Jujutsu Kaisen Creator Explains How Bleach and Naruto Inspired the Manga

Jujutsu Kaisen‘s creator opened up about how Bleach and Naruto ended up influencing the first chapter of their manga series! Jujutsu Kaisen is now in the midst of the Shinjuku Showdown arc, and each new chapter of the manga has been more intense than the last. But at the same time, the franchise has also never been bigger as the success of the anime has pushed its worldwide recognition to a whole new kind of level with collaborations with the likes of McDonald’s, Megan Thee Stallion, Fanta and more. So it’s the perfect time to celebration how far the manga has come.

Jujutsu Kaisen has launched a special exhibition in Japan showing off new looks at the manga, and with it comes some extra behind the scenes information from series creator Gege Akutami himself. With the creator answering questions about his inspirations (as translated by @soukatsu_ on X), he also elaborated more on how the manga was ultimately inspired by Tite Kubo’s Bleach and Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto for the first chapter of the manga and the dynamic between Yuji and Sukuna. 

How Bleach and Naruto Inspired Jujutsu Kaisen

“In Naruto, it’s the relationship between the main character Naruto Uzumaki and the Nine-Tailed Fox,” Jujutsu Kaisen series creator Gege Akutami began when opening up about the connections between Naruto and Jujutsu Kaisen. “For Itadori, it’s Sukuna and for Okkotsu, it’s Rika. In Volume 0, the story ended in reconciliation like in Naruto, but I thought Jujutsu Kaisen needed a different approach, so I tried to portray Sukuna as someone completely incompatible [with Itadori].”

As for the Bleach side of things, Akutami mentioned how Yuji was inspired to be a more driven character to answer the call to action much like Ichigo was in that series, “For Bleach, it’s the story framework. The protagonist Ichigo becomes a shinigami of his own volition after getting swept up in an unexpected incident. I was really conscious of the ‘of his own will’ aspect in Jujutsu Kaisen when Itadori gets the cursed object.” 

Jujutsu Kaisen has worn its Shonen Jump manga inspirations on its sleeve often noting connections both in and out of the series’ universe, so to find out that these connections bury even deeper into the core of how the manga first began certainly is fun to see considering how much of a hit that Jujutsu Kaisen has become these days.