Manga / Jujutsu Kaisen

My true form constructs a future for I, who curse and am cursed! ^Characters Top: Mahito. Second row, from left: Megumi Fushiguro, Yuji Itadori, Satoru Gojo. Bottom: Nobara Kugisaki.

"The people I know, I want them to die properly."

—Yuji Itadori

Yuji Itadori is an athletically blessed but easygoing high school student not sure of his path in life when, during a routine visit, his grandfather suddenly perishes, but not before making Yuji swear a promise to him: that he will do kind deeds so that he dies surrounded by loved ones, unlike his grandfather.

The boy isn't left long to grieve however, when he runs into Megumi Fushiguro, a sorcerer on the lookout for a cursed object. When Itadori's friends open the cursed object that they found, things go south as the cursed spirits that it attracted come to roam the school. As Megumi and Yuji are pushed against the wall, Yuji swallows the cursed object, incarnating into his body none other than the King of Curses, Ryomen Sukuna. Yuji is forced to become a sorcerer himself to escape execution, and what starts as a mission to find and consume the rest of Sukuna's fingers to end the sorcerer's threat once and for all gradually spirals into a conflict that could forever change the balance between humanity and Curses.

Jujutsu Kaisen (呪術廻戦; lit. Sorcery Fight) is a Urban Dark Fantasy manga written and illustrated by Gege Akutami, which began serialization in Weekly Shōnen Jump on March 5, 2018.

The series is a sequel of a four-chapter monthly series in Jump GIGA called Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School, which was later released under the title Jujutsu Kaisen 0. It takes place about a year or so before the main story and stars Yuta Okkotsu, a first year student at Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School and the possessor of a powerful guardian spirit known as Rika.

An anime adaptation by MAPPA premiered in October 2020. In March 2021, it was announced that Jujutsu Kaisen 0 would receive a movie adaptation that premiered in December 2021. In February 2022, it was announced that a second season will air in 2023 in two parts: the first part (containing Hidden Inventory Arc) aired from July 6 and the rest of the episodes (containing Shibuya Incident Arc) from August 31. In December 2023, a third season focusing on the Culling Games arc was confirmed to be in production.

Not to be confused with the martial art of Jujitsu, which does not involve sorcery whatsoever.

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Jujutsu Kaisen provides examples of:

A — M

• Academy of Adventure: Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School is one of only two Jujutsu schools in all of Japan. It has the facade of a private religious school when it’s actually used to train Jujutsu Sorcerers. Even after graduating, many Jujutsu Sorcerers use the school as a home base for missions and, in general, a location of support for the jujutsu community.
• Adaptational Badass: Due to the anime expanding on several fights many characters come off as far stronger in the anime than they do in the source material. For example in Choso's brief fight against Kenjaku and Uraume, Choso lifts a large rock under Kenjaku about a meter or so into the air. This is changed to an entire column of stone in the anime.
• An Aesop: Junpei's story arc is very much a heavy-handed anti-bullying message. A meek, anti-social boy is repeatedly harassed and attacked by a turd of a classmate, and he has no one else to confide with. Moreover, his lack of social skills are what allow him to be manipulated by Mahito. While he does find friendship and common ground with Yuji, Mahito has already gotten his grips onto Junpei and makes use of his self-loathing by getting his mother killed, tricking him into fighting Yuji, and eventually killing him in a twisted way. In the aftermath, it is reported that Junpei "moved away". Plus, it's implied that everyone in the school was in some way aware of what the bully was doing but was too afraid to do anything or didn't want to do anything that would ruin the school's reputation because the bully came from a wealthy and influential family, and now everyone has to deal with not doing anything to help Junpei when they had the chance.
• All the Other Reindeer:
  • Junpei Yoshino, the teen who Yuji befriended, was constantly getting harassed and bullied, especially by the three people who died a Cruel and Unusual Death in Chapter 18.
  • The mother of one of the students from Kyoto Prefectural Jujutsu High School, Noritoshi Kamo, is treated horribly by other people because of Noritoshi's status as an illegitimate child and her being a concubine of the head of the Kamo clan.
• Always Accurate Attack: Domain Expansion traps the target in a space made of the user's own Cursed Energy. Every attack issued by the user within the Domain is guaranteed to hit. That said, the attack can still be blocked or at least mitigated by the target.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Curses, unsurprisingly given that they are given form, power, and will from humanity's darkest emotions.
• Anatomy of the Soul: Discussed throughout the series. Mahito sees the soul as a physical object inside everyone, and his technique allows him to contort the body through simply playing with the soul. Kenjaku finds out the original Geto still has some control of his body despite his death, and so he concludes that the soul and body are exactly the same. This is proven further when Toji is resurrected in his entirety through Ogami just bringing back his body.
• And I Must Scream: Not only does the humanoid curse Mahito have the ability to transform human bodies, but he also uses them as attack dogs while keeping their consciousness intact.
• Antagonist Title: The anime's first episode is titled Ryomen Sukuna, after one of the story's central villains.
• Anyone Can Die: Zigzagged all around. While it's clear some of the major characters seem to have Plot Armor, somehow that armor seems to have a time limit and, as the series progresses, more and more important characters receive no special treatment regarding death and Yuji himself is fated to die horribly. It's amped up considerably as the series heads towards its climax, which can aptly be described as the whole cast being thrown into the meat grinder against Sukuna.
• Armed Females, Unarmed Males: All four of the main heroes have some training in weapon use. However, Nobara, the sole female character among them, is the only one who specifically needs weapons to use her Cursed Techniques. Averted however with both Special-Grade Sorceror Yuki Tsukumo, who taught brawler extraordinaire Toudou and Takako Uro, both of which fight barehanded. Also Averted by Yuta Okkotsu and Kashimo Hajime, who both use a sword, ring and staff respectively to use their techniques and fight.
• Armour-Piercing Question:
  • Before Itadori is accepted into the Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School, the principal of the school, Masamichi Yaga, asks him many questions to find out why he wants to attend the school and why he wants to collect the king of curses, Ryomen Sukuna's, remains. When Yuji fails to answer, the principal asks him sensitive questions about his grandfather and his true intentions.
  • Mahito also uses this trick as a part of his Hannibal Lecture by questioning sensitive topics, such as the meaning of life or the value of the human soul, so that he can corrupt other people easily.
• Arrogant God vs. Raging Monster: Sukuna and Mahoraga have this dynamic during their battle in Shibuya, respectively.
• As Long as There Is Evil: As long as humans vent their negative emotions such as pain or envy, there will always be cursed spirits. Or rather, non-sorcerer humans, who can't control their cursed energy and prevent it from leaking out, spawning Curses. Suguru Geto learned of this, and resolved to kill off every non-sorcerer to prevent cursed spirits from spawning ever again.
• Bait-and-Switch: In the first chapter and episode, Megumi notes that eating a Cursed Object, especially a Special Grade, is the same as eating a deadly poison before also noting there's a million-to-one chance that Yuji might survive and gain a power boost, which seems to be the case when Yuji oneshots the cursed spirit that tried to eat him and Megumi...until Yuji starts laughing and sprouts tattoos and an extra set of eyes. Megumi clarifies that the million-to-one chance is the worst-case scenario in that the Special Grade Cursed Object is now in the process of reincarnating. Worse, later chapters establish that the being now inhabiting Yuji's body is Ryomen Sukuna, the most powerful Sorcerer in existence.
• Battle Royale Game: Kenjaku begins a Japan-wide battle royale between curse users called the "Culling Game".
• Beat Still, My Heart: In Chapter 8, Sukuna kills Yuji by tearing his heart out while controlling his body, as payback for using him carelessly. The death doesn't stick and Sukuna regrows Yuji's heart after forcing him into a Binding Vow.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Eso initially misinterprets Kugisaki's Resonance as 'a technique to turn the curse on the user', which he and she both like to a game of chicken. He realizes his mistake later in the battle, right before she and Yuji kill him.
  • One of the few ways to thwart an enemy's Domain Expansion once you're inside is to overpower it with your own Domain Expansion. When Jogo traps Gojo and Yuji within his Coffin of the Iron Mountain, Gojo responds by deploying Unlimited Void.
• Big Damn Reunion: Invoked, but subverted. By the time of the Goodwill event, Nobara and Megumi have been led to believe their classmate Itadori has been dead for two months. When the time comes to reveal to them that he has actually survived, Yuji is counting on a "touching reunion" happening between the three of them; Gojo hijacks it to make it more grandiose. After Itadori jumps out of the suitcase Gojo brought, however, Megumi and Nobara reactions are eye-twitching Color Failure instead of the emotion Itadori was expecting, to his dismay. It is made clear later, however, that they are happy he's back.
• Bigger on the Inside: Domain Expansions and Innate Domains are essentially Pocket Dimensions and are larger than the space of their enclosure. This is partially the reason why trying to escape from them is almost impossible.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Downplayed. The English translation is mostly faithful to the original, but some of the explanations of Jujutsu's inner workings have been misinterpreted. For instance, the Reverse Cursed Technique is described as creating "Reverse Cursed energy", despite the Japanese dialogue specifying that it generates positive energy.
• Birds of a Feather: One of the students from Kyoto Prefectural Jujutsu High School, Aoi Todo, ends up becoming a friend of Itadori after he answers Todo's question (about the type of the girl that he likes) with "tall girls with big butts", which happens to be Todo's type as well.
• Bishōnen Line: Zigzagged. Normal Curses are generally more monstrous-looking the stronger they get, but eventually, they cross a line and the most powerful special-grade Cursed Spirits tend to be Humanoid Abominations. However, even then, these intelligent and human-like curses will usually have a One-Winged Angel form that turns them more monstrous like their lower-leveled brethren, such as Mahito.
• Bishie Sparkle: Played for laughs in episode 23's Juju Stroll, where Gojo poses as an exaggeratedly handsome and sparkly violin instructor to mess with Fushiguro.
• Bland-Name Product: In the episode "Premature Death", Gojo and Geto have their falling-out in front of a "KIC", referencing the real KFC that stands on Shinjuku's Memory Lane.
• Blessed with Suck: Being a sorcerer means having a great deal of Cursed energy... which is made of negative emotions, so everyone with the potential to be one is a psychological mess by necessity.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The official Viz translation can be very... questionable at times, particularly during the series' later arcs. At times much of the dialogue is conveyed in an awkward and confusing manner that muddles what the characters are saying and/or undermines the impact of many key moments. And then there's instances where the dialogue given to the reader blatantly contradicts information established prior. It's by no means the case in every chapter as sometimes different chapters will have different translators working on them, but many fans will still recommend seeking out other translations rather than relying on the official.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: In the anime, the Tokyo freshmen trio: Nobara (blond), Megumi (brunet), and Yuji (redhead).
• Body Motifs: Hands. Sukuna's power is sealed into his fingers (and he can manifest himself on Yuuji's palms), many cursed techniques used throughout the series are signaled through the use of hand signs or are activated by or through the hands (in particular Domains), Mahito has them as his personal motif, and most of the narrative's battles involve hand-to-hand combat, specifically punches.
  • Special emphasis is also called to them in the anime's third and fourth openings.
• Bullying a Dragon: Jogo quickly realizes that Satoru Gojo is on a far greater level of power than he initially believed, and regrets not having paid heed to Geto's warnings by the end of their extremely one-sided duel.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: In Chapter 2, Gojo spares Yuji, who was supposed to be executed after he ate one of Sukuna's fingers, by asking Jujutsu Sorcerers at the decision-making level to delay Itadori's execution. It is established that Gojo and the higher-ups will eventually execute Itadori after he consumes all of Sukuna.
• Captain Obvious: "Gorrila mode pounds through cursed energy like a gorilla!"
• Central Theme: Two major ones.
  • One can only learn empathy through weakness. The strongest characters in the series are ones who are obsessed with strength, but these characters tend to be total sociopaths with no understanding of people weaker than them. Gojo only learned to really care for other people after the Hidden Inventory arc, in which Toji delivers him a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle, brutally kills an innocent girl he had gotten attached to, and forced him to confront that killing curses isn't enough to be a good person. After this event, Gojo resolves to be a genuinely good person who protects those weaker than him not out of duty, but kindness. On the opposite end of the scale is Sukuna, who is insanely strong and has never had to struggle for anything, leading him to be unapproachable and lonely.
  • The "value" of individual lives, and the cruelty of trying to measure it in terms of quantifiable worth.
    • The series constantly examines the worth of human beings based on their potential. Natural-born geniuses like Gojo and talented-but-hardworking figures like Megumi and Nobara stand opposite to Yuji, who is otherwise completely average. As the story develops, each of these characters grapples with the expectations put upon them by their potential in different ways, such as Gojo choosing to completely rebel against the order that set him up for greatness while Megumi doubles down on his training to take advantage of his raw talent. Yuji, meanwhile, must grapple with his own self worth as a walking timebomb with no potential for developing a unique cursed technique, which eventually erodes his self-confidence so much that he believes himself to be nothing more than a machine built to kill curses.
    • On the opposite end of this, Jujutsu sorcery is built on hierarchies of worth that continually oppress the main characters. The Jujutsu elders are manipulative and selfish, often acting in the best interests of themselves rather than Jujutsu society as a whole. For instance, Gojo was nothing but helpful in the Shibuya Incident before being shut in the Prison Realm, but the elders take advantage of his involuntary imprisonment to keep him locked up for good, as he's made it very clear that his goal is to completely reform the Jujutsu society. The top Jujutsu families war with each other instead of pooling their resources to fight curses, and the Zen'in family in particular makes Mai, Maki and Megumi's lives hell for the sake of cultivating their reputation. These hierarchies are so obsessed with power based on what they personally value that they fail to see an Outside-Context Problem coming from a mile away- for instance, the elders get blindsided by Kamo's plan, because to them, a Jujutsu sorcerer would never plan to spread sorcery to basic human beings. The Zen'in family similarly get wiped out by Maki, who absolutely decimates them with her Heavenly Restriction despite their supposed power as sorcerers. All in all, these hierarchies are consistently painted as manipulative or restrictive, and it is the goal of certain characters (such as Gojo) to reform Jujutsu society in some way.
• Cerebus Syndrome:
  • The humor noticeably tones down during the VS Mahito arc, as Mahito makes himself fully known to the narrative and quickly establishes himself to be a very real threat against the Jujutsu sorcerers.
  • The Shibuya Incident arc doubles down on the tone shift, ramping up the death and tragedy significantly as the curses gain more ground against the Jujutsu sorcerers. Keep in mind, this arc takes place over one Halloween night.
• Chekhov's Gun: The deal Yuji makes early on with Sukuna, where he will be forced to briefly hand over control of the body, is used in Chapter 212 by Sukuna so that Sukuna can use one of Yuji's fingers and force-feed it to Megumi so that he takes control over his perfect vessel.
• Club Stub: In earlier chapters, Itadori joins the Occult Research Club, which desperately needed more members and were being threatened with shut down by the student council.
• Combat Pragmatist: Everyone. One of the things that separates Jujutsu Sorcerers from many of its predecessors is that they're fully willing to press every advantage they can get their hands on and never hesitate to gang up against their opponents. It's not uncommon for fights to turn into vicious two-on-one beatdowns where the heroes are overwhelming the bad guy du jour to such an extent that they're forced to use an extremely powerful technique to even break out of it.
• Company Cross References: Several to other Shonen Jump manga:
  • The "Idiot Survivor" arc is named after "Baka Survivor", the second opening for Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo.
  • Kenjaku seemingly killing Takaba, only to find that he's unharmed thanks to Comedian's Toon Physics, is laid out similarly to a gag in a Dragon Ball and Kochikame crossover where Ryotsu survives a blast from Frieza.
• Corrupt the Cutie:
  • What Mahito does to Junpei. Initially passive as he tries to mold Junpei to his mindset, he eventually has Junpei's mother killed and frames one of the students at his school for it. And when that doesn't work, he outright kills him for his own amusement.
  • Indirectly doing this to Yuji mainly through Shibuya Arc ends poorly for him, as Yuji agrees that maybe there really is no difference between them and so no reason not to hunt him like a rabid beast.
• Counting Bullets: Exploited by Mai. She fights using a revolver, knowing that her opponents will count her shots. Her cursed technique, Construction, allows her to create an extra bullet out of energy and catch her opponent off-guard. Doesn't work against her sister Maki, who simply catches the extra bullet after counting the first six.
• Creepy Doll: The principal of Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School has a childish interest in creating creepy/cute dolls, called Cursed Corpses, animated through cursed energy.
• Critical Hit: If a sorcerer releases their cursed energy within a miniscule fraction of a second after striking their target, a Black Flash will occur. The Black Flash greatly increases the power of the hit (it's said that the force is raised to the power of 2.5), and following this, the user will enter a flow state that increases the odds of landing another Black Flash. This doesn't happen purely at random: landing a Black Flash requires extreme skill and focus on a sorcerer's part; however, the extremely small timing window means that even sorcerers who do have the talent to pull it off can't do it consistently.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • In Chapter 6, some of the students from Eishuu Reformatory School are brutally murdered and parts of their bodies are crushed.
  • In Chapter 18, three high school students are found dead in a cinema, with their bodies deformed by a cursed spirit named Mahito. Mahito claims many victims through the story this way.
  • In Chapter 27, Yuji's friend, Junpei, is turned into a deformed creature by Mahito, to Yuji's despair.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Yuji's occult club hypothesizes that the rugby team fell ill because of the ghost of a dead architect buried beneath the rugby field. The student council president immediately shuts down that theory in favor of ticks; however, when Megumi arrives on campus he notices a curse attached to the rugby field and wonders if someone is buried underneath it.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Anyone unfortunate or naïve enough to face Satoru Gojo head on will regret it very quickly, because of the latter's overwhelming power.
  • Sukuna delivers a couple of these in the unfortunate instances where he is given control, notably with a curse bearing one of his fingers at the beginning of the series and Megumi right after, despite only having a fraction of his power.
  • During the Kyoto exchange event, Kasumi Miwa was not only out-fought by Maki Zen'in, but also had her sword stolen, for an extra serving of Humble Pie.
  • Toji Fushiguro easily defeats a young Satoru and Suguru in their first fight.
  • After seeing Ijichi and other assistant managers assaulted in Shibuya, Kento Nanami quickly and soundly defeats Haruta Shigemo.
  • Takuma Ino, regardless of his power, didn't stand a chance against Toji Fushiguro, who was summoned by Ogami and her grandson.
  • After being unleashed in Shibuya, Sukuna absolutely bodies Jogo during their fight, with the cursed spirit being unable to land even a single hit on him.
  • Uraume defeats Yuji, Panda, Momo, Noritoshi, Choso, and Kusakabe all at once. They saved death by Tsukumo at the last second.
  • Maki suffers one at the hands of her father, Ogi Zen'in. After Mai sacrifices herself to grant her sister a power boost, Maki returns the favor and lops the top of Ogi's head off.
  • Right after the above, Maki proceeds to singlehandedly slaughter the whole Zen'in clan on her own. The clan's strongest sorcerers (barring Naoya) only last for about a minute against her.
  • Megumi and Yuji defeat their first enemies in the Culling Game within seconds, until they finally face opponents more than capable of handling themselves.
  • Kinji Hakari's first act upon entering the Culling Game is to utterly defeat Charles Benard, a Mangaka with the ability to see the future but no fighting experience. Nothing Charles does makes Hakari break a sweat, and the single attack he lands was only because Hakari purposefully let him deal it so he can end their fight with a single kick afterwards.
  • Kashimo Hajime utterly defeats Panda in a single chapter, leaving him reduced to just his face. He would have been killed for real had Hakari not arrived in time.
• Curb Stomp Cushion:
  • Yuji vs Yuta. Although Yuta puts him entirely on the defensive nearly all the way, Yuji is able to break his katana and force him to use Rika to finally restrain him. He even admits that he expected nothing else from Gojo's student, and as it turns out, while the whole fight was simply Yuta taking care of Yuji in his own way as Gojo told him to, meaning he wasn't taking the fight seriously at all, Yuji too was struggling between wanting to die and to keep living for the sake of others.
  • Yuji puts up a better showing against Hakari at least. He not only headbutts Hakari, but manages to make him ditch his jacket in an unseen fight before he gets tossed to where Megumi and Panda were fighting Kirara and is shown to be only slightly bruised. He clearly does a lot better than Charles Bernard, who gets utterly stomped by Hakari in a close-range fight.
  • Naoya's speed and skill proves enough to give Maki a decent fight after all the Zenin Clan had been slaughtered. He actually manages to take the upper hand and deliver numerous devastating blows for a few moments, before Maki manages to trick him, realize the secrets of his technique, and pummel him with a single hit.
  • Kenjaku defeats Choso pretty handily in their first round, but Choso, upon getting a Heroic Second Wind, manages to knock him to the ground by mimicking the style of his brothers and even force him to reveal his secondary cursed technique, surpassing Kenjaku's previous expectations of only having to use Cursed Spirit Manipulation.
• Custom Uniform: At Jujutsu High, school uniforms can be customized on request. Gojo himself asks for Yuji’s customization, which gives his uniform a red hoodie.
• Darkest Hour:
  • Chapter 27 is one of the darkest chapters in the manga. As Yuji tries to persuade Junpei to join Jujutsu High, Mahito appears and gruesomely transforms Junpei. When Itadori pleads with Sukuna to save Junpei, Sukuna simply refuses and mocks him, laughing hysterically with Mahito, as Yuji realizes that curses fundamentally don't respect human life.
  • The Shibuya Incident is basically a whole arc of this, with the sealing of Gojo in the Prison Realm allowing for the Disaster Curses and Geto to plunge the country into chaos. One result of their actions is Sukuna gaining control of Yuji's body temporarily, which leads to him obliterating an entire section of the city- civilians and all. The fallout that results ramps up the insanity, as Gojo is permanently exiled by the higher-ups, Yaga is branded as a traitor, Yuji is set to be executed by Yuta, and Kenjaku awakens the potential of 1000 sorcerers from the Heian era.
• David Versus Goliath: As a general rule of thumb for the series, both the heroes and the villains are willing to fight dirty to get the upper hand, creating several instances where characters are able to hold their own against opponents far, far stronger than themselves.
  • The Hidden Inventory arc has Toji as the "David" to Gojo's and Geto's "Goliath." Toji, a human cast out by Jujutsu society for not being able to use Cursed Energy, is able to defeat the two sorcerers who stand at the Jujutsu world's summit. While Gojo, after learning Reverse Cursed Technique, completely stomps Toji in their rematch, yet years upon years later Toji remained in Gojo's memory as the one man who managed to put the fear of death into him.
  • The Disaster Curses (and Choso) versus Satoru Gojo in Shibuya, with the Curses being the "David" to Gojo's "Goliath." While Gojo (obviously) has the Curses absolutely outmatched in straight combat, the Curses are able to put Gojo on the backfoot by using his sense of duty against him, forcing him to hold back by using the civilians as cannon fodder. Gojo, however, manages to get the better of them, but his victory is almost immediately cut short by falling into Kenjaku's trap.
  • The story’s climax at Shinjuku though is by far the biggest example. Once Gojo dies, the final battle quickly turns into the heroes pulling out every possible plan they can come up with to bring down the overwhelming god of destruction that is Sukuna.
• Deus Exit Machina: Satoru Gojo. Having the overwhelmingly powerful Limitless cursed technique and equally exceptional levels of skill that made him the series World's Strongest Man and World's Best Warrior, he is repeatedly sidelined to either give the heroes their own chance to shine or the villains a chance.
  • 0: Suguru purposefully forces Satoru to handle Miguel, who is the only one in his group that can even have a chance against Satoru due to his unique weapon, while also unleashing thousands of Cursed Spirits to also further distract him, all so Satoru wouldn't go to Jujutsu High while he was trying to capture or kill Yuta to get Rika on his side and personally deal with him. Satoru only shows up after Yuta has won due to the power of his emotions giving him the strength to beat Geto to deal the finishing blow.
  • Cursed Womb: Satoru is out on a mission to deal with a particularly powerful cursed spirit, keeping him out of Yuji, Megumi, and Nobara's struggle with the Finger Bearer that sees Yuji temporarily dead.
  • VS Mahito: Satoru is on an unknown business and personally entrusts Yuji to Nanami, setting up the major conflict between them and Mahito, most of which could have been avoided if he was there, as Satoru could have pretty much killed Mahito easily and possibly even saved Junpei.
  • Kyoto Goodwill Event: The enemy places a Curtain specifically designed to ward off Satoru, although he does get to participate in the final moments of the battle and single-handedly ends the fight afterwards.
  • Shibuya Incident-Culling Game: In order to enact the Culling Game, Kenjaku has Satoru sealed up after managing to trick him using the face of Suguru who he was possessing, which quickly proves to be the beginning of the series intensifying. The Shibuya Incident shows how much the Jujutsu students and faculty members relied on Satoru as they were pushed to their limits to even survive the massacre and ultimately lost a few key characters and didn't even manage to unseal Satoru. Throughout the Culling Game, unsealing Satoru becomes one of the key objectives of the heroes, as he is the only one who could settle everything for them, but circumstances always keep Satoru's unsealing out of the way until the Darkest Hour has come, with Megumi possessed by Sukuna and Tengen captured by Kenjaku, at which point it gives the heroes time to properly prepare for the final battle and sets Satoru to fight Sukuna, the only person on the side of the villains who could challenge him.
• Designated Girl Fight: During the Goodwill Event, every major student confrontation is always between the same gender. It's made more apparent by every girl fight happening consecutively in the span of three chapters, and emphasized in the anime with said three fitting neatly into Episode 17. This girl's episode also serves as A Day in the Limelight for the Zen'in twins, showcasing their abilities and detailing their story.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Near the end of the Culling Game Arc, after Megumi, Yuji, Takaba and Hana meet up with Tsumiki, everything seems to be going according to plan. As Megumi gives Tsumiki a hundred points to leave the Culling Game, the story suddenly reveals that Tsumiki has been an incarnated sorcerer all along named Yorozu. She uses Megumi's points to allow free entry or exit into the colonies, and flies off. This causes a chain reaction where Sukuna enacts his Binding Vow with Yuji, changes vessels by stealing Megumi's body, grievously wounds one of the only characters capable of exorcising him from a vessel, and incarnates fully into the modern era with Uraume and Kenjaku's assistance.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Black Flash is this for all jujutsu sorcerers. It requires you to apply energy directly after a physical strike (no more than 0.000001 seconds), but the control needed is so fine that it ends up being akin to a Critical Hit. Itadori manages to grasp it easier than others, however.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: For some reason, the official translation of Chapter 256 has Gojo say in a flashback that he's incapable of using the Black Flash due to having the Six Eyes... despite literally having done so onscreen earlier that arc.
• Eldritch Abomination: Most of the cursed spirits are depicted as grotesque and terrifying monsters. Although some of them approach Humanoid Abomination territory (e.g. Mahito), they largely originate from the human subconscious, since cursed spirits are formed from negative human emotions such as pain or envy.
• Eldritch Location: When either sorcerers or cursed spirits accumulate magical power, it can be used to construct a Domain, a location that can be used to boost their own powers. When a Domain is expanded, a more polished sorcery will control the space itself. An example of a Domain Expansion is Gojo's Immeasurable Void, which is an endless void that Mind Rapes those inside.
• Equivalent Exchange: Because Cursed Energy is formed from negative emotion, it increases in volume if exposed to feelings of stress and risk. Many sorcerers exploit this phenomenon by intentionally placing flaws in their Jujutsu to enhance its overall effectiveness:
  • Curtains, magical barriers usually used to hide sorcerer activity, can be fine-tuned to allow certain kinds of people in and out and, in exchange, block another kind of people's movement. For instance, during the Goodwill Event arc, a curtain is erected that allows anyone access, except for Satoru Gojo. Another aspect of curtains is that they can have a special 'emitter' that projects them. These emitters can be placed behind the curtain, of course, but doing so makes them weaker and susceptible to being broken by brute force. By placing the emitter outside, and in a conspicuous location, the curtain is strengthened greatly.
  • A kind of magical contract, called a Binding Vow, can be agreed upon between two people in order to guarantee exchanges. Binding Vows can also be imposed on oneself; in exchange for more power, one can deliberately handicap themselves.
    • Divulging your own abilities is a common contract to increase power.
    • Nanami has a contract known as "Overtime". Normally while working on the clock, he limits his energy. When he starts working overtime though, his energy increases dramatically.
  • Another kind of contract is known as the Heavenly Restriction. Having limited access to cursed energy, or even having no cursed energy whatsoever, gives one drastically increased physical prowess, and the lack of cursed energy to fight curses can easily be circumvented by the use of cursed tools. Conversely, those with extremely frail bodies gain access to an extreme amount of cursed energy.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Geto's former subordinates find this out the hard way when they summon Sukuna. They ask him to kill the entity possessing Geto and are killed for their trouble.
• Evil Versus Evil: Cursed spirits can only be harmed by cursed energy, so in a sense this is the premise of the entire series. More concretely, any time Sukuna is pitted against another Curse, such as the first Finger Bearer or Mahito.
• Evolutionary Pressure Cooker: The Zen'in clan keeps a room of cursed spirits that they use to punish and humiliate noncompliant family members. When Ogi leaves Maki and Mai there to die, he only half-succeeds: Mai passes away and takes her cursed energy with her, allowing Maki to evolve and kill the rest of the creatures.
• Evolving Credits:
  • The anime's first opening, "Kaikai Kitan", changes in different ways over the course of the first 13 episodes:
    • At one point, a brief scene of Gojo lifting his black eye band appears. He never reveals his eyes though. After his domain has been revealed, however, he lifts it completely, revealing one of his eyes fully.
    • The end has a picnic scene in which more characters are added to when they are introduced throughout the show, (barring villains and less noteworthy characters). The scene eventually comes to resemble Claude Monet's Luncheon on the Grass.
    • The scene initially starts with Yuji, Gojo, Megumi, and curiously enough, Junpei, who doesn't get introduced until much later.
    • Episode 3 adds Yaga and Nobara.
    • The second years Maki, Inumaki, and Panda are added in Episode 6 along with Ijichi and Ieri. Nobara's position is also moved, with a slightly different pose.
    • Filling out the rest of the painting in Episode 9 are Nanami and Todo. It's also worth mentioning here that a different scene earlier, with Gojo slowly removing his blindfold before cutting out, has him finally revealing his eye in full.
    • A final change occurs in Episode 13, the last time "Kaikai Kitan" is used; Yuji is shown with tears in the end, after Junpei's death at Mahito's hands.
  • The second opening for the second season, "SPECIALZ", has a significant change in episode 20, where after Sukuna's massacre of Shibuya and Nanami and Nobara's deaths to Mahito, the overview shot of Shibuya represented by lights is replaced with the city slowly becoming a void, and the final crowd shot of the heroes in Shibuya instead has them removed and the city in ruins. The final episode also replaces a shot of Shoko with a shot of Yuta Okkotsu drawing his katana.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: Invoking this trope has special benefits in the Jujutsu Kaisen universe. Every jujutsu sorcerer can call upon a contract which boosts the effectiveness of their abilities, at the cost of giving away the nature of their technique. An opponent managing to figure it out before you can explain it negates the contract, however.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The 50+ chapters long Shibuya Incident Arc (discounting the initial mini-arc at its very beginning) takes place over a single night on Halloween.
• Fate Worse than Death: Mahito's transfigured humans are still conscious post-transformation.
• Females Are More Innocent: Implied. We have yet to meet an actual villainess in the series (excluding Yorozu at the tail-end of the Culling Game Arc), almost all female characters are performing on the side of good. On the side of evil, the Hasaba twins are merely Geto's wards who only act evil because Geto is their surrogate father; Rika Orimoto is a vengeful Curse but is non-malicious to Yuta and actually a manifestation of his powers; and later on Remi is only a minion to Reggie Star because he promised to protect her.
• Fighting Panda: Panda is a large bipedal panda-looking creature (he insists several times he isn't really a panda) who is just as capable of kicking ass as the human jujutsu sorcerers, and unlike most of them, his size and bulk lends itself to a close-combat fighting style. He's actually a sentient Cursed Corpse, meaning Principal Yaga deliberately chose to make his prize fighter in the shape of a panda.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Geto makes his first appearance in the main story, he has stitches along his head. While it could initially be chalked up to him making a recovery after Gojo confronts him in Volume 0, it actually serves the reveal later that the dead Geto had his brain swapped with that of someone else.
  • Early on, Megumi expresses an interest in using Cursed Tools to compliment his fighting style when talking to the second-years, and is briefly shown using his technique to put his fingers in his own shadow. When fighting Hanami over 30 chapters later, he reveals Cursed Tools he's stored within his shadows for him and Maki to use.
  • Itadori displays an abnormal, unexplained resistance to poison when fighting Junpei early on. It can very easily be dismissed as Junpei simply being too weak to affect him, or Itadori using Heroic Willpower. Later in his fight with Eso and Kechizu it's explained that Sukuna, as the King of Curses, is immune to all poisons, making Itadori immune by extension.
  • Despite his contempt towards humanity, Sukuna shows an abject interest in Megumi after he used Ten Shadows Technique to fight him. After using Mahoraga and falling into a coma as a result, Sukuna even healed him. Sukuna later reveals that this is because he found the Ten Shadows Technique quite interesting and possibly able to beat Satoru Gojo (and thus take over Jujutsu world as a result), so everything he did was actually to seize Megumi as a stronger vessel once the time came.
  • Toji's No-Sell to Dagon's shikigami in his Domain Expansions is later clarified that Heavenly Restricted people like Maki and Toji don't have cursed energy to be targeted on, and thus can't be affected by sure-hit attacks in a domain.
  • The Culling Games reveal that Incarnated Sorcerers' vessels will always suffer both Demonic Possession and Death of Personality, yet the fact that Yuji not only resisted Sukuna's possession, but contained his essence in his body, tells that Yuji is something else.
  • Satoru Gojo states that there was a point in history where a user of the Ten Shadows Technique stood toe-to-toe with a Gojo that had both the Six Eyes and the Limitless technique. History Repeats when Sukuna manages to steal Megumi's body and with it the Ten Shadows Technique; he gets a rematch with Gojo and is able to match him blow-for-blow with help from the Ten Shadows' Shikigami.
  • A lot of foreshadowing in the series is focused around the idea of establishing that the body and the soul are the same thing. Mahito's Fantastic Fighting Style focuses on him "touching the soul" of a person and shaping it like clay, which can alter the body of his opponents. Later, during the beginning of the Shibuya Incident, Gojo and Kenjaku come to blows. As he's being pulled into the Prison Realm, Gojo asks Geto how long he's going to be manipulated by other people, causing Kenjaku to laugh- only for Geto's hand to snap to life and begin strangling his own body, which Kenjaku remarks should be impossible. While the purpose of this has not been revealed yet, there is a lot of strong implications that this is ultimately what gives Sukuna a lot of his power, and is the result of his monstrous appearance.
• Generational Trauma: The Zen'in Clan is regarded as one of the most powerful families of sorcerers in the series who subject themselves to brutal training and family politics to maintain their power. Toji Fushiguro was a product of that systematic abuse and would later abandon the Clan when he couldn't take it anymore. But after the death of his wife, he became directionless, hedonistic, and showed no interest in raising his child Megumi. He even considered selling him back to the Zen'in Clan when Megumi became of age. Though the boy ended up in Gojo's care instead, Megumi would develop the same toxic traits of becoming stronger while isolating himself from his peers.
• Godzilla Threshold: Deconstructed. When faced with a Cursed Spirit they can't hope to beat, Yuji decides to release Sukuna, tells Megumi to take Nobara and run as far as possible, staying behind to hold it off until Megumi gives him the signal release to switch. It almost backfires when Sukuna decides to cooperate with the Curse and lead it back to Megumi instead, only to be attacked by the Curse anyway. Then it gets deconstructed again after Sukuna kills it when he finds out that Yuji can't switch back because he didn't have Sukuna's consent. As a result, he rips out Yuji's heart to ensure that he dies if he switches back and nearly kills Megumi.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Curses allied with Geto had a simple goal - unleash Sukuna using the fingers and seal Gojo. By the end of the Shibuya Arc, the Group clearly succeeded in their goal, but unleashing Sukuna directly results in him killing Jogo and devastating Shibuya, whereas Hanami, Mahito and Dagon all die or are incapacitated as the result of their actions, and the only person who could restrain Sukuna has just been sealed by the Curses, as Geto promptly betrays them.
• Go Out with a Smile:
  • Realizing he has no way to escape from Mahito's Domain, he reminisces on the moment that made him decide to become a sorcerer again, and calmly and warmly expresses acceptance of his fate to Mahito.
    Mahito: Right now, I'm just... thankful to you.
    Nanami: There's no need for that. I've already received gratitude from many people. I have no regrets.
  • There's a Call-Back to that scene when Mahito actually kills him. He smiles at Itadori with no regrets, telling him to take it from there.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Both the protagonists and antagonists aim to gather all twenty of Sukuna's fingers and feed them to Itadori, but they have different plans for what comes after: the former want to kill the King of Curses by executing Yuji, while the latter want to recruit him to their cause.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: After the incident with Junpei, Yuji begins to question what a "proper death" is. Nanami suggests that a proper death is a fair one, where good people pass peacefully and evil people die horribly. However, he concedes that this is hard to enforce, as the world itself is morally gray, and there are no purely good or evil people; no two people will die the same death and giving proper guidance to all souls is most likely a path of misery.
• Hand Seals: Performing a Domain Expansion involves a hand seal. Megumi makes shadow puppets to summon his shikigami.
• Hannibal Lecture: Mahito gives these to Junpei, to push him into misanthropy. He disparages the human soul in general, the meaning of life and pushes the idea that "indifference" is a virtue.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Reversed Cursed Techniques are special techniques that enable healing using positive cursed energy. Although the theory behind it is simple, the actual process is so complex that even Gojo was unable to comprehend it until his second year in school. A testament to just how rare it is, only five characters so far have shown the ability to perform Reverse Curses Techniques. Performing the technique on other people is magnitudes harder still, with very few sorcerers being able to do so at all.
• The Heartless: Cursed Spirits are this trope played almost entirely Straight; they're inherently evil monsters with supernatural abilities that are born from negative human emotions. The only real distinction from the traditional trope is that curses created from only one person's negative emotions are usually so weak and small that they're only minor annoyances at worst; it takes multiple people pouring their negative emotions and thoughts towards one thing for an exceptionally powerful Curse to form.
• Home Field Advantage: Domain Expansion is a technique that manifests an environment constructed with cursed energy. Constructing a domain uses a lot of cursed energy at the benefit of getting environmental "stat upgrades" and making cursed techniques used in the domain always hit. Gojo even compares it to a buff in video games. The best counter to a Domain Expansion is another one, with the more polished one winning.
• Horrifying the Horror: By the end of their second fight, Yuji manages to reduce Mahito, the unflappable embodiment of human's fear/hate of each other, who has killed skilled Jujutsu sorcerers, into scurrying away like a frightened rabbit as Yuji now casually jogs to kill him. Even Choso refers to Yuji's power as if he was a demon god.
• Humanoid Abomination: Several curses, such as Mahito, have the body of a human rather than grotesque and terrifying monsters, and they generally behave like normal, if malevolent humans.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Though generally not overtly stated, the series has a certain undercurrent of this theme throughout. For one, Ryoumen Sukuna, who's one of the Big Bads and the most powerful villain in the series, is stated to have originally been a human. In addition, the most monstrous and depraved of the Disaster Curses, Mahito, is the embodiment of the hatred and negativity humans have towards each other.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: The nature of the Binding Vow between Mahito and The Mole (Mechamaru). The Vow stipulates that Mahito heals Mechamaru's original body with his Idle transfiguration in exchange for information on Jujutsu High from Mechamaru. However, the Vow has no condition to protect either from harm after the healing is done. Both parties are fully aware they would try to kill each other the moment the Vow is fulfilled.
• Invisible to Normals: The body of a cursed spirit consists entirely of cursed energy, and so they can't be directly perceived by ordinary humans under typical circumstances. However, as cursed energy is generated by negative emotions, a curse may become visible to a non-sorcerer in a moment of extreme duress - such as when said curse is about to kill them.
• In Medias Res: The first episode of the anime starts out with Yuji trapped in a mystical cell, with Gojo explaining that the higher-ups want to execute him. The rest of the episode explains How We Got Here.
• It Can Think: Some Curses, even at Grade 3 or 4, possess higher intelligence. As first demonstrated in Chapter 5, where one such Curse holds a child hostage against Nobara, knowing that it couldn't beat her head on.
• I'll Kill You!: An enraged Yuji utters this at Mahito after he kills Junpei, complete with a Death Glare.
• Irony: After exorcising the curse under the suicide bridge, Megumi realizes that the reason the curse began to start killing people years after they were first cursed by it was because Yuji had eaten the first Sukuna finger, an action that activated the rest. He tells Nobara to keep this information from Yuji so he doesn't feel guilty about the people who died. Cut to Sukuna straight up telling Yuji that those deaths were his fault due to him eating Sukuna's finger. Yuji tells Sukuna not to tell Megumi about this information so he doesn't feel bad about it.
• Kick the Dog: When Yuji asks Sukuna to revive Junpei (who had been transformed by Mahito), Sukuna refuses. He then mocks him for his inability to save anyone, laughing at him hysterically along with Mahito, sending Itadori into a Heroic BSoD.
  • Yuji is the target of a lot of these, as being Sukuna's Vessel puts a large target on him: the Jujutsu elders set him up to be executed for essentially sacrificing his humanity to save Megumi and his friends, and work around Gojo's protection by having Yuji thrown into deadly or unfair situations that he cannot possibly handle, which also threatens the lives of his friends. His possession also brings him to the attention of the Disaster Curses, making him the target of several schemes that draw in innocent bystanders to get pointlessly killed. In particular, both Sukuna and Mahito, aware that Yuji cares so much about saving people's lives, take sadistic delight in arranging deaths around Yuji such that he can witness a demise, but be helpless to prevent it. It's no wonder that, as the series goes on, Yuji slowly ends up becoming cynical and world-weary from being a pawn in many other people's games.
• Killed Offscreen: Junpei's mother is killed offscreen by a curse (implied to be one of Geto's), triggering Junpei's Start of Darkness.
• Kill the Parent, Raise the Child: Satoru Gojo battles and mortally wounds Toji Fushiguro. With his last breaths, Toji informs Gojo that his son Megumi will be sent to the Zenin clan, promoting Gojo to look after Megumi and his step-sister Tsumiki. He also becomes Megumi's teacher at Tokyo Jujutsu High. Although he contemplated talking to Megumi about his father, Gojo dies before going through with it.
• Lying by Omission: Aoi Todo employs this tactic liberally during his battle with Hanami whenever they start to get accustomed to his Swap Teleportation by abusing the expectation of Revealing One's Hand. Initially, he says that by clapping his hands, he can swap himself with another person. However, as the fight progresses it becomes evident that his initial explanation left out several other applications of his ability, such as the fact that he doesn't need to be the person being swapped, and the fact that he can swap objects as long as they possess Cursed Energy.
• Made of Evil: Cursed spirits originate from human emotions such as pain or envy. Schools and hospitals are potential spawn points for cursed spirits because many people have bad memories and emotions tied to these places.
• Magic by Any Other Name: Jujutsu Sorcerers and Cursed Spirits utilize Cursed Energy coming from The Power of Hate, which allows using Supernatural Martial Arts, Pocket Dimensions and personalized magic spells.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Gakuganji tells his students to do this to Itadori during the school exchange event.
• Men Act, Women Are: Notably averted. There is an almost even helping of female characters in the series as there are male characters. Also, almost all of them, especially Nobara, Maki and Mei Mei, are given agency to act upon the story, be it by helping actively in battle or by influencing the events in one way or another, which is quite rare for the Shōnen genre.
• Million to One Chance: Fushiguro notes that there's a one-in-a-million chance for Yuji to survive eating Sukuna’s finger, a special-grade cursed object that's essentially a lethal poison, to become stronger, kicking off the plot.
• Missing Reflection: Cameras can't capture the image of a cursed spirit. In Chapter 20, this is what first tips off Nanami that something's off about the 'cursed spirits' he and Itadori just fought - they're visible through his phone camera. Turns out, they aren't curses at all, but rather humans altered by Mahito's Idle Transfiguration.
• Muggle Born of Mages: Despite hailing from the Zenin, one of the Big Three Sorcerer Families, Maki was born with a baseline level of cursed energy typical of ordinary humans, far below what is needed to become a sorcerer. It's so low that she can't even see cursed spirits unaided - she relies on a special pair of glasses.
  • Toji Fushiguro (né Zenin) exhibits the same phenomenon to an even greater degree: he was born with absolutely no cursed energy at all. This makes him imperceptible via supernatural means, which he uses to his advantage, gaining the moniker Sorcerer Killer.
• Musical Assassin: Yoshinobu Gakuganji, Principal of Kyoto's Jujutsu College. He uses his body as an amp and Shreds out his melodies in waves of cursed energy.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Sukuna's original body had four arms, and thus twenty fingers.
  • Mahito's Domain Expansion, Self-Embodiment of Perfection, is a space consisting of nothing but arms.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Yuji has this reaction after Sukuna's massacre in downtown Shibuya, feeling personally responsible for the atrocity.

N — Z

• Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: The "Night Parade of One Hundred Demons" was a terrorist attack organized by the sorcerer Suguru Geto, in pursuit of Rika Orimoto and Yuta Okkotsu. He had a multitude of demons swarm the cities of Shinjuku and Kyoto while students, faculty, and alumni of Jujutsu High were on hand to fight back.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Japanese models Peco and Ryuchell are depicted in chapter 4.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Ino suffers one of the series' most savage Curb Stomp Battles at the hands of Toji Fushiguro once he is summoned by Ogami and her grandson. While a powerful sorcerer in his own right, he stood absolutely no chance against a man that posed a serious challenge for Gojo.
• Not My Type: Toji Fushiguro delivers this once trapped in the domain of an imaginary vengeful spirit controlled by Geto. The spirit asks him if it is pretty, and when he realizes you can only escape the domain by answering its question, he responds this way, opening himself up to its onslaught.
• Not Quite Dead:
  • In Chapter 8, Sukuna supposedly kills Itadori by tearing out his heart, it is revealed that he didn't truly die. Instead, Sukuna transported him to his Innate Domain, a sort of dimension within themselves.
  • In chapters 14 and 15, Jougo deals multiple should-be fatal blows to Gojo, including blasting his head with magma and setting it on fire for a prolonged period of time. Gojo reveals that he survived with his technique, which allows him to avoid actually being touched by infinitely slowing down attacks as they approach him.
• Opponent Instruction: During their fight in the midst of the Sister School Goodwill Event, Todo coaches Itadori on how to synchronize his Cursed Energy with his physical blows.
• One-Man Army: Special Grade Sorcerers are considered such because they have the ability to conquer nations all by themselves.
• Overdramatic Dating Commotion: Despite being a non-romantic work, there's still a scene where Yuji, Satoru, and Nobara mistakenly believe a girl (who was just asking for directions) is flirting with Megumi. The three instantly run toward Megumi's location as if they're on a mission, and Nobara and Yuji latch to Megumi and dramatically and disapprovingly inquire about the woman and ask him, "was it all a lie when you said your time with me was the most enjoyable of all?!"
• Pants-Pulling Prank: Yuji's response towards the teacher who acts condescending towards him while Yuji is trying to talk to Junpei. Itadori pulls his pants off and runs off before coming right back to where Junpei is.
• Phlebotinum-Proof Robot: Mahito's Idle Transfiguration ability manipulates a person's body by altering their soul, so it doesn't work on Ultimate Mechamaru, the robot that Kokichi Muta uses to fight on his behalf.
• Please Spare Him, My Liege!: In Chapter 3, it is revealed that Megumi had asked Gojo to spare Yuji from his impending execution. Fortunately, Gojo complies. It is ruled that Yuji will ultimately be killed after he finds and eats all of Sukuna's body parts. Gojo, due to ultimately caring for Yuji, found one of his fingers and hid it in a safe place to infinitely delay Yuji's execution, but to no avail as Sukuna possesses Megumi instead and gets near his full strength anyways.
• Pocket Dimension: Domain Expansions are created with cursed energy and follow different rules apart from regular reality. They're also generally bigger on the inside, ranging from Sumo rings to tropical island and the surrounding ocean to a literal infinitely sized void and can have time dilation within them such that 1000's of minutes inside are a single minute outside, or the opposite where 30 minutes inside are 2 days outside.
• Power Levels: There are different grades for curses based on the effectiveness of traditional weapons:
  • Special Grade: Carpeting explosives like a cluster bomb could work.
  • Grade 1: A tank might be useless.
  • Grade 2: A shotgun would cut it close.
  • Grade 3: A pistol would be fine.
  • Grade 4: With a wooden bat it'd be easy work.
  • These grade levels are also applied to Jujutsu sorcerers, but in their case it's a sign that they're stronger than Cursed spirits in the same grade as they are.
  • Jogo has his power measured in Sukuna's fingers at the start of the series, but this metric isn't really used after that.
  • Special Grade Sorcerers are considered capable of overthrowing nations all by themselves.
• Power Of Hate: The basis of cursed energy is negative emotions like anger, fear, and hatred. Jujutsu Sorcerers are trained to control their emotions to channel cursed energy.
• Power High: Advancing in Jujutsu, either by getting access to Reverse Cursed Technique, being near death and gaining a revelation on a cursed technique, or getting a standard power up, seems to make the sorcerers or cursed spirits who experience them act like they're high.
  • Mahito acts ecstatic while Yuji and Nanami nearly beat him to death and he discovers his domain expansion.
  • Megumi starts laughing maniacally when he's had a concussion from a special grade finger bearer and he decides to use a Domain Expansion.
  • Gojo, after learning Reverse Cursed Technique on the brink of death, chatters endlessly and has a wild look in his eyes which Toji comments on.
  • Hakari spaces out in the middle of his fight with Kashimo after he starts to feel Infinite Cursed Energy and Reverse Cursed Technique upon gaining his bonus.
• The Promise: Yuji promises his grandfather to be kind to everyone around him, and to die surrounded by his loved ones.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The Shibuya Incident is this for the Disaster Curses, as they manage to succeed in all of their goals (empowering Sukuna and sealing Gojo), but are all killed by the retaliating sorcerers or absorbed by Geto.
• Reality-Breaking Paradox: Gojo's Hollow Purple manifests the concepts of infinite convergence and infinite divergence simultaneously. Everything within the affected space is simply deleted from existence.
• Rescue Arc: Once Gojo is sealed by Prison Realm, the Shibuya Incident Arc focuses on the sorcerers attempting to rescue him.
• Revive Kills Zombie: Reversed Cursed Techniques are powerful healing techniques used by sorcerers utilizing positive cursed energy. Such energy is, however, highly harmful to cursed spirits and applying these techniques can easily disintegrate them.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • After Junpei's mother dies, he uses the powers bestowed by Mahito to knock several students out and kill the suspected murderer.
  • Junpei's Cruel and Unusual Death (being turned into a monster at the hands of Mahito and Sukuna's refusal to fix him) becomes a raison d'etre of Yuji on trying to find and kill Mahito. It happens again when Mahito kills Nanami.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: A lot of cursed objects are ancient sorcerers sealed in talismans.
• Shirtless Scene: Yuji has one in the second chapter after Sukuna rips off his shirt, to which we get a very glorious sight of his abs. This also happens again when Sukuna takes over his body and rips his heart out. These are suitably played for drama and horror rather than fanservice.
• Shock Collar: Gojo trains Yuji by letting him watch movies together with one of the principal's cursed dolls. It attacks Yuji if he doesn't emit a constant flow of cursed energy.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of Yuji's classmates says that it's rumored that Itadori completed all four stages of Ninja Warrior.
  • Yuji's type of girl is Jennifer Lawrence.
  • During Nobara's first appearance, she names Stardust Promotion (one of big talent agencies in Japan who have produced actors and groups such as Momoiro Clover Z) as one of the talent agencies she hopes would scout her.
  • In Episode 6 of the anime adaptation, Gojo holds up several DVD movies, including The Lure and a parody of Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time while he explains Yuji's task of watching movies with a curse corpse. The movie Gojo was spoiling, however, is Deep Blue Sea.
  • Yuji watches a film that is suspiciously similar to a Lord of the Rings film, with Yuji shown totally mesmerized by what looks like Frodo and Sam having a very Frodo-and-Sam-like True Companions conversation.
  • The Vs. Mahito arc begins with Junpei watching Human Earthworm 3 in theatres, an obvious send-up to The Human Centipede film series. Human Earthworm 4 is later mentioned. In an interview, Gege Akutami stated that Junpei's opinion of the Human Earthworm movies are their actual opinions on The Human Centipede movies.
  • Characters regularly name drop manga, anime, and other Shonen Jump properties, like when Yuji compared Cursed Techniques to using a Kamehameha, Spirit Gun, Bankai or a Rasengan.
  • Nobara being a hammer-wielding Action Girl owes to the Hammer Girl from The Raid 2: Berandal, and just like her influence Nobara is also blinded on one eye.
  • The cover for Chapter 147 is a reference to the poster for Logan. Additionally, some panels are direct references to Christopher Robin.
  • In episode 7, the end of the fight between Kokichi Muta and Mahito is a clear knock-off of the final clash between Simon and the Anti-Spiral Consciousness from Gurren Lagann, complete with Puppet Mechamaru taking the place of Lagann as it gives Muta enough protection to get in close for the final blow.
  • The "Uzumaki" technique manifests an image of a human twisted into a spiral, in a very clear and direct reference to Uzumaki.
  • In the Hidden Inventory arc, Gojo compares Master Tengen's curse's evolution to that of Digimon. Specifically, he says that digivolving into MetalGreymon is fine, but becoming SkullGreymon would be a problem, so they reset him to being Koromon. A confused Geto just lets him have this.
• Spit Take: Junpei does one when he bursts out laughing at Yuji's impression of Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
• Status Quo Is God: Notably subverted. One of the defining themes of the series is that the consequences of one's actions are permanent and, while it might be possible to fix certain things sometimes, other things just can't. One instance is that the animus between the Zen'in twins is never fully resolved, even after Mai's apparent death. Another example is Junpei's hapless association with Mahito which causes Junpei's demise at Itadori's hands. Also, the fact that Sukuna's association with Itadori can only induce the latter dying horribly is another example.
• Story-Breaker Power: Deconstructed Trope. Satoru Gojo and Ryomen Sukuna, two of the strongest characters in the entire series, are both this as they are just so overwhelmingly strong that having them would tip the scales heavily to the favor of whoever side they are on. It's pretty much acknowledged by both the heroes and the villains that those two can only be really opposed by one another. Unfortunately, in this series, having such overwhelming power doesn't mean much and just paints a massive target on your back to either get you on one side or find some clever way to remove you from the picture: For Satoru, the enemies tend to come up with ways to nullify this and allow them to engage him in more favorable settings, while Sukuna's antagonist status doesn't benefit the villains either as he doesn't care for either side and when he is released, his cleverness means he comes up with ways to use his power to ensure he doesn't solve the situation for either of them, instead worsening the situation for the heroes while also giving the villains some set-backs rather than really giving them any actual help.
• The Stinger: From Episode 3-onwards of the anime, a mini-anime named "Juju Sanpo" (lit. Juju Stroll) airs, focusing on the daily lives of the characters and more comedic bits based on storyboards that Akutami provided.
• Supernatural Sealing: The Prison Realm is a cube-shaped special-grade cursed object with a barrier able to absolutely seal anything inside a Pocket Dimension within it. Geto seals Gojo in the Prison Realm at the beginning of the Shibuya Incident, with him unable to be freed unless a cursed tool/technique that nullifies other cursed techniques is used.
• Taking You with Me:
  • Part of what makes Yuji's "partnership" with Sukuna so tumultuous (besides Sukuna being, well, himself) is that he's made no secret that he aims to consume all of his fingers and then die to end the threat the artifacts pose towards humanity once and for all. Conversely, when Yuji tries to force Sukuna's aid when facing a special-grade curse on his first mission, under the grounds that if the curse kills him, Sukuna's essence will die too, Sukuna bluntly refuses to aid Yuji regardless, pointing out that there are still 18 of his fingers out in the wild, thus even if the part of him trapped in Yuji dies, he'll still survive overall, and he's perfectly willing to die if it would inconvenience Yuji more than himself.
  • When Sukuna seizes control of Yuji's body at the end of the Cursed Womb arc, he tears his/their heart out as a tactical gambit: Sukuna himself is strong enough to survive in a body without a heart, but Yuji isn't, meaning that if the latter takes back control, he'll die. Yuji does it anyway, thwarting Sukuna and saving Megumi.
• Tangled Family Tree: Yuji is the child of Jin Itadori and Kenjaku, who at the time was inhabiting the dead body of Kaori Itadori. Kenjaku had previously fathered Choso and the Death Paintings while inhabiting the body of Noritoshi Kamo by mixing his own essence in with a Cursed Spirit raping a woman and then aborting the fetuses. Choso likewise considers Yuji to be his brother. And on top of that, Jin Itadori was actually the reincarnation of Sukuna's twin brother whom he cannibalized in the womb, technically making the two main villains siblings in law with one of them being the main character's biological mother and the other technically being the main character's uncle by way of reincarnation.
• A Taste of Power: In the middle of a fight with Jogo, Gojo decides to bring Yuji to the battle as a training lesson, under the (correct) assumption that his opponent would use Domain Expansion, the pinnacle of Jujutsu Sorcery. After showing him the technique and how to counter it, he states he'll be training Yuji to fight against threats like Jogo in the future.
• Textplosion: Kinji Hakari's Domain Expansion is so pointlessly complicated it "beams its own rules directly into his opponent's head" because Explaining Your Powers to the Enemy would take too long. There's a whole, two-page spread, diagram explaining the mechanics of the magical pachinko machine- and the actual effects of the thing can be explained as 'Hakari rolls until he hits a jackpot, at which point he becomes immortal for four minutes and starts rolling again'.
• Tournament Arc: From Chapter 33 onwards, both Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School and Kyoto Prefectural Jujutsu High School hold a tournament called the "Kyoto Sister-School Goodwill Event", which is a tournament between the sorcerer students of the respective schools. The intent of this festival is so that the sorcerers will be able to know their companions and themselves. Though it's slightly subverted — although the first event features fighting, Gojo hijacks the second event, turning it from the typical one-on-one tournament into a nearly completely normal baseball game instead.
• Trying Not to Cry: Played for drama. When Yuji is presumed dead after Sukuna has torn his heart out, Nobara says that she isn't the kind of person to get sad over losing someone she barely knows, but upon closer inspection, Megumi sees that her lips are trembling, and that she's holding back tears.
• Uncanny Valley: Dealing with Curses and Jujutsu sorcerers, you'll see some obvious nightmarish creatures yet some that look normal, but are subtly off...
  • Mahito, looks like a very pretty human with no striking odd features except for his heterochromia, grayish blue hair, and stitches on his face... until you get a closer look at his face and it's a little too realistic compared to the main cast and when he acts psychotic, it's more of a monster wearing a human face and not exactly getting it right. Justified in that he's the Curse of the fear and hatred of humans, so his appearance gives him an inherent uncanny feeling.
  • Gojo while beyond pretty when his eyes are revealed, he has an ethereal, inhuman look. It's little wonder that he almost always cover his eyes with his blindfold and more occasionally glasses due to this trait.
• Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection: Played for Laughs. Todo has a Fantasy Sequence in which he confesses to his favourite idol Takada-chan, only for her to rip his love letter in half in front of him and tell him she's in love with someone
• Uriah Gambit: Gojo accuses the higher-ups of doing this to Yuji, sending him and his classmates against the nascent Special Grade Curse from the detention center.
• Voodoo Doll: The Resonance application of Nobara's Straw Doll Technique operates like this: drive a nail through an effigy and a piece of the target, and the damage to the effigy is mirrored on the target's body. Typically, the 'effigy' is a straw doll, but in the fight against Eso and Kechizu, she uses her own body as the effigy, driving nails through her arm in order to inflict pain on the two Death Paintings through the link created by their Rot Technique.
• Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Junpei is a strictly-principled loner who often tries to rein in his carefree, energetic mother. Notably, she encourages him to skip school and smokes and drinks heavily against his wishes.
• Welcome to the Big City: The premise has Itadori move from a town in the countryside to Tokyo, the location of Tokyo Jujutsu High.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 90. Gojo is stalled for one minute inside his brain, and successfully sealed into Prison Realm. The catch is that what stalls him long enough to be captured is the sight of his old friend Suguru Geto, because he had killed him one year prior to the start of the series. While someone who has read the prequel or watched Jujutsu Kaisen 0 would be able to deduce this, Gojo then demands to know who Geto really is. What follows is Geto pulling a string to remove the top part of his head, revealing an exposed brain with teeth sticking out.
    False Geto: Yeesh! How'd you know?
  • Chapter 135. Choso the Death Painting reveals that the false Geto's real name is Noritoshi Kamo, known as the most evil sorcerer in history. According to the false Geto, it's only one of his many names. It's implied he's been doing this for a while, as Noritoshi shares the same scars as Geto.
  • Chapter 136. Geto reveals the outline of his plan: to create chaos that allows humanity's control over cursed energy to be optimized. To this end, he has groomed over 1000 dormant potential sorcerers (among them, Tsumiki Fushiguro) to become vessels like Yuji, or curse users like Junpei. He then uses Mahito's Idle Transfiguration to awaken these sorcerers, and announces his intention to have them fight each other to the death, finishing off with the release of a great number of Curses into the world.
  • Chapter 137. The Jujutsu world's elders respond to the Shibuya incident. They decide that: Satoru Gojo was an accomplice in the incident, and is not to be released from the Prison Realm; Principal Yaga is to receive the death penalty due to his connections to Gojo and Geto; and Yuji Itadori's execution is no longer suspended, with a newly returned Yuta Okkotsu appointed as his executioner.
  • Chapter 202 expands on Kenjaku's plan, revealing he plans to use Master Tengen to merge all the non-Sorcerers in Japan together in the interest of making a gigantic abomination. It also finally reveals his motive for all he's done: He thinks it would be really funny if it ended up looking like something inappropriate, like a clown face.
  • Chapter 212 is probably the biggest Wham Episode of the entire series, with two big plot points. First, it is revealed that Megumi's sister Tsumiki never truly woke up; instead, her body has been possessed by a sorcerer named Yorozu, who impersonated Tsumiki in order to gain Culling Game points. The second and bigger plot point is that Sukuna takes advantage of his Binding Vow with Yuji to possess his body, incapacitate Hana, rip Yuji's finger off, and force-feed it to Megumi. Megumi is now Sukuna's vessel.
  • Chapter 221. After 130 chapters, Satoru Gojo is finally unsealed from the Prison Realm. He then makes a deal with Sukuna to fight him on December 24, after which he'll kill Kenjaku.
  • Chapter 236. Sukuna kills Satoru Gojo.
  • Chapter 257. Hoo boy. First, Sukuna had a twin sibling that he ate, which resulted in Kenjaku reincarnating him as Jin Itadori, Yuji Itadori's father. This would make the main protagonist a nephew of Sukuna of a sort. Second, Uraume realizes to their shock that Yuji might actually have the same potential as Sukuna himself. Third, Yuji now has two Cursed Techniques: Blood Manipulation from Kenjaku's lineage, and most surprisingly, Shrine from having the same lineage as Sukuna. And lastly, Yuji surpasses Nanami's consecutive Black Flash record, by way of eight consecutive Black Flashes.
• Wham Line:
  • In chapter 199, Yuji and Megumi have met up with the Angel who has agreed to help them free Gojo from his prison. They even have all the points from the Culling Game needed to make it happen. Megumi even notes to himself that things are going shockingly well. But then the Angel makes one condition that must be met before they will free Gojo. An Incarnated sorcerer within the Culling Game that the Angel refers to as "the Fallen" must be killed. Sukuna immediately pulls Yuji into his domain to let him know that he is the Fallen that the Angel wants dead.
  • Chapter 202 has Kenjaku finally explaining his grand plan to horrifically merge the non-Sorcerers in Japan using Master Tengen, the thing he's been building to all this time. The Wham Line here is when Choso asks his motive, and Kenjaku replies that he just thinks it's a good time, revealing that everything he's done so far has just been for his own enjoyment.
  It just sounds fun.
  • Chapter 212 has two of them.
    • Everything seems fine as Yuji ponders on how they'd be now able to free Gojo from the Prison Realm, cure Tsumiki, and get rid of him and Sukuna. At this point, Tsumiki has something to say...
    "Tsumiki": Add a rule allowing entry and exit across colony borders.
    • Then as a fallout of the above line, a horrified Megumi and Yuji chase after Yorozu, as Sukuna seizes his opportunity.
    Sukuna: Enchain.
  • Chapter 250 shows how Yuta has grown into one of the strongest characters in the series by showing his Domain Expansion, which can let him use all abilities he copied at no limit. And one of these abilities would be...
    Yuta: Cleave.
  • Chapter 256 has the narration confirming that Yuji unlocks something when he lands a Black Flash on Sukuna.
    "Yuji Itadori awakens!"
  • Chapter 257 has three.
    • In a flashback, Uraume and Sukuna discuss who Yuji is. Sukuna then drops a bombshell regarding his origins.
    Sukuna: Perhaps his mate was my other half reincarnated, and thus possessed the same soul.
    • After Uraume ends their discussion with Sukuna, they suddenly get a hunch that changes who Yuji is.
    Uraume: Does that mean...that Yuji Itadori has the potential to rival Sukuna?
    • After 256 chapters, the narration finally confirms that Yuji not only has one, but two cursed techniques.
    Intergration of Death Painting Wombs 4 to 9 grants Blood Manipulation to him. And the awakened State drawn out from his Black Flash grants him... Shrine, which is engraved in Ryomen Sukuna's cursed body.
• Wham Shot: Chapter 143 has a brief flashback to Yuji’s grandfather urging his son Jin (Yuji’s father) to leave his wife. Said wife is revealed to have scars on her forehead very similar to Geto and Noritoshi Kamo’s.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Curses, even the intelligent ones, are fought and killed without much thought to their status as people. To be fair, the Special Grades all trying to wipe out humanity. In-Universe, Principal Gakuganji even tells his students that Itadori "isn't even a person" due to being Sukuna's vessel. The moral quandary gets a little attention after Yuji manages to change most of the Kyoto branch students' minds.
• Whole Episode Flashback: The Hidden Inventory arc and the following Premature Death mini-arc all take place about a decade in the past^*For reference, the main series takes place in 2018., and follows Gojo's past, with his best friend Geto, and shows the latter's Start of Darkness, as well as the events leading up to Megumi's recruitment by Gojo into Tokyo Jujutsu High.
• The Worf Effect: Practically, this happens pretty frequently.
  • Sukuna and Gojo AKA the two strongest characters in the series regularly deliver swift and decisive defeats like candies to anyone who crosses their path. Just as Mahito seems to be gaining an edge against Nanami and Yuji, Sukuna ends the fight with ease just by flicking his fingers. The most particular emphasis is Jogo: Despite being acknowledged as the strongest of the unregistered special-grade curses, the only fight Jogo wins is against Nanami, Maki, and Naobito in a matter of seconds. He ends up being utterly annihilated when he fights either of them, as nothing he tries works and he's unable to land a single hit or put up any meaningful opposition. Both of them make it clear they are just toying with him as they easily beat him down with just physical combat and don't even need to use their cursed techniques. While Gojo at least shows off his Red and Unlimited Void, Sukuna only uses a technique that manipulates fire, Jogo's specialty, to kill him. With 15 fingers, meaning he's back at 75% of his power but not quite at full strength, Sukuna defeats Mahoraga, Megumi's strongest shikigami that not even Gojo's ancestors with the Six Eyes can put down without dying himself, pretty handily.
  • The Culling Game is full of this, with sorcerers from ancient ages displaying just how formidable veteran jujutsu warriors are. Shortly after Yuji and Megumi handle their own situation, Yuta Okkotsu takes charge of the story... But despite being the second greatest sorcerer in the current age, the opponents he fights end up giving him a brutal fight, dwarfing even Megumi's troublesome fight with Reggie Star. In particular, Ryu Ishigori defeats Rika and can even outdo Yuta in terms of destructive output. Kashimo Hajime, the strongest in the Tokyo no.2 Colony, proves even more terrifying, as he nearly kills Panda in a one-sided mauling, and fights Hakari with infinite cursed energy to a brutal standstill. As Hakari points out, he wasn't using his Cursed Technique, and still manages to nearly beat him to death, blow him apart via lightning bolt, and sever his left arm in a Death or Glory Attack. And as it turns out, even ordinary warriors are exceptionally lethal in the Culling Game, so much so that Daido Hagane, a nameless swordsman reincarnated for some reason, could fight on near-equal footing with Maki after she could wipe out the entire Zenin Clan and deals Naoya as a Cursed Spirit considerable damage, while Rokujushi Miyo actually beats Maki in hand-to-hand combat several times, although it doesn't last for too long as Miyo admits Maki is way more powerful than he is physically and also purposefully helps Maki hone her new skills. Even modern sorcerers possess astounding potential, such as Higuruma, who mastered Domain Expansion, defeated 20 other sorcerers and became as powerful as a Grade 1 sorcerer in just 12 days, and Takaba, who has an Innate Technique that could potentially oppose Gojo.
• Worf Had the Flu:
  • While Yuta is one of the strongest characters in the series, Yuji and Choso's rather easy loss against him is attributed to neither of them being able to go all-out against Yuta in the fight: Yuji is still emotionally traumatized from the Shibuya Incident and fighting a desire to just roll over and die, and he still manages to break Yuta's katana, with Yuta opting to immediately summon Rika rather than keep fighting any more, while Choso was exhausted from his battle with Naoya. Even Yuta himself acknowledges this, saying part of the reason why he didn't have a difficult fight with Yuji to kill and then immediately resurrect him is because Yuji wasn't giving it his all.
  • Yuki Tsukumo's loss to Kenjaku. She was capable of handling him at the start with her Star Rage Cursed Technique, to where Kenjaku decides against trying to engage her in a fair fight and immediately activates his Domain Expansion, but her plan to allow Tengen to dismantle Kenjaku's barrier proves to be a severe mistake as Kenjaku's barrier is manifested outside of a domain while her Simple Domain proves no match for Kenjaku's Domain, due to Kenjaku being The Archmage when it comes to barrier techniques. The subsequent lethal injuries she suffers allows Kenjaku to exploit her weakness later on in the fight and critically injure her. He even admits had Yuki brought out her own Domain or just not trusted "that thing", the fight would have been one for all Kenjaku's marbles instead of a Curb Stomp Cushion scenario followed by a Death or Glory Attack of earth-shattering magnitudes from Tsukumo.
  • The duel between Gojo Satoru and Ryomen Sukuna. On one hand, Gojo was faced with a specific counter for his cursed technique. On the other, Sukuna was holding back his other cards now that he had Megumi's Ten Shadows to use instead. Each chapter was a brutal back and forth as both tried to outwit each other's techniques. Once left unable to initiate any more Domain Expansions, Gojo constantly outdoes Sukuna in hand-to-hand before Mahoraga showed up. Near the tail-end, Gojo ended up in a one versus three with Sukuna, Mahoraga, and Merged Beast Agito. However, that last bout would prove to be Gojo's undoing, as letting Mahoraga unleash the slash that struck where Gojo was rather than Gojo specifically meant that Sukuna saw a technique he could use himself. After Hollow Purple destroyed Mahoraga, Gojo was left vulnerable to that infinity-piercing attack by Sukuna, leaving Sukuna the victor.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The author admits to fudging the math used in the series. For example, the Black Flash technique is said to increase the cursed energy of an attack by the power of 2.5. However, that would mean if you use Black Flash with 1 Cursed Energy, then the attack power is still 1, and the attack would become weaker with even less Cursed Energy. In an author's comment, he hand waves it by saying that Cursed Energy starts at 2, before himself wondering what that even means.
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: At the beginning of the flashback arc, Mei Mei and Utahime are both trapped in a mansion, in an unusually long hallway. Gojo being Gojo, rescues them by destroying the whole building, where Shoko reveals that they've actually been stuck there for two days.
  • In the Sakurajima Colony Arc, a sorcerer's domain inverts this and has a domain wherein he can fight a 1000 sumo fights in the time it takes for a minute outside to pass.

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