My sister and I came to one of those unfortunate story arcs in Naruto Shippuden which focus on Sasuke and his goon squad Suigetsu, Karin and Jugo (A.K.A Shark boy, stupid girl and man who talks to birds). So, after that we decided to take a small break from our favorite anime. I went to find popular anime to try out and this one kept coming up. I found two overwhelming reviews: Absolutely fantastic, and seriously overhyped. So my sister and I watched it and I have some thoughts. 

What People are saying: 

So firstly, when I research popular shows I try to find out why they're so popular and why people love them so much. If the reasons look like valid ones then I give it a shot. Note this is not to discredit anyone's opinions simply to say people watch shows for different reasons. For example, if I find out that people love Vampire Diaries because it’s full of supermodels playing vampires and having affairs with high schoolers with a bunch of romance drama…I’m not going to bother watching it. With some shows it’s that simple. Anime is a little more complicated so I had to do a little more digging. I read a bunch of reviews of this show and primarily what was praised was the animation, action, and the character of Satoru Gojo. 

Other reviewers contended that the show was a Naruto knock off and that gorgeous animation and elaborate fight sequences don’t make a show. To their defense, there is a squad with two boys and a girl (one boy is the broody Sasuke type, only not a jerk, and the main character is the enthusiastic one harboring a demon’s powers). The midpoint in the season is them having an exchange event (similar but not identical to the Chunin exams) and they have an extremely powerful white haired sensei with his face partially hidden who’s very popular with female fans.  However, similarities don’t make something the same. While the show clearly had Naruto inspiration, I don’t think it was a knock off. However, on a whole I would agree the things which I’ve heard the show praised for (and will confess were a positive side to it) weren’t enough to make me love it. 

The characters I appreciated in the show:

The world they built in the show was interesting. The idea of an Academy that trains Jujitsu sorcerers to exercise curses is unique and the style they created which seemed half Highschool/half Ninja school was intriguing. 

There were key characters I liked.  Those being: Megumi and Satoru Gojo.

• Megumi Fushiguro is one of the three students and really the only one I understood. The character has a strict sense of justice with little to no compassion for those who commit wrongdoing. Deep down he questions if his sense of justice is too extreme because his half-sister who’s currently under a curse had more compassion than him. His last meeting with his sister wasn't a pleasant one so he forever questions if he wasn't a good enough brother or if he should change his harsh perspectives. 

Even with this character I will say my only contention was that towards the conclusion his development wasn't very clear. I understood from his personal training session with Gojo that he needs to be more ambitious and self-motivated in order to win his battle but the persona he broke into while fighting didn't make a lot of sense. He also randomly mentions that he wants to “surpass” Itadori at one point, but it's never built upon or addressed and I’m not sure where it came from in the first place. 

• Satoru Gojo–the most loved character in the show to my knowledge and I’ll concede, he was one of the most entertaining and interesting characters. He was criticized for being a knock off of Kakashi but in truth he reminds me more of if someone made a hybrid of Kakashi Hatake and Guy Sensei. Having the sensei character be the most powerful character in the show, while having a comical but slightly narcissistic personality which conceals a more serious agenda, was intriguing. While the silliness of Gojo’s personality might be a front or a façade, his narcissism doesn’t appear to be. He’s well aware he’s powerful enough to beat anyone in the show and will literally bring his student to watch and take notes. All in all I can see why he’s one of the selling points, but there were still questions I had.

It’s not that everything has to be explained all at once, simply that for me to really love a character certain things have to be addressed. I get that Gojo hates the Higher ups and their corruption, he openly thinks and jokes about them dying and how easy it would be to get rid of them. That's an interesting plot point to build upon but it makes me curious as to how Gojo ended up teaching at Jujitsu High in the first place and how he got so powerful. Maybe it’s explained in the Manga? Idk. I appreciate he cares about his students but he always pretends to be so carefree and unconcerned it makes me question if there’s a reason why he acts that way? Or is he just that narcissistic?  Being cool, powerful and interesting are good ways to start a character but it’s not enough to necessarily make me love it. 

There were a handful of other characters I liked in the show but they didn’t receive enough development for me to really understand them. I appreciated Nobara wasn’t Sakura, but aside from being really confident I didn't really understand her arc. I liked Maki and thought she was a well rounded character with an interesting backstory, even the panda won me over somewhere towards the end. However, with some of these characters too much was revealed too quickly, like us getting the entire Panda’s story in the first season–and with others I never caught on.

Character’s I DID NOT appreciate: 

Yuji Itadori….I have words for this character but none of them are really pleasant. Let’s start with the origin of his character. Yuji’s grandfather tells him he’s a good kid so he should try to help people, then he dies of illness. Yuji is in a club with friends who like the dark and supernatural so they have a cursed object. When a curse attacks Megumi tells Yuji that consuming the cursed object will make him have the power of the demon and therefore be able to fight demons. Yuji eats the object but now because he consumed the power of the demon Sakuna he’s supposed to die according to Jujitsu sorcerer law. Yuji gets a deal in which if he consumes all of Sakunas fingers (ew right) he’ll be executed and in doing so destroy the demon's power forever. Problems with all of this?

• Yuji’s Grandfather dies and he doesn't seem that shaken by his death. In fact, the character doesn't seem too emotionally shaken by anything which is a key flaw with him. After his grandfather's death Megumi explains Jujitsu sorcery and curses to him and he doesn't seem shocked about that either.

• Yuji eats the cursed object (Sakunas finger) with little to no thought. I get he wants to be powerful enough to save his friends but this is literally the first episode of the show and he jumped from normal dopey teen to being willing to consume demon power on a whim. 

• Sakuna possesses Yuji’s body and beats the living daylights out of Megumi (too many people beat that poor guy up) and when Yuji gets his senses back he acts totally chill and shows no guilt.  

• Yuji doesn't have a character arc aside from wanting to “help people” and even that we almost never hear him talk about. His personality is far too chill, upbeat and positive for someone whose whole character arc is that he’s on death row. Yuji never seems to digest or reflect upon the fact that his death sentence has only been postponed, he has to consume all Sakuna’s fingers and then he’ll be killed. But he’s too busy cracking jokes, hanging up girlie pictures in his room and being excited to think about literally the only interesting thing he has to reflect upon. Yuji didn't have a whole lot of growth and I didnt care for his portrayal.  

The title character being weak is a major problem. The title character doesn't have to be my favorite, but they have  to be compelling in some way. Yuji being annoying and not written well was a big issue for me because the show spent so many episodes focussing on him and all the other characters revolve around him. Alongside him were the other characters who either didn't have a lot going on or were not delved into enough. There were several other characters like the students from the sister school who either weren’t interesting or were just plain annoying: Noritoshi, Momo (she was just plain annoying), Mai (her backstory was dumped out a little too quickly), and last but most certainly not least–Todo. If toxic masculinity had a definition or a physical form it’s that character and I won’t forgive whoever wrote him. And  whoever gave him a whole episode dedicated to himself bears my hatred also. 

Some of my criticisms: 

• The pacing and the development: While my sister and I fell in love with the Naruto series in the first season, so many of the story arcs and characters' backstories took time to uncover.  Yuji’s character arc is seemingly done in the first episode, he doesn't really mature or grow after that. The Panda’s backstory is laid bare before us in the first season. While I liked Maki, her backstory is laid out in the first season as well as her sisters. That's a lot to put forth right away and it removes a lot of intrigue. 

• The grotesque violence: I swear there's almost more blood in this show than in Demon Slayer. Not quite but almost. The curses in this show are drawn to be grotesque and disturbing, they kill people in grotesque ways. There’s nothing wrong with implying this and even showing how horrific some of the curses can be in brief shots, but an excess of violence misses the mark for me. When someone cuts a demon’s head off, and it's back has ten heads growing out of it which all shoot streams of blood and then the severed head drowns in it–that zones me out. This is an under-exaggeration of the kind of bloody violence in the show. I get that we're trying to portray Jujitsu sorcerers as people who face horrible things and they have to be a little unhinged in order to face these monsters, but the show goes over the top to do it. 

• Wasted time: I don’t know who asked for a whole scene of Todo talking about his kind of woman, or a whole episode of that loser's backstory but we got it. We got episodes of characters fighting (like Yuji and Todo) and unlike in Naruto where fights take place to give way to meaningful backstory or character arcs, here they serve no purpose. 

• The plot: I had several issues with the writing in this show. 

1. I understand that the Higher ups are corrupt but exactly how many? All of them? And does everyone else feel the same way about them as Gojo or is it just him? Do the students hate the higher ups?

2. What exactly is the plot thread of season 1? Yuji is put on a postponed death row but people seem to forget about that fairly quickly and move on. Yuji seemingly dies right before the exchange event is getting started–amidst a dumb sub plot of a boy getting beat up and bullied by jerks who serve no purpose as characters. Yuji comes back from the dead and it affects no one nor does it alter the course of the plot. Gojo is concerned about the existence of a mole but the only person he tells is Utahime. None of our key characters seem to build upon the possibility of a traitor. In fact, the only character who seems to be holding all the cards or at least aware of most variables and actively taking steps to do something about it is Gojo. The students feel oddly separate from the plot and like they don’t have a great deal they're accomplishing. In Naruto every student has something of a personal journey to fulfill in the Chunin exams. It was pivotal and meaningful to their characters. In this series only a couple students really felt like they had an important personal journey. 

So on a whole, I think the show had some good material and some good characters. However, the plot, excess of violence, and unnecessary focus on unimportant side characters, as well as the weak lead–made the show fall short for me. I’m invested enough in a few things so that when a second season comes out I will look into it, but I’m not sold on the show as a whole. 

Article by Jubilee