A Counterintuitive Lesson About Greed from “Jujutsu Kaisen”
Be greedier!
Gege Akutami’s Jujutsu Kaisen is currently my favorite shōnen anime. There are at least 30 million people who’d agree with me, seeing the series’ meteoric rise in popularity. I first picked up the manga in early 2020 and have since been following it on every media. It’s that good.
One major reason that makes Jujutsu Kaisen stand out so much, I believe, is how good it is at turning many storytelling tropes on their head. That is to say, the series takes a lot of commonly established clichés across anime (and all pop culture) and presented them in a completely different way. This gives it a noticeably fresher flavor compared to what’s available on the market.
This is huge because not many shows can be this contrarian and still garner mainstream popularity. Usually, those who attempted the same thing — while still good in their own right — only came across as too edgy and esoteric.
It’s a tall order, but Jujutsu Kaisen passed with flying colors.
To illustrate what I mean, I picked this one example: A lesson about greed.
Greed Is Bad
I recently wrote about this lesson in my Substack newsletter, Fourfold Cure, and I was so inspired by it I thought I’ll write about it…
