Jujutsu Kaisen Director Reveals Jujutsu Kaisen 0 Was Originally Planned for the Anime
Jujutsu Kaisen's director revealed that the story from the upcoming Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie was originally planned for the TV anime series! As fans of the anime might not be entirely aware of, Gege Akutami's original manga series didn't actually start out with Yuji Itadori, Sukuna, and the other fan favorites we had followed throughout the first season of the series. It actually all started out with a four chapter limited series that followed Yuta Okkotsu (who has been mentioned in the main series in passing) when his curse was too strong to let run wild.
This prequel series was released some time before Akutami began a full serialization of the series, which kicks off a year after the events of the prequel and references events from it. The prequel is such a big deal, in fact, that it will be the focus of the first feature film for the franchise, Jujutsu Kaisen 0, and it turns out that series and movie director Sunghoo Park had originally wanted to start off the anime with the Yuta Okkotsu prequel series before ultimately deciding to follow the main series for its TV adaptation.
As Park mentioned in a new comment from the newest issue of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine hyping up the upcoming release of the movie (as translated by @soukatsu_ on Twitter) "When I took on the mantle of director, I originally wanted to start the TV anime series with this magnetic story with its fascinating beginnings in Jujutsu Kaisen 0: Tokyo Metropolitan Technical College." He unfortunately doesn't disclose why the anime ultimately went with the main series and saved the prequel for the movie instead, but at least fans will soon be checking out the story for themselves in full form soon.
Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is currently scheduled for a release in Japan on December 24th, but has yet to set an official release date for an international release as of this writing. The film will be tackling the prequel that will be setting up some major things for the future along with filling in some very important moments from the past mentioned in the anime. If the anime started off with the prequel, it could have been a much different kind of story.
What do you think? Would Jujutsu Kaisen's first season have been as effective if it started out with the prequel story at first instead of the movie? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!