‘Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo’ Is Higher Than the OG Manga Collection

When Jujutsu Kaisen‘s manga lastly wrapped in 2024, the sensation was much less bittersweet than sheer aid. Gege Akutami’s megapopular shonen juggernaut actually delivered spectacle with its battles, however its story was skinny. At its worst, its fights might be frustratingly exhausting to parse, be it from poor well being making an attempt to maintain up with the rigorous weekly shonen crunch schedule or its labyrinthine energy system that needed to be defined with such exhaustive mid-bout exposition that it rivaled Bleach. 

So when Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, its sequel sequence, debuted quickly after, I braced for a Boruto-style continuation that may solely double down on these flaws. Nevertheless, after catching up—curiosity lastly received out—I can admit Modulo isn’t solely surprisingly robust however, dare I say, higher than its predecessor exactly as a result of it sidesteps the gripes that weighed the unique down.  

From the bounce, Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo—written by Akutami and illustrated by Yuji Iwasaki—takes a daring step few sequel shonen have taken: it situates itself years faraway from its predecessor and embraces the fact that the outdated heroes’ period has ended, clearing the stage for a brand new technology. Positive, nostalgia lingers in nods, cameos, and winks to the previous. However these gestures by no means overshadow the recent solid with the hole “what in the event that they had been adults now?” fanfare most sequel shonen sequence pigeonhole themselves in.

Whereas Jujutsu Kaisen proper, all the best way to its finish, at all times felt prefer it was constructing its energy system because it went, by no means taking the coaching wheels off with explainers and shock deaths (ardently leaked/spoiled online by fans) that by no means rang deeper than their archetypes in a cool struggle manga, Modulo truly units up the sequence’ thrust early on and lets its story take middle stage. After which there’s the paradigm shift in its premise, going full Giorgio A. Tsoukalos by including aliens to the cursed spirit-fighting sequence’ narrative gumbo.

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Set 68 years after the Culling Game, in 2086, Modulo sees Japan at a precarious crossroads the place a humanoid alien race referred to as Simurians has arrived on Earth as refugees from a distant world, wielding an influence system strikingly just like jujutsu sorcery. The central rigidity of the manga to this point lies in whether or not coexistence or battle between sorcerers and Simurians will outline Earth’s future.

Early chapters hint a fragile tightrope as Japan—functioning as Earth’s de facto extraterrestrial representatives, due to its supernatural sorcerers—seeks to know the vagabond aliens and suss whether or not fostering prosperity is within the playing cards with out scary hostility. In the meantime, the Simurians themselves try to construct new lives after years of subjugation below brutal colonization.

On the coronary heart of this narrative are sorcerer siblings Yuka Tsuguri Okkotsu, joined by their Simurian ally, Maru. For JJK followers, Yuka channels Yuta’s mild essence with a extra playful edge; Tsuguri blends the grit of Maki Zen’in (greatest character; argue with a wall) with Megumi’s composure; and Maru embodies an alien spin on Yuji Itadori’s golden-retriever exuberance. They kind a compelling trio as they enterprise right into a back-to-basics supernatural battle of the week that made early JJK a lot enjoyable to learn week after week earlier than the sequence dovetails again into the intergalactic elephant within the room that feels deliberate out as a substitute of improvised week to week. And layered atop the intricate is a miraculously genius combo of Akutami and Iwasaki, whose previous works would have made such a narrative really feel not possible to come back collectively with out highlighting each creators’ previous pitfalls.

Cipher Academy is so infused with japanese wordplays that it merely broke the official translation, I am in awe pic.twitter.com/qAo9ZHGPp9

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As famous earlier, when Modulo was first introduced, I used to be fairly apprehensive about whether or not the sequence may cohere given the pedigree of its creators. Whereas I’ve waxed poetic about late-stage Jujutsu Kaisen sufficient, Yuji Iwasaki’s prior work—Cipher Academy, a death-game sequence as soon as deemed practically untranslatable—prompt a possible for even larger opacity. On paper, their pairing appeared destined to be much more unparsable. But the collaboration proved the other, embodying what Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto has often wished for himself: the liberty to deal with writing whereas one other artist handles the visuals, permitting every creator to lean wholly into their strengths.

The result’s a fairly rattling nice team-up that’s additionally fairly rattling nice to learn play out. Iwasaki’s panels are clear, legible, and brimming with character, by no means drowning the reader in infodumps, whereas Akutami’s worldbuilding and character dynamics unfold with out the specter of runaway energy scaling. Collectively, their return to the sandbox of JJK’s world strips issues again to fundamentals even because the premise expands into extraterrestrial territory—and in doing so, they coalesce into one thing unexpectedly profound. With a sequence that’s bought a story bone construction to assist the emotional catharsis and hype of its struggle, Modulo is Akutami and Iwasaki cooking on the peak of their powers in a manner that doesn’t really feel as canned or compelled as many sequel manga sequence chasing the hype of their predecessors usually do.

Failing to see eye to eye, the people and Simurians attain a harmful level of no return.

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Inside the first 20 chapters of the manga to this point, its characters are deeply written, my favourite being Yuka and her unlikely bond with Maru’s Trigun-esque meaner brother, Cross; any callbacks to the unique sequence are much less showy for affordable fanservice pops and extra in service of writing a deeper narrative that’s mainly an immigrant story with all of the anxiousness that comes with it wrapped in a shonen bundle. There’s actual rigidity and friction in Modulo that’s not restricted to its fights, of which there are scarcely any—a choice that solely provides to their pomp and circumstance. The story feels rigorously crafted somewhat than an afterthought to ferry you to the subsequent overly difficult bout. As with wrestling, it’s at all times cool to see a man get his shit in by doing gymnastic flips, however until there’s a narrative cause why they’re about to interrupt their neck for people’ leisure, it’s simply vapid. Modulo is shaping as much as be something however, and I’m glad to have my notions in regards to the sequence confirmed flawed.

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