Yuta Okkotsu has a girl he just can’t shake: the tormented spirit of his childhood friend who bonded to his soul after the gruesome accident that claimed her life. When Rika takes her love of Yuta a step too far, a strange man named Satoru Gojo arrives and claims he can help him control this curse. Gojo whisks Yuta away to Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School, a place where students can harness the power of curses to do battle with malicious sorcerers and other unseemly types. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is, of course, a prequel to the Shonen Jump series Jujutsu Kaisen, based on what was essentially a pilot that ran before the series’ actual circulation. This might sound a bit technical, but the film is designed solely for the fans who know all this already.
Much like last year’s uber-successful Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is a film based on canon story events, not an invented big screen adventure. This makes the film a necessary bit of worldbuilding for anime-only viewers who last checked in on the world of Jujutsu Kaisen in spring 2021. Yuta Okkotsu, mentioned in passing in the series, is our protagonist – a broken down shonen hero burdened by a power beyond his understanding. No wonder he’s voiced by Megumi Ogata, the same woman behind Shinji Ikari. In many ways, it doesn’t matter if this film is actually good or not. It’s part of the story, and it must be seen.
But it’s pretty good! It feels more like four episodes of an OVA than a film – Yuta goes on missions with each of the supporting characters before a final battle with a mysterious villain – but the missions are fun and everyone’s abilities are appropriately cinematic and well-animated. The film loses the emotional throughline of Yuta and Rika in the middle due to deference to the source material. There could have been more of a balance between battles and the traumatic. Somewhere along the way, anime based on manga has been reluctant to make any changes, even here. I expected to at least get a cameo or a reference to the series’ main plot, but there was nothing of the sort. This puts Jujutsu Kaisen 0 in the strange space of being a standalone story but also not at all. I can’t recommend going into this blind, though I doubt anyone will.
Jujutsu Kaisen is one of the few standout series currently running in Weekly Shonen Jump, and I’m thrilled that this film is getting a theatrical rollout in the US. I just wish it hadn’t wholly devoted itself to the manga on which it was based, an early version of this world of curses that had not been totally fleshed out. “Domain Expansion,” one of the more visually interesting sorcerer abilities, is nowhere to be found. “Black Flash” is used but not explained, making it seem more like an artistic flair than the sequence breaking power-up it actually is. The current story’s Yuta is far more interesting than the standard crybaby we see in this film, a glimpse of his dead-eyed brutality couldn’t have hurt. Basically, if you are aware of the existence of Jujutsu Kaisen 0, you’re probably gonna see it. I bet it looks great in IMAX.
Jujutsu Kaisen 0
2021
Dir. Sunghoo Park
105 min
Opens 3/18 in select theaters
