The new artwork shows the series’ protagonist, Yuji Itadori, a high school freshman, battling the maniacal Mahito. The “special class” curse served as Yuji’s main enemy in the show’s first season, with Mahito forcing Yuji to kill his own friend after he used his “human transfiguration” powers to turn the boy into a monster. This deadly clash began in Episode 9 of Season 1, titled “Small Fry and Reverse Retribution,” which will air again on May 29 in Japan.
The series follows Yuji, a high school student who becomes the receptacle of an ancient curse named Ryomen Sukuna, who was once one of the greatest and most feared wizards in the world of jujutsu. With Sukuna’s twenty fingers (he had four hands) having been severed and sealed, the only way to completely eliminate the threat is for a compatible vessel to ingest all of the fingers and then be exorcised. While searching for the rest of Sukuna’s fingers, Yuji becomes the target of a group of Sentient Curses – monsters born from humanity’s negative emotions – including the immature but sadistic Mahito, who tricks Yuji into using Sukuna’s dangerous powers. .
The first season of the Jujutsu Kaisen anime aired in 2020 and was produced by studio MAPPA, best known for its work on Attack on Titan. MAPPA also released the hit prequel film, Jujutsu Kaisen 0, which became the fourth highest-grossing anime film of all time in the United States. As of April 2022, the film has sold 9.5 million tickets, grossing over 13 billion yen ($108 million) since its local release in December 2022.
The series is based on the best-selling manga by Gege Akatami, currently serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump and released in North America under Viz Media, with the 16th volume dropping June 21. The manga also had excellent sales, with 65 million copies in circulation as of April 2022, and it became the best-selling manga of 2021 in Japan, with 30 million copies sold in that year alone. The series has been consistently praised by critics for its storytelling and lore, with comparisons to Tite Kubo’s Bleach and Sui Ishida’s Tokyo Ghoul.