Jujutsu Kaisen: descent into disgusting
sadism and brutality for no reason at all
There’s nothing wrong with violence and brutality in anime; it just has to serve the story effectively and appropriately. That’s why I didn’t have any problem with episode one of Goblin Slayer: the rape wasn’t shown, and it made clear at the beginning what the stakes were.
Jujutsu Kaisen, in episode 6, fails completely to get the scene in the diner right. They no doubt think they are showing the true nature of the demons and what the stakes are for our protagonists, but there is nothing to prepare viewers that the show might go in this direction. It’s been Bleach-esque from the start. The demon in episode 1 was horrible, yet its victims survived.
Out of the blue, and for no real narrative purpose, we get this:
Slaughtering schoolgirls brutally and horribly.
This slaughter has nothing to do with the story; nothing. The people making Jujutsu Kaisen seemed to think turning a bunch of innocent people into human torches was a grand way to show how bad the demons are.
Let’s not forget: In episode 2, our hero fought a stuffed kappa! Cutesy was the narrative impact here. And now this:
Let’s have people terrified for their lives — and then torch them! Whee!!
So the implied rape in Goblin Slayer was unacceptable, and this is ok? How is this less horrible? I was watching this show because it was enjoyable, it had some nice twists to the usual clichés and some characters I found appealing.
I wish they’d managed to make this dark turn in a way that felt like it was in keeping with the narrative, but it was simply slammed into the story just for shock value. They let us stay with this woman long enough to hope she’d be the lone survivor, and then they brutalized her as well.
Sick. I’ve dropped Jujutsu Kaisen, of course. It’s a lesson into how to ruin a perfectly good anime with very bad judgment.
