Jujutsu Kaisen S01E09-11

After the honestly rather hectic information dump of the last couple of episodes, I did feel like the Mahito arc reduces things into a much more... digestible size? It feels a bit more mundane compared to the more rapid-fire pacing of the Demon Womb arc. And the rapid-fire pacing makes it great to see an anime that doesn't dawdle, but I really also do like that this one does give us a lot of time for Yuji, Nanami, Mahito and Junpei to really stand out and develop a bit more slowly. 

Also apparently last year there was some drama with the second season of this anime? I really wasn't aware personally, but then I wasn't looking at news sites too hard.

Episode 9:

• 
  So it is kind of interesting to talk about Yoshino Junpei. After the rapid-fire introduction of characters in the past couple of episodes, the pacing takes a gigantic slow-down to introduce Junpei's life. It really did make me think that Junpei's going to be a major member of the cast. 
• And there's a lot of conversation both in this episode and the next about... how twisted Junpei's worldview is. It's caused by bullying and the circumstances around him, and we get to see the bullying first-hand and it's pretty cruel and really highlights why Junpei was so receptive to Mahito's words. 
• The 'button' speech really exemplifies Junpei's POV, huh? He would press a button that would kill 'everyone who hates [him] without hesitation'. Which leads to one of his first words when he catches up to Mahito being 'how can I do what you do?'
• Heh, 'Human Earthworm 3'.
• We also get the debut of one of the fandom's favourite characters, Nanami Kento. He's the exact opposite of Gojo, being extremely non-goofy (not intentionally goofy, anyway) and professional... but also not actually cruel or mean-spirited. 
• Of course, he is irritated at Gojo, as exemplified by the oft-meme'd panel of him imagining a cartoonish Gojo running through the flowerbeds, but it doesn't mean that Nanami hates Gojo. It's just like someone that's kind of... incompatible. 
• Nanami's title is apparently the 'ex-salaryman sorcerer'. He spent time as a sorcerer, and he spent time as a salaryman, and he found both lives to be miserable. At that point, why not be miserable in something he excels in? 
• Nanami doesn't want to be funny, but by god, he is the master of unintentional stoic humour. Particularly the brick joke about 'moderate effort will suffice' and later on 'time to go all out!'
• I also really appreciate Nanami's worldview. Just because Yuji has survived a couple of life-and-death situations doesn't mean he's suddenly an adult.
• ...apparently, being an adult is to weather hundreds of tiny losses (like the bread you like being removed from a convenience store... a very understandable piss-off moment!) that just sounds a bit real as we grow a bit older. 
• Also, it's great that Nanami instantly has such a kooky yet likable personality, while also making it believable that he'll fall to the Anime Mentor Syndrome(tm) in Gojo Satoru's stead. 
• Action scene! Two creatures that resemble Curses, but are actually the work of Mahito's cursework. What intentionally looked like just disposable lesser curses for Nanami to make into a teaching moment (tm) turns out to be something rather horrific. 
• It's a bit Hunter x Hunter-esque, but Nanami notes that his announcement of his abilities creates a 'pact' that causes his powers to be more effective in battle. I don't actually remember if this will come into play in the future, but it sure does allow some justification for the Bleach-esque power infodump in this show!
  
• Okay, Yuji channeling cursed energy into his fists and double-punching enemies is pretty cool. The description of a 'time lag' and a two-impact blow really does fit into this anime studio's animation style, too, particularly with how much they love the 'impact causes an explosion behind the enemy' deal. 
• Keitei Ken! Divergent Fist!
• Nanami's power allows him to deal immense damage even with a wrapped-up dull blade when he strikes someone at the right intersection of a 7:3 ratio. Something that sounds nonsensical when I type it out, but both the anime and manga make a great show of visualizing these rulers next to where Nanami cuts. 
• And yes, the mutated humans are no longer sentient and the other sorcerers emphasize that they've basically already died during transformation... but Yuji himself doesn't really care for the explanation and is pissed, and Nanami joins him in also being pissed about it. Maximum effort!
• This episode closes with Mahito delivering an exposition about how these specific curses appear -- collective fears of mankind. Not just towards powerful yokai or legends, but towards natural disasters, all but confirming that Jogo is the fear of volcanoes, Hanami is of the forest and Dagon is of the ocean. Hanami himself? Is humanity's fear towards other humans, which is such an interesting concept that you'd think would be saved for a villain much later in the story, but he's basically the second or third one, depending on whether we're counting Sukuna. 
• This episode ends -- and the next one starts -- with Yuji and Ijichi investigating Junpei, having realized he's probably involved thanks to the cameras nearby. 

Episode 10:

• Again, we get a rather extended scene of Junpei's bullying. The previous episode focused specifically on the three guys that get killed in the cinema, who bullied him in the schoolyard, whereas this one has him bullied out of a horror-movie-discussion-club -- this bully would actually show up in later episodes, which I thought was a nice touch. 
• I'm not sure which franchise that the author is criticizing with how "it's less of a horror franchise and more of a sitcom serial", because I don't really get caught up with horror movies. It sounds so specific that it probably is based on a real franchise!
• There's a discussion on semantics (as Mahito himself points out) about the Japanese phrase "the opposite of love is indifference", which actually does sound pretty profound. Again, it really does highlight just how much hatred Junpei has within him, and how he probably wouldn't have ended up like this if people just left him alone. 
• Mahito explains his abilities at two points in this episode -- first when he exposits about his experiments of making people huge or small with Junpei, and later on while he gloats to Nanami in the sewer fight. 
• Mahito basically is able to 'touch' the core, the soul, of a person, and then mould them as he pleases. 
• It really does imply that there's a fair bit of time from Mahito's meeting with Junpei after the theater incident, since we've had multiple conversations between the two, whereas Yuji and Nanami's timeline seems pretty instantaneous from the investigation, to the fight in episode 9, and this operation here... but it ultimately works out, I think. It just felt a bit jarring seeing things out of chronological order, is all. 
• I do like that Ijichi gets a bit more of a role to play in this episode as a more senior member that's just really trying to do his job, but he kinda shares the same competence level as one-brain-cell Itadori Yuji. Their plan to sic the 'Fly Head' cursed spirit on Junpei is actually very well thought-out, in trying to gauge how Junpei is (while giving Yuji an 'in' to befriend Junpei and investigate someone who may or may not be just an innocent person), and of course they cock it up the first chance they get. 
  
• The episode goes back and forth between Nanami and Yuji, but for the Yuji part, I do like that he witnesses Junpei talking to one of his teachers... who is worse than the bullies because he's an adult in a position of authority who ignores the bullying. And we get to see Junpei's internal ranting, which... yeah, you really get the feeling that his frustrations and anger is about to reach a climax and he's about to do something, before Yuji defuses everything with a helpful dumb-shonen-protagonist trick of pulling down the teacher's pants. 
• Mahito faces off against Nanami in the sewer, and I do like how just so cocksure the two of them are. Mahito is overjoyed to have a strong sorcerer to be part of his experiments, while Nanami delivers the eternally badass line of "I hate working overtime".
  
• I also like one of the reasons that causes Nanami to fight a bit harder is the realization that Gojo and Mahito are also the type of super-strong-but-super-carefree kind of personality that he isn't in the mood to entertain.
• Idle Transfiguration, Mu'i Tenpen, is such a... relaxed-sounding name for such a body-horror ability, isn't it? 
• The fight, as usual, is pretty well-animated, with specific attention given to the explosive speed done by Mahito when he's bouncing around and fast motion done by Nanami. I really can't highlight just how much the animation fluidity really does help to make the fight scene feel so much more heavy!
• And then Nanami reaches overtime, and goes full-up Super Saiyan, which is where this episode cliffhangs. 

Episode 11:

• 
  And this episode kind of wraps up Junpei's "fall" to the dark side, with the three episodes doing basically the bare minimum of good pacing highlighting Junpei's terrible life that affects his backstory; his corruption by an evil mentor; and ultimately his friendship with Yuji. It feels like the absolute bare minimum that you need to spend time with a character not to call it 'rushed', I feel.
• Anyway, the fight between Mahito and Nanami kind of ends after a brief showcase of Overtime, and Ratio Technique: Collapse. Very cool usage of the explosive attack that Nanami does, and I do think that it's a very cool sequence of showcasing how badass the villain and the more experienced mentor without having either them die. 
• Again, very heavy Hunter x Hunter vibes with how Nanami gets a power up because of a 'time pact'. I wonder how this works, because I don't really remember if they explained this? We've seen a literal pact between Sukuna and Yuji, yes, but Sukuna's got a consciousness and everything. 
• Poor Ijichi just gets kind of written out of the story as he goes off to catch another Flyhead, allowing Yuji and Junpei to have some one-on-one characterization. He later panics when Nanami realizes over the phone that he and Yuji are separated.
• Not all shonen protagonists are able to really display it well, but Yuji's "dumb earnestness" energy really does shine in-between him just deciding to 'fuck it' and try and be buddies with Junpei, eventually leading to a very brief moment where he considers if his nihilistic worldview is wrong. 
• Geto also goes around doing enigmatic stuff, though the story's pretty clear that he's just observing while the arc revolves around Mahito. 
• I do really like Nanami's observation that Mahito is still in the excitement of rapid growth, which is why he's so cocksure and dangerous, as compared to the more experienced volcanic cursed spirit Jogo. It definitely would make sense that the fear of natural disasters would be felt much, much older compared to the fear of other humans. 
• And then a good chunk of the middle part of the episode involves Junpei's crass but extremely likable mother, Yoshino Nagi, who... she's cool! They do a lot to make her instantly quirky while not doing an over-the-top job about it, but I do like that between Nagi's "bad" parenting of realizing that school's not the perfect fit for Junpei, or Junpei yelling at his mom to stop smoking, and the two of them just... hanging out with a new guest? I really do like the energy between them.
  
• And it's after this fun ice-breaker moment with Mama Nagi that Junpei actually feels like he's got a real friend to talk to, one that isn't a psychotic demon that goes 'yeah, fuck humanity, kill them all'. Yuji doesn't even parrot some condescending bullshit onto Junpei, but gives perhaps one of the better description of "I don't want to lose sight of what a life is, because once I murder, that's it" compared to the lip service that many other manga or comic book heroes do. 
• ...and then of course Nagi gets brutally murdered by the random curse that manifests in their home. 
  
• I feel like the anime/manga does this far more effectively by not showing the gore. We just do a massive, jarring flash-cut from the happy civilian fun times with Nagi and Junpei being wholesome, to a brief shot of Nagi being stalked by the curse, to the very clinical and brutal explanation of the state that Nagi's body is found in.
• The missing half of her body and the organs and whatnot are creepy enough, but the ice bags? Who and why put it there? Was it the curse? And why did it put the ice bags there?
• And then we get the absolutely obvious 'this guy is a creepy manipulator' moment as Mahito is clearly preying and giving Junpei incomplete information, but you could see just how utterly broken Junpei is -- and right after he has a potential epiphany about how not all humans are bad. This is honestly one of the best 'corrupted youth' stories I've read in a while. 
• This leads to Junpei's "Darth Vader" moment, basically, and I didn't catch until watching it in the anime that he wears his mom's jacket. 
• The bully and the teacher from episode 10 are in an award ceremony in an auditorium, and both Mahito and Geto observe as they summon a giant magic curtain-dome over it. Junpei shows up with brand-new curse powers and starts brutalizing the bully, Shota. And it is really obvious that Shota's just some punk-ass that isn't involved in any of this cursed spirit bullshit, but Junpei's so driven by a combination of grief, anger, hatred and Mahito's egging that he doesn't care anymore. 
• Which leads to him facing off against Yuji, and summoning his jellyfish Stand -- I mean, his jellyfish shikigami. Pretty great stuff all around. 
• Now before we close this review off, I do admit that I really would've wished that this supreme development that was given to Junpei was given to one of the actual secondary characters... but oh well! As long as the story is good!