- This one is the baseball one! I'm going to really gloss over the entire baseball game that takes up the second half of the episode. I actually do really like it, but without pointing out the jokes and driving them to the ground, I really wouldn't add much value talking about the scene. In the ridiculousness of seeing these characters playing baseball after seeing them in a life-or-death situation before, though, this is exactly the kind of 'hey, Itadori Yuji has some nice, calming quality civilian time with his friends' that I felt was a bit lacking in the previous 20 episodes.
- My favourite gag has to be Mai bringing in a baseball-shooting machine and drawing Mechamaru's face on it.
- We do get a bit of a wrap-up for the other characters, with Haruta (baggy curse user guy) meeting the wounded Hanami. Haruta is about to straight-up murder Hanami, but is stopped by Mahito... who... I really don't remember if Haruta becomes an important character down the line, I'm sorry, but I really thought that whether it's the girls from episode 20 or Mahito, him dying at the end of this arc wouldn't really matter.
- We also get a brief flashback to "Geto" talking to Hanami, Jogo and Mahito about Tengen and his barrier, which... I felt was a bit infodump-y? There is no way to have this exposition happen at the beginning of the arc without spoiling the fact that Mahito's going around stealing stuff from Tengen while Hanami and the curse-users are wreaking havoc.
- Dagon swimming in the background is adorable!
- We also get some confirmation that Megumi acts as a 'landmine' for Sukuna, and "Geto" is very unwilling to risk Sukuna being a wildcard and causing a lot of havoc if they threaten too many of the students.
- We get a brief foreshadowing of Uraume, the 'androgynous monk kid', from Juzo, which the higher-up Jujutsu Sorcerers find out about.
- The sequence is interrupted with Todo being, well, Todo, but I do really appreciate Megumi and Nobara hanging out with Yuji in that recovery bed, with Megumi going on this long tirade about being rivals. Again, all of these scenes are much-needed for me to really sell the bond between these guys.
- We also get a conclusion about Noritoshi's characterization, where he finally gets to talk to Yuji about their respective reasons of becoming a Jujutsu Sorcerer... and, again, Noritoshi isn't a character I care about much among the Kyoto cast, but it's nice to have it kind of be wrapped up a bit as all the tension deflates and he realizes that Yuji's motivations aren't so different from his own desire to be a great sorcerer and meet his mother, who had been sent away by the clan.
- And the episode ends with Gakuganji and Yaga discussing about Yuji and rules in general. Yaga talks about the potential of lives being saved if Yuji could be trained as a sorcerer, and talks about general regrets. We get a brief name-drop of Geto again (which, I think, is the first time this connection is made clear if you don't know about Zero) before we get the fun symbolic image of Gojo Satoru walking past and stepping on the lines of ants that are 'following the rules'.
Episode 22:
- And we'll close off this season with the three-part Death Painting storyline, and... I do feel like while the spectacle of the episodes that involved the main villains have been bombastic and fun, there's something nice to return to a slower-paced 'let's investigate a creepy thing'. I think the last one that felt this way was Yuji and Nanami's scenes as they investigated Junpei's case?
- We get a nice little cold open as some punk gets killed when the auto-lock doors to his apartment are left open, and then a cutaway to a debriefing from another non-combatant, Nitta Akari (who really isn't anywhere as memorable as the long-suffering Ijichi). This entire three-parter focuses on Yuji, Megumi and Nobara and I really do feel like it does solve one of the bigger gripes I have with the rapid pacing of this series.
- The investigation brings them to the common thread that the three of them attended the same high school, which, incidentally, is also the one that Megumi and his older sister Tsumiki attended. We get a lot of fun scenes of their investigation, and some fun visual comedy as Megumi turns out to be a bully-beating terror in his old high school, causing all the punks to kowtow to him.
- In addition to the fun image of Megumi standing on top of a pile of defeated adversaries, this episode as a whole does have a nice theme and highlight that Fushiguro Megumi doesn't really confide a lot in his friends, with both Yuji and Nobara only learning about details like his high school and the fact that he even has an older sister at all.
- Again, the investigation stuff is a lot of nice buildup -- which pays off when we get the big bombshell that Tsumiki has also visited the cursed bungee jumping bridge.
- For some reason while watching this season, I had the impression that Megumi's older sister is already dead? It's obviously not true, at this point in the story, though. I'm not sure if I'm conflating it with another character or even another manga.
- Speaking of the investigation, I love that the three first-years have already tried to chuck Yuji over the bridge, tying him up with string. Nobara going on with this idea is fun, but I do like that sometimes Megumi is very much willing to get up in the insanity.
- Another fun gag is the recurring nickname that Nobara gives to the two punks, which is "A and B". Again, in a faster-paced arc these two punks would've been brushed off, but "A" does show up with his own sister (Tsumiki's classmate) that leads to the increased stakes of the arc.
- Meanwhile, we get to see Mahito getting a bit of an exposition dump about the Death Painting Wombs, which is a nice little exposition about why the Jujutsu Sorcerers are unable to destroy every single cursed object out there. Mahito force-feeds some punk one of the Death Painting Wombs, which is pretty... pretty creepy! Why does Mahito need to strip that one poor schmuck?
- We also get a brief cameo from Ijichi, who is trying his best to arrange protection around Tsumiki... but even Gojo is out of reach for the moment.
- And we get to see a wonderfully self-destructive character trait of Megumi's, where he goes off to Yasohachi Bridge alone after shoving Yuji and Nobara into the car to bugger off. He already has an idea of the sheer amount of danger that the curse is possessing... and is willing to do everything on his own, staking his life to rescue his sister while not risking the lives of any of his friends. It's not too different with how willing he was to throw away his life when he fought against the Sukuna Finger or against Hanami.
- And in true shonen fashion, Yuji and Nobara are already there, behind Megumi, ready to do a fun little two-man act.
- It's glossed over, but I really do appreciate the little description of the very horror-stories-you-tell-at-night ritual that they enter through the barrier, including jumping over a river. They enter the Cursed Domain, where the spirit inside is a bizarre mole with siphon eyes.
- ...and then their fight is interrupted when Kechizu bursts in through the wall, both sides being absolutely bamboozled that there's already 'someone' inside the Domain.
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