Highlights
- Jujutsu Kaisen pays homage to various shōnen series through its character designs, settings, and overall story, making it a monument to the genre.
- The anime adaptation of Jujutsu Kaisen goes above and beyond in referencing and paying tribute to classic and contemporary anime and manga, including popular series like Evangelion and Dragon Ball.
- Despite its clear influences, Jujutsu Kaisen maintains its own identity and stands out through its unique storytelling, thematic exploration, and perspective on societal issues.
It’s no secret that anime loves to pay homage to its peers, be it poses, finishing moves, or entire character tropes, making it somewhat easy to track a rough lineage of a project’s influences. Jujutsu Kaisen is one such story that loves to reference shōnen, both classic and contemporary, and the anime has gone even further, turning the series into a monument to the genre.
Written and illustrated by Gege Akutami, Jujutsu Kaisen began publishing in Shōnen Jump on March 5, 2018, receiving an anime just two years later from Studio MAPPA. In 2021, the Jujutsu Kaisen Official Fanbook featured an interview featuring not only Akutami but Bleach author Tite Kubo, wherein the two discussed manga as well as the works that inspired them.
The Origins of Jujutsu Kaisen
As a genre, shōnen is constantly defined by iteration and subversion, where tropes and concepts are reused and remixed. Even the most subversive stories that play with darker themes or mature content tend to borrow from predecessors that employed similar storytelling tactics to subvert then-established trends. This could be a criticism of the genre as much as it is a strength, and it depends largely on the execution.
To this point, it doesn’t take very long to see the traces of other popular shōnen in Jujutsu Kaisen. The main trio alone bears a resemblance – at least aesthetically – to Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura. Even Gojo’s design looks as if Kakashi was put through a Hunter x Hunter filter. Meanwhile, the modern setting and the occult secret society working behind the scenes of this seemingly ordinary world evoke Bleach or YuYu Hakusho.
Frankly, this is nothing compared to the anime/manga references offered by the characters themselves, which are only a fraction of the references to film and media in general across the series. But the love shown for anime, in particular, contributes to the idea of Jujutsu Kaisen as a shōnen for people who grew up on shōnen.
In their interview with Tite Kubo, Akutami themselves described the three stories that inspired them to become a mangaka: Bleach, Hunter x Hunter, and perhaps most interesting, Evangelion. Understanding this, one can see traces of all three in the characters, the power system/scaling, and the mythology behind Jujutsu Kaisen.
This interview is as endearing as it is informative because it not only reveals how authors like Kubo influenced Akutami, but how both of them were inspired by Yoshihiro Togashi. Togashi, who wrote both YuYu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter, was a big factor in both mangaka’s work, leading to a humorous exchange when Akutami and Kubo had met some years prior.
Back then you told me, “I started a new manga that’s inspired by Bleach,” and I replied, “Don’t you mean ‘by Mr. Togashi’?” [laughs]
-Tite Kubo, to Gege Akutami
How Jujutsu Kaisen’s Anime Pays Homage To… Everything
It’s one thing to observe the references present in the original story, but it’s a whole other can of worms to look at how the anime has gone a step beyond. Season 2’s production was not without hardship, as has been covered extensively, but it still might be one of the most impressive feats in anime this year, and one eager to celebrate the medium as a whole.
Not a single episode of the Shibuya Incident seemed to pass without people recognizing homages to the classics. Episode 31 was one huge love letter to the mecha genre, from Evangelion to Gurren Lagann, and were it not for the ghosting/dimming that plagued the TV airing, it might have been perfect.
Once the titular incident finally began in earnest, the floodgates were practically nonexistent. My Hero Academia, Bleach, Hunter x Hunter, Naruto, Rurouni Kenshin, Birdy the Mighty, Hajime no Ippo, the original JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime, and so much more are referenced. This is without even mentioning references to non-anime works. In Episode 37, Yuji’s fistfight against Choso even starts with a callback to the live-action film The Raid 2.
If Episode 31 weren’t enough of a celebration of mecha, Season 2’s finale feels like one big homage to Evangelion, at least in terms of tone and pacing. It’s made even more perfect by Shinji Ikari’s voice actor, Megumi Ogata, voicing Yuta. The screens behind which the mysterious higher-ups speak to the characters evoke the Seele monoliths that Gendo would speak to. By the end of the episode, Jujutsu Kaisen starts to feel like a less sci-fi/more mystical take on Eva.
How Jujutsu Kaisen Stands Alone
When people talk about inspiration and influence concerning storytelling, it can often be forgotten how subconscious and unintentional some of these similarities can be. On some level, every story is an amalgam of the many stories that influenced the storyteller, and in a collaborative process like animation, there are only more ingredients added to that blend.
Some look at the aforementioned callbacks and references and accuse this series of merely copying other successes. However, it is to Jujutsu Kaisen‘s credit that, despite its increasingly apparent origins coming through on screen, it never feels like mere mimicry. There is an identity and tone that define the series, given ample texture by such inspired elements. Akutami has gone on record discouraging young creators from outright copying another creator’s identity.
I consider folks like Kubo-sensei and Chainsaw Man’s Tatsuki Fujimoto-sensei to have strong identities… Since their creations are products of the instincts and talents that come with having such a strong identity, I’d only hurt myself if I tried to copy their methods. That’s why I go out of my way to avoid this pitfall. I’ve always loved reading Bleach, but I know that imitating it would be the death of me. Ultimately, I can’t copy it because it’s too unique. So whenever I hear people say that my series reminds them of Bleach, I hesitantly reply with something like, “Well, sure, I guess… But…”
In the past, we’ve written about the philosophy of Jujutsu Kaisen, be it its perspective on society or adulthood, and these are the qualities that ultimately help the series stand out. Again, shōnen is about iteration and subversion, and finding a way to tell new stories while building hype through familiar frameworks. However, the extent of the anime’s penchant for paying tribute is not without some significance.
Jujutsu Kaisen feels progressively more like a turning point in popular shōnen, where the generation that grew up with the genre is now the one leading the way forward. Thus, these productions are increasingly referential, captained by creative teams that bridge the gap between those who have been inspired, and those that did the inspiring.
Sources: Edomonogatari
Leave a Reply