Jujutsu Kaisen S01E04-05

Okay, three more Jujutsu Kaisen episodes! I'll try to be a bit faster and more concise with this, so as to get through the first season in a timely manner!

Two episodes this time, mostly because I talked a lot! 

Episode 4:

• The Cursed Womb episode! I do enjoy that we just immediately go to our heroes in action.
• We also get Kiyotaka Ijichi, the long-suffering non-combatant assistant manager, who Yuji just casually dismisses as being not particularly useful. He does deliver an explanation about the rankings of Curses, going from 'can be beaten by a baseball bat' to 'you need a tank'. I love that that's the description that goes on.
• In addition to being a good little world-building sequence, I do like that this is also a nod to later on when Sukuna mocks the idea that he and the other Special-Grade Curse, showing the sheer disparity between the two. 
• I do really like the comedic bits as Yuji and Nobara does the little dance-around thing in panic when they realize they're in an 'Innate Domain', and them going all goo-goo over Megumi's Divine Dog. 
  
• I do also really like the little dilemma with Megumi about rescuing or even gathering the body of the victims in the detention center. It's something that gets ignored in favour of simple survival, but Yuji sympathizes with the crying mother outside... while Megumi straight-up states that he 'never even intended to save them in the first place', since the son of the crying mother is actually a repeat drunk-driver that killed a little girl.
• ...and I do like that it does go both ways. Drunk drivers are scum, but they don't deserve to die so brutally or 'not be saved'. Conversely, Yuji trying to lug around a corpse in the midst of a Domain is a stupid thing to do. 
• It's a great, fun speedy pacing that in the midst of this ideological debate in the midst of a mission against a powerful assailant with unknown powers, suddenly Nobara just casually gets dragged away through the floor, Megumi's Divine Dog is already cut up and decapitated, and Mr. Special Grade (these Curses don't really have names, huh?) shows up. 
• And so ends the tale of Yuji's butcher knife, which I didn't even mention in my commentary for the previous episode. Oh, and so's Yuji's hand. 
• It's... it's rather sad, Nobara's fate and sidelining in this episode, especially considering what happens next. She's stuck fighting a bunch of floating masks, fights and kills some of them offscreen, and then she's nearly eaten by a mushroom monster and giant creepy mouth-creature before Megumi saves her. 
• I do also find Yuji's frustration with his (honestly almost immediate) realization that he's powerless and this isn't how he wants to die to be pretty well-written. Again, the frankly fast pace and escalation between the 'beginner' gauntlet of the first couple of missions to this Demon Womb mission is pretty jarring.
• Yuji tries to hold back the Special Curse while Megumi goes to save Nobara (we get to see the debut of Nue and Frog), and it's... it's rather interesting how this series really does try to deconstruct the 'evil superpowered berserk side'. It's something that has shown up in so many different shonen anime that it's became a bit of a tired trope, but I really do like that even Sukuna himself tells Yuji that, no, he's not just going to 'berserk' and only happen to attack the bad guys. Sukuna actually retains his mind, and while Yuji is originally shown to be able to wrestle back control, Sukuna's not going to make it a secret that he's going to try to make things as difficult as possible for the humans.
• And even when Sukuna is unleashed after the other heroes escape, Sukuna's first instinct is to actually team up with the enemy. It's just that the Special Grade's kind of a lunatic that dances around, senses the danger in Sukuna and starts attacking him. 
• I love that in the process of blocking the attacks, Sukuna just forgets and instinctively heals Yuji's body, getting irritated that the boy's going to get back his amputated arm. 
• And I love that Sukuna just really finds it so amusing that he and the other Special Grade are considered the same 'level' by the Jujutsu Sorcerers, even mocking the Special Grade by calling it by that title. 
• Of course, we get the ever-badass RYOIKI TENKAI: Fukuma Mizushi. I actually do think that this sequence flows a lot better in the manga, with how impressive the reflected Malevolent Shrine looks, as well as the suddenness of the Special-Grade being sliced into ribbons... but the anime does a very good job when Sukuna previously just utterly overpowers the Special-Grade with his fisticuffs. 
• And, of course, the episode ends with Sukuna realizing that for some reason, Yuji can't actually take back control of the body even when he goes 'take it back, brat', and then we get a ghoulish grin!
• ...I didn't realize we have post-credit little skits called 'Juju Strolls'. I'll have to go back and watch the first three.

Episode 5:

• Yeah, so this episode has Sukuna fighting against Megumi for the first half, which I think is such a nice little thing about a superpowered evil side. It's such a refreshing change of pace from 'berserk' superpowered evil sides like we see in Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, and a dozen different other shonen battle anime where the superpowered evil side only acts like an animal and rampages around. No, Sukuna is actively trying his best to fuck shit up, and honestly the only reason Megumi survives this is more due to Sukuna being interested/amused in Megumi than anything. 
• He also rips out Yuji's heart! Pretty damn graphic! It's a nice way to basically take Yuji 'hostage', forcing him to not switch out.
  
• Also, in the midst of it all, Sukuna eats another finger. That's 3 out of 20!
• I always have a soft spot for Nue. I really like the Nue, among the many different Japanese mythological creatures. 
• Sukuna blows the shit up of Orochi, exploding him into shadowy ink. I don't remember if these Shikigami can be reformed or if they're just dead. Megumi does dismiss Nue from suffering the same fate, though. 
• And we get a rather Dragon-Ball-esque sequence as Megumi gets punched and haymaker'd around by Sukuna around. I'm surprised he survived being punched through a building without breaking a bone or two. 
• There is a very smooth sequence of Sukuna just casually moving around without even really trying to fight back while Megumi tries to yolo-charge and do some melee moves in the rain.
• We also don't really get Megumi's full flashback yet and more of a summary about Megumi's sister and her tragic fate, but there's a nice little motive rant about how 'the only fair thing in the world is that the world is unfair to everyone', and that's the reason he felt a kinship with Yuji while also really hating the drunk-driver. 
• Karma isn't automatic, apparently, and sometimes it needs a little push. 
• Eventually, Megumi's talk about how Yuji is a good person allows him to take control? Or is Sukuna just out of time? Regardless, though, it's a pretty emotional moment, and a nice description about how Megumi understands how Yuji is a good person and will stop Sukuna from rampaging even at the cost of his own life.
• So yeah, Yuji dies! Very early in the series, so clearly it won't stick, but I did remember reading this the first time and thinking that there's a non-zero chance that we swap protagonists and that Yuji's a (rather long) decoy protagonist while Megumi becomes the real one. 
• ...and then the second half of the episode is just a huge introduction to a lot of new members of the cast. We get a brief showcase of the Four Disasters -- which we'll cover once we get to the diner scene.
• I do like that Dagon and Hanami are talking weird, so the audience is focused on Jogo and Geto's conversation. 
• Dagon is adorable. 
• Man, I really can hear Buggy the Clown in Jogo's voice.
• Dagon is very adorable.
• We get Gojo talking to Ijichi, and man, poor, poor Ijichi. He feels so bad not just because the mission led to Yuji's death, but also because, as Gojo pointed out, he's been played like a fiddle by the higher-ups that wanted to use the Demon Womb as a way to get rid of Yuji. 
• 
  Shoko Ieiri, Gojo's friend, is surprised to see Gojo so emotional... and gets straight to wanting to dissect Yuji's body. One thing that the more compressed and fast-paced adaptation is that I really need more time for these side-characters to sink in as compared to when I was watching old-school One Piece or Naruto. 
• Megumi and Nobara, meanwhile, mourn Yuji on the stairs together, and I do feel that it's pretty in-character for them to try to play it off because they haven't known Yuji for very long. 
  
• And we have the entry of the second-years: 
• Zen'in Maki, the vocal, loud-mouthed one.
• Inumaki Toge, who has a covered-up mouth and speaks only in food toppings.
• Panda, who is a Panda.
• Between Dagon, Hanami and Toge, I do feel like Jujutsu Kaisen does a pretty good job at making one of the characters in a group of newly-introduced characters not talk in a regular way, thus limiting the amount of new dialogue from new characters. 
• Maki ranting about 'why so glum, did someone die????', followed by Panda and Toge trying to shut her up because someone actually died, and Maki being utterly horrified... that's a nice subversion to the ultra-macho only-children-shed-tears-for-the-dead vibe that she initially exudes.
• Yuta gets briefly alluded to by Megumi, and he is technically the protagonist of the prequel (or pilot miniseries) but I didn't actually know about Zero when I first read it, and I feel like Maki, Yuta and the others were introduced relatively well for what they are.
• Oh, and the Curses make it very clear that the biggest obstacle in their way it Satoru Gojo, the 'big good' of the setting.  
• Also, Panda is a panda called Panda, and Nobara is as perplexed as the audience at the sight of him.
• And then we get the tournament between the Tokyo and Kyoto highs, and our two main protagonists Megumi and Nobara deciding to join up in Yuji's honour is pretty neat. 
• And I do like that the episode ends with Yuji and Sukuna meeting in their inner world or whatever, which makes it pretty clear that Yuji's not killed off.