Highlights
- Jujutsu Kaisen Episode 43 delivers a masterclass in pacing, a perfectly orchestrated episode from beginning to end.
- Nobara Kugisaki steals the spotlight in this episode, showcasing her strength and resilience as she battles Mahito and confronts her past.
- The empty chairs at the end symbolize Nobara’s previously guarded nature and her transformation, as she finds acceptance and belonging among her fellow students at Jujutsu High.
- The female cast takes a major hit as it loses the best and most iconic of them.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Jujutsu Kaisen Episode 43, “Right and Wrong, Part 2”, now streaming on Prime Video.
The anime adaptation has now reached one of the defining moments of Jujutsu Kaisen. Right and Wrong in its two episodes has probably done more psychological damage to fans than most other shōnen series. Painful deaths aside, Part 2 was an absolute masterclass of pacing. While in both episodes some style changes were made from the manga, there is clearly one better than the other.
Once again, the direction of Jujutsu Kaisen’s anime adaptation deserves a lot of praise for wanting to add their vision and be successful with it. So does the animation that, despite all the conversation around the production and some alarming statements about the last few episodes of the season, it came through once again. A fight doesn’t need to carry explosions and massive destruction to be spectacular.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Can Nobara Return?
Nobara’s return from death in JJK could happen before the end of the series.
Natural Enemies
This episode was all about Nobara Kugisaki, from beginning to end. A few stellar battle scenes between Yuji and Mahito might distract from the core of the story, but it was always about her. The arguably most charismatic student of Jujutsu High wanted her shining moment, that memorable battle that would improve her rank and popularity as a sorcerer.
Lucky her, at least at first, she ran into the one Mahito copy that couldn’t touch her soul. Even more, she proved to be, alongside Yuji, Mahito’s natural enemy. Thanks to her cursed technique, Resonance, she could directly attack Mahito’s soul through his copy, which gave Yuji an opening to chain a powerful attack that really turned the tables for them. However, it wasn’t going to be as stereotypical as two one-on-one battles when Mahito could always run and put himself back together.
Back In 2009
Right when Mahito wonders if that one touch was enough to kill her, a flashback to her childhood pops-up. Pretty much a death sentence at this point for fans of Jujutsu Kaisen, but still not enough to diminish the impact of a great story. Her life and death are connected by a narrative thread that starts from Fumi’s perspective. Nobara’s one and only childhood friend was almost antagonistic to her.
Rather shy and bullied just for wearing a blue backpack in a small town where everyone wore red or black. Their friendship resonates stronger than her cursed technique. But as wholesome as Fumi’s relationship with Nobara is, it gets even better after Saori comes into play. Like Fumi, she moved out of the city to the outskirts. Although she was much older than them, they managed to establish a very special bond.
The people living in that area are not especially nice to strangers or react appropriately to outsiders. Saori’s time with them was cut short due to some episodes of vandalism and an obvious rejection their family suffered after moving there. Surely, Jujutsu Kaisen doesn’t portray living in the country very positively. The clear preference for Tokyo or big cities in general might be questionable, but in this case, it does a good job of setting a character with so many different layers. Her background story sums up as a great parenthesis between the usual Nobara and pre-death clarity Nobara.
Broken Promises
For one, this long flashback shows an unseen side of her. As tough as she always seemed to be on the outside, she cared, loved and cried as much as anyone. Her character is built upon the misconception of how other people would always treat her a certain way. Obsessed with perfection and appearances but at the same time aware of her own faults and limitations.
When someone like Saori comes in her life, it changes things completely. It breaks down her idea of how people are, which was based on her hometown, and opens her wish to one day leave this place. It only increases when Saori ends up doing so, leaving her behind heartbroken. When she finally gets a chance to move to Tokyo, she just switched roles. Nobara is the one leaving Fumi behind.
Their promise proved to be empty. Saori, who they looked up to, never gave them their contact information and was now working at an office collecting overtime, far from the person she wanted them to think she was. The people Nobara met were also quite different from that version of Saori, acting as the older sister. And for Fumi, the one that was left behind twice, she will never have a chance to see them again. The hardships of friendship are hardly overcome by how the three of them approach it. And when Nobara finally realized it, it was already too late.
Empty Chairs
This analogy hurt almost as much as the tragic ending. Also present in the manga but perfected in the anime, this blank space full of chairs is the representation of Kugisaki’s state of mind. It was always hard for her to let someone else into her life. Perhaps the circumstances of where he grew up or her personality, or a combination of both, but she never trusted in anyone.
Little did she know that she would find herself so welcomed in Jujutsu High by all the other students and Satoru, who, alongside Fumi and Saori, were the only ones in her mind during those last moments. Her family was never mentioned in detail, so it would be easy to assume that it wasn’t the best of relationships either, if any. Still, she came to a surprising realization. Besides leaving all those chairs empty, she had no regrets, she found the right people that managed to break through her shell.
In the end, it is those who she met that made her reshape her own idea of her life. It was they who bore the biggest importance in her growth as a person glad that she finally found her place, and found the perfect people to be around. Nobara Kugisaki was the best among a great cast of female characters. However, her death creates a clear turning point for them, as more of the female cast will take a secondary role in some way, working against the praise the series received early on.
Delusion
The carefully orchestrated ending consisting of just a few seconds seals a perfectly paced episode. With just silence as a background, Nobara shares with Yuji, but looking directly at the spectator her last words. A set of words is made sure to be shared with everyone. Her life was a good life. The violent sound as she collapses to the ground would break the most indifferent spectator, followed by a shot portrayed above that fades away into a black screen.
Right before the ending kicked in, but during the darkness, Yuji managed to whisper a single word: Kugisaki? It seems like they learned their lesson when a lot of criticism flew their way for the Yuji scene featuring the opening music. For the darkest of moments, silence will even multiply the feeling, better than any song, especially that song. As Yuji’s life encounters another spiral of extreme suffering, his delusional reaction seemed like the only way to go for this scene.
After this, Yuji witnessed how Mahito took away the lives of Junpei Yoshino, Kento Nanami and Nobara Kugisaki. All he could do was stand there and watch, every single time. His anger has been diluted with every time, being replaced by sorrow, impotence and a constant feeling of wanting to help everyone but coming up short. Perhaps it was never about stopping suffering, but embracing it, for the life of a sorcerer is always and will always be cursed.
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