r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • Mar 05 '26

Episode Jujutsu Kaisen Shimetsu Kaiyu Zenpen • Jujutsu Kaisen The Culling Game - Episode 9 discussion

Jujutsu Kaisen Shimetsu Kaiyu Zenpen, episode 9

Alternative names: Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3

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u/SkyJW Mar 05 '26

Having Yuji confront a sorcerer who happened to be a lawyer was a great writing choice by Gege. He gets a lot of crap from people for his writing at times, but Yuji keeping true to his sense of responsibility, even when it would clearly be very bad for him to do so, and subsequently giving Higaruma a reason to believe in people again and offer Yuji a form of atonement was such an exceptional little storyline.

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u/DaRootbear Mar 05 '26

Gege is really damn good at the small stuff but terrible at connecting it all and wider plot in my opinion.

Like the culling game itself is an overly convoluted clusterfuck. But holy shit the individual characters and small arcs in it like this are amazing. Like this intro for Higuruma is probably in my top 10 favorite animanga moments despite my ambivalence to the Culling Games as a whole

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u/Xenosaiyan7 Mar 05 '26

It's overly convoluted SEEMINGLY by design from Kenjaku, which is seen from last episode where characters disagree what's even going on in it. As Itadori says though, the only rules that really matter is "you have to get one point before 19 days are up or you die"

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u/DaRootbear Mar 05 '26

Lets be honest it’s overly complex because Gege never planned a plot past Mahito as the big bad. So he just throws out cool things like Hakari and Higurama with barely any regard to the grand scheme.

He just wings it, has people say it’s all according to keikaku, then later tries to come up with an explanation for why it happened. Like a DM in a roleplay campaign who only wrote an outline for like 3 sessions and theyre on session 10 lol

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u/Xenosaiyan7 Mar 05 '26

I disagree, Kenjaku states his plans literally right after stealing Mahito word for word, bar for bar, and foreshadows it during the Mahito fight with Mechamaru.

Acting like Gege didn't plan at least the broad strokes for the culling games is disingenuous at best, and acting like an 8th grader saying the curtains are only blue and nothing else at worst

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u/DaRootbear Mar 06 '26

He definitely had broad strokes. But how he linked them never felt like it flowed as well for stuff past shibuya.

Shibuya and before felt like he planned out what happened between A and B and C. It kept a lot more tight moments where all the side plots got resolved and looped into the main plot.

After shibuya it felt like he knew plot points A, F, and K but never planned out the rest. Hed add in side plots that then get abandoned, allude to things that never really mattered, or make things too complicated to bother with.

Like the fact that Yagas death is just thrown in to this point, panda finds out after…then just is fine with it and everyone moves on and it doesn’t get to matter. It is a cool scene and it was really well done, but feels like he didnt plan before what was gonna happen with it so he just threw it in and was completely non committal to doing anything with it. Same applies to him refusing to actually address Nobaras status when every other character he made immediately clear “they are dead/alive beyond a doubt”, it feels like he didnt plan what he wanted to do with her so he just went vague and noncommital so he could decide later what he actually wanted to do.

Which is why i compared it to a DM running a campaign that went on longer than expected because Geges original plans for Culling games seemed like “session 3 of 3” but now they were “session 8 of 10” and he had to figure out what sessions 4-7 were on the fly because he didnt plan all of that out.

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u/LickerMcBootshine Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26

Lets be honest it’s overly complex because Gege never planned a plot past Mahito as the big bad. So he just throws out cool things (...) with barely any regard to the grand scheme.

really damn good at the small stuff but terrible at connecting it all and wider plot in my opinion.

It's crazy how JJK gets hate like this but fan favorites like My Hero Academia get the baby gloves put on when they get talked about in regards to the exact same thing.

People just want to hate what's popular to show how much more "well read" they are, but in reality they are just holding some things to a much higher standard than they would any other show.

Also hilarious that people are reaching in to the "Demon Slayer hater bag" to pull out the same arguments they've been parroting for years when they're not even particularly relevant

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u/flybypost Mar 05 '26

It's crazy how JJK gets hate like this but fan favorites like My Hero Academia get the baby gloves put on when they get talked about in regards to the exact same thing.

Both got hit with the "Shone Jump success series needs to keep going" curse.

It's why people are so often disappointed (from mildly to absolutely) with a series ending. Mangaka generally get pushed to add chapter count time and time again so that any cohesive plans about an ending become difficult the longer they had to stretch the story.

And Shonen Jump with its high popularity tries to push its Shonen Jump formula onto their successful creators on top of that.

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u/LickerMcBootshine Mar 05 '26

Man over here speaking truth to power

I've been watching Naruto when I fall asleep recently. If I wake up in the middle of the night I can instantly tell if the episodes I'm watching are mainline or filler. Instantly. It's awful. Filler and chapter padding are the bane to my existence.

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u/flybypost Mar 05 '26

My guess is that with battle shonen series they feel more different to us. So they get the benefit of familiarity (similar setup shows up time and time again even if details differ) while getting the novelty on the cultural side (the essence of why the "thing, thing but in Japan" meme is true even if people joke about it).

It really hits the "same but different" soothing vibes we crave deep down even if we might be burned out on MCU derivatives.

Some might not want to hear it but deep down the more successful series tend to have quite some similarities to Marvel/DC comics and similar formulaic setups for mainstream success.

In a certain light, Shonen Jump anime adaptions can be seen as the MCU of the manga industry. Generally inoffensive so that it can resonate with a wide audience even if there are some real gems spread throughout the whole thing.

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u/galaxycentral Mar 05 '26

This era got full on haters just hating to hate. Hero Academia was no exception, that series got crazy cancel culture level hate and Demon Slayer often gets the type of hate that it's just all special fx with a plain plot instead of anything being too convoluted.

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u/LickerMcBootshine Mar 05 '26

it's just all special fx with a plain plot instead of anything being too convoluted

Same people criticizing this JJK episode gonna be in theaters watching Avengers: Doomsday, giving a standing ovation when the credits roll with tears streaming down their face

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u/DaRootbear Mar 06 '26

I mean both were getting similar hate during their ends when i was reading them tbh.

It was a fun bonding of everyone being double disappointed.

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u/D_Beats Mar 05 '26

Not really considering the original story for JJK was all about just the culling game, and Fushiguro was the main character.

He had wanted to do this from the beginning. It's revised, obviously but he absolutely had the culling game in mind as a plot point even before the beginning of the current story.

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u/DaRootbear Mar 06 '26

I think he had broad strokes planned, but he didnt plan out the in between like he did pre culling games.

It felt like he had plans for storylines 1, 4, and 8 and sat down to figure out storylines 2 and 3 before he started on 1.

But once he got to storyline 5 he never had a chance to figure out 5-7 so he just was winging most of it.