were big and flashy and yeah they looked great but they were so boring and meaningless!!! Battle anime is about battles but some other series give them weight and you're invested bcz you care about the characters and the outcome!!! I really love some ideas in this series and the potential of the characters and i played with the idea of reading the manga but i rly can't be bothered😅
JJK to me is what happens when a series subverts and deconstructs to its own detriment I won't lie as a huge shonen meathead, JJK was like a spark to younger me; it made me actively want to embrace my sketchier, messy art tendencies and evolve my writing Sometimes i look back at the series now and just think "Where did the love go?"
Good analysis, I feel like gege akutami tries to fix the common flaw we see in the classics such as naruto or dragon ball, which is having a wide roster of useless side characters at the end. The problem is, if you kill them right after their role in the story is fulfilled, it feels artificial and empty. I sometimes wonder how can the main character cry so loudly over his self proclaimed brother he met like 1 arc ago as if they were childhood friends. At the end, instead of having a bunch of useless side characters narrating the endgame, you get a bunch of wasted personalities that end up feeling like tools for the narrative and nothing else (and you know what the mc said about humans not being slaves of their role in the most recent chapter). When I get to think about my favorite character in the series, nothing personality related comes to my mind, I always answer choso bcs of the single fact his ability is giving aids.
people were overhyping the shibuya arc. I was ok with jjk 1st season until the 2nd season. While they still had the free will to move, Normal citizens were reacting like npcs standing around with a mouth breathing stupefied look on their face and dying like fodder. There were way too many shots panning to the citizens literally standing with no urgency after being sucked into the train station. I realized at that point nothing matters and I don't care who dies. The author treats its characters like fodder and not even like an impactful way.
In my opinion, writing ability-wise, jjk is weak. even if Gege does have talent that doesn't change the fact that everything written in jjk is mostly surface-level. the main highlight of this series for me is the action which I think is the main reason it's so popular anyways (besides the existence of gojo, sakuna, toji and perhaps yuta) the actual world-building, character work, power system, etc. are the weakest I've seen yet in shonen (and that's saying something considering demon slayer exists.) This is the first time I've come across a main characters that does not feel like a main character at all. Yuji is the character I'm least interested in and literally the existence of sukuna is what makes him more interesting. On his own, his ridiculously bland and basic for a shonen protag. Literally anyone else could have served as a better MC in this series than Yuji. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy watching the show and have a positive opinion about the action and pacing. I've tried to get on that hype train but the glaring issues in writing I just could not get past (bc I enjoy deep diving into things) I've seen people give meaning to things and plot points that were never there to begin with. Basic shonen tropes are blatantly present and I do not care about a SINGLE character in jjk.There deaths and personal tragedies did nothing for me emotionally (and I don't consider frequent deaths in shonen as special especially when their done so poorly) For instance, in naruto, I remember balling my eyes out at jirayas death. My world shattering at kakashis (fake) death. Hell even asuma sensei. And literally any character in one piece pre time skip (even a freaking ship!) I have yet to experience a signal emotional high such as that in jjk. Nobara just died and I literally felt like 'well that was quick'. Mechamaru? Dear god, I don't give a shit. In conclusion, I just like watching gojo and sakuna on screen. Otherwise, this is a series made with the least amount of effort.
It's a fun action anime with great battle sequences and a cast that is often entertaining. You're not getting more than that and, to me, that is fine. But people want to gaslight themselves into thinking that the writing doesn't have very questionable decisions.
@@gottigamer3448And you know what? Fair play to him. Even if I'm critical of his work at times, particularly during the final arc, I'm fine with Jujutsu Kaisen mostly standing out because of the characters being cool and having great fights. It's the pretentious fandom thinking this is a deep, complex story that irks me. There's this weird thing in some shonen anime fandoms to try claim their favorite series is "deep, complex art". You don't need to do that. Enjoy watching the cool characters beating the shit out of each other. That also has value because you give people something to enjoy.
@@kevintanza6968 FACTS! Idk why so much Anime Fandom try to gaslight you into thinking their story is so "grand, mature and complex" and its literally the same "Bad guy vs Good Guy + Flashy powers" Plot. Thats not bad, liking that is not bad, my fav series is like that at times! But people cant admit for the life of themselves, that the anime/manga they like its just another fighting manga
Jjk Really knee capped itself by moving at such a breakneck pace with the story. So much hinges on the relationship between yuji and megumi now but they've spent almost no time together on screen. The worst part is that what's there is very good. I think gege can write characters well. The little we've gotten blows naruto out of the water, but it's incomplete. It always will be. And now all that's left is Sukuna. He's boring as a character. He has the same problem you've mentioned with the series. Sukuna's theme and ideology are swallowing any character he has. It's being used to excuse the weak writing while shruggs off a mountain of ass beatings & soul damage.
I'm glad someone mentioned this. Sukuna has gotten boring. His whole thing now is killing characters. We don't know anything about him and has been on the manga as the main focus for seven months or so.
@@rohanshah8808 And what about their downtime? Most shonen have near equal quality in emotional payouts with character deaths, fights, and big plot points. JJK has this in spades for Shibuya but even before that it's good stuff. When I say JJK is better at it i mean that when we're at a calm point in the series the characters actually feel like friends and allies. Even in the battles their character comes out in how they communicate.
@@RedCornix i gave more points about the fault in plot points in jjk..in respect of character building..(but comments got deleted) i think the channel has a bit of favoritism towards jjk
personally the show was much more intriguing before author started Dickridin Sukuna costantly, making him this invincible chad gary-stu with no weaknesses, who defeat literally everyone everytime with zero effort and basically kill every character who can be interesting in the same chapter it's introduced. at this point it feels like a fanfic made by some thirtsy teen than an actual good story. heres summarisez all the recent volumes "plot twist Sukuna wasnt even serious because he wasn't using that extremely strong technique that hasnt been used since the Heian Era"
@@ZorrowTasogare92Atleast Madara was a character with personal goal and motivations instead of just being a generic bad guy you gotta beat. It felt like Madara mixed with Kaguya lol.
@@ConstantinDOSSOU-vy1zo Being strong ain't the issue. Personally I think Sukuna's strength and the built up towards showcasing it multiple times is actually well done in the series. Its the writing around that strength and Sukuna's character later on that causes so many issues for people.
good to know gege isn't sexist, all characters get thrown away when he stops caring, man or woman (this is a joke, he's said some shit that makes me think he cares about his female characters even less than his male characters)
lol. well actually we know very well he isn't sexist, he even has multiple instances of feminist messages in jjk, but that's also exactly an example of how focused he is on messages themselves without actually weaving them into the themes and narrative consistently
I think JJK is mostly for fans who are not looking to be moved emotionally, but want to be entertained. It is a visually stunning show with a fast pace, but honestly if Gege decided to genocide every single character in the most gruesome way, I d still be bored. I am one of those people who only care for a story if they care for a character, and the main issue with JJK cast for me is that I never felt like I actually know them. They are strangers, and I am as moved by their death as when I see the daily news with new bodies. To me Gege did not manage to bring me into the world, I am still just a viewer, detached from what is going on .
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THISSSS ive been thinking about what jjk lacks for so long!! my primary gripe with the series is that im not invested in any of the characters and because of that, im not invested in what gege is trying to say either. in my creative writing class i was taught about how the story/narrative is inextricably linked with the characters and their arcs, so in jjk without my investment in the characters, the story comes off as entirely empty and soulless. im not immune to its hype moments, but what are those moments FOR? what purpose do they serve towards the narrative at large? theyre usually only there for hype, which doesnt go well with the deeper messages this story wants to tell its audience
JJK gets you invested with the PROMISE of deep characters ..... aaaaand then it's gone. There are many, but the one that really stands out to me are Gojo and Geto. Specifically, the scene right before Gojo's imprisonment when he speaks to Geto's body and asks whether he'd really let another control him, causing the hand to spasm and try to choke out Kenjaku. It was such a tantalizing setup: the thought that Geto was still in there, reacting to Gojo's voice. Geto turned evil before being taken over by Kenjaku, so I wasn't expecting some glorious return/redemption, but I AT LEAST expected a Gojo vs Kenjaku/Geto fight before the end. Instead, Gojo and Kenjaku die in separate battles and all we get is Gojo meeting Geto in terminal limbo 😐
@@obara7366 Yup, tbh I thought jjk is gonna be good because of how the fandom is so crazy about it, after watching it, I don't really know, I didn't even felt any emotion about the characters death, I'm just surprised
Now I haven't read the manga, but watching season 2 made me feel empty in a bad way. I don't know how to describe it but it felt weirdly shallow. The show is trying to tell me this a big terrible event and realistically it would be, but it felt the characters themselves didn't even care, like the world didn't care. There are people dying left and right but it feels so meaningless and I had idea anymore why some people are on certain sides when they care so little.
JJK boring as hell bc you don’t connect to NOBODY! The entire time you’re pushed to Love Gojo, but then you barely get to know homie and then he’s locked up for a whole season and then he dies. WTF?? Yuji supposed to be main character, don’t know shit about him really, and he’s barely on screen considering he’s MC. I told my friend I blazed through the entire first season and could barely understand wtf was happening. He said to watch season 2 bc it’ll answer everything. The only thing that I left season 2 with was shipping Gojo and Geto, and pretty much nothing else. Like to this day, what is this show even about.
@@MasterMike_ I deleted this post, i‘m terribly sorry for this misunderstanding. But thank you for pointing this out. @he_just_like_me_fr guess i should have read your Name before, sorry for this misunderstanding.
An amazing video! Thank you! I think you did a really good job really *showing* the difference between something like HxH and JJK, in a way that I could never figure out how to properly put into words. What I've been saying for a while is that (while it had its flaws well before the Culling Games) Gege started writing as though his characters were action figures right after starting the Culling Games. Gege decides that he wants to have a shitload of cool fights, but it ends up feeling super dead and boring because all the characters are relegated to mere vessels for said fights to take place between.
Came here because JJK fans are trying to gaslight twitter that the Heian era and Gojo clan lore (and why they didn’t make a move when Gojo got trapped in that box) doesn’t matter in the narrative as the series comes to its end
This video hits even harder after chapter 268 and 3 to go until the end of the story. Honestly this critique is exactly how I feel and whenever I raised this up among those I converse with I'd just be told I am wrong or not reading the story properly 😭
I feel like especially reading the Cullung Game its JUST FIGHTS. It got so tiring, and i was just looking for whatveer character scraps that actually showed their personality
Such a great video! I had so many incoherent gripes and ideas around jjk ,but this video did such a perfect job at helping me fully understand my issues with the series
this was an incredible video, you truly have a way with words. good luck to you and your channel, cause I was a minute in to watching and just knew i had struck gold. i definitely agree that jjk needs more time, it is fast-paced and it does work in some aspects, but that's also where it fails with the character development
What made me abandon it was the fact that there isn’t a clear protagonist to refer to. I don’t care if they’re weak or strong, but it should be evident, and from the start, I found Yuuji useless most of the time and quite forgettable. Gojo, as defined as he is, can’t be considered a protagonist. People die, even though they’re presented from the beginning as the strongest sorcerers. Sukuna could have been a different kind of antagonist for once compared to other shounen manga, but he seems like a stupid child who treats the world as a toy and boasts about being the strongest, even though he never fully demonstrates these powers. For being the strongest curse, he seems like a joke. I don’t expect anything groundbreaking; sometimes it’s nice to read the same stuff with different versions. I don’t mind if the antagonist wins, but the "good" side doesn’t even seem to be on the same level. If Sukuna and his cheerful family of curses were serious, Jujutsu Kaisen would have ended in the first volume, and the curses would have lived happily ever after. That’s what it seems like to me-lots of pointless fights that don’t give me much motivation to read/watch. People die like flies, the antagonists are banal, and they seem like elementary school kids. For me, only the art is worth anything, but I have only one life and many manga to explore, so I’ve abandoned this crap.
Wow, never thought I'd find a video like this. I tried to get into JJK early on, tried watching the anime twice but it never gripped me for some reason. Now that the manga is being criticized by everyone, I kinda feel like I dodged a bullet😅
As a JJK fan, this video does bring up some really good points about JJK's side characters. I honestly can barely remember Nobara and Megumi's backstories. I liked Gojo, Nanami, Todo on a surface level but they honestly weren't that deep. The Disaster Curses had a decent relationship but it wasn't that influential on the plot. I think there's one character I actually care about in JJK, and that's Yuji himself. Ultimately, all the biggest themes in JJK revolve around Yuji, and he's the only character that really gets a proper arc. The entire story of JJK is all about finding purpose in life, and Yuji embodies that search. Yuji starts off kinda purposeless, just goofing around and squandering his talents. That changes when his grandpa gives him the mission to "save one person", which he takes to heart. In the next few episodes, he takes that mission and makes it his own, becoming a Jujutsu sorcerer because it's a way he specifically can save people, and vowing to save everyone whether or not they "deserve" it, contrasting with Megumi who only saves people who reach his moral standard. The Cursed Womb arc challenges his resolve and shows him the pain and death he will experience if he continues along this path, but ultimately he sticks with it and comes back stronger than ever. But then Mahito comes along, a villain who is the complete opposite of him, who believes life has no value and that people have no lofty morals behind their actions except for their own selfish desires. Mahito challenges Yuji's ideals by having him befriend Junpei, then manipulating Junpei into becoming a killer, deconstructing Yuji's belief in the inherent good of all people. However, when that doesn't work and Yuji successfully convinces Junpei to stop, Mahito simply kills him. Yuji failed, he tried to save one person, yet they died anyway despite his best efforts. Furthermore, Mahito drives Yuji into a state of rage where for a short time, he forgets about saving others and cares only about killing Mahito. The rest of Season one is kind of a breather for Yuji, the attack on the Exchange event has him successfully saving his friends and fighting off Hanami alongside Todo. But then there's the Shibuya arc, where Yuji's beliefs are completely and utterly shattered. First, he's too late to stop Gojo from being sealed. Next, he loses control of Sukuna, leading to tens of thousands of civilians dying. Finally, despite his best efforts, he fails to save Nanami and Nobara, his mentor and his friend. Yuji realizes that he's a failure, that his purpose is bullshit, that he can't save anyone, driving him to utter despair. Todo is able to convince him to keep fighting, telling him that as Jujutsu Sorcerers, they don't need to let themselves be bound by lofty concepts like karma, and that Yuji's attempts to find meaning in the deaths of the fallen are ignoring the purpose they died for. But while Todo's speech is inspiring, there is also a toxic subtext to it. By convincing Yuji that he must keep fighting not out of moral goals but simply because it is his purpose as a Jujutsu sorcerer, he inadvertently proves Mahito right. At the end of their fight, Yuji is convinced that he is just like Mahito, that there is no higher purpose or profound meaning to what he does, that he, Mahito, all the friends he lost, and all the curses he exorcised are nothing more than cogs in the meatgrinding machine of the Jujutsu world. No longer does he have a goal of his own, now he just kills curses because that's what he's supposed to do. There's a great tragedy to Season 1 and 2 of Jujutsu Kaisen, the story of a passionate, upstanding, and happy boy who joined the Jujutsu School trying to make the world a better place, and came out the other end a broken shell of his former self whose purpose was destroyed by tragedy and replaced with a hollow desire to do what he's "supposed to" rather than what he wants to. It hits even harder when you consider the toxic work culture of Japan, including in the manga industry, something Gege commented on with Nanami (who is apparently his favorite character!). It's kinda well known at this point that Gege Akutami is getting tired of JJK which he never really expected to be popular, and wants to write a slice of life or idol manga, but he has to keep doing JJK because it's so profitable. Maybe Yuji's story is kinda a meta commentary on Gege's own journey as a cog in the hypercapitalist manga industry, and how his initial passion was eroded by overwork and executive demands. On the bright side though, the new leaks seem to show Gege getting back on track with Yuji's story, having him abandon the cog mentality and his initial mission, finally realizing that life is inherently beautiful regardless of what someone achieved or what impact they left behind. I can understand people not liking JJK because they want better side characters, more fleshed out worldbuilding, less Sukuna Kaisen slop, those are all valid reasons to hate the show and manga. What I don't get is people who say JJK has no depth at all, it has nothing to say, that Yuji is just a generic shonen mc. Because when you actually look at Yuji and his story, it has a lot to say.
How does TH-cam know that i find JJK to be overrated aswell? Weird. The characters are boring. The main character is dumb and I mean it like he is intentionally not intelligent which I find a bad decision. If your character can only make bad deciosion by being stupid then the character is not good. The somewhat mentor or "brothers" motivation is litterly Jennifer Lawrence. The characters are not deep, which can be the case with fighting anime but then you shouldnt praise it as the most amaizing show ever. The worst part for me is in all honesty the narrator. If you need a narrator not just at the beginning or the end, but durin a battle, than something is just wrong. Not only do I learn about characters abilities during an important battle, I am told by a narrator. WTF
I loved all the HOOKS in jjk, but I couldn't love it because nothing ever happened. It was just fight after fight after fight, with cool ideas being teased at.
Gege is like that popular art account that wont stop talking about how their OCs are super special awesome but never actually write any plot or lore. Idk if JJK was all he wanted to deliver then he wouldve worked better as an artist/animator and i wont give him ANY excuses bc his fanbase is already going hard on his personality cult.
There is no good or bad way to read/analyze text: be it a book, manga, film or even a painting. Yes, there's the author's intentions, but at the end of the day, the message that you understood and fostered from it is the one you'll take. Maybe in another reading, or by sharing interpretations and different viewpoints with others, you might re-contextualize that message you formed initially, but there is no true way or right way to perceive art. When displaying the standard that "the best way to communicate an idea in the story is through character", it automatically impedes the chance of investigating outside these parameters for nuances that might be lingering by. I wholeheartedly agree that overlooking is detrimental (e.g. manga theorists), but if the narrative is presented in such a way that subtext is more and more evident, I don't see why not evaluate it and read it alongside the text. Every work is different, and comparisons are valid of course, as long as they are clear on what and why they are being compared, otherwise is apples and oranges. PS: I loved the video actually, sorry if I came across as a stinky jerk
Fully agree there. The anime is a good watch, and it has its hype moments. But, I dont feel any emotional connection. Any draw to it. When Im done with it I will likely never think about it again.
I think people get instinct from their environment like any other animal. We only have so many choices to make. People can only bond when they are similar
Because i got spoiled the hell out of it It was impossible to avoid them since they came randomly basically everywhere Knowing everything that will happen before even having the chance of reading it just made it a chore to get through the end
gege struggles SO much with _showing_ instead of telling. rushing the process because all he cares about, the point of the series, the reason he writes it, is the message. but unfortunately the process is not an unfortunate annoyance you have to get through to get to the goal, but is the building blocks that constitute this goal itself, like kita shinsuke from haikyuu would teach us! writing those little moments, those character interactions that serve no direct purpose to the plot (instead of trying to "efficiently" cram characterization exclusively in plot-related interactions/conversations like jjk does)... like you said well: the emphasis and effort is put on the message rather than *_how_* that message is conveyed.
8:39 going off your critic on subversion hindering story. I notice that many shows and movies try to be meta with conventions but end up misunderstanding why those conventions worked or represented in the first place. This is the problem with jjk. It reminds me of this quote. “You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.” C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
This might be unrelated but this might be the same dillema that ASOIAF and GRRM faces (or at least of trying to find a best conclusion in his books as well as the trouble of trying to put a pallate cleanser with it along to mitigate the effect of the TV ending), postmodern writing (subversion and deconstruction) is only complete once you go back to its roots why it works so effectively in the first place. You can only deconstruct so much until you start going back to it's roots in the first place, and from all the media that I've consumed a lot of stories that successfully goes this meta, the author themselves doesn't consider their work to be a deconstruction.
I dropped jjk a few months ago. I just stopped caring about the story. I mean I'm still curious how it will end, I just don't care about the journey it will take to get there.
I think Gege is a great mangaka. He might have some problems with linework, character design, and pacing, but he has a clear grasp of composition, mechanics, and writing gripping, tense action set piecies. I think his main problem is the format: not manga, but Shonen Jump and the serialization schedule. A lot of Gege's failures with JJK can be explained specifically by the stresses of not only writing a chapter of Manga every week but also keeping weekly readers invested. He's clearly a writer who struggles with this format's specific challenges, and his story has also been forced to be something it's not or that it shouldn't be. The high school setting is what comes to mind immediately even though clearly that isn't where Gege wants to be. The popularity of certain elements in the demographics of Shonen Jump readers are clearly intruding on the story Gege wants to tell. Eichiro Oda thrives in this kind of setting: both because he's the kind of creative mind who can indulge himself in these popular story elements in addition to the fact that he's comfortable in his position as the king. One piece doesn't have to worry about getting axed. Less popular series do. There's pressure from outside the writing process to pace the story quickly so as to get it over and done with. Gege obviously feels this pressure immensely and is almost paranoid about letting the story sit still and wait to expand on its depth, even if it might add something to his story. Bleach's ending was extremely abrupt because of editorial meddling forcing Tite Kubo to get on with it before Bleach go cancelled, and even really good stories have ended up on the chopping block of Shonen Jump in less than 50 chapters, a year and change of serialization. That said, I don't think JJK is bad. At points, it's brilliant, but Shonen Jump Magazine slots are a precarious situation that Gege is clearly not comfortable in, and I am actually very interested in what he'll be doing once it's done and he can move on to something more his speed.
Gege could kill every character off screen and gloss over every unresolved plot thread and I wouldn’t feel a shred of emotion or disappointment, in fact I think I’d feel relieved because as it is the half assed way it tries to get me to care about anything that happens actually feels kind of insulting. Obviously the response to such a profound apathy is to stop watching/reading (and I have) but as long as it’s still talked about in the terms that it is now I’ll be completely bewildered that people have so much to say about it.
Nanami and Nobara were such boring characters. Have no idea why people were crying for two boring characters we hardly even got to know smh. Who cares 😂
I left a comment on the previous JJK video before this one, then deleted it because this one pretty much summarized my issues just fine. As a fan a Jujutsu Kaisen, it's not hard to see the undeniable shortcomings of the story, and the lack of care when it comes to its characters is certainly one of them. What makes this issue stick out far more is that the characters that the story DOES focus on end up being fan favorites, Todo, Choso, Yuji, Yuta, and Higuruma are some of my favorites, but even they occasionally get the short end of the stick. It's frustrating.
Never really got the love for hxh, sure it is great, but it never clicked with me, maybe because i watched some battle shonen i didn't like much before hxh, which influenced many of them or because the anime isn't a great adaptation, or i don't know, never been too much of an anime "consumer", always prefered the more seinen stuff like GiTS, Mononoke and NGE, which is why i find JJK so compelling, there are little of the usual tropes, no moral lessons, no power of friendship, no endless flashbacks, no characters overexplaining their emotions, people die easily because they are not special like in real life, no need for plot armor yet we get enough time to know them a little, enough to understand their conflicts and connections. All topped with great thought-out action. It is far from perfect, but i appreciate how much it deviates from the fairly boring and repetitive shonen formulas and tries to break them even subtextually
Probably because JJK have that potential, just like any story will, problem is in the execution, maybe not for you, but definitely true for a lot of people. It's okay to deviate from tropes or cliches within the same "genre" (despite shonen isn't a genre), but when you do it without any - seemingly - thought put into it, people understandably will be disappointed. Why would you put a seemingly romantic sub plot with Yuji if you're not gonna do anything with it, might as well not make it and it'll be better for the pacing since you're not stopping more important part of the story for something that won't ever happen. JJK have a lot of this, like, A LOT. I appreciate if it wants to be "different", but in the way of being different, don't sacrifice actual good storytelling tools and techniques, don't just poorly execute it.
The connections between the characters are really not established well in JJK, that it left me bewildered when Maki killed the whole family motivated by her sister's death. Like, all her sister did until her death was show disdain towards her, when did that suddenly change? Did the whole family besides them deserve to die? It's all very shallow. As for Mechamaru's love story...it felt very forced. How could anyone root for that guy? JJK is definitely good at setting things up, but it fails to put emotional weight on any of its characters that their motives and deaths end up feeling like pointless props.
Finally, someone put it into clear words. When you subvert non-stop, you only reach meaninglessness. If you don't take anything seriously, then you shouldn't be surprised when no one takes you seriously
Im very invested actually but I’ll watch regardless. I get your point. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, I still love JJK. It’s fast, intense, volatile, doesn’t adapt to conventions and, in that process, it transforms into something unique. I don’t want JJK to be HxH (my favorite anime of all time btw). You say at the end of the video that maybe we should force stories to actually follow certain writing conventions… I strongly disagree. Plus, it’s actually pretty cool how JJK packs so much in such a short runtime. It may not be as developed as other stories, but it manages to imply so much and, now and then, it actually pays attention to the characters and their motivations. I genuinely think I don’t need more from Yuji, Todo, Nobara, Nanami, Mahito, Gojo… hell, even Jogo. Everything you need to know from them is already explained and showed. Yeah, some characters and ideas gets scraped but, in the process, we still get a wealthy amount of characters that, for such little time they get, they feel complete and, more so, in that brevity, they shine bright cause they don’t get diluted. Nice video, btw, even though I rarely agree with lots of the stuff you point out, an specially when it comes to that last conclusion. Also, funny enough, I read YYH recently and actually felt the same way you feel about JJK but with that series. Too fast paced, unable to properly breath, and unable to develop most of its ideas without feeling rushed and forced.
Gege does one thing that I love about jjk it takes risks. You either love it or hate it and that's something that I really respect. Comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing and contrasting different series or whatever is not often bad but it can blind you to accept something different. I love berserk and hxh (mainly the 90s one) but it a vastly different story to any series. Berserk literally starts like a edgy shounen series then excels in a masterful of character development. These series has had time and development but jjk doesnt have that and gege doesn't want it to be like that. From I what I take from gege is life is often not fair we have to move on quick and shit happens. I get where your coming from you want more about these characters, more time and development but just like life we don't always get that time and I think that's what gege is really saying or I'm just chatting shit. Each series is different and tells its own story about its world and how it deals with. JJK feels very real with death especially we never really get the time to cherish the last moments always reflect on what we had before. Sorry for the long comment but I'm kinda tired of this criticism recently from any series that realistically very short compared to others.
But Gege doesn't explore the theme of 'life isn't fair' well at all - all he does is wipe characters out and then have characters act completely against type about it. You're saying that death can tragically and unexpectedly rob us of time with loved ones and friends right? So why the fuck doesn't anyone in JJK act like it's tragic or unexpected when their allies get smoked? If the series was 'real' about death, we would see death having an actual impact on the characters - no one in 'real life' responds to death in such a flippant, uncaring way as every character has done post-Shibuya. Egregious examples: - Gege went out of his way to convince us that Yuji was a good dude who is tight with his new friends, so why didn't Yuji lift a finger to find out what happened to Nobara after Shibuya, demand to see her body, etc. considering the bond they now share after killing the Death Paintings? Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour. - Gege established Gojo's number one motivation as being a mentor to his students, so why the fuck didn't he or any of the other faculty express any sympathy to Yuji for the trauma he went through in Shibuya, or check in with Maki who went from someone who was embarrassed about seeming insensitive to Nobara after Yuji's first 'death' to suddenly becoming a mass-murderer of HUMANS!?!? Time is not an excuse - they had a full 30 days to have these interactions and it didn't happen. Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour. - Nanami is a good enough friend to Gojo to appear in an afterlife flashback, yet when he's told he DIED after being unsealed, all he gets is a 'Really? Huh...' from Gojo. Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour. - If there's no time for development why the fuck are we getting an afterlife heart-to-heart about love between Sukuna and the most-throwaway villain in the story (Kashimo)!? - If there's no time for development why is Gege spending so much time on dumb details like the organisational hierarchy of a clan that's going to be wiped out by the end of that chapter, or identifying the various armies that Sukuna beat which have no bearing on the current events of the story? - If there's no time for development why is Gege going down the rabbit hole on weird ideas like Kenjaku being Yuji's mother only to not have them mention it before Kenjaku gets whacked or for it to have any importance to the plot whatsoever? - Why bring up Yuki's big book of soul research and goal to rid the world of cursed energy and never do ANYTHING with it before killing her? - Gege deliberately told us that Yuki is Todo's mentor (to the point they share a catch-phrase), yet we're not going to see them interact or see any expression of sorrow from Todo over his mentor dying? Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour. - Hakari was all pissed off that Gojo got sealed early in the CG, yet he sees him bisected before his very eyes and casually rolls into battle with a big smile right after? WTF?
“You shouldn’t be comparing JJK to other stories” is the single best anti-criticism shield the JJK stans had ever come up with, lol. Not just because it’s blatant and absurd, but because it doesn’t even work. If JJK was literally the only story ever told, its flaws would remain identical.
I agree, it's no fair. Both HxH and Berserk are two times longer than JJK. JJK manages to bring something very different in terms of storytelling which is what I'm all here for. Very clear beginning, middle, and end. Even if you can't connect with the characters, JJK is still one of the most fun Shonen to watch right now. So go watch it, if anything, it is fun seeing everything unfold ONLY through fights and flashbacks, and with a keen eye, you can notices all kinds of little things thag gege leaves in his manga. I think there should be a more fair and longer critique of JJK here, because in JJK, characters are symbols of ideology and philosophy, it's cool, l like it, it's simple, and simple isn't bad.
@@biscobisco1882 damn i wrote this 5 months ago and I didn't expect a reply. "You're saying that death can tragically and unexpectedly rob us of time with loved ones and friends right? So why the fuck doesn't anyone in JJK act like it's tragic or unexpected when their allies get smoked? If the series was 'real' about death, we would see death having an actual impact on the characters - no one in 'real life' responds to death in such a flippant, uncaring way as every character has done post-Shibuya." The way characters in JJK respond to death can seem weird, especially when you compare it to how people might react in real life. But I think this might be intentional on Gege's part, reflecting the brutal and relentless world these characters live in. I think it serves to highlight just how unforgiving and desensitizing their world really is. Yes "real" world people reflect on death and impact their lives but a lot of them also move on. You see in hidden inventory how normal it was see normal sorcerers die and Nanami reacting in a normal way. 1. Why would Yuji go crazy seeing what happened to nobara when he was told she was dead by Megumi and he saw her quite literally die in front of him. He went berserk mode when Nanami died and broke down when Nobara "died". Yeah totally bizarre inhuman behaviour IMO. He did ask about Nobara and got his answer why he seek further answer when Megumi is asking for his help and the "Culling games" started. And now she back with the worst plot convenience of the story. 2. "Gojo's number one motivation as being a mentor to his students, so why the fuck didn't he or any of the other faculty express any sympathy to Yuji for the trauma he went through in Shibuya, or check in with Maki who went from someone who was embarrassed about seeming insensitive to Nobara after Yuji's first 'death' to suddenly becoming a mass-murderer of HUMANS!?!? Time is not an excuse - they had a full 30 days to have these interactions and it didn't happen. Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour" - It's like Gojo was sealed or something Idk maybe it happened in shibuya as for the rest yaga died straight after and Idk about the rest but the culling games started immediately after shibuya. Gege should of done better but I am not defending it. 3. Yeah that is weird interaction dont ask me ask gege but sometimes people do act like. Gege should of yes done more but I am not here to say that was a good move. 4. I never said there was no time for development I said we wished we had more and cause gege is master speed runner he skipped through some or would be good interactions with character. 5. I have no idea what your on about please clarify or best don't 6. YES GEGE PLEASE EXPLAIN I LIKE REALLY DO WANT TO KNOW. 7. YES GEGE PLEASE EXPLAIN I LIKE REALLY DO WANT TO KNOW. 8. YES GEGE PLEASE EXPLAIN I LIKE REALLY DO WANT TO KNOW. 9. Yeah would of been nice to see Todou and Yuki interact but you know gege he dont like that shit. 10. Dont ask me I never wrote this shit.
Finally I see something about this!! I like watching jjk it's very entertaining but at the same time I really do not care about anyone and anything in this I realized this also because spoilers did not hit me as hard as I thought, I can keep watching even knowing stuff
Gege doesn't know how to write a good storyline properly whether it's the depth of the characters which all he focuses on is how strong and in a way "inhumane" they are but the plot as well For example: maki takes revenge on mai's death by killing every member of the zenin clan and a lot of them are just like her and toji which means they suffered the same bad treatment by their clan but she annihilates them offscreen to just show us how strong she became, and that raises another point: how is she able to kill others who have the heavenly pact meaning they, as well, are strong af. kenjaku goes from this curse who have interesting goals about shaping the world the way he wants to a curse who is bored and wants to have fun just for the sake of fitting him into the plot of being killed through someone who would give him that "fun" and then his body "killed" immediately by yuta even though the body is getto who is one of the most powerful sorcerers and we saw him destroy tsuki with ease and Gege wrote that just to get rid of getto's powerful body and techniques... and don't get me talking about including the americans and then forgetting all about that because at that point half of the countries that have nukes will be dropping them on japan after the massacre of the American soldiers and the realization of how threatening the curse users are... and don't get me started on the gojo vs sukuna shit... at that point it's not a story anymore with complex intertwined events and consequences, it's just a fighting video game, it's like playing tekken lol.. there are a lot of points that I have forgot about but it's frustrating to see a story with so much potential gets treated this way.
I swear I loved the 1st season but then I picked up the scans and let's just say there was Shibuya, Geto was my fav (I wanted him to come back) and realising after some spoilers that most characters would just end up dying without having half the development he had broke my heart real bad. I just didn't want to get invested in it because it would hurt and there would be no payback, so instead I read fanfics lol (this is not an insult to Gege I respect his work sm 🙏)
It just has some very subpar writing and direction. Very bog standart for a shounen. Doesn't really deserve to be compared with such giants as Berserk and HxH.
My main gripe with JJK is that the story is beautiful the cast is amazing and the characters have so much to them; yet it is half the length it should be to really dive into those themes. I would love to see these themes delved into more by THE STORY not a random YT video I come across, not because the video's are bad but because a story shouldn't just convey its themes subtextually.
JJK suffers severely from that writing problem of 'telling more than showing'. I love the cast, they are all really interesting characters, but no one is alive enough to be developed. Kinda sucks for me how, aside from Junpei, there are so few non-sorcerers in the story, people that could make a huge difference in the storytelling, making the line between sorcerers and non-sorcerers more blurry. Anyone that is a non-sorcerer, isn't important or interesting enough for society or the plot as a whole before dying. Kinda sad, since the anime/manga has a lot of potential. I really liking the first season, then everyone started to die, and I was just like 'Ah, so we'll have a few panels with all the information being spilled on us instead of inserting it in subtext. Ok.', and that was the end for me. I love Geto's story, Choso, and Nanami. It kinda sucks that they were thrown aside so fast. Anyway, just my opinion.
Wrong: I am invested Edit: read the full manga, and almost completely fell out of love. Everything past Shibuya is one long climax, and you can’t have 70% of your story be a climax, with only action.
I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT JJK NEEDS TO BE EXTENDED. Coño why didn't we get 3-2 fights for each of the culling game new characters? Where are the seniors in the JJK highschool? I think they died off screen in the parade of demons?! Hakari needed more fights like choso, kashimo, mai, bumgumi, nobara (she shouldn't had died so early), the school is empty, the WORLD barely has any sorcerers outside of Japan because of plot (😂 this is so FUCKING stupid, the CIA had a psychic program and you're telling me that in this VERSE they don't have jujutsu sorcerers?! This is why I call Gege, MidGe because honestly he fumbled
I see what you're trying to say. Berserk and Tokyo Ghoul are two of my most favorite mangas of all time. However, I think you're missing the point a bit when it comes to Jujutsu Kaisen. You mentioned that JJK explores its themes through its characters, that's true. But the characters aren't meant to be "real" people in the same way as Guts and Kaneki are. They're mainly meant to be vessels for ideas, themes and ideologies. It's like when you read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra himself is not meant to be someone for you to be emotionally attached with and to identify as a person, and neither are all the characters that he met throughout the book. They are all vessels for ideas, much like in JJK, but here they converse and debate throughout via fighting instead of talking. I think the manga shows this very clearly straight from chapter 1. Yuji is selfless, he looks out for his friends, he's kind and virtuous. He is the vessel for Sukuna, who is as selfish as you can be, does not care about anyone else, and have no regard for what is right and what is wrong. This is I think, as straight forward as you can get into showing that your characters are literally meant to be vessels for different philosophies. I'm mainly gonna use Berserk and TG as they're the ones I am very close and familiar with. With these two, the point is to develop the characters, and with that, to develop the themes. Berserk and TG shows you the character, their personality, philosophy and their state as people. It then develops that by showing us A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,etc. With Guts, we literally saw him straight from being born, up to being a kid, then a teenager, and so on. With Kaneki, we see every step of his transformation from when he was human, up to the end. That's how they ultimately become real people, as we are shown a lot of the steps they take, we spend a lot of time with them as they develop. But that's not really what JJK is doing. JJK shows us a character, what that character represents, it then gives us A, B, and C, and then it expects us to fill in the gaps. It does not concern itself through developing its characters. What it wants to do is to develop its themes. And when the themes are develop, the characters develops with it. Because again, the characters are vessels for themes. Maki is a good example,. If you only look at Maki, you can say that she didn't get enough development and enough time, especially if you put in her sister in the equation. But, that's where you're supposed to look at the themes as a whole as JJK intends you to, instead of just looking at the characters. Toji is the first step of development for Maki. Toji's character, is a direct result of his horrible upbringing with the Zenin clan. So the current Toji represents all of that. We see that through his actions, and the way he speaks, even if the Hidden Inventory arc is short, it actually showed his character very nicely. We didn't need to get flashbacks of Toji, we just need to see his current state. Maki's flashbacks fleshes out Toji's character, as they both had the same past, so Maki's flashbacks functions as Toji's flashbacks. And likewise, Toji's present functions as Maki's future. Maki's sister is the same as Toji's wife. In the sense that it's the person that frees them from the Zenin clan, with the only difference being Toji falls right back down when his wife died. Maki completes the theme. You can say that we didn't actually spend anytime seeing Toji and his wife, and Maki with her sister. But, do we need to? We already see how Toji turned out because of it, we see Maki's current relationship with her sister. We don't need to see the past, in the same way that we didn't need to spend time with John Wick and his wife to see how much she meant to him. We see that with how driven, commited and willing John Wick is in the present through his actions as his entire motivation is the last vestige of hope his wife left him. By annihilating her entire family, we see what her sister truly means to her. Which as you know, Toji couldn't do, he was unable to overcome his trauma despite having the strength to. In this case, its love. Toji was "freed" temporarily because he had a loving wife. Maki was freed because she had the love of her sister. But Maki was the only one who was able to overcome it, meaning that Toji has no love in himself aside from the love he had for his wife. Maki is literally the embodiment of self-love, so when her sister added hers, she just became complete. And I think that's quite deep and accurate. Traumatized people need the love of others, friends and family to support them, but they will never get anywhere if they never learn to love and accept themself, so they need both. Toji was just half a person all this time. Their actions in the present shows us the past. This is pretty much how JJK functions. It gives us E,F,G,H, and with that we can infer what A,B,C,D is. I first read Berserk 8 years ago and it has been the most important piece of literature in my life. But by no means do I apply the same standard in which I view Berserk and how it tackles story telling to everything else. I love Berserk, and it is that amazing because we spent a lot of time with the characters, it is still unrivaled to this day when it comes to its world and characters, but it would suck if it has chapters after chapters of nonstop fighting. And I also love Jujutsu Kaisen, but it is only that good because we literally just go bonkers with fights all the time. If there's chapters after chapters of introspection in Jujutsu Kaisen, it'll literally suck. Because it does not want us to be attached to the characters, it wants us to basically watch a debate. It wants a constant back and forth between different ideologies at all times. When a fight happens, don't just view it as two characters throwing hands. Instead try to see what each character represents and see it as dialogue. But that is not to say Introspection does not happen in JJK. It does, it just literally happens during fights. Yuji breaking down and realizing his world view is hypocritical, flawed and dysfunctional is introspection, it just happens during a fight Anyways, sorry for the super long comment and horrible grammar, I'm writing this at 5 am. But in short, not every story wants to tell their story the same way. Now whether that's bad or good, I'll let you decide. But for me, I prefer meeting and viewing each stories in their own terms.
I love jjk but it’s pacing is deeply flawed and it’s a shame because it could’ve been a truly fantastic story if it didn’t feel like gege just wanted to finish it as soon as he started it.
I dont think this is a well though out video ngl. You dont afford the happenings of Jjk with the level of thought they deserve. No, the deathsaren'tt done to show the "hoplessness" of the world. If anything, the mang of the deaths came after the character found peace within themselves or put their faith in others. Like Kenjaku, who finally found something outiside of his control, even if it was unexpected. Or Higuruma, who was able to gain peace as he reained his role of the protector of the weak who kept fighting even against hopeless odds. With the latest chapter, the thematic framing becomes clear. Despite Yuji initially thinking the the contrarary, every death in the series DOES have meaning, as long as you have connected with others. Junpei's death finally awoke his school to their faliures. Haibara's death was the straw that broke the camel's back for geto. I dissagree that charcters get too little screentime. This is noy a grand adventure like One Piece or HunterXHunter. Nor is this a character study like Evangelion. While I would love more slice of life silliness, it's not required because the charcters do spend enough time on screen in general. You have just made the mistake and writing off fights as usless to characterization, when in jjk fights DRIVE characterization. Also. I surprised that you dont like Geto's downfall in hidden inventory when it's pretty universally loved, even by self proclaimed jjk haters. And the fact you didnt mention Yuji ad one of the intriguing shinjuku charcters when the arc is focused on him and sukuna. I genuinely think it's a little sad that you cant find any value in one of my favorite series. If you dont belive me that JJK has more to offer, check out Serena2D who makes amazing analysis on the manga and anime.
That’s the problem I have with JJK, everything moves to fast and I don’t have enough time to feel the characters or feel that the world is real. I need videos of people talking well about JJK to feel like it’s good. The one thing that it does well is the fights, but that’s it really
Counterpoint: it has cool fights
@@endygonewild2899 misspelled mid buddy
@@jayxx_slayer9456 sociopathic statement
Fights that are solely carried by mappa,Jjk literally carried by animation
@@slwoo7432 nah, they’re pretty lively and fun in the manga. stop hating on jjk. you literally have no reason to hold so much hate.
@@Lineproof loads of Jjk fans are hella toxic ,like hating on other anime sayin stuff like it has better written characters then all of dragon ball ,JJk fans have just filled the new spot that AOT fans had
Pros: it has fast pacing
Cons: the pacing is too fast
They gave Itadori a romantical interest for no reason, bro was looking forward to watching that movie with somebody and homegirl was trying to spend time with him, so I was like "great, it's date" and then they say good-bye to each like ??????????
BRO, WASN'T YOU GOING TO WATCH A MOVIE????!????????
@guilhermeteodosio40 what's worse is that she just has never shown up again. Like what was the point of that?
Forfeit the game before somebody else takes you outta the frame, and puts your name to shame, cover up your face, you can't run, the race the pace is too fast, you just won't last!
@@thelordz33 @guilhermeteodosio40 you guys are so fucking stupid
It shows that Itadori recognizes people by their soul, not their looks or appearance. That's why Ozawa says at the end that it was selfish of her to think Yuji would see her in a romantic way now that she looks like this.
It is used as one final showcase of Yuji's character before he is forced to question everything before the events of shibuya.
You really think this show was going to explore some romantic subplot? Please read the story
@@thelordz33that was added by the editor for down time given the constant rush of season 2 material. Gege wanted the series to begin with culling game stuff. People claim it’s mid early on as it’s generic but he was asked to make school setting since it eases people in. The girl also could be a theme of the simple vs complex lifestyle choices he had and how anyone even those that feel insignificant are important lives. As expressed in a recent chapter he’s not a cog in the wheel of life and a proper death is different for everyone but there all valuable nonetheless and he went through so much fast loss of life to see that. Making it the way you all want and fairy tail like with climactic goodbyes tons of long lore dumps and him directly tell no jutsuing the themes every chapter and going on long sukuna isn’t evil flash backs wouldn’t be what he was going for and it’s something we can get else where. It’s like asking blue lock to be more about team sports vs ego. You can go read team sports stories this is a new fast paced genre. Hate it go read old stuff your nostalgic about.
I consider Gege to be an impulsive writer. He is all too quick to throw characters away, throw plot points away, throw cool abilities away, etc just to make for a cool fight or interesting moment. There is little room for fleshing things out and developing things, which is why so many things are just told to us or explained to us. It sucks too because he's really good at coming up with interesting stuff, but it doesn’t seem like he has placed any real value into it. Sometimes it feels like he doesn't care.
I'm convinced that he hates JJK because it's not the JJK he wanted to write
He doesn’t like jjk and is trynna end it by this year so prolly why so much is wasted
@@angedenpeacelove_411-00 I don't want to imagine the JJK he wanted.
@@mray4784 well the Culling Games is basically is first idea for JJK, so I agree. It would have been trash if he got his way anymore than now
what if gege purposefuly make it that way. it's not like he doesnt care about jjk but its the "world" of jjk that doesnt care about jjk cast. each cast are competing to be the main character of this world and we (as a reader) just happen to be seeing it from yuji perspective mostly. but I do agree that there is not enough time to invest in jjk character.
The thing is, gege didnt want to do a school setting but the editor at jump said thats the only way to move forward. So gege just did the bare minimum for the school part.
Also, Japan.
so that's why so many manga has school setting(?)
Everytime i hear about Gege and the editor i get more the impression that he(?) was cooking a monster of a story but all the restrictions within the manga industry have vastly changed it for the worse. I hope he gets the chance to write what he intended someday, maybe in a seinen mag
@@Bojoschannel oh no, he actually wanted to make a thick thigh long legged girls idol manga 🤣😂
@@Bojoschannel yeah that probably made him not want to write the story anymore because its not what he originally wanted it to be
Jjk character cycle: cool guy introduced.. cool guy doesn’t get fleshed out at all but at least he’s cools.. cool guy dies due to terrible plan because there’s no leader.
"Nanami's death was so sad ):" - literally Nanami's character
@@turkeybeef6269there are so many jjk characters that fit the comment above and you chose the one that fit the least
@@roarzabimaru-q1i Nanami fits the MOST lmao, his only impact on the story was: tag teaming Mahito once with Yuji, and dying 💀
@@turkeybeef6269 there's a big difference between their impact on the story and their character though?
@@roarzabimaru-q1i Oh yeah, my bad. His character is: I hate my job.
the problem with jjk is it isn't long enough.
he is human and understanding that gege has little energy seeing as how his dialogues are more than panels is why the potential of jjk isn't reached, jump releases caused the same problem like with kishimoto stress schedule
To be fair, it could also do more with its runtime if it didn't have to split it between way too many characters. The Culling Game arc really was the key to this problem, it introduced a shit ton of new characters that we just didn't need at that point, and instead of spending more time with the ones who already had way too little opportunity to shine we got more and more randos show up for a short while and then dying or becoming irrelevant again.
or good...
If I could wish it like a genie JJK would be twice as long. This gives adequate time for its characters to be fleshed out a bit more in the early parts (including Hidden Inventory), the Shibuya Incident to leave a greater scar on the cast (it could honestly go the exact same way it did) then the Culling Games would allow for the cast to have more interactions greater exploration of their themes and ideas, the Shinjuku Showdown could be the same length for Gojo v. Sukuna and I'm not sure about after that.
Not really. There are long shonen mangas that aren't well written
I think the hardest part in criticizing JJK is how the fanbase react, this is true to anything, but for this context specifically, let's say it is hard. I don't know why it's the case, but it seems it is because they see criticism as a form of "hating" the series, despite a lot of these criticisms comes from fans who truly like JJK.
As you said, JJK fans seems to counter argue a lot of criticisms purely by regurgitating what the story said. If you criticize the lack of depth and screen time a character have, they'll use "Oh, it's because of series theme about death, therefore characters die prematurely without any ounce of development is because that".
The most recent one is the Nobara situation. People point out how her come back felt rushed and how it feels like an a*spull. The counter argument they use is "Oh well, she just woke up tho, she's in a coma". Like, yeah we get it, but that's not why we have a problem with it. The reason why it's a problem is that Gege decide to "wake" her up, conveniently at a time when Yuji need help, with only 4 chapters left.
It seems like they will counter argue any criticisms based on what the story told, rather than seeing it in a writer perspective, which is the problem with a lot of JJK fans.
Well said.
funny because any criticism you give on tiktok about jjk your met with "Tiktok Reader"
Yup and it’s annoying
Not to mention they also call you an illiterate moron for not mindlessly glazing their half baked series you make it sound like they arent that rude but man ive gotten some hate online for having any criticism for the series
I think my problem with jjk is just that it should be longer, I love how gege writes his characters (at least when he feels like it), but I feel like the pacing sometimes can just kill the series. Which is why I was really hoping for the 1 month interval to be the point for a lot of character writing worldbuilding, build up, and also pay offs of the tons of mysteries that were introduced into the story, which is why it sucks that it was skipped. Though the series is not over so, hopefully there is a time where we get a bunch of character writing because when gege does I really love it.
Time is not the issue. There are well over 20 volumes, how many more do you need?
@ben99ny69 Some stories need more time than others. For jjk this comment is completely true because its issues are less about what happens in the story and more about what did NOT happen. The story is too fast paced at times and speedruns a lot of elements that it should’ve taken the time to explore and expand upon.
let’s hope the anime extends on this and extends some fight scenes like kashimo vs sukuna and such. the mahoraga vs sukuna fight was only like 8 pages long and got turned into a 20 min fight so it’s possible
I missed when JJk had those calming moments before the storm. You know when we used to see the bond between Yuji,Megumi and Nobara. Those unimportant slice of moments,the bonding moments that made team ups between Yuji and Nobara some of my favorite moments.
Now it’s nothing but fights ,fight with no real emotional value.
Is JJk terrible no I still like the series but I’m no longer in love with it.
Totally agree on this. Season 1 made me love the series. After Season 2 I immediately fell out of love. The vessel is just like baked in the story to have a plot. Even her death is not that much impactful to me unlike other characters we have invested in the series.
Sakamoto days better
I've been told that's it's editor that forced him to do them. Then he got fired and guess what we got next? A skipped Culling Games reunion. The more I learn, the more I see Gege's success as a fluke carried by subverting expectations (which he overdid, didn't understand the consequences of it and neglected good story clichés).
I think this is why i get more jaded toured JJk has it goes on. I series is great at introducing interesting ideas but never flesh them out beyond that making it feel surface level. I look back pre shibuya and i see so many things that didn't develop it's transparent how little gege cares about his cast. Probaby why Yuta my favorite because volume 0 was solely detacated to his arc
The fact we know nothing of Gojo's family is shocking to me. We don't know how he was raised and how that impacted the power dynamics in his clan. Furthermore, why the Gojo clan didn't Say anything when he was dead? Are they dead? If so, how?
This is just Gojo. There are many examples of that. We still don't know anything about Sukuna and why he had four arms.
Gojo is the last of his clan@@kevintanza6968
@@kevintanza6968gojo is the only member of the gojo clan at the moment it was mentioned a good bit earlier on in the story
@@CurryForceOfficialonly member is wild cause what happen to the rest of his family 😂 like that's something I'd like to know. Cause if he's the only member and he's dead, doesn't that mean six eyes will never be around again. Although tengen did say her and six eyes was tied by faith so since she's dead guess that means no use for the six eyes anymore 🤣 shit still wild with the lack of backstory
@kevintanza6968 Yeah, jjk has very lackluster worldbuilding
I feel most things in JJK are surface level, it's so rushed. I feel like so many people overhyped it and added so much depth to something that isn't there. In hindsight, the story is just all about Sukuna and getting to this Sukuna fight.
Yuji was made for a vessel for Sukuna, Kenjaku was an evil genius but he just pushed the plot along and bring Sukuna back, Megumi was literally just there for Sukuna to take over and make our hearts hurt, same with his sister. There's also Jogo, Kashimo, Hiromi.
True
THIS bro, the plot of this series is so malnourished imo. I dont really see any of what people see ln it at all, all I see is just a half baked story with not much to offer other than some cool fight scenes and nice looking character designs
Some people see what others cant see
@@anointilisque7768give an example then
@@JellyOnAPancakeAyyyyYuji’s entire philosophy, the cog in a machine that changed into every memory of life has value.
The school setting definitely could've been used better. Maybe by bringing in the Kyoto gang to Tokyo, it helps fill up the classrooms cuz they are so barren the majority of the time, with 3-4 students at most in a class.
It also opens up certain character dynamics. For example, Nobara and Miwa could've had an interesting friendship, with Nobara's high self esteem clashed with Miwa's low self esteem, fighting for more vs settling for less. There is some potential for interesting stories of self perception focusing on these two. Maybe Nobara helps Miwa have faith in her abilities while Miwa teaches Nobara not to overestimate her own. Maybe end it off with them going shopping, Nobara showing Miwa the joys of life in the city that she's too poor to afford. Idk I'm just spitballing here.
You could also have some of the adult sorcerers be instructors that teach students certain aspects of the power system:
Utahime: Basic Cursed Energy Manipulation
Gojo: Cursed Techniques
Shoko: Reversed Cursed Energy
Mei Mei: Binding Vows
Nanami: Cursed Tools
Kusakabe: Domains
Yaga: Cursed Corpses/Dolls
Yuki: Body and Soul
Not perfect but I think you get the gist. You could have some students having better relationships with one of the instructors, either because their personalities mesh well or the student excels at the teachers class.
Gojo-Megumi
Mei Mei-Nobara
Yuki-Yuji
Nanami-Maki
Kusakabe-Miwa
Yaga-Panda
Utahime-Mai
Shoko-Noritoshi
This could help make the school setting more than just a gathering place for characters, where the audience learns about Jujutsu society in a more organic way by having the students serve as vehicles in which they can experience these elements of the story.
i agree with the teaching. completely disagree with the "friendship" stuff you are talking if you maybe watched jujutsu kaisen you would understand why its dumb
@@poulpouler What ? Friends Can't Happen Because Characters Like To Die Or Because The Power System is Built On Hate ?? If Either Reason, It's Only A Better Reason To Involve Deeper Relationships. Imagine How Much Harder Nobara And Nanami Would Have Hit Yuji(And The Fans) If They Had Some Real Buildup
i need this side of the JJK fandom to be more in light, I 100% agree with this
The school setting things is that the editor forced Gege to have it. Gege never wanted to have the school setting and he wanted to go for much darker vibe but the editor was against it. I definitely feel like in a world like jjk, I think school setting doesn't make sense to me honestly. Not every story should have a school setting like just look at chainsaw men or demon slayer. Jjk could had have something like what chainsaw men has and it would have been great. I mean we still could have mentor and student relationships but not the school things like Kyoto festival.
i tried to like jjk, i really did. because the premise seemed like something i should like, the introductions of characters made me think 'yeah this is a character i can get into'. and then nothing came from it. i adore hxh and let's just say there's a reason it is still so loved despite the literal years of hiatus. because the characters are just so good that as soon as you pick it up again you're back with them and you need to know what happens next. there's a reason the chimera ant arc managed to hurt so many readers and it's that you care. you care about these characters, even the ones only introduced in this arc and you feel for them. im getting emotional just thinking about it rn
you get it
That arc seriously made me care about an ant that reads books!!! It’s crazy how well written it is! Even characters like the women imprisoned in the palace. They were not forgotten when shit went down. Togashi thought through every single aspect of it. It’s one of my favourite anime arcs. 🙌🏽
Same. I've read 150 chapters and anything past like the first 5 was a slog. I really wanted to be a part of the hype. The only interesting character was Toto, and that was because he has a little more than zero personality like the others. Nobody has interesting motivation or backstories. The MC is the most bland MC I think I've ever seen. And the magic system sucks. It feels so tossed together and random with how it works, and it didn't help that like every 10 chapters there had to be something added to explain something or make a change to how it worked. The only reason people like it is because of the good animated fight scenes. Thats it. Take away the animated fights and you have nothing. How this even got an anime adaptation is beyond me.
Gege writes like someone who grew up with manga and thought "I could do this better." His love for subverting the tropes like having smart and strong villains but he didn't understand that you need to know what to do with smart villains. Never mind his dislike for pretty much all the characters except for Sukuna and Toji.
Exactly how I describe gege's writing lmao
smart and OP villians.
Gege just takes the troupe of when the protagonist is a smart and OP and everyone else works to elevate the protagonist's deeds and have cool baddass scenes of him but changed it from the good guy to the bad guy(s).
You made me remember Kurapika which means I'm gonna go on a rant about HOW FUCKING GOOD HE IS AS A CHARACTER. So, calling out a comparison between Kurapika and Megumi; one has lost his clan and wants revenge and to restore the eyes of his clan, and the other wants to find a cure for his sister. Both are self-destructive due to their morals, Kurapika wants to protect his friends and get revenge. Megumi wants to protect his friends and cure his sister. Now, Megumi's motivation leads to him summoning mahoraga which he has tried on many occasions, that's all and as a reader, we can hold onto this as yeah this guy risks his life for others there is no way he would ever stop doing it when it is needed the most, right? right? *sigh* "why should I help you? Why does it matter?" are the words megumi said to yuji when his refusal to help means the destruction of the world. going to Kurapika he is helping a stranger on the ship in the selection war arc and he slowly starts caring for them and is risking his life with each of his powers cutting away at his life, phantom troupers are on the ship and so is the dark king. Kurapika insures the woman that his priority is to protect them and keep them safe no matter the cost. We know Kurapika is dedicated because of how the chapters play out. It's just that Megumi feels so boring and unexplored that I feel like he was just a fucking plot device to get taken over by sukuna to kill gojo because that's the only way to kill six eyes user with infinity and yet still he was off screened and then Megumi was just thrown out of the story like a used cloth.
it's so unfortunate because the idea of self sacrifice was done better in so many other characters in jjk 😭 megumi just stinks
@@sometimeselii SO, True!!!!!
If you cant see how Megumi is dedicated to his ideals throughout the story, then thats a skill issue on your end.
@@Arukitsuzukeru We can all see that he's arbitrarily dedicated to a random ideal (his ideal being "me help people - will kill myself"), but so what? We don't know WHY he holds this ideal, we have no meaningful backstory to make him think this way, we don't explore how it differs in any interesting way from the "let's save people" mentality of a stock-standard shonen protagonist and in fact, we see Gojo telling him his ideal actually sucks and that it's holding him back (which is proven correct when Megumi beats the Finger Bearer).
And the whole sister thing? Is she supposed to be some moral compass for him, because we get exactly ONE scene of them interacting and it's her throwing milk in his face and telling him not to get in fights. Woowwwwwwwww, what a rich relationship they have, I can totally see why he's so driven to save her /s.
@@biscobisco1882
>>We can all see that he's arbitrarily dedicated to a random ideal (his ideal being "me help people - will kill myself"),
His ideal is that life is unfair to all and because he can only save so much people, he'll choose to save people unequally, only according to his own whims. Thats why even though hes very much a pragmatic person, he goes out of his way to protect Yuji, despite the threat that Yuji causes to everyone around, and especially himself(since Sukuna is invested in him)
>>We don't know WHY he holds this ideal
It's explain in the first arcs of the series....his sister, who's very altruistic, fell victim to a curse for no other reason than that life is unfair...so he saves people unfairly, since he can only do so much.
>>we don't explore how it differs in any interesting way from the "let's save people" mentality of a stock-standard shonen protagonist
An "interesting way" is subjective, but its explored in the first arc + and in CG. He has an entire argument to Yuji about bringing back the dead bodies out of the prison since it would be a waste of time and the people weren't good anyways, and he shows how ruthless he is in the CG. Yuji generally goes out of his way to avoid killing humans, Megumi specifically said that hes not like Yuji and ends up killing two of the people who attacked him. He even went out of his way to hunt down Remi after the fight(who did screw him over, but shes also a defenseless girl who cant fight) and only avoided killing her because he thought of Tsumiki at the last second.
>>in fact, we see Gojo telling him his ideal actually sucks and that it's holding him back (which is proven correct when Megumi beats the Finger Bearer).
His self-sacrificial has nothing to do with his ideology of saving people unequally, it has to do with his confidence in his own abilities.
>>Is she supposed to be some moral compass for him, because we get exactly ONE scene of them interacting and it's her throwing milk in his face and telling him not to get in fights.
It's his sister, and its explained very explicitly in the cursed womb arc + origins of obedience his relationship with his sister and how she molded his ideology...if you wanted more, thats whatever, but dont pretend the story didnt do anything
The problem is, Gege kills for fun, not for the plot.
Smth I noticed is that JJK is carried so immensely hard by its own fandom. The characters are so much easier to enjoy and dissect when you ignore the canon storyline that does nothing to flesh them out. It’s easier to love the main trio when you look at fan works of them actually hanging out, instead of watching the two whole minutes we get from Gege’s own storyline. Hell, a lot of the anime only fans don’t even touch the manga and instead believe a lot of the high quality fanart to be canon.
fandoms are franchises double edged swords
Im actually so happy you put this out cause this is exactly how i feel about JJK as well. I dont want to commit to a series that has such heavy themes and questionable character deaths. And while i understand that morality and death are key themes in JJK, i want to know what is the point allowing the antagonists thrive while the protagonists die? Are you trying to make this story grounded in reality? Because if so, most people come into this awareness of the dark world pretty early in their lives. Is it to subvert our expectations? Because the surprises and unpredictability get old pretty quickly... like you said, it just hard to invest in a story that doesn't allow you time to connect with its characters and how they represent the ideals the author wants to make...
To me it just feels like there IS no point anymore.
I always wondered how come everyone is hyping JJK up and yet I can't seem to get invested for some reason. You perfectly described my problem with JJK. No matter how hyped up the fights are, no matter how godly the animation is, that all goes out the window when you don't care about any particular character.
Yup I'm in the same boat, I literally tried to loved jjk because of my friends but it's just hard to comprehend it, I don't get why some people get hyped with the scenes when all of its about is just fighting scenes... It's just bland... There's not much part where they enjoy their time with each other, the sad parts are too sudden, I didn't even get any chance to grow fond from the other characters or any interest
The problems with jjk is the lack of worldbuilding, fast pacing, lack of character interactions, and the infamous "Sukuna cycle".
This video definitely voices a lot of the concerns I have personally with the series.
I like JJK, but realistically, everything that has happened after the Shibuya Incident (Which is easily the biggest highlight of the entire series, bar none), has seemed to have absolutely undermined anything that Akutami has built up, if he's even bothered to do it, with little to no pay off. Characters like Yuki get shafted all for the villains to be on top once more, instead of actually giving her any legitimacy outside of her getting relatively close to finishing Kenjaku off. And it's not just her, we're seeing it with everything that's currently going on in the recent chapters.
Characters getting undermined for highlights, but the highlights, ironically enough, being undermined because there's no major pay off. And I don't even think it's JUST characters, but everything else. Everything from the magic system, to the actual setting itself is ultimately undermined and confusing, because Akutami can't be bothered to just flesh things out, and provide answers and good conclusions to the "payoffs", if we can even call them that, that we're seeing. It's all just nebulous, and we only get highlights that have lackluster build up.
No disrespect to Akutami, but it really just seems like he's only emphasized his love for Togashi through referencing his work constantly, but without understanding what makes Togashi's work WORK, or at the very least if he does get it, then he's just not expanding on it enough for JJK to have its own identity, aside from "I like Nen so lemme make a magic system based around it, it's cool, right?" Like I said, I like JJK, but with where it's headed so far, I find it difficult to care about any of the established aspects of the series, when Akutami, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't care enough to make the story any better than what it is.
It's clear that it can be so much more than what it is, and it's not. And it's just disappointing.
Shibuya was only a highlight because it was a pseudo-ending. A ton of stuff set up from S1 was resolved in Shibuya at a short time span but S2 didn't really bother setting up enough for the future or for itself. This is typically what you do in an ending where you try to resolve all loose threads but well, Shibuya is not an ending
@@phobics9498 Thinking about it, I see what you mean there.
ESPECIALLY with all the breadcrumbs that have been spread out through stuff like cover pages, Gege's not doing a good job at being able to convey the ideas he wants adequately. I'm sure it's because of time constraints and whatnot, but even then, as far as I'm concerned, JJK shouldn't be a shonen manga. It is, but it's clearly doing things that Gege likes in people like Togashi. But Togashi can get away with a lot of the stuff he does narratively with his characters, like the video brought up, because of how they're set up in the grand scheme of things.
Gege's foreshadowing of stuff like the mummified corpse, and how people respond to things like that with "HE COOKED!" sometimes makes me confused, because, at least if I'm not smooth-brained for it, it was never mentioned or implied to exist in series. Just because an author can foreshadow stuff, doesn't mean that the payoff is good, or that it's cooking.
Even now, I'm confused what to think about Gege's writing, because he's just very difficult to decipher. But that may be mainly because of how fans have created theories, that Gege has that allure about him. Though, it's not doing him any favors as far as I can see, especially with all the stuff he admits he wish he could have done better on.
Literally been rereading berserk and I’m invested in it when I already know what’ll happen, but reading jjk weekly just feels like I’m waiting for something good to actually happen😭
Berserk is on another level.
I would wait for the arc to finish and then read the arc, things flow so much better and i did it for the culling games arc.
I've only seen season 1 of jjk so far, but that feeling of waiting for something to happen is strong for me. I watched the 0 movie, and I call that my favorite jjk episode. It just delivered its themes and plot so well . Some comments to this video say the series needed to be longer. The movie proves otherwise.
For the people going "Akutama didn't want to do the high school setting, it isn't what he wanted it's what his editors wanted", do you have any idea of how well editors can influence a story, or just how necessary they are in general? Let's look at a classic example, Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball Z, and his editors. Toriyama's most well known and influential editor, Torishima (From OG DB to the Frieza Saga) helped Toriyama get the story off the ground by suggesting that it should be based around martial arts. During the entirety of the Android/Cell Saga, Torishima (who wasn't his editor at this point anymore) would call up Toriyama and say "The villains are just some old and fat guys, really" and then Toriyama would adapt and Torishima would call again saying "Now they're just some brats" which made Toriyama decide to create Cell. The funny thing is, once he created Cell he then got ragged on by his current editor at the time, Kondo, who said things like "This bug is so ugly, but he can transform right *wink wink* ", and "He looks like an idiot in his second form, just make him perfect already".
Unlike Gege Akutama, who decided to put in as little effort as possible with the editor's requests, Toriyama sensei decided to "roll with the punches", he didn't take the criticisms too personally, he just adapted to the situation and, eventually, made the (imo) best arc of DBZ because of his editors criticisms, not in spite of them.
As a mangaka, you can "buck the editor" like Akutama and try to write the story you want to, or you could do what greater mangakas have done and adapted to what the editors said and change your story or evolve your story into one that you want to write (Toriyama and Togashi respectively).
TLDR; Using Akutama's editor as an excuse for Akutama fleshing out the school or backstory or worldbuilding isn't fair, as multiple mangakas have proven that you can adapt your story to include those things or use them as a launching point to tell the story you want to tell, their suggestions/criticisms aren't supposed to be "roadblocks" or "obstacles", they're a resource the mangaka should use or at the very least consider.
Having multiple perspectives on your work is always helpful
That’s is true and rarely do you get to do whatever you want. Gege could have used the school to help train and understand jjk world way more than he actually let it be
This is something that I would describe as a... Anoyance for me I guess.
Mangaka that are good at writing and being good just don't seem to have any level of adaptability or being able to look past their own original vision.
I look at Naruto as an example of this and more specificaly how some characters were used.
Originaly Neji was planned to die in the Sasuke retrival arc but his editor made him (The author Kishimoto) keep him alive due to his popularity.
And what does Kishimoto do wtih this now living popular character.... Nothing.
He and so many others that he didn't originaly have a vision for ended up being cast aside without any thought of how they could help the story.
Exactly 💯 Gege could've given way more effort. Another great example is the Chinin Exam arc in Naruto. While Kishimotos original plan was to have team 7 go to different villages, like in the land of waves arc.
His editor told him to do a tournament arc, so he rolled with it and he gave us one of the best arcs in OG Naruto.
The cell saga the best arc of dbz ? 😂😂😂 This arc has the most bullshit because Toriyama changed the story all the time . The namek arc was the best I don't know why it is a debate .
I’ve felt this way for so long and people continue to deflect every criticism justifying it by talk about how subversive it is but it’s clear to me that akutami doesn’t care and is just trying to finish the story and show cool looking fights so why should I care why should anyone care
Gege really fumbled JJk. It could've been something better to the likes of HxH
The hunt for Sukunas fingers
This was basically the main premise of the manga, it has been completely thrown aside, and at this point was basically was completed off-panel.
Our heroes actually learning Jujutsu Sorcery
Every main character (except Gojo who is a teacher) is a STUDENT at Jujutsu High, one of the earlier arcs was an inter-school competition. Yet after Yuji gets a basic handling on CE and some training before the aforementioned arc, we are done with any schooling, any training. If you set your manga in a magic school, and make all your character magic students, people expect you to do stuff with that.
The politics of the Jujutsu world
This has been a thing that was foreshadowed from the get-go as well. The staunchly traditional higher-ups are introduced basically from Chapter 1 - Gojo laments that they would have Yuji killed immediately out of fear and incompetents and that only he is there to oppose them. This gets later reinforced by Gojo's speech about the new wave and how he wants a revolution led by the youngsters etc. But this also gets put to the side - all higher-ups are killed (again off-panel), and the one guy from the traditional faction that we knew gets kinda 'redeemed' bcs he was just following orders or whatever and done.
The time skip before the finale fight
Is just a clear f*ck you, to any reader who wanted to have any of the aforementioned plot lines be addressed in anything but a throw-away line. You can see this, especially in Chapter 225 where half of the chapter is talking about basic concepts that should have been addressed beforehand - like how will Gojo's DE interact with Sukunas open-border DE. So the author clearly sees a need for this topic to be addressed but can't be bothered to do so when it would have fit story-wise bcs he is rushing to the end fo the manga.
Military plot wtf was it? Waste of Yuki. Fucking Yorozu. Gojo unsealing rushed and anticlimatic. Time skip that happened because Gege didn't want to write any character interactions between Gojo and the rest of the characters. Think what you want about the quality of the fight, but it was massive waste of time because Gojo achieved nothing and died for nothing which made his whole character useless. And don't make me start on Kashimo and his "usefullness"
it’s good to know others feel the same way that I do
Shhh. Dont let the sukunafans hear you speaking facts.
You will be called the G word.
Gojofanboy😂😂
But nah. U seriously fucking nailed the problem at hand.
They can say anything but the truth is there in the manga. How tf did gojo the guy with six eyes not see Sukuna’s chant. But the others with regular eyes can see them 🤔. Nahhhh, I really didn't care that Gojo died , come on everyone knew it was gonna happen sooner or later but like that, and offscreening the attack, f that I rather hear Jimbei speak about Akainu and Aokiji fighting for 10 days straight than this bs. And now he's using miguel 😭
My person problem with JJK is that they killed Mahito too early him and Gojo were literally the best part of the show RIP my GOAT
My sister made me watch jjk this summer, and i just struggled to stay focused on it...i had to be told to pay attention at certain important moments so i could understand what would be happening but I WAS SO BORED😭 and i love so many battle shonen series.. The fights were big and flashy and yeah they looked great but they were so boring and meaningless!!! Battle anime is about battles but some other series give them weight and you're invested bcz you care about the characters and the outcome!!! I really love some ideas in this series and the potential of the characters and i played with the idea of reading the manga but i rly can't be bothered😅
REALLLL
JJK to me is what happens when a series subverts and deconstructs to its own detriment
I won't lie as a huge shonen meathead, JJK was like a spark to younger me; it made me actively want to embrace my sketchier, messy art tendencies and evolve my writing
Sometimes i look back at the series now and just think
"Where did the love go?"
Good analysis, I feel like gege akutami tries to fix the common flaw we see in the classics such as naruto or dragon ball, which is having a wide roster of useless side characters at the end. The problem is, if you kill them right after their role in the story is fulfilled, it feels artificial and empty. I sometimes wonder how can the main character cry so loudly over his self proclaimed brother he met like 1 arc ago as if they were childhood friends. At the end, instead of having a bunch of useless side characters narrating the endgame, you get a bunch of wasted personalities that end up feeling like tools for the narrative and nothing else (and you know what the mc said about humans not being slaves of their role in the most recent chapter). When I get to think about my favorite character in the series, nothing personality related comes to my mind, I always answer choso bcs of the single fact his ability is giving aids.
people were overhyping the shibuya arc. I was ok with jjk 1st season until the 2nd season. While they still had the free will to move, Normal citizens were reacting like npcs standing around with a mouth breathing stupefied look on their face and dying like fodder. There were way too many shots panning to the citizens literally standing with no urgency after being sucked into the train station. I realized at that point nothing matters and I don't care who dies. The author treats its characters like fodder and not even like an impactful way.
its not that i mind BUT THE rest of the jjk sorcerers standing there as people died?? unless it was the main cast the rest were afk.
In my opinion, writing ability-wise, jjk is weak. even if Gege does have talent that doesn't change the fact that everything written in jjk is mostly surface-level. the main highlight of this series for me is the action which I think is the main reason it's so popular anyways (besides the existence of gojo, sakuna, toji and perhaps yuta) the actual world-building, character work, power system, etc. are the weakest I've seen yet in shonen (and that's saying something considering demon slayer exists.)
This is the first time I've come across a main characters that does not feel like a main character at all. Yuji is the character I'm least interested in and literally the existence of sukuna is what makes him more interesting. On his own, his ridiculously bland and basic for a shonen protag. Literally anyone else could have served as a better MC in this series than Yuji.
Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy watching the show and have a positive opinion about the action and pacing. I've tried to get on that hype train but the glaring issues in writing I just could not get past (bc I enjoy deep diving into things) I've seen people give meaning to things and plot points that were never there to begin with. Basic shonen tropes are blatantly present and I do not care about a SINGLE character in jjk.There deaths and personal tragedies did nothing for me emotionally (and I don't consider frequent deaths in shonen as special especially when their done so poorly) For instance, in naruto, I remember balling my eyes out at jirayas death. My world shattering at kakashis (fake) death. Hell even asuma sensei. And literally any character in one piece pre time skip (even a freaking ship!) I have yet to experience a signal emotional high such as that in jjk. Nobara just died and I literally felt like 'well that was quick'. Mechamaru? Dear god, I don't give a shit.
In conclusion, I just like watching gojo and sakuna on screen. Otherwise, this is a series made with the least amount of effort.
Realll
It's a fun action anime with great battle sequences and a cast that is often entertaining.
You're not getting more than that and, to me, that is fine. But people want to gaslight themselves into thinking that the writing doesn't have very questionable decisions.
Gege just wanted boxing the anime
@@gottigamer3448And you know what? Fair play to him. Even if I'm critical of his work at times, particularly during the final arc, I'm fine with Jujutsu Kaisen mostly standing out because of the characters being cool and having great fights.
It's the pretentious fandom thinking this is a deep, complex story that irks me. There's this weird thing in some shonen anime fandoms to try claim their favorite series is "deep, complex art".
You don't need to do that. Enjoy watching the cool characters beating the shit out of each other. That also has value because you give people something to enjoy.
@@kevintanza6968 you've said it all buddy
@@kevintanza6968 FACTS! Idk why so much Anime Fandom try to gaslight you into thinking their story is so "grand, mature and complex" and its literally the same "Bad guy vs Good Guy + Flashy powers" Plot. Thats not bad, liking that is not bad, my fav series is like that at times! But people cant admit for the life of themselves, that the anime/manga they like its just another fighting manga
@@gottigamer3448lmao, it would never have gotten popular tbh, his editor saved his dumbass
It simply put, it doesn't have world building and character building
Jjk Really knee capped itself by moving at such a breakneck pace with the story. So much hinges on the relationship between yuji and megumi now but they've spent almost no time together on screen. The worst part is that what's there is very good. I think gege can write characters well. The little we've gotten blows naruto out of the water, but it's incomplete. It always will be.
And now all that's left is Sukuna. He's boring as a character. He has the same problem you've mentioned with the series. Sukuna's theme and ideology are swallowing any character he has. It's being used to excuse the weak writing while shruggs off a mountain of ass beatings & soul damage.
I'm glad someone mentioned this. Sukuna has gotten boring. His whole thing now is killing characters.
We don't know anything about him and has been on the manga as the main focus for seven months or so.
The little we've gotten blows naruto out of water?
Bro kakashi gaiden 2 episodes had better EMOTIONAL aspect than whole jjk season 1😂
@@rohanshah8808 And what about their downtime? Most shonen have near equal quality in emotional payouts with character deaths, fights, and big plot points. JJK has this in spades for Shibuya but even before that it's good stuff.
When I say JJK is better at it i mean that when we're at a calm point in the series the characters actually feel like friends and allies. Even in the battles their character comes out in how they communicate.
@@RedCornix i gave more points about the fault in plot points in jjk..in respect of character building..(but comments got deleted) i think the channel has a bit of favoritism towards jjk
@@rohanshah8808 If he is that's annoying. I don't think naruto is going to win that department though.
personally the show was much more intriguing before author started Dickridin Sukuna costantly, making him this invincible chad gary-stu with no weaknesses, who defeat literally everyone everytime with zero effort and basically kill every character who can be interesting in the same chapter it's introduced. at this point it feels like a fanfic made by some thirtsy teen than an actual good story.
heres summarisez all the recent volumes
"plot twist Sukuna wasnt even serious because he wasn't using that extremely strong technique that hasnt been used since the Heian Era"
Yeah Sukuna feels like Madara imo
@@ZorrowTasogare92 God that comparison is so True.
@@ZorrowTasogare92Atleast Madara was a character with personal goal and motivations instead of just being a generic bad guy you gotta beat. It felt like Madara mixed with Kaguya lol.
People were really surprised that Sukuna is strong when the manga always said this 😂?
@@ConstantinDOSSOU-vy1zo Being strong ain't the issue. Personally I think Sukuna's strength and the built up towards showcasing it multiple times is actually well done in the series. Its the writing around that strength and Sukuna's character later on that causes so many issues for people.
Love the video. Character development is the most important thing in storytelling in my opinion.
Bro hit the nail on the head
good to know gege isn't sexist, all characters get thrown away when he stops caring, man or woman
(this is a joke, he's said some shit that makes me think he cares about his female characters even less than his male characters)
lol. well actually we know very well he isn't sexist, he even has multiple instances of feminist messages in jjk, but that's also exactly an example of how focused he is on messages themselves without actually weaving them into the themes and narrative consistently
I think JJK is mostly for fans who are not looking to be moved emotionally, but want to be entertained.
It is a visually stunning show with a fast pace, but honestly if Gege decided to genocide every single character in the most gruesome way, I d still be bored. I am one of those people who only care for a story if they care for a character, and the main issue with JJK cast for me is that I never felt like I actually know them. They are strangers, and I am as moved by their death as when I see the daily news with new bodies. To me Gege did not manage to bring me into the world, I am still just a viewer, detached from what is going on .
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THISSSS ive been thinking about what jjk lacks for so long!! my primary gripe with the series is that im not invested in any of the characters and because of that, im not invested in what gege is trying to say either. in my creative writing class i was taught about how the story/narrative is inextricably linked with the characters and their arcs, so in jjk without my investment in the characters, the story comes off as entirely empty and soulless. im not immune to its hype moments, but what are those moments FOR? what purpose do they serve towards the narrative at large? theyre usually only there for hype, which doesnt go well with the deeper messages this story wants to tell its audience
REALL RAHHHH
JJK gets you invested with the PROMISE of deep characters ..... aaaaand then it's gone. There are many, but the one that really stands out to me are Gojo and Geto. Specifically, the scene right before Gojo's imprisonment when he speaks to Geto's body and asks whether he'd really let another control him, causing the hand to spasm and try to choke out Kenjaku. It was such a tantalizing setup: the thought that Geto was still in there, reacting to Gojo's voice. Geto turned evil before being taken over by Kenjaku, so I wasn't expecting some glorious return/redemption, but I AT LEAST expected a Gojo vs Kenjaku/Geto fight before the end. Instead, Gojo and Kenjaku die in separate battles and all we get is Gojo meeting Geto in terminal limbo 😐
FINALLY! SOMEONE WHO GETS IT! You perfectly articulated and expanded upn why I have beef with JJK's manga.
I get not liking something but beef? I ain’t that deep.
@@dragonmaster3207 It's beef cuz I was actually invested at first
@@obara7366 Yup, tbh I thought jjk is gonna be good because of how the fandom is so crazy about it, after watching it, I don't really know, I didn't even felt any emotion about the characters death, I'm just surprised
Now I haven't read the manga, but watching season 2 made me feel empty in a bad way. I don't know how to describe it but it felt weirdly shallow.
The show is trying to tell me this a big terrible event and realistically it would be, but it felt the characters themselves didn't even care, like the world didn't care.
There are people dying left and right but it feels so meaningless and I had idea anymore why some people are on certain sides when they care so little.
JJK boring as hell bc you don’t connect to NOBODY! The entire time you’re pushed to Love Gojo, but then you barely get to know homie and then he’s locked up for a whole season and then he dies. WTF?? Yuji supposed to be main character, don’t know shit about him really, and he’s barely on screen considering he’s MC.
I told my friend I blazed through the entire first season and could barely understand wtf was happening. He said to watch season 2 bc it’ll answer everything. The only thing that I left season 2 with was shipping Gojo and Geto, and pretty much nothing else.
Like to this day, what is this show even about.
Real!! Fans talking about how it's ending but we know NOTHINNNG
Jujutsu Kaisen is all about magic battles, that's it. Jujutsu Kaisen used to be good from the beginning, but in the end of chapter 271, it's mid.
csm is what jjk wished it was
@@The_Omnipotent_Lurkhe litteraly agreed with you, why you beefing?😭
@@MasterMike_ I deleted this post, i‘m terribly sorry for this misunderstanding. But thank you for pointing this out. @he_just_like_me_fr guess i should have read your Name before, sorry for this misunderstanding.
An amazing video! Thank you! I think you did a really good job really *showing* the difference between something like HxH and JJK, in a way that I could never figure out how to properly put into words.
What I've been saying for a while is that (while it had its flaws well before the Culling Games) Gege started writing as though his characters were action figures right after starting the Culling Games. Gege decides that he wants to have a shitload of cool fights, but it ends up feeling super dead and boring because all the characters are relegated to mere vessels for said fights to take place between.
Came here because JJK fans are trying to gaslight twitter that the Heian era and Gojo clan lore (and why they didn’t make a move when Gojo got trapped in that box) doesn’t matter in the narrative as the series comes to its end
And somehow it’s One Piece’s fault…
@@lazystargazer Or Naruto's fault
@@alpguy4865 I mean, people are blaming One Piece for the fans being unsatisfied with JJK’s story so far
You can’t make this shit up lol
LMAOOOOO
JJK has gotta be the most overrated piece of media in the past decade.
I agree that its overrated but it's not the most overrated compared to one piece or demon slayer. Also overrated isn't a bad thing.
We get one of these every 5 years. Last time was Demon Slayer
This video hits even harder after chapter 268 and 3 to go until the end of the story. Honestly this critique is exactly how I feel and whenever I raised this up among those I converse with I'd just be told I am wrong or not reading the story properly 😭
I feel like especially reading the Cullung Game its JUST FIGHTS. It got so tiring, and i was just looking for whatveer character scraps that actually showed their personality
Such a great video!
I had so many incoherent gripes and ideas around jjk ,but this video did such a perfect job at helping me fully understand my issues with the series
this was an incredible video, you truly have a way with words. good luck to you and your channel, cause I was a minute in to watching and just knew i had struck gold. i definitely agree that jjk needs more time, it is fast-paced and it does work in some aspects, but that's also where it fails with the character development
thank u so much this means a lot ^^
They put the best character in a box. Literally!!!
What made me abandon it was the fact that there isn’t a clear protagonist to refer to. I don’t care if they’re weak or strong, but it should be evident, and from the start, I found Yuuji useless most of the time and quite forgettable. Gojo, as defined as he is, can’t be considered a protagonist. People die, even though they’re presented from the beginning as the strongest sorcerers. Sukuna could have been a different kind of antagonist for once compared to other shounen manga, but he seems like a stupid child who treats the world as a toy and boasts about being the strongest, even though he never fully demonstrates these powers. For being the strongest curse, he seems like a joke. I don’t expect anything groundbreaking; sometimes it’s nice to read the same stuff with different versions. I don’t mind if the antagonist wins, but the "good" side doesn’t even seem to be on the same level. If Sukuna and his cheerful family of curses were serious, Jujutsu Kaisen would have ended in the first volume, and the curses would have lived happily ever after. That’s what it seems like to me-lots of pointless fights that don’t give me much motivation to read/watch. People die like flies, the antagonists are banal, and they seem like elementary school kids. For me, only the art is worth anything, but I have only one life and many manga to explore, so I’ve abandoned this crap.
Heard Togashi glazing, and instantly subscribed. This person gets it.
Wow, never thought I'd find a video like this. I tried to get into JJK early on, tried watching the anime twice but it never gripped me for some reason. Now that the manga is being criticized by everyone, I kinda feel like I dodged a bullet😅
I feel like jjk speedruns alot of characters instead of letting the characters develope
As a JJK fan, this video does bring up some really good points about JJK's side characters. I honestly can barely remember Nobara and Megumi's backstories. I liked Gojo, Nanami, Todo on a surface level but they honestly weren't that deep. The Disaster Curses had a decent relationship but it wasn't that influential on the plot. I think there's one character I actually care about in JJK, and that's Yuji himself. Ultimately, all the biggest themes in JJK revolve around Yuji, and he's the only character that really gets a proper arc. The entire story of JJK is all about finding purpose in life, and Yuji embodies that search. Yuji starts off kinda purposeless, just goofing around and squandering his talents. That changes when his grandpa gives him the mission to "save one person", which he takes to heart. In the next few episodes, he takes that mission and makes it his own, becoming a Jujutsu sorcerer because it's a way he specifically can save people, and vowing to save everyone whether or not they "deserve" it, contrasting with Megumi who only saves people who reach his moral standard. The Cursed Womb arc challenges his resolve and shows him the pain and death he will experience if he continues along this path, but ultimately he sticks with it and comes back stronger than ever. But then Mahito comes along, a villain who is the complete opposite of him, who believes life has no value and that people have no lofty morals behind their actions except for their own selfish desires. Mahito challenges Yuji's ideals by having him befriend Junpei, then manipulating Junpei into becoming a killer, deconstructing Yuji's belief in the inherent good of all people. However, when that doesn't work and Yuji successfully convinces Junpei to stop, Mahito simply kills him. Yuji failed, he tried to save one person, yet they died anyway despite his best efforts. Furthermore, Mahito drives Yuji into a state of rage where for a short time, he forgets about saving others and cares only about killing Mahito. The rest of Season one is kind of a breather for Yuji, the attack on the Exchange event has him successfully saving his friends and fighting off Hanami alongside Todo. But then there's the Shibuya arc, where Yuji's beliefs are completely and utterly shattered. First, he's too late to stop Gojo from being sealed. Next, he loses control of Sukuna, leading to tens of thousands of civilians dying. Finally, despite his best efforts, he fails to save Nanami and Nobara, his mentor and his friend. Yuji realizes that he's a failure, that his purpose is bullshit, that he can't save anyone, driving him to utter despair. Todo is able to convince him to keep fighting, telling him that as Jujutsu Sorcerers, they don't need to let themselves be bound by lofty concepts like karma, and that Yuji's attempts to find meaning in the deaths of the fallen are ignoring the purpose they died for. But while Todo's speech is inspiring, there is also a toxic subtext to it. By convincing Yuji that he must keep fighting not out of moral goals but simply because it is his purpose as a Jujutsu sorcerer, he inadvertently proves Mahito right. At the end of their fight, Yuji is convinced that he is just like Mahito, that there is no higher purpose or profound meaning to what he does, that he, Mahito, all the friends he lost, and all the curses he exorcised are nothing more than cogs in the meatgrinding machine of the Jujutsu world. No longer does he have a goal of his own, now he just kills curses because that's what he's supposed to do. There's a great tragedy to Season 1 and 2 of Jujutsu Kaisen, the story of a passionate, upstanding, and happy boy who joined the Jujutsu School trying to make the world a better place, and came out the other end a broken shell of his former self whose purpose was destroyed by tragedy and replaced with a hollow desire to do what he's "supposed to" rather than what he wants to. It hits even harder when you consider the toxic work culture of Japan, including in the manga industry, something Gege commented on with Nanami (who is apparently his favorite character!). It's kinda well known at this point that Gege Akutami is getting tired of JJK which he never really expected to be popular, and wants to write a slice of life or idol manga, but he has to keep doing JJK because it's so profitable. Maybe Yuji's story is kinda a meta commentary on Gege's own journey as a cog in the hypercapitalist manga industry, and how his initial passion was eroded by overwork and executive demands. On the bright side though, the new leaks seem to show Gege getting back on track with Yuji's story, having him abandon the cog mentality and his initial mission, finally realizing that life is inherently beautiful regardless of what someone achieved or what impact they left behind. I can understand people not liking JJK because they want better side characters, more fleshed out worldbuilding, less Sukuna Kaisen slop, those are all valid reasons to hate the show and manga. What I don't get is people who say JJK has no depth at all, it has nothing to say, that Yuji is just a generic shonen mc. Because when you actually look at Yuji and his story, it has a lot to say.
How does TH-cam know that i find JJK to be overrated aswell? Weird.
The characters are boring. The main character is dumb and I mean it like he is intentionally not intelligent which I find a bad decision. If your character can only make bad deciosion by being stupid then the character is not good. The somewhat mentor or "brothers" motivation is litterly Jennifer Lawrence. The characters are not deep, which can be the case with fighting anime but then you shouldnt praise it as the most amaizing show ever.
The worst part for me is in all honesty the narrator. If you need a narrator not just at the beginning or the end, but durin a battle, than something is just wrong. Not only do I learn about characters abilities during an important battle, I am told by a narrator. WTF
😭😭😭😭 this is killing me
Lmaooooooo sounds like a you problem bro
Naw he's right @@him5698
@@him5698 Bad writing is bad writing.
@@Jake-jj2pgand bad opinion is bad opinion, but it doesn’t work like that. JJK has its flaws but I find it meaningful and enjoyable.
I loved all the HOOKS in jjk, but I couldn't love it because nothing ever happened. It was just fight after fight after fight, with cool ideas being teased at.
Gege is like that popular art account that wont stop talking about how their OCs are super special awesome but never actually write any plot or lore. Idk if JJK was all he wanted to deliver then he wouldve worked better as an artist/animator and i wont give him ANY excuses bc his fanbase is already going hard on his personality cult.
There is no good or bad way to read/analyze text: be it a book, manga, film or even a painting. Yes, there's the author's intentions, but at the end of the day, the message that you understood and fostered from it is the one you'll take. Maybe in another reading, or by sharing interpretations and different viewpoints with others, you might re-contextualize that message you formed initially, but there is no true way or right way to perceive art.
When displaying the standard that "the best way to communicate an idea in the story is through character", it automatically impedes the chance of investigating outside these parameters for nuances that might be lingering by. I wholeheartedly agree that overlooking is detrimental (e.g. manga theorists), but if the narrative is presented in such a way that subtext is more and more evident, I don't see why not evaluate it and read it alongside the text.
Every work is different, and comparisons are valid of course, as long as they are clear on what and why they are being compared, otherwise is apples and oranges.
PS: I loved the video actually, sorry if I came across as a stinky jerk
nahhh I appreciate it :)
Fully agree there. The anime is a good watch, and it has its hype moments. But, I dont feel any emotional connection. Any draw to it. When Im done with it I will likely never think about it again.
I think people get instinct from their environment like any other animal. We only have so many choices to make. People can only bond when they are similar
this is a really good point, it’s why see characters like mereum and komugi relate to each other
JJK isn't bad but it is certainly overrated, at least in my opinion.
Yeah, I agree. It's a good series, just overrated.
Because i got spoiled the hell out of it
It was impossible to avoid them since they came randomly basically everywhere
Knowing everything that will happen before even having the chance of reading it just made it a chore to get through the end
There is a reason why yuta / yuji / todo and to some extent choso are fan favorites...BECAUSE GEGE PUT TIME TO FLESH OUT THESE CHARACTERS.
What ur saying is some incredibly factual stuff yet somehow i am still inexplicably invested in JJK more than anything else 😂
gege struggles SO much with _showing_ instead of telling. rushing the process because all he cares about, the point of the series, the reason he writes it, is the message. but unfortunately the process is not an unfortunate annoyance you have to get through to get to the goal, but is the building blocks that constitute this goal itself, like kita shinsuke from haikyuu would teach us! writing those little moments, those character interactions that serve no direct purpose to the plot (instead of trying to "efficiently" cram characterization exclusively in plot-related interactions/conversations like jjk does)... like you said well: the emphasis and effort is put on the message rather than *_how_* that message is conveyed.
8:39 going off your critic on subversion hindering story. I notice that many shows and movies try to be meta with conventions but end up misunderstanding why those conventions worked or represented in the first place. This is the problem with jjk. It reminds me of this quote.
“You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to 'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.”
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
In other words, rules, and conventions are to be tested, bent, and potentially broken, but without any rules, all you have is gibberish.
This might be unrelated but this might be the same dillema that ASOIAF and GRRM faces (or at least of trying to find a best conclusion in his books as well as the trouble of trying to put a pallate cleanser with it along to mitigate the effect of the TV ending), postmodern writing (subversion and deconstruction) is only complete once you go back to its roots why it works so effectively in the first place. You can only deconstruct so much until you start going back to it's roots in the first place, and from all the media that I've consumed a lot of stories that successfully goes this meta, the author themselves doesn't consider their work to be a deconstruction.
@@kennethmendoza1350I think you brought up an interesting idea
@@Arrakiz666yup
Tbh mappa made it a real hit , the manga is ass
I dropped jjk a few months ago. I just stopped caring about the story. I mean I'm still curious how it will end, I just don't care about the journey it will take to get there.
I think Gege is a great mangaka. He might have some problems with linework, character design, and pacing, but he has a clear grasp of composition, mechanics, and writing gripping, tense action set piecies.
I think his main problem is the format: not manga, but Shonen Jump and the serialization schedule.
A lot of Gege's failures with JJK can be explained specifically by the stresses of not only writing a chapter of Manga every week but also keeping weekly readers invested. He's clearly a writer who struggles with this format's specific challenges, and his story has also been forced to be something it's not or that it shouldn't be. The high school setting is what comes to mind immediately even though clearly that isn't where Gege wants to be. The popularity of certain elements in the demographics of Shonen Jump readers are clearly intruding on the story Gege wants to tell. Eichiro Oda thrives in this kind of setting: both because he's the kind of creative mind who can indulge himself in these popular story elements in addition to the fact that he's comfortable in his position as the king. One piece doesn't have to worry about getting axed. Less popular series do. There's pressure from outside the writing process to pace the story quickly so as to get it over and done with. Gege obviously feels this pressure immensely and is almost paranoid about letting the story sit still and wait to expand on its depth, even if it might add something to his story. Bleach's ending was extremely abrupt because of editorial meddling forcing Tite Kubo to get on with it before Bleach go cancelled, and even really good stories have ended up on the chopping block of Shonen Jump in less than 50 chapters, a year and change of serialization.
That said, I don't think JJK is bad. At points, it's brilliant, but Shonen Jump Magazine slots are a precarious situation that Gege is clearly not comfortable in, and I am actually very interested in what he'll be doing once it's done and he can move on to something more his speed.
At writing in general to his list of problems.
Another writer who learned the hard way subversion and killing characters willy-nilly are just cheap tricks that eventually stop working.
Gege could kill every character off screen and gloss over every unresolved plot thread and I wouldn’t feel a shred of emotion or disappointment, in fact I think I’d feel relieved because as it is the half assed way it tries to get me to care about anything that happens actually feels kind of insulting.
Obviously the response to such a profound apathy is to stop watching/reading (and I have) but as long as it’s still talked about in the terms that it is now I’ll be completely bewildered that people have so much to say about it.
My favourite arc in jjk was hidden inventory
Nanami and Nobara were such boring characters. Have no idea why people were crying for two boring characters we hardly even got to know smh. Who cares 😂
I left a comment on the previous JJK video before this one, then deleted it because this one pretty much summarized my issues just fine. As a fan a Jujutsu Kaisen, it's not hard to see the undeniable shortcomings of the story, and the lack of care when it comes to its characters is certainly one of them. What makes this issue stick out far more is that the characters that the story DOES focus on end up being fan favorites, Todo, Choso, Yuji, Yuta, and Higuruma are some of my favorites, but even they occasionally get the short end of the stick. It's frustrating.
Never really got the love for hxh, sure it is great, but it never clicked with me, maybe because i watched some battle shonen i didn't like much before hxh, which influenced many of them or because the anime isn't a great adaptation, or i don't know, never been too much of an anime "consumer", always prefered the more seinen stuff like GiTS, Mononoke and NGE, which is why i find JJK so compelling, there are little of the usual tropes, no moral lessons, no power of friendship, no endless flashbacks, no characters overexplaining their emotions, people die easily because they are not special like in real life, no need for plot armor yet we get enough time to know them a little, enough to understand their conflicts and connections. All topped with great thought-out action. It is far from perfect, but i appreciate how much it deviates from the fairly boring and repetitive shonen formulas and tries to break them even subtextually
Well not liking hxh doesnt make jjk better my man, not sure why you just yapped all that.
@@SpaceBoyDigital learn to read man, i never said i don't like hxh to start with...
Probably because JJK have that potential, just like any story will, problem is in the execution, maybe not for you, but definitely true for a lot of people. It's okay to deviate from tropes or cliches within the same "genre" (despite shonen isn't a genre), but when you do it without any - seemingly - thought put into it, people understandably will be disappointed. Why would you put a seemingly romantic sub plot with Yuji if you're not gonna do anything with it, might as well not make it and it'll be better for the pacing since you're not stopping more important part of the story for something that won't ever happen.
JJK have a lot of this, like, A LOT. I appreciate if it wants to be "different", but in the way of being different, don't sacrifice actual good storytelling tools and techniques, don't just poorly execute it.
I guess you don’t like stuff that require you to think. You just like it simple
HxH is a really good story it is just fans who refuse to see any flaw in it
The connections between the characters are really not established well in JJK, that it left me bewildered when Maki killed the whole family motivated by her sister's death. Like, all her sister did until her death was show disdain towards her, when did that suddenly change? Did the whole family besides them deserve to die? It's all very shallow. As for Mechamaru's love story...it felt very forced. How could anyone root for that guy? JJK is definitely good at setting things up, but it fails to put emotional weight on any of its characters that their motives and deaths end up feeling like pointless props.
The school wasn't supposed to be a thing that was basically forced by Shounen Jump I think
Finally, someone put it into clear words. When you subvert non-stop, you only reach meaninglessness.
If you don't take anything seriously, then you shouldn't be surprised when no one takes you seriously
i am very invested tho in fact this is my favourite arc right now
Im very invested actually but I’ll watch regardless.
I get your point. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, I still love JJK. It’s fast, intense, volatile, doesn’t adapt to conventions and, in that process, it transforms into something unique. I don’t want JJK to be HxH (my favorite anime of all time btw). You say at the end of the video that maybe we should force stories to actually follow certain writing conventions… I strongly disagree.
Plus, it’s actually pretty cool how JJK packs so much in such a short runtime. It may not be as developed as other stories, but it manages to imply so much and, now and then, it actually pays attention to the characters and their motivations. I genuinely think I don’t need more from Yuji, Todo, Nobara, Nanami, Mahito, Gojo… hell, even Jogo. Everything you need to know from them is already explained and showed.
Yeah, some characters and ideas gets scraped but, in the process, we still get a wealthy amount of characters that, for such little time they get, they feel complete and, more so, in that brevity, they shine bright cause they don’t get diluted.
Nice video, btw, even though I rarely agree with lots of the stuff you point out, an specially when it comes to that last conclusion. Also, funny enough, I read YYH recently and actually felt the same way you feel about JJK but with that series. Too fast paced, unable to properly breath, and unable to develop most of its ideas without feeling rushed and forced.
Gege does one thing that I love about jjk it takes risks. You either love it or hate it and that's something that I really respect. Comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing and contrasting different series or whatever is not often bad but it can blind you to accept something different. I love berserk and hxh (mainly the 90s one) but it a vastly different story to any series. Berserk literally starts like a edgy shounen series then excels in a masterful of character development. These series has had time and development but jjk doesnt have that and gege doesn't want it to be like that. From I what I take from gege is life is often not fair we have to move on quick and shit happens. I get where your coming from you want more about these characters, more time and development but just like life we don't always get that time and I think that's what gege is really saying or I'm just chatting shit.
Each series is different and tells its own story about its world and how it deals with. JJK feels very real with death especially we never really get the time to cherish the last moments always reflect on what we had before. Sorry for the long comment but I'm kinda tired of this criticism recently from any series that realistically very short compared to others.
But Gege doesn't explore the theme of 'life isn't fair' well at all - all he does is wipe characters out and then have characters act completely against type about it.
You're saying that death can tragically and unexpectedly rob us of time with loved ones and friends right? So why the fuck doesn't anyone in JJK act like it's tragic or unexpected when their allies get smoked? If the series was 'real' about death, we would see death having an actual impact on the characters - no one in 'real life' responds to death in such a flippant, uncaring way as every character has done post-Shibuya. Egregious examples:
- Gege went out of his way to convince us that Yuji was a good dude who is tight with his new friends, so why didn't Yuji lift a finger to find out what happened to Nobara after Shibuya, demand to see her body, etc. considering the bond they now share after killing the Death Paintings? Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour.
- Gege established Gojo's number one motivation as being a mentor to his students, so why the fuck didn't he or any of the other faculty express any sympathy to Yuji for the trauma he went through in Shibuya, or check in with Maki who went from someone who was embarrassed about seeming insensitive to Nobara after Yuji's first 'death' to suddenly becoming a mass-murderer of HUMANS!?!? Time is not an excuse - they had a full 30 days to have these interactions and it didn't happen. Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour.
- Nanami is a good enough friend to Gojo to appear in an afterlife flashback, yet when he's told he DIED after being unsealed, all he gets is a 'Really? Huh...' from Gojo. Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour.
- If there's no time for development why the fuck are we getting an afterlife heart-to-heart about love between Sukuna and the most-throwaway villain in the story (Kashimo)!?
- If there's no time for development why is Gege spending so much time on dumb details like the organisational hierarchy of a clan that's going to be wiped out by the end of that chapter, or identifying the various armies that Sukuna beat which have no bearing on the current events of the story?
- If there's no time for development why is Gege going down the rabbit hole on weird ideas like Kenjaku being Yuji's mother only to not have them mention it before Kenjaku gets whacked or for it to have any importance to the plot whatsoever?
- Why bring up Yuki's big book of soul research and goal to rid the world of cursed energy and never do ANYTHING with it before killing her?
- Gege deliberately told us that Yuki is Todo's mentor (to the point they share a catch-phrase), yet we're not going to see them interact or see any expression of sorrow from Todo over his mentor dying? Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour.
- Hakari was all pissed off that Gojo got sealed early in the CG, yet he sees him bisected before his very eyes and casually rolls into battle with a big smile right after? WTF?
“You shouldn’t be comparing JJK to other stories” is the single best anti-criticism shield the JJK stans had ever come up with, lol. Not just because it’s blatant and absurd, but because it doesn’t even work. If JJK was literally the only story ever told, its flaws would remain identical.
I agree, it's no fair. Both HxH and Berserk are two times longer than JJK. JJK manages to bring something very different in terms of storytelling which is what I'm all here for. Very clear beginning, middle, and end. Even if you can't connect with the characters, JJK is still one of the most fun Shonen to watch right now. So go watch it, if anything, it is fun seeing everything unfold ONLY through fights and flashbacks, and with a keen eye, you can notices all kinds of little things thag gege leaves in his manga. I think there should be a more fair and longer critique of JJK here, because in JJK, characters are symbols of ideology and philosophy, it's cool, l like it, it's simple, and simple isn't bad.
@@biscobisco1882 damn i wrote this 5 months ago and I didn't expect a reply.
"You're saying that death can tragically and unexpectedly rob us of time with loved ones and friends right? So why the fuck doesn't anyone in JJK act like it's tragic or unexpected when their allies get smoked? If the series was 'real' about death, we would see death having an actual impact on the characters - no one in 'real life' responds to death in such a flippant, uncaring way as every character has done post-Shibuya."
The way characters in JJK respond to death can seem weird, especially when you compare it to how people might react in real life. But I think this might be intentional on Gege's part, reflecting the brutal and relentless world these characters live in. I think it serves to highlight just how unforgiving and desensitizing their world really is. Yes "real" world people reflect on death and impact their lives but a lot of them also move on. You see in hidden inventory how normal it was see normal sorcerers die and Nanami reacting in a normal way.
1. Why would Yuji go crazy seeing what happened to nobara when he was told she was dead by Megumi and he saw her quite literally die in front of him. He went berserk mode when Nanami died and broke down when Nobara "died". Yeah totally bizarre inhuman behaviour IMO. He did ask about Nobara and got his answer why he seek further answer when Megumi is asking for his help and the "Culling games" started.
And now she back with the worst plot convenience of the story.
2. "Gojo's number one motivation as being a mentor to his students, so why the fuck didn't he or any of the other faculty express any sympathy to Yuji for the trauma he went through in Shibuya, or check in with Maki who went from someone who was embarrassed about seeming insensitive to Nobara after Yuji's first 'death' to suddenly becoming a mass-murderer of HUMANS!?!? Time is not an excuse - they had a full 30 days to have these interactions and it didn't happen. Totally bizarre, inhuman behaviour" -
It's like Gojo was sealed or something Idk maybe it happened in shibuya as for the rest yaga died straight after and Idk about the rest but the culling games started immediately after shibuya. Gege should of done better but I am not defending it.
3. Yeah that is weird interaction dont ask me ask gege but sometimes people do act like. Gege should of yes done more but I am not here to say that was a good move.
4. I never said there was no time for development I said we wished we had more and cause gege is master speed runner he skipped through some or would be good interactions with character.
5. I have no idea what your on about please clarify or best don't
6. YES GEGE PLEASE EXPLAIN I LIKE REALLY DO WANT TO KNOW.
7. YES GEGE PLEASE EXPLAIN I LIKE REALLY DO WANT TO KNOW.
8. YES GEGE PLEASE EXPLAIN I LIKE REALLY DO WANT TO KNOW.
9. Yeah would of been nice to see Todou and Yuki interact but you know gege he dont like that shit.
10. Dont ask me I never wrote this shit.
Jujutsu Kaisen is shallow.
Finally I see something about this!!
I like watching jjk it's very entertaining but at the same time I really do not care about anyone and anything in this
I realized this also because spoilers did not hit me as hard as I thought, I can keep watching even knowing stuff
Gege doesn't know how to write a good storyline properly whether it's the depth of the characters which all he focuses on is how strong and in a way "inhumane" they are but the plot as well
For example:
maki takes revenge on mai's death by killing every member of the zenin clan and a lot of them are just like her and toji which means they suffered the same bad treatment by their clan but she annihilates them offscreen to just show us how strong she became, and that raises another point: how is she able to kill others who have the heavenly pact meaning they, as well, are strong af.
kenjaku goes from this curse who have interesting goals about shaping the world the way he wants to a curse who is bored and wants to have fun just for the sake of fitting him into the plot of being killed through someone who would give him that "fun" and then his body "killed" immediately by yuta even though the body is getto who is one of the most powerful sorcerers and we saw him destroy tsuki with ease and Gege wrote that just to get rid of getto's powerful body and techniques... and don't get me talking about including the americans and then forgetting all about that because at that point half of the countries that have nukes will be dropping them on japan after the massacre of the American soldiers and the realization of how threatening the curse users are... and don't get me started on the gojo vs sukuna shit... at that point it's not a story anymore with complex intertwined events and consequences, it's just a fighting video game, it's like playing tekken lol.. there are a lot of points that I have forgot about but it's frustrating to see a story with so much potential gets treated this way.
Period
I swear I loved the 1st season but then I picked up the scans and let's just say there was Shibuya, Geto was my fav (I wanted him to come back) and realising after some spoilers that most characters would just end up dying without having half the development he had broke my heart real bad. I just didn't want to get invested in it because it would hurt and there would be no payback, so instead I read fanfics lol (this is not an insult to Gege I respect his work sm 🙏)
It just has some very subpar writing and direction. Very bog standart for a shounen. Doesn't really deserve to be compared with such giants as Berserk and HxH.
My main gripe with JJK is that the story is beautiful the cast is amazing and the characters have so much to them; yet it is half the length it should be to really dive into those themes. I would love to see these themes delved into more by THE STORY not a random YT video I come across, not because the video's are bad but because a story shouldn't just convey its themes subtextually.
JJK suffers severely from that writing problem of 'telling more than showing'. I love the cast, they are all really interesting characters, but no one is alive enough to be developed. Kinda sucks for me how, aside from Junpei, there are so few non-sorcerers in the story, people that could make a huge difference in the storytelling, making the line between sorcerers and non-sorcerers more blurry. Anyone that is a non-sorcerer, isn't important or interesting enough for society or the plot as a whole before dying. Kinda sad, since the anime/manga has a lot of potential.
I really liking the first season, then everyone started to die, and I was just like 'Ah, so we'll have a few panels with all the information being spilled on us instead of inserting it in subtext. Ok.', and that was the end for me.
I love Geto's story, Choso, and Nanami. It kinda sucks that they were thrown aside so fast.
Anyway, just my opinion.
Wrong: I am invested
Edit: read the full manga, and almost completely fell out of love. Everything past Shibuya is one long climax, and you can’t have 70% of your story be a climax, with only action.
You put into words what I couldn’t. Plus Gojo better come back!!!!
this is where you're wrong. *I AM INVESTED IN JJK*
I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT JJK NEEDS TO BE EXTENDED. Coño why didn't we get 3-2 fights for each of the culling game new characters? Where are the seniors in the JJK highschool? I think they died off screen in the parade of demons?! Hakari needed more fights like choso, kashimo, mai, bumgumi, nobara (she shouldn't had died so early), the school is empty, the WORLD barely has any sorcerers outside of Japan because of plot (😂 this is so FUCKING stupid, the CIA had a psychic program and you're telling me that in this VERSE they don't have jujutsu sorcerers?! This is why I call Gege, MidGe because honestly he fumbled
I see what you're trying to say. Berserk and Tokyo Ghoul are two of my most favorite mangas of all time. However, I think you're missing the point a bit when it comes to Jujutsu Kaisen. You mentioned that JJK explores its themes through its characters, that's true. But the characters aren't meant to be "real" people in the same way as Guts and Kaneki are. They're mainly meant to be vessels for ideas, themes and ideologies. It's like when you read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra himself is not meant to be someone for you to be emotionally attached with and to identify as a person, and neither are all the characters that he met throughout the book. They are all vessels for ideas, much like in JJK, but here they converse and debate throughout via fighting instead of talking. I think the manga shows this very clearly straight from chapter 1. Yuji is selfless, he looks out for his friends, he's kind and virtuous. He is the vessel for Sukuna, who is as selfish as you can be, does not care about anyone else, and have no regard for what is right and what is wrong. This is I think, as straight forward as you can get into showing that your characters are literally meant to be vessels for different philosophies.
I'm mainly gonna use Berserk and TG as they're the ones I am very close and familiar with. With these two, the point is to develop the characters, and with that, to develop the themes. Berserk and TG shows you the character, their personality, philosophy and their state as people. It then develops that by showing us A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,etc. With Guts, we literally saw him straight from being born, up to being a kid, then a teenager, and so on. With Kaneki, we see every step of his transformation from when he was human, up to the end. That's how they ultimately become real people, as we are shown a lot of the steps they take, we spend a lot of time with them as they develop. But that's not really what JJK is doing. JJK shows us a character, what that character represents, it then gives us A, B, and C, and then it expects us to fill in the gaps. It does not concern itself through developing its characters. What it wants to do is to develop its themes. And when the themes are develop, the characters develops with it. Because again, the characters are vessels for themes. Maki is a good example,. If you only look at Maki, you can say that she didn't get enough development and enough time, especially if you put in her sister in the equation. But, that's where you're supposed to look at the themes as a whole as JJK intends you to, instead of just looking at the characters. Toji is the first step of development for Maki. Toji's character, is a direct result of his horrible upbringing with the Zenin clan. So the current Toji represents all of that. We see that through his actions, and the way he speaks, even if the Hidden Inventory arc is short, it actually showed his character very nicely. We didn't need to get flashbacks of Toji, we just need to see his current state. Maki's flashbacks fleshes out Toji's character, as they both had the same past, so Maki's flashbacks functions as Toji's flashbacks. And likewise, Toji's present functions as Maki's future. Maki's sister is the same as Toji's wife. In the sense that it's the person that frees them from the Zenin clan, with the only difference being Toji falls right back down when his wife died. Maki completes the theme. You can say that we didn't actually spend anytime seeing Toji and his wife, and Maki with her sister. But, do we need to? We already see how Toji turned out because of it, we see Maki's current relationship with her sister. We don't need to see the past, in the same way that we didn't need to spend time with John Wick and his wife to see how much she meant to him. We see that with how driven, commited and willing John Wick is in the present through his actions as his entire motivation is the last vestige of hope his wife left him. By annihilating her entire family, we see what her sister truly means to her. Which as you know, Toji couldn't do, he was unable to overcome his trauma despite having the strength to. In this case, its love. Toji was "freed" temporarily because he had a loving wife. Maki was freed because she had the love of her sister. But Maki was the only one who was able to overcome it, meaning that Toji has no love in himself aside from the love he had for his wife. Maki is literally the embodiment of self-love, so when her sister added hers, she just became complete. And I think that's quite deep and accurate. Traumatized people need the love of others, friends and family to support them, but they will never get anywhere if they never learn to love and accept themself, so they need both. Toji was just half a person all this time. Their actions in the present shows us the past. This is pretty much how JJK functions. It gives us E,F,G,H, and with that we can infer what A,B,C,D is.
I first read Berserk 8 years ago and it has been the most important piece of literature in my life. But by no means do I apply the same standard in which I view Berserk and how it tackles story telling to everything else. I love Berserk, and it is that amazing because we spent a lot of time with the characters, it is still unrivaled to this day when it comes to its world and characters, but it would suck if it has chapters after chapters of nonstop fighting. And I also love Jujutsu Kaisen, but it is only that good because we literally just go bonkers with fights all the time. If there's chapters after chapters of introspection in Jujutsu Kaisen, it'll literally suck. Because it does not want us to be attached to the characters, it wants us to basically watch a debate. It wants a constant back and forth between different ideologies at all times. When a fight happens, don't just view it as two characters throwing hands. Instead try to see what each character represents and see it as dialogue. But that is not to say Introspection does not happen in JJK. It does, it just literally happens during fights. Yuji breaking down and realizing his world view is hypocritical, flawed and dysfunctional is introspection, it just happens during a fight Anyways, sorry for the super long comment and horrible grammar, I'm writing this at 5 am. But in short, not every story wants to tell their story the same way. Now whether that's bad or good, I'll let you decide. But for me, I prefer meeting and viewing each stories in their own terms.
Not reading allat😭😭😭
interesting viewpoint
Tldr
Is that Killshot by Eminem in the background?
u know it! 👍🏾
I love jjk but it’s pacing is deeply flawed and it’s a shame because it could’ve been a truly fantastic story if it didn’t feel like gege just wanted to finish it as soon as he started it.
I dont think this is a well though out video ngl.
You dont afford the happenings of Jjk with the level of thought they deserve. No, the deathsaren'tt done to show the "hoplessness" of the world. If anything, the mang of the deaths came after the character found peace within themselves or put their faith in others. Like Kenjaku, who finally found something outiside of his control, even if it was unexpected. Or Higuruma, who was able to gain peace as he reained his role of the protector of the weak who kept fighting even against hopeless odds.
With the latest chapter, the thematic framing becomes clear. Despite Yuji initially thinking the the contrarary, every death in the series DOES have meaning, as long as you have connected with others. Junpei's death finally awoke his school to their faliures. Haibara's death was the straw that broke the camel's back for geto.
I dissagree that charcters get too little screentime. This is noy a grand adventure like One Piece or HunterXHunter. Nor is this a character study like Evangelion. While I would love more slice of life silliness, it's not required because the charcters do spend enough time on screen in general. You have just made the mistake and writing off fights as usless to characterization, when in jjk fights DRIVE characterization.
Also. I surprised that you dont like Geto's downfall in hidden inventory when it's pretty universally loved, even by self proclaimed jjk haters. And the fact you didnt mention Yuji ad one of the intriguing shinjuku charcters when the arc is focused on him and sukuna.
I genuinely think it's a little sad that you cant find any value in one of my favorite series. If you dont belive me that JJK has more to offer, check out Serena2D who makes amazing analysis on the manga and anime.
That’s the problem I have with JJK, everything moves to fast and I don’t have enough time to feel the characters or feel that the world is real. I need videos of people talking well about JJK to feel like it’s good. The one thing that it does well is the fights, but that’s it really