In the past, anime has never been seen in theaters. They have created movies as a side story, but never as a “required” watch to understand the plot. Now, however, that narrative seems to be changing in the movie realm. Something that a lot of different animes are doing is releasing movies in theaters. This is something that they are doing to help push the stories they are trying to tell without sacrificing half of a season to do so. Or, they do so in order to provide more background on a character who is important to the story, but is not the main character. The most recent “Jujutsu Kaisen 0” movie falls into the latter category.
The movie in question follows the story of Yuta Okkotsu, a student at the school the anime follows, and how he got pulled into the world of curses and dangers. The movie also follows Yuta’s mentorship with Satoru Gojo, who is known as one of the most powerful characters in the anime’s universe. We then also get to hear the background between Gojo and Suguro Geto, one of the main villains in the anime. This movie also goes into the background of the class above the main character from the first season, which is where the story picks up. The movie is based on the prequel of the “Jujutsu Kaisen” manga.
The movie is very action-based, with fights in each part of the movie and several good emotional scenes. From this point on, there will be spoilers, so please be aware of that! Overall, I would give this movie a 4/5. There were really good moments in the movie, but there were a few unnecessary scenes as well. However, the unnecessary scenes did not detract from the good, hence why there is not a lower score. The art of the movie was beautiful—you can tell the artist put their all into animating this movie. It really does show, especially in the scene right before Yuta’s childhood friend dies. The colors and effects in that scene are still things that I think about—even a week after seeing the movie.
The voice actors really did their best with the characters, and it goes the extra mile to make the movie fantastic. The actors really put the emotions of each character into their voices, and it compliments the animation very well. As mentioned previously, there were a few moments in the movie that I felt like could have been taken out, and the plot would still have been good. Additionally, I thought that the big fight scene was a bit underwhelming. While it was a good scene, the series and other big anime movie’s big fight scenes have been better. These things can greatly impact an action anime, and they do here. However, these things did not take away too much from the film overall, which explains the 4/5 review it received. If you are looking to get into anime, I think that this movie is a good start to the “Jujutsu Kaisen” franchise.
