Jujutsu Kaisen 0 Movie Review: Action-Packed and Extremely Fun, But Cursed with Narrative Limitations

The highly anticipated and immensely successful anime film, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 got Its streaming release on Crunchyroll today (21st September, 2022) after months of waiting from fans around the world.

This is a prequel centered on the events which occured a year before the story of the main show. The story introduces Yuta Okkotsu, a teenage kid cursed with a special grade apparition which happens to be a warped demonic manifestation of his childhood lover, Rika, who died in a hit and run 6 years ago.

Yuta gets discovered by Jujutsu High and enrolls in light of his unique condition, determined to free Rika and end his curse.

I'll try to keep this review short and straight to the point, given the fact that I really don't have that much to say about this movie.

Firstly, the greatest aspect of the film, no surprise to anyone is the fights.

Sunghoo Park has made quite a name for himself in directing exhilirating and superbly choreographed action sequences as prevalent in his preceeding works, The God of Highschool and the original Jujutsu Kaisen.

The fight scenes in this film were truly electrifying. Beautifully animated and with enough visual flare to immaculately represent the different fighting styles, sorcery techniques and paranormal mechanisms in this bizarre world.

Like the main series, It's impossible not to get blown away by the stunning battles in this work, as with great sound tracks and even better application of Sakuga, every one of them was as thrilling and visually incredible as intended.

This makes this film a perfect fit for anyone looking for something action-centric and entertaining to spice up their day, or to motivate them to check out the main series.

But even with its stunning fights and despite being a movie, its overall animation and production value isn't that special in comparison with the series.

In fact, in terms of the cinematography, aesthetics and fantasy representations, the anime has a lot more to offer, given its wider narrative scope than this film.

This isn't exactly a bad thing, but to the anime fans expecting the usual overblown visual glow-up that's characteristic of high budget anime films, better to lower your expectations. I mean, come on guys, the "Hollow Purple" and "Infinite Void" releases by Gojo in the anime series are more visually stunning than any sequence in this movie.

Now going into the story, as much as I acknowledge the effort put into telling a supernatural shounen story weaved with a tragic romance, its narrative value is really limited.

As a shounen with a new protagonist to make an impression, having Yuta's entire past summarized into a single flashback that only serves to clarify his goal and not his identity doesn't make him anything less of a bland and shallow main character.

We never get a clear picture of his character in terms of his upbringing, who and where his parents are and why he's as altruistic as he is.

As a main character, Yuta just felt like a walking trope, without any authentic character feature beyond his crippling predicament and/or elaborate backstory to back up his passionate nature.

Its even worse as a romance. Basically, all we got of the love story between Yuta and Rika was that one clip of their childhood with them making a pre-mature engagement/promise before Rika's death. One would think after seeing that clip in the trailers that the movie would give us more pieces of their love story, highlighting how they came to love each other and the time they spent together before the big twist, but the film failed at establishing both Rika and the romance as notable elements of it's narrative.

This makes it virtually impossible to draw an empathic reaction from seeing Rika finally pass on, or feel captivated by the thought of Yuta losing the love of his life.

Basically, it lacked the depth in it's writing that would've made it as emotionally resonant and impactful as it looked to be.

The pacing certainly didn't help matters. Despite being shallow, it could've worked as a progressive story, if only they laid it out elaborately. Yuta's evolution from a cursed broken kid to a delightful, talented new Jujutsu Sorcerer was all too sudden and blunt. Particularly the way he gained mastery of his cursed fighting abilities, used techniques and tools that were either brought to him on the spot or not at all.

Yuta summoning Rika intentionally for the first time without any prior attempt or training, Gojo giving him a sword and a cursed energy control exercise and him mastering it on his very first try, Yuta using a move only introduced in the main story, "Black Flash" along with the battle prowess and bucket of techniques he displayed during the final face-off in the film weren't shown to be the results of any lecture or training he received in this film. 

Despite the main anime story's existence and how well it presented its world and all concepts surrounding sorcery and curses, it's the job of a prequel to take us through a similar enlightenment to solidify it as a complete story in it's own right, even though most of it's viewers will probably be fans of the main work. This film left out important bits of information relevant to the story that will only be known by fans of the anime/manga series which makes it limited in appeal.

It basically did a poor job of providing proper education to both Yuta and unfamiliar fans to the laws and structure of it's world.

Its bad pacing really impeded it from being as thrilling as it could've been.

A declaration of war by the antagonist with a date given for his big move, and such an attack beginning in the very next scene without any show of preparation from both sides, leaving no room for anticipation or proper film transition between it's 2nd and 3rd act.

 Flimsy information dumps didn't help fill this hole, and limiting the runtime to an hour and 45 minutes was basically self-sabotage as it failed to lay out any part of it's story properly in this given time frame.

These are basic problems that are non existent in well made prequel movies like No Game No Life: Zero, that re-established its lore, but in a pre-historic action filled world and Fruits Basket: Prelude that told an immensely captivating love story centering the parents of the main series protagonist.

Both stories served to fulfill both old and new fans of their respective franchises.

The film also had a lot of cameos from original characters and weapons in the series which only further serves the familiar fans of the main story, but isn't exactly a problematic feature in the film.

The way it did represent its characters aside Yuta was quite commendable.

Particularly the antagonist, Suguru Geto was a stand out feature of this story.

Aside his magnetic personality, the accentuation of his goal despite it just being supernatural eugenics, while also establishing his friendship with Gojo was a definite redeeming factor of this movie. 

He was given a bizarre cursed ability to match his twisted personality, and the power he displayed in this film made him a formidable villain, especially on the scale of typical anime arc and film villains.

Guess I ended up saying much about the film after all.

All in all, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 was a pretty enjoyable film. It's got a great premise and some of the most exhilirating battle sequences I've seen all year, but it doesn't have quite the intended impact due to its limited and contained narrative.

Weighing the good and bad aspects of the film, I give it a stable 7/10. 

Given the fact that most cinema viewers and fans of the anime series come for the action, it'll definitely satisfy a lot of people, but it wasn't at all a perfect movie.

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