Did Jujutsu Kaisen Fumble Its Finale?

Jujutsu Kaisen has officially ended its run with Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump after six years, and now there’s a big question raised over whether or not series creator Gege Akutami brought it to a satisfying end. Jujutsu Kaisen is now one of the biggest modern franchises to come out of Shonen Jump magazine. Not only has the series crossed over 100 million copies of the Jujutsu Kaisen manga sold by the end of its run, but it’s undoubtedly going to leave a void in the manga as many fans will seek out their next major action series to check out each week. 

Thanks to the success of the TV and feature film anime adaptations that have debuted since Jujutsu Kaisen started years ago, the franchise is now at the highest peak it ever will be. That’s ultimately why the ending is going to feel unsatisfying to many. Like some of the other major endings before it that seemed to end right as they were getting popular (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba ending just as the anime franchise was blowing up, for example), Jujutsu Kaisen’s ending feels abrupt as fans aren’t ready to see it go. But it could have planned for its grand finale better to alleviate some of the issues fans have with its final chapters. 

What Happened to Jujutsu Kaisen? 

Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 271 ends with Yuji Itadori, Megumi Fushiguro, and Nobara Kugisaka returning to their normal lives and completing the standard kind of curse elimination mission that they started out with in the beginning of the series. It comes at the tail end of a few epilogue chapters exploring the fallout of the fight against Sukuna, and sees Yuji and the others approach the future with clear path for Jujutsu society to improve overall after everything that’s gone down. It leaves quite a few questions unanswered, and that’s the sticking point that’s hard to ignore. 

Like many Shonen Jump series, Gege Akutami has had to adapt his story week after week. It’s why some plot ideas and teases never seem to come to fruition. Some ideas might have been in development at an earlier stage, then perhaps abandoned due to the ever changing demands of the readers and editorial. It’s a collaborative effort, and it means that a manga story like Jujutsu Kaisen isn’t one straight shot to the end. It ebbs and flows, and often goes in directions that even a creator might not have expected. It’s why in some interviews you’ll hear creators being surprised by the actions their character might take in any given moment. While they might have an ending in mind (which Akutami was said to have had at the start of the year), it’s getting there that is always in flux. 

And this is ultimately why the ending might not be satisfying to many. There was a big shift in the Shijuku Showdown that suddenly seemed to indicate that the series was going to be getting to its ending before Shueisha themselves confirmed this was the case. Kenjaku was introduced early on in the series and seemed like a secondary antagonist to Sukuna. While Sukuna was always set to be the final foe, Kenjaku was going to be a huge enemy on the way to get to that final fight. The Culling Game seemed to bring all of this to the forefront, as Kenjaku was readying to reveal what he had been working on since the Shibuya Incident. 

Jujutsu Kaisen fans had been teased about all of this chaos merging into a massive curse, and it was supposed to be the culmination of Kenjaku’s master plan. But during the Shinjuku Showdown, this was suddenly thrown out in favor of an off-panel Kenjaku death and Sukuna outright telling the audience that the merge just wasn’t going to matter or happen. It’s this throwing out of what seemed like a full plan that made the ending feel like it was coming too fast. Coupled with the sudden announcement of the ending, and it’s clear that it was the path to the ending is what really got fumbled here. 

Is Jujutsu Kaisen’s Ending Bad? 

When looking at the final chapter itself, it’s a fittingly small ending for the series. Jujutsu Kaisen has been one intense fight after another for basically the second half of its run, so slowing down after all of that chaos was really the only way it could all end. Yuji, Megumi, and Nobara have been fighting against their fates to have a happy ending, and they got this in the finale. Gojo wanted them to have a bright future where they could form a whole new path for Jujutsu sorcery, and that’s exactly what Yuji and the others plan to do now that they have returned to their normal lives. 

Sukuna has been defeated, and he’s no longer a threat. That means it’s going to be free of huge conflicts, and fans can rest easy knowing that this main story ends here on a happier note. It’s not the ending that’s an issue, it’s just that fans wanted much more before it ended. The Kenjaku stuff being thrown out was a major drawback, and it was further exacerbated by the uncertainty of the Satoru Gojo situation. Following his defeat, fans had debated back and forth for months over whether or not his fate was truly final. His body was brought back to life as Yuta Okkotsu piloted it like a meat mecha, and it meant that Gojo’s brain ended up getting tossed out or thrown in a jar somewhere. 

Then with the series ending, his final appearance was a spoken flashback scene but fans never get that final conclusive piece of getting to see his body laid at rest. It’s sort of standard for the series to kill off its characters and to not have time to properly mourn them, but it’s supposed to be different in the finale. We see the epilogue chapters giving time for proper send offs to other characters, so one lacking for Gojo feels egregious given how popular he was. But Gojo’s final words have him outright tell Yuji that he hopes he’s forgotten about. It thematically works for the ending, and thus is a proper send off in that way. 

So it’s not the finale itself that you might be struggling to accept, it was the path there. Something in the fight against Sukuna or Kenjaku felt like it was lacking, and it might be because of so much potential left on the table to explore. It’s the death of that potential that fans are mourning, and right now they are angrily taking it out on the final chapter itself. But in time, everyone will move on and see the forest for the trees.