The anime version of Jujutsu Kaisen was awarded “Anime of the Year” in 2021 by the Crunchy Roll Anime Awards, but how is the manga version of this highly popular anime? After failing to get hooked on the anime myself, I decided to give the manga a try.
Jujutsu Kaisen by Gege Akutami Volume 1 | Buy on Amazon US | Buy on Amazon UK
About Jujutsu Kaisen
Written and Illustrated by: Gege Akutami
Published by: Jump GIGA
Original run: April 28, 2017 – July 28, 2017
Pages: 192
Premise
All living beings emanate an energy called Cursed Energy, which arises from negative emotions that naturally flow throughout the body. Normal people cannot control this flow in their bodies. As a result, they continually lose Cursed Energy, resulting in the birth of Curses. Jujutsu Sorcerers are people who control the flow of Cursed Energy in their bodies, allowing them to use it as they please and also to reduce its release.
After the death of his grandfather, Yuji Itadori chooses to eat the finger of a Curse creature to protect his friends from a Cursed creature and he becomes the host of Ryomen Sukuna, a powerful Curse. Jujutsu Sorcerers who had been hunting the Cursed creature are then asked to slay Yuji immediately. However, because Yuji is able to maintain control of the Curse, they allow him to live for as long as he agrees to eat the rest of the creature’s fingers so that they can execute all Curses in one. The belief is that Yuji may also find a way out of this fate by the time they find all Cursed fingers.
My thoughts on Jujutsu Kaisen Volume 1
Although the premise of Jujutsu Kaisen sounds too bizarre to be taken seriously, I was surprised at how enjoyable a read this manga volume was. As I said at the start of this review, the anime didn’t grab me at all during its first episode. How much of this is a format preference, I’m not sure about, but to me it seemed that the manga cut out the fluff and got right to the core story elements. This is important in a first volume of a story, because the fundamental aim is to hook the reader into the story so they’ll be invested in what’s to come.
The art in this manga suits its tone perfectly. Jujutsu Kaisen is your typical Shōnen action series which features a bunch of well-placed humour. For that reason, it’s perfectly normal for some illustrations to be full of intricate details during an action scene, while during some of the more laid-back and comedic moments, the level of detail sees a reduction. In-between chapters, author Gege Akutami also adds in lots of fun introspection about the creative process. While also giving us some fun (and obscure) details about the characters. It’s little things like this that make the manga even more worth reading.
There were some panels where it got confusing to tell who’s speaking, such as when a character is saying something while not being displayed in the panel. This means you need to pay extra close attention to the thread of conversations. Sometimes the author makes it easier by drawing a chibi face of the character inside the bubble, but this is typically in panels where no characters at all are shown. But despite the few moments of confusion, this was still a pleasurable reading experience.
Verdict
Jujutsu Kaisen volume one was a super fun read all the way through and now I’m happy to finally see this series in the same light as everyone else. Manga is clearly the better format for me over anime, and this one matched my speed of reading well. There were no slow moments in Jujutsu Kaisen volume one, and all the important story details are presented in an easy to digest way.
Because of how well the action and humour go together in this series, I was getting Bleach vibes from it. Some may see that as a bad thing, but early Bleach was pretty incredible. And Jujutsu Kaisen is already showing more promise than Bleach had.
I highly recommend reading this manga if you’re a weirdo like me and the anime isn’t doing it for you.
