Jujutsu Kaisen S3 Ep 12 Review
If you weren’t allowed to pick Satoru Gojo, who in Jujutsu Kaisen would you consider the GOAT? I don’t know if it’s possible to settle on a single GOAT, as season three of the show has given us multiple contenders for the title. Maki managed to wipe out her entire clan of frauds. Higuruma was a newbie as a sorcerer but managed to become one of the top players in the Culling Game. Takaba’s rule of funny technique could give even Gojo a hard time! But if you ask me, I think the season finale showed us that the biggest GOAT is Yuta Okkotsu. He not only heads to the colony with four of the heaviest hitters of the Culling Game thus far, he also manages to beat all of them by himself by the time the credits roll!
If you’re an anime fan, then you know that when a series chooses to skip the OP, that means it needs the extra runtime for something big. And Jujutsu Kaisen is no exception, as it starts right where we last left off: with Yuta killing one of the four sorcerers that had the Sendai colony stuck in a stalemate. This wasn’t any sorcerer, either; this was a reincarnated sorcerer who was so powerful that, 2,000 years ago, he managed to conquer all of Japan. And the series still decided that it wasn’t worth showing us how Yuta killed him. And that is only the end of the last episode and the start of this one.
The rest of the episode can best be described as Yuta running a gauntlet of boss fights against the other three bigshots of Sendai Colony: Kurourushi, a cockroach cursed spirit, Uro, an incarnated sorcerer who can manipulate the space of the sky like solid matter, and Ishigori, another incarnation whose pompadour doubles as a cursed energy cannon. Each of them could the subject of a fight that lasts an entire episode, and Yuta fights them all in just one.
If you’ve seen Jujutsu Kaisen 0, you already know this, but even if you haven’t, this episode is meant to confirm what the season premiere implied: Yuta Okkotsu is that guy. Next to Gojo, he is the strongest jujutsu sorcerer of the modern-day, and this episode demonstrates it. His reserves of cursed energy are practically off the charts, his innate technique allows him to copy other people’s techniques, and if that wasn’t enough, he never has to fight alone. He’s got Rika, the cursed spirit left behind by his childhood sweetheart of the same name after the events of JJK 0. Add in the fact that he’s distantly related to Gojo himself, is it any wonder why Yuta is the GOAT of Yuji’s generation?
He defeats the cockroach spirit Kurourushi by giving it a mouth-to-mouth Reversed Curse Technique.
He fights Uro, who has it out for him because of something his ancestor did. Then he fights the battle-crazed Ishigori. And then he almost fights the latter two in a three-way domain expansion that’s only stopped by the return of the cockroach.
And during the entire episode, the anime doesn’t let up on the incredible animation that we’ve come to expect this season. All of it eventually boils down to an epic one-on-one between Yuta and Ishigori, all to the OP of the season, Aizo. When an anime chooses to use its OP or ED in the middle of the episode, you know that things have gotten serious!
In the end, Yuta manages to beat all of them. But since he’s such a nice guy, he doesn’t kill Uro or Ishigori, just taking their points. GOAT status, confirmed.
Sadly, this is where season three of Jujutsu Kaisen comes to an end. Even worse, we likely have to wait a year for the second half of the Culling Game. It feels more than a little cruel to know that we have to wait that long, but maybe that’s why the anime chose to end things here. They wanted to give us absolute peak before we had to wait. It’s sad, but we have to give great shows like this time to cook. Plus, this season already managed to leave its mark in pop culture, from the stunning animation to the memes that it inspired. The Game shall continue, but until then, we have other shows to watch!
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