The world, characters and story of Jujutsu Kaisen all contribute to the show’s potential to be one of the best action anime series in recent years. A lot of that potential goes back to the powers. The abilities of the characters are not tied down by any limitations of categories or elements, but rather the character’s strength and strategic prowess. Along with this, there is no limit to how many different abilities there can be; any new character in this world is most likely going to have a new ability that is going to change the perspective of the characters and the story arc.
These abilities are not just used to serve amazing fight scenes; they can tell us about the character themselves. Mahito is a character who has the ability to contort and change the body of anyone he touches. With this ability, he says himself that he is the manifestation of humans' hatred toward each other and how awful humanity can be. He embodies this mindset fully in the famous “Shibuya incident” arc, during which he runs around a subway station with the character Yuji chasing him. During this chase, Mahito just starts contorting and literally popping people like balloons to break the mental fortitude of the character Yuji, because Yuji always wants to save as many people as possible.
Since this is an action anime series, there are a lot of fights. Some people say that Jujutsu Kaisen is carried by its fights and abilities only and has no real character development, but the fights and abilities are the character development. For example, when the character, Megumi, is in a life or death situation, he always thinks to himself, “The only way to win this fight is to sacrifice myself to save everyone.” He has the ability to summon different monsters to his command, but there is one monster he can’t control and it’s the most powerful in his arsenal. His plan would be to summon it and have it take out himself and whoever his opponent is. So, while Megumi is in a particularly difficult fight, and he gets hit particularly hard, he goes into that mindset of sacrificing himself again until he remembers something his teacher told him: “You believe that in the worst case, you can resolve everything at the cost of your life. But at that point, forget about me. You’ll never even measure up to Nanami. Dying to win, and risking death to win… are completely different, Megumi.” With this little change in mindset, Megumi is able to basically just have confidence in the strength of his power and ability, and is able to unlock one of the most powerful abilities any character can have: the Domain Expansion. With this ability he is able to win the fight with a new mindset for future battles.
The abilities can also be a gauge for how the character has developed. The best example of this is Maki Zen’in. She has no “ability” per-say, but in exchange for no ability, she was born with superhuman levels of strength and speed, almost to the degree of the most feared member of the Zen’in clan, Toji Zen’in. He too, was born like Maki, but had unimaginable strength and speed on another level that no one had ever seen. The only reason Maki isn’t like Toji is because her twin sister’s cursed energy is dragging her down (twins are treated like one person in the jujutsu world). But because Toji had absolutely zero cursed energy, he was gifted with the absolute limit of the human body’s physical prowess.
As the story progresses, Maki returns to the Zen’in estate to collect weapons. Instead she finds her sister who is beaten close to death by the Zen’in clan. After defeating her sister’s abuser, they find a safe space to rest, and that’s where Maki’s sister comes up with an idea. Her power is the ability to create anything she wants as long as it’s not too big or complex, so she uses the last of her strength to create a special sword for Maki. As a result, she passes away. As Maki’s sister dies, so does the cursed energy tying her down. With her sister’s death, Maki is now fueled with more hate towards the Zen’in clan and is at the same level of strength as Toji.
Throughout the entire series, there are even more examples of the abilities being used as story and character tools more than just cool add-ons to fights. And the amazing thing is, all of these examples are from relatively early in the story, so just imagine what else the author, Gege Akutami, will be able to come up with next.
(Photo courtesy of: IMDb)