Existential Elements in Jujutsu Kaisen
Christian Jones ’26 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Spoilers through season two ahead
Existential themes in anime are not new. They have been around for a long time, from the do-or-die fervor of Attack on Titan to the constant moral ambiguity of Tokyo Ghoul, in the passionate characters seeking a raison d’etre in Naruto or the metaphysical interrogation of older cyberpunk animes like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell. However, Jujutsu Kaisen, which aired on October 3, 2020, hybridizes these existing themes into a new and inventive premise.
The fundamental conflict of the show is a fight for existence on all sides. Humans want to live until they can achieve “a proper death,” one not initiated by curses but natural, timely. Curses want to live and take over the human world, initiating an era of chaos. Sorcerers want to live and either fight to save humans or fight to hurt other sorcerers and aid curses.
Curses are a race of beings invisible to humans and are incarnated from the cursed energy that leaks out of humans’ negative emotions. These curses are essentially the manifestations of human anxieties, fears, and traumas. Their range in power is relative to the amount of negative energy fueled by human beings. Special grade curses such as the Smallpox Deity or the great Elemental Curses—Hanami (Atsuko Tanaka), Jogo (Shigeru Chiba), and Dagon (Kenta Miyake)—are so powerful because they embody collective human anxieties about illnesses, forests, volcanoes, and oceans. Other curses are less powerful because they arise out of more individual emotions or the negative emotions tied to a specific place, which is why hospitals and prisons have more cursed spirits. These spirits harm and kill humans. Jujutsu sorcerers use cursed techniques and cursed weapons to fight these cursed spirits and protect humanity. We enter a world where our main characters are literally fighting the embodiments of human despair, hopelessness, fear—what could be more existential?
To complicate matters further, our protagonists are caught in a conflict of purpose. For the most part (obviously excluding evil jujutsu sorcerers and clans), sorcerers dedicate their lives to protecting and saving humans, who are unaware of the curses’ existence. The continued existence of curses is also inevitable because humans will forever create new curses with their negative emotions, making the sorcerer’s duty a Sisyphysian task. Each sorcerer deals with this duty in different ways. Itadori Yuji (Junya Enoki) is initially guided by his grandfather’s dying words in Season 1, Episode 1: “You are a strong kid, save as many people as you can and be surrounded by those who care about you.” Yuji constantly tries to save people and guarantee them a chance at a “proper death” because of what he sees as an inherent value to human life. For Nobara Kugisaki (Asami Seto), killing is just part of the job of being a jujutsu sorcerer; she is more concerned with being herself as unapologetically as she can. Kugisaki is driven by her desire to stay true to herself and fighting curses away from her small-minded hometown is the best way for her to exercise this commitment. Megumi Fushiguro (Yuma Uchida) was initially uncomfortable with the idea of helping others. Abandoned by his parents, he was a jaded child whose conception of relationships was survival and the avoidance of violating others’ dignity. When his sister, Tsumiki (Saori Hayami), was cursed, he became a sorcerer to save the one dearest to him and developed a sense of morality under Satoru Gojo’s (Yuichi Nakamura) mentorship. In his battles as a sorcerer, he built a sense of comradeship that was inconceivable to him as a child and seeks to save others with the support of those close to him. Each of our three protagonists has some subjective sense of purpose that gives meaning to their free will. Otherwise, they would simply be cleansing spirits like cogs in a machine, never questioning why they did what they did. As Simone de Beauvoir states in The Ethics of Ambiguity, it is how one assumes their freedom through projects that turns it from a pure contingency into transcendence. We are born free, but it is not until we confront the state of this responsibility, this ability to make a choice for ourselves, that we can give that freedom a direction. Transcendence is when one is conscious of one’s agency and enacts it through different means (projects), thus giving meaning to one’s otherwise purposeless freedom.
Other sorcerers use their free will to contribute to chaos, solely seeking power for domination and destruction. Ryomen Sukuna (Junichi Suwabe) is a prime example of this evil motivation. He is regarded as the most powerful curse user that ever lived and as being sadistic, narcissistic, bloodthirsty, and immoral. He split his soul into twenty fingers—curse objects—and was reincarnated when Yuji ate one. Throughout the show, Sukuna is a stark contrast to the positive values of every other sorcerer because he simply wants to harm others and amass power; he is a true sadist. Another ancient sorcerer who desires chaos is Kenjaku (Takahiro Sakurai). His ability allows him to transplant his brain into others and control their bodies and powers. He continually implants himself in powerful sorcerers so that he can hijack their powers and effectively cleanse the world of human beings, either by killing them off or turning them into curses—Nazi eugenics much?
Another layer of existential themes resides in the conflict between the antagonists’ and protagonists’ differing motivations. Both Sukuna and Kenjau represent the past, whereas Nobara, Yuji, and Megumi represent the present/future. This conflict is existential because our protagonists seek to imagine a new world and create a positive future, but are constantly thwarted by the sadist, eugenic motivations of the past. Sukuna and Kenjaku literally possess, as a parasite or spirit would, the bodies of modern sorcerers and meddle with the world. As an existentialist would refuse to let the past define or determine them, our protagonists fight against the figures and ideologies of the past to guarantee the future.
This battle between the determination of the past is especially personal for certain curse users who are either born with “heavenly restrictions” or are bound in “binding vows.” The former is much like a disability with a conditional—for Maki Zenin (Mikako Komatsu), she is gifted with superhuman strength, but cannot use cursed energy. This made her a disgrace to her clan (prestigious bloodline), which she sought to disprove. Her motivation in the show was to break free of the constraints imposed by her birth circumstances and prove her spiteful family wrong. Mechamaru (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka) is another example of a heavenly restriction because he was born with such a sickly and fragile body that he could not leave a dark tub in a hidden room. But he controlled immense cursed energy through mechanical automatons. He strikes a deal with Mahito (Nobunaga Shimazaki), the special grade cursed spirit of human hatred, to have his body remodeled and strengthened, thus escaping the restrictions of his birth. Other determinations in the series involve binding vows, which are conscious decisions that grant consequences or strong benefits. They are exactly as they sound, and as existentialists would celebrate, all about making a decision with unified conscious awareness—no Bad Faith here, Sartre! Sorcerers use them in battle to turn the tables, reinforcing the idea that their conscious decisions are in service of the perspective they assert on the world or other characters (done through the violence of a battle).
It will be interesting to see how these themes—curses, purpose, destiny, free-will, power, and friendship—develop. The manga, which released its final chapter on September 30, 2024, has already finished playing out the battle of perspectives between the past and the future, between selflessness and sadism. Of course, there is a similar clash of perspectives and power ever-occurring in the real world. As we wait for the anime to catch up, we can find hope and inspiration in our protagonists’ will to devote their personal freedoms to making the world at large a better place.