Popverse's top stories of the day

• My New Years Resolution is to watch less anime in 2025 - but to enjoy it more
• Sam Wilson has always been the perfect successor as the MCU's Captain America and Brave New World will show that
• Is Severance enough to make AppleTV+ a real player in streaming?

The end of Jujutsu Kaisen is upon us and, with it, the chance to marvel at the remarkable run the manga has had. In just six years and 271 chapters, Gege Akutami’s series has become one of the best-selling manga of all time and spawned one of MAPPA’s biggest anime hits, all by simultaneously embracing and subverting the Shonen tropes that have come before it. This week on Popverse Jump, we celebrate the greatmess that is Jujutsu Kaisen.

It isn’t hard to see the other manga that influenced Akutami as he was developing Jujutsu Kaisen. There are elements of Yoshihiro Togashi’s Yu Yu Hakusho and Tite Kubo’s Bleach in both the art and the story elements, while it is easy to see the similarities between Naruto’s Team 7 and the three protagonists of Jujutsu Kaisen. Satoru Gojo is, in many ways, just Kakashi with a blindfold instead of a facemask.

It isn’t just the visuals that are heavily influenced by the previous generation of manga creators – Jujutsu Kaisen isn’t shy about using tried-and-tested Shonen classics when it needs to. It has an orphaned protagonist, tournament arcs, mysterious mentor figures, and enemies that swiftly become stalwart allies. The first 50 chapters or so feel like a Greatest Hits record of all the Shonen tropes you’ve heard before. Considering the Jujutsu Kaisen manga is surprisingly short – only 271 chapters compared to the 430 that My Hero Academia managed before it ended – this should have been a damning start to the series.

So, if Jujutsu Kaisen is so basic, why are we still talking about it? Because Akutami’s greatest talent as a writer has been to know exactly when to subvert the tropes he was embracing. Yuji Itadori isn’t the strongest character in the series, nor does he particularly care about training to become stronger. His goal through most of the series is to help people and not die alone. Sure, he's got a competitive streak but it isn’t what drives him – he just wants to be a good person, despite having an immortal, seemingly unkillable murder machine locked up inside him.

Which is another way that Jujutsu Kaisen avoids being a typical Shonen series. Its protagonist is also, in a way, its antagonist. Yuji has Sukuna, the King of Curses, living inside him, occasionally taking control of his body to enact terrible violence. Their relationship is the driving force behind the manga, yet the two rarely come into direct contact with each other. They do fight eventually, but only in the closing stages of the story. Normally, they exist in a strange form of equilibrium that is tense but not outright hostile. The conflict between Yuji and the monster living in him is inevitable but Akutami wisely doesn’t let them properly fight until near the end of the series.

Satoru Gojo, Yuji’s cocky teacher who is considered the strongest jujutsu sorcerer of the modern era, fits the traditional mentor role that every good Shonen anime needs while also breaking most of the rules that come with that role. For the first half of Jujutsu Kaisen’s run, Gojo exudes powerful "main character energy" in every scene he shows up in. Not only is he stronger than anyone else, but he is vastly more interesting. His history with Suguru Geto is key to one of the most interesting arcs of the manga, the Hidden Inventory Arc. Rather than being a stepping stone to build up Yuji Itadori, Gojo is eager to remain at the top of the jujutsu world until the very end. Despite spending almost half the manga’s run sealed in an alternate dimension, Gojo still outshines every other character in the series.

Jujutsu Kaisen’s pacing is so quick that even the most important arcs in the manga feel rushed and many of the plot points require ridiculous amounts of exposition to wrap your head around. It takes a long time to give us something more than the standard Shonen fare, but, when it does, the manga does a great job of flipping those tropes on their heads. The result has become one of the most popular manga of all time whose ending feels like the end of an era in the industry.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming comic conventions