Jujutsu Kaisen and Breaking the Fourth Wall

Let's talk about an anime series today,

Jujutsu Kaisen opens up on the line of every shonen anime, and for the uninitiated, shonen is a genre within the anime and manga series "aimed at a young male audience typically characterized by action-filled plots."

So basically, every popular anime like "Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z and Naruto" series are classified under the same. And since that's over, let's come back to the topic at hand.

So what makes this one stand out?

The plots, the character histories, and the myths within anime are far superior to their contemporary mediums; maybe that's why some of the prolific filmmakers and writers, like, for example, the Wachowskis ( Matrix series & Sense8) and Quentin Tarantino swear by them!

But I fell in love with Jujutsu Kaisen is in episode 6 titled "Watching Movies"!

Unlike other Shonen Anime, where the protagonist is trained by a quirky master in martial arts or supernatural techniques, here Satoru Gojo just gives Yuji Itadori (the hero) a bunch of movies to watch!

Here Yuji's initial excitement breaks down, and he falls down disappointed. Right then, the magic happens. He breaks the Fourth Wall between his world and all the other anime as he sighs that he thought he would learn a Rasengan, sword dance, or Kamehame but had to settle for this!

Essentially that was the prologue to the brutal realism Jujutsu Kaisen began to embrace!

This cemented the idea that this series is actually happening in our world and our timeline! And thus started the pointers,

The movies referenced in the series include Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Juggernaut, The Human Centipede, and so on. These little details brought me a bit closer to the author of the series and the audience who made the series a great hit!

It brought me a tiny hope that inherently across the globe, we are all watching more or less the same movies, shows, and series, hears the same music, and reads the same books!

The series also showcases the brutal honesty which the Millennials and Gen Z crave for. A perfect example of this is within a quote by one of the characters.

"You've faced several life-or- deaths situations, but that does not make you an adult. Finding more fallen hairs on your pillows, watching your favourite stuffed bread disappear from the convenience store,the accumulation of those small despairs, that's what makes a person an adult" - Kento Nanami.

These hard hitting dialogues, though framed to be funny, make us think twice, right.

Our generation, though products of globalization, or Hollywood, are really coming together and maybe are a bit more closer to understanding each other better.

(I don't know whether it's a ploy right out of some of the popular conspiracy theories, but that's a topic for another day) .

I'll be blunt, and It feels damn good! Otherwise, I wouldn't have written this much!

I hope you all give it a chance, and it's on Netflix

— Dan E Kuriakose