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JUJUTSU KAISEN
Author: Gege Akutami
Volumes: 21 English/ 24 Japanese (ongoing at 243 Chapters)
Publisher: Shonen Jump [click HERE for digital chapters]
Gege Akutami is a fascinating author. Visually his style is distinct yet has very clear inspirations from early to mid 2000’s authors baked into it, yet his writing style feels like it’s closer to author’s of the mid 80’s such as Araki and Toriyama.
I tried to place this one higher, because I feel like this is the one series that a lot of people would place MUCH MUCH MUCH closer to number 1. I can’t though, I’ll go into why later but first, I want to make it clear that for the most part Jujutsu Kaisen is relatively issue free.
Main character Yuji Itadori has a lot of classic tropes in his initial reveal, he’s a naturally strong and capable athlete, the kinds of traits that these days the average character has to spend half the series building up to as they go. For Yuji his challenge comes from making the choice to eat a demon’s cursed finger that he thinks will give him the power to save his friends, unfortunately it puts him at odds with the demon the finger belongs to, Sukuna. This also makes him an enemy with most of the curse users who see Sukuna as a threat that must be wiped out no matter what.
It takes a collection quest format story, and gives it a fresh new take in which the aim is to collect and eat the rest of the fingers in order to ensure that Sukuna can be ultimately wiped out within the unfortunate vessel that is our main character, who will be sacrificed to achieve that end (to say anything more would be a spoiler). Yuji’s other goal being to find meaning/ value in life/ death which, and as the story goes on, the author displays some genuine depth and thoughtfulness.
Another thing I appreciate is that characters actually gain strength in their abilities by explaining them, equally putting them at more risk due to the reveal. There’s also this weird additional and yet unexplained ability that Yuji seems to have where people will get fake memories of him at moments where Yuji is in pretty dire situations.
The biggest issue that Jujutsu Kaisen has that holds it back from climbing higher in this list, is one that has only been getting worse, and that’s that techniques such as Domains don’t translate very well in the comics at all. Maybe the anime will do a better job when recent events receive coverage but it often requires that somebody tells us why a certain domain cancels another out, or which domain is happening when, and unlike explaining baseline abilities, domains tend to be somewhat invisible and hard to visually establish the functions of them even when they are given a visible periphery.
I like the consequence that Domains originally introduced, where being in the opponents domain would guarantee a curse would hit, but now that so many at a time can layer over one another, it’s destroying the foundations of how stories are told in comics, and bringing forth all the worst traits of having the spectators explain what’s happening in nauseating detail because of how ridiculously impossible it is for images alone to cover it all.
I’m aware this issue isn’t solely one in JJK but…
Below is a very brief example of a recent event where exposition is literally stuttering the narrative. It’s hard to demonstrate fully without ripping entire chapters worth of events (and spoiling content) but this really hurts it overall:
