Jujutsu Kaisen is a dark, action-packed shonen anime series that helped set a new standard in many ways for the anime industry. It has a cool combat system, slick animation, compelling drama, and most of all, wonderful characters, such as protagonist Yuji Itadori and his mentor, Satoru Gojo. Along the way, Jujutsu Kaisen also set a new standard for its female characters.
Improving the depiction of female characters in shonen anime is an ongoing process, and sometimes, progress can be slow and erratic. But Jujutsu Kaisen, at least, is going full steam ahead. The story makes strong, cool, and substantial female characters a fact of life, and Season 2 is poised to keep that up for secondary characters like Utahime, Shoko Ieiri, and Mei Mei. Nobara and Maki got the ball rolling for Jujutsu Kaisen’s girls in Season 1, and now a new female trio can keep it going.
Jujutsu Kaisen Had A Good Start For Its Female Characters
The inclusion of three major female characters in Jujutsu Kaisen’s second season isn’t a last-minute course correction or a novelty; it’s the follow-up to Season 1’s excellent progress with the series’ female characters. The anime’s focus on Shoko, Utahime, and Mei Mei is simply continuing what Season 1 started with the popular characters Nobara Kugisaki and Maki Zenin. Both of them, Nobara in particular, are already iconic of the series and are some of the best examples of modern shonen girls done right. Those two characters fit snugly into the narrative alongside their male counterparts Satoru Gojo, Yuji Itadori, and Megumi Fushiguro, and Jujutsu Kaisen wouldn’t be the same without them.
There was no special trick to making Nobara and Maki such great shonen girls in Jujutsu Kaisen’s first season, either. They simply got the same treatment that male shonen characters take for granted: being tastefully and substantially written, while having clearly defined goals, interests, and vulnerabilities without being a token character. The anime also gave Nobara, Maki, and the other girls ample screen time and wrote them to be a substantial part of the story, and not just obligatory eye candy or excuses for fan service.
These Jujutsu Kaisen girls also have real, in-universe reasons to strive to catch up to the boys. Unlike Sakura Haruno in Naruto, for example, Nobara and Maki aren’t written to be weak, token love interests—in other words, it’s not the author who’s keeping them down. The sorcerer world is a tradition-bound and regressive one where girls are considered second-class and have unfairly high expectations set for them, and characters like Nobara, the Zenin sisters, and Momo Nishimiya are painfully aware of it. These girls are fighting back to prove their worth, and to prove that sorcerer girls deserve better than this. Now, Jujutsu Kaisen’s second season may keep up this excellent female representation, though not necessarily in the same way.
Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2’s Girls Have Great Promise
Jujutsu Kaisen’s second season has begun with a flashback taking place about 12–13 years before the series’ main events, meaning Yuji’s sorcerer squad is swapped for teenage versions of adult characters like Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, and Shoki Ieiri, among others. Episode 1 started off with its female characters in particular, establishing a new squad made up of the tsundere Utahime Iori, her mentor Mei Mei, and the aspiring doctor Shoki Ieiri. The three of them comfortably took command of the narrative, with Utahime and Mei Mei launching an investigation into an abandoned mansion where a curse was believed to reside. The two of them cleverly saw through the curse’s trap; eventually, the trap was destroyed and the day was saved, albeit with serious collateral damage.
This sorcerer mission was a classic Jujutsu Kaisen experience, from its mingled humor and horror to the character development, and the three girls took center stage. That may not seem like much on its own, but it’s still promising for the rest of Season 2. Based on the first season’s narrative with its female characters, Mei Mei, Utahime, and Shoko will easily keep pace with their male counterparts and prove their worth in this story, and strive for a world where they don’t even have to.
Jujutsu Kaisen fans have every reason to believe that these three girls will get substantial character arcs in Season 2, and the first episode was a fine starting point. Fans also know for a fact that the three of them will survive and make something of themselves, so Season 2 can easily bridge the gap between past and present and give Mei Mei, Utahime, and Shoko solid character arcs while fleshing them out. They were just background characters in Season 1 as adults, but here in Season 2, they are students, and that means they have ample room and time to grow, just like Yuji in Season 1.
Why Shonen Anime Needs Girls Like Jujutsu Kaisen’s
For Jujutsu Kaisen’s own sake, it’s encouraging and highly satisfying to see so many substantial female character arcs, putting them at parity with the series’ male stars. Beyond Jujutsu Kaisen’s own story, these female character arcs also do the entire anime industry some good, mostly by setting a good example and normalizing such great female characters—as much as a single anime series can, at least. Jujutsu Kaisen cannot transform the entire industry on its own, but it still plays a vital role in improving female representation in modern shonen. There’s already a trend underway to make shonen girls more compelling and move away from shallow, regressive tropes like token cheerleaders or damsels in distress, though progress can be slow and erratic at times.
Even today, with characters like Nobara Kugisaki, Chainsaw Man’s Power, and My Hero Academia‘s Ochaco Uraraka around, some anime series are lagging behind and diluting this progress somewhat. A conspicuous example is Lemon Irvine from Mashle, a comedy-action series from the Spring 2023 season. True, most supporting characters in Mashle were thinly conceived and written, but that’s doubly bad news for Lemon, who was absolutely a token shonen girl, like something from the 1980s. Now is not the time for the industry to drop the ball with its female characters; this trend for the better needs everything it can get to keep moving, and characters like Jujutsu Kaisen’s Nobara and Utahime are leading the way.
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