Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution review – spectacular if baffling anime is out to thrill and bewilder

<p>Remix of old and new material from TV series includes tremendous battle sequences but there’s an awful lot of lore for new viewers to catch up with</p><p>Here’s an unusual proposition: a film that opens with a kind of super-edit, cutting together chunks culled from many hours’ worth of plot and spectacle from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/mar/15/jujutsu-kaisen-0-review-sorcerer-anime-series-gets-a-spectacular-prequel">Jujutsu Kaisen TV series</a>, which is then followed by some all-new episodes of the TV series; playing together in full as a movie, in the cinema. Is it a movie borrowing bits from a TV show? A TV show dressed up as a movie? Does it matter? It certainly doesn’t, if all you need is spectacular and imaginatively staged battle sequences – though for non-initiates, it’s difficult to see it adding up to much more than that.</p><p>One thing that would be very helpful – and is regrettably lacking – is a Star Wars-style scroll plainly laying out the backstory in simple terms for unfamiliar viewers. Sure, the TV show compilation does a bit of that, but it also feels like trying to download a thousand years of lore into your head, while simultaneously having your mind boggled by wild visions of conflict in the underworld. A bit more context for the long-running struggle between good and evil, involving sorcerers and “curses” (which seems to mean something closer to “demon” here), would be of great help to the normies over here.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/nov/13/jujutsu-kaisen-execution-review-spectacular-if-baffling-anime-is-out-to-thrill-and-bewilder">Continue reading...</a>