Jujutsu Kaisen
 iCover of Volume 1, featuring Yuji Itadori | |
| Author | Gege Akutami |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Shueisha |
| Magazine | Weekly Shonen Jump |
| Demographic | Shonen |
| Genre | Dark fantasy, supernatural, action |
| Original run | March 5, 2018 – September 30, 2024 |
| Volumes | 30 |
| Chapters | 271 |
Jujutsu Kaisen (呪術廻戦, meaning "Sorcery Fight") is a Japanese dark fantasy manga series written and illustrated by Gege Akutami. It was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump from March 5, 2018, to September 30, 2024, and its chapters were collected into 30 tankobon volumes. The series follows a high school student named Yuji Itadori who swallows a powerful cursed object to save his friends and is pulled into the hidden world of jujutsu sorcerers, people who fight monsters born from negative human emotions.
Jujutsu Kaisen became one of the best-selling manga series of all time, with more than 150 million copies in circulation worldwide by the end of its run. An anime television adaptation produced by Studio MAPPA began airing in October 2020, and the series has since expanded into films, video games, and merchandise.
1 Plot✎
Yuji Itadori is a kindhearted high school student with extraordinary physical ability. Although he could be a star athlete, he prefers spending time with his school's Occult Research Club and visiting his sick grandfather in the hospital. Before his grandfather dies, he asks Yuji to always help other people so that he will be surrounded by loved ones at the end of his life.
Yuji's ordinary life changes when he meets Megumi Fushiguro, a young jujutsu sorcerer searching for a dangerous cursed object that has ended up at Yuji's school. When the object, a mummified finger belonging to the legendary curse Sukuna, is unsealed by Yuji's friends, it attracts monstrous cursed spirits to the campus. To save Megumi and his classmates, Yuji swallows the finger and becomes the unwilling host of Sukuna's soul.
Instead of being executed for harboring such a dangerous curse, Yuji is taken in by the sorcerer Satoru Gojo and enrolled at Tokyo Jujutsu High, a secret school that trains young sorcerers. He is told he will be allowed to live until he has consumed all 20 of Sukuna's remaining fingers, at which point he will be killed to destroy the curse for good. Alongside Megumi and fellow student Nobara Kugisaki, Yuji begins learning to control cursed energy and takes on missions to exorcise dangerous spirits, gradually uncovering a larger conflict between sorcerers and curses that threatens all of Japan.
2 Characters✎
The main cast centers on three first-year students at Tokyo Jujutsu High and their teacher. Yuji Itadori is the protagonist, a cheerful and physically gifted teenager who becomes the host of the curse Sukuna. Megumi Fushiguro is a reserved sorcerer from a prestigious family who can summon shikigami, spirit familiars, to fight alongside him. Nobara Kugisaki is a confident sorcerer from the countryside whose technique uses nails and a small hammer as weapons. Their teacher Satoru Gojo is considered the strongest jujutsu sorcerer alive and serves as a mentor figure to the students. Sukuna, the "King of Curses," is a thousand-year-old sorcerer whose soul is sealed inside Yuji and acts as the series' primary antagonist.
3 Publication✎
Before Jujutsu Kaisen began, Gege Akutami wrote a four-chapter prequel series titled Jujutsu Kaisen 0: Jujutsu High, which ran in Shueisha's Jump GIGA magazine in 2017. The short series was well received, and Akutami was given a full serialization slot in Weekly Shonen Jump the following year.
The first chapter of Jujutsu Kaisen was published on March 5, 2018, in issue 14 of Weekly Shonen Jump. The series ran for six and a half years, with its final chapter, chapter 271, published on September 30, 2024, in issue 44. The prequel series was collected into a volume labeled "Volume 0" and released alongside the third main volume in December 2018.
4 Reception✎
Jujutsu Kaisen was a slow starter commercially, with around 2.5 million copies in print by late 2019. Sales exploded after the anime adaptation premiered in October 2020: within months, circulation had jumped to more than 50 million copies, an increase of several hundred percent. The series continued to grow through the rest of its run, surpassing 150 million copies in circulation worldwide, which placed it among the best-selling manga series ever published.
Critics praised the series for its fluid action scenes, complex magic system based on "cursed energy," and willingness to take dark turns and kill off major characters. Gege Akutami has cited horror manga such as Hunter × Hunter and Bleach as influences.
5 Adaptations✎
5.1 Anime✎
An anime television series produced by Studio MAPPA was announced in November 2019 and premiered on October 3, 2020. The first season adapted the early arcs of the manga and was directed by Sunghoo Park. A second season, covering the "Hidden Inventory" and "Shibuya Incident" story arcs, aired from July 6 to December 28, 2023, and was widely praised for its animation quality.
5.2 Films✎
A theatrical film titled Jujutsu Kaisen 0, based on the prequel manga, was released in Japan in December 2021 and internationally in 2022. It became one of the highest-grossing anime films ever released.