Jujutsu Kaisen Team Breaks Down the Pressure of Season One’s Finale

Jujutsu Kaisen has become one of the biggest Shonen series of all time, which is especially impressive since the manga created by Gege Akutami only debuted a scant few years ago. With the first season of the anime adaptation helping to promote the franchise and raise it to new heights, MAPPA and the creative minds behind the series recently attended this year’s Anime Expo to answer a number of questions while also diving into the challenges that arose from animating the season finale.

Otsuka, Seko, and Matsutani dove into topics such as the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen, the ever-increasing popularity of the Shonen franchise, as well as the reception of the first film of the franchise, which has pulled in some major receipts from box offices around the world. In our coverage of the latest panel at this year’s Anime Expo, here’s how the creative minds behind Jujutsu Kaisen’s first season broke down the challenges of the season finale:

“The team is now looking at specific scenes to discuss animation. We are looking at Yuki at the end of season one while Nobara takes on her own enemy. The pair go wild as we know, so Manabu is asked about the fight in particular. The CEO says the first thing he considered in this scene was the action and music timing. It was difficult because this scene was from the final episode, so we wanted to close out season one with the absolute best action possible. Seko admits as the writer that he had to work with everyone to include the best elements of this fight in terms of dialogue from the manga. And for Hiroaki, the producer says he has to think about how the action works out here because the manga does focus a lot on the monologues. He had to work with Seko on how far that moment is moved with words rather than action.”

Season Two of Jujutsu Kaisen’s anime is slated to arrive next year, with Studio MAPPA returning following the studio animating both the first season and the prequel film in Jujutsu Kaisen 0. 

The first season finale came to a close with Yuji Itadori and his fellow classmates at Jujutsu Tech capturing another finger of the king of curses, Sukuna, and while this was a major victory, the second season will have plenty more deadly challenges for the supernatural students to tackle.