Jujutsu Kaisen Episode 5

That didn’t go the way I expected at all. And I don’t want to sound like a downer but I didn’t really like this episode all that much, and something about the show is bugging me and I think I know what it is?

First of all, I want to apologize to Fushiguro for even comparing him to someone like Sasuke Uchiha. Fushiguro is nothing like Sasuke because Fushiguro is actually good, and he cares for people. He just wants people to have a fair chance in this world, and he saved Itadori simply because he saw him as a good person and wanted him to live. That’s good enough for me, honestly.

Here I thought while we were getting Fushiguro’s backstory that it was the end for him, but Sukuna pulling out Itadori’s heart was still in the back of my mind. Now…I did say last time that Itadori couldn’t be the one to die because he’s the main character, and technically I’m still right! Yeah, he’s “dead” right now but we all know he’s not dead for real. He’s going to form some pact or something with Sukuna and he’s going to come back and we’ll have the trio again. Am I disappointed by this? Not going to lie, I am. Fake-out deaths have been done a lot, and I’m always of the opinion that you can use these worn-out tropes but at least make the execution interesting. Here, it didn’t work out for me. The fight itself was fine, though Fushiguro making out of it with only a couple scratches is hilarious, but it wasn’t as exciting as previous episodes. Which is sad to say since I felt like this fight was supposed to be huge. But I think it’s the fake-out death that just soured the whole thing for me. I do admit that Itadori willfully switching back knowing he’d die was a great moment, but I guess knowing he’s a main character and this is a shounen that I just knew not to worry.

The surprise was already shown to us at the end, and if I wanted to compare a more successful fake-out death, I think the way Attack on Titan handled it was much better and I feel like the setting really played into that. Not to go into a huge paragraph-long comparison, AOT did well in showing us that while the main characters are strong, they and the others can easily still die. Here, Itadori is just shown to be way too strong and he can make it out of situations, and we’ll see that again.

Another thing that bothers me about this show is the weird balance between the serious and humor. It bugged me before but I feel like it was the worst here. We have someone that just died and then we suddenly get these second-years yelling at each other with funny faces and a sudden announcement of a tournament and a Smash Bros reference. It’s so jarring because not too long before that, Fushiguro and Nobara were both upset but hey here’s a talking Panda. Though I will admit I love that we finally met the panda from the opening running on buildings, and his name is just Panda. Still, the mood change was too abrupt and it was so strange. Itadori’s death did make an impact on them as we see, but it’s hard to care about it when the show is so quick to forget it for a sec.

We also got to see the main villain, and I am curious to see what’ll happen. Also my suspicions were confirmed that something was strange with the mission, because it was all deliberate to get rid of Itadori and they succeeded. It’ll be interesting to see the higher ups, and to see an angry Gojou.

I’m just crossing my arms with this show. I enjoyed the premiere and was looking forward to this one, but I feel like my excitement is getting smaller and smaller with each episode. I’m not disliking it, it remains to be a fine show where it’s still missing something to make it really huge for me. I’m hoping for this next arc to really reel me in, but if not, I might just stop my coverage for it. I don’t like continuing my coverage for shows if my passion for it is gone, so I’m hoping these next few episodes will do something for me.