Jujutsu KaisenandAttack On Titanare two of the most influential series in recent memory. From a distance, the two series don’t have much in common.Jujutsu Kaisenwears its shōnen identity on its sleeve, whileAttack on Titan’s demographic is notoriously hard to identify.Jujutsu Kaisen’s cursed energy, however innovative, is supernatural to its core—the series begins with Yuji as a member of the Occult Club, even.Attack on Titan’s combat is far more grounded, by contrast. Even though they’re both of human origin, curses are something fundamentally separate from people considered “human”, while Titans, though monsters at first, were always humans in the first place.
While it’s a fun exercise to list their differences, it’s actually much harder to list their similarities. There is one very important similarity, though, and it’s so subtle most fans missed it. However, I think it’s actually a crucial key that unlocks new ways of understanding both series.Attack on Titan’s portrayal of war has been lauded, and for very good reason. However, what if I said thatJujutsu Kaisenis just as much about war asAttack on Titan—and in some ways, it builds on the concept of war in a way that’s more pressing and relatable, even if it’s subtle?
War Plays A Very Different Role In The Worlds OfAttack on TitanAndJujutsu Kaisen
Jujutsu KaisenIs Loosely Framed By A Conflict To Come
Attack on Titanis always framed by some kind of overarching conflict that presents itself as a war. In the first part of the series, the main enemy is the ambiguous Titans. Titans are perceived as being literally subhuman and inherently dangerous: invaders penetrating the walls without good reason other than their own brutality. After Zeke’s leadership role over Titans and the espionage of Reiner and Bertholdt are revealed, the conflict is reframed: the enemy is now Zeke representing the Titan onslaught, and his downfall becomes an end goal. Finally, after visiting Marley, the conflict becomes reframed one last time as Eldians against Marleyans.
By contrast,Jujutsu Kaisenis never so blatant. Although it presents rival groups with specific interests—sorcerers who wish to protect non-sorcerers, curses who wish to subjugate sorcerers and non-sorcerers alike, and sorcerers who wish to band together with curses—it rarely presents its events as a war in a sense we would imagine. However,there are two primary elements that make it about war: firstly, the fact that different “combatants” understand their commitments in terms of truths and allegiances; secondly, the fact that these commitments define (and are defined by) how the combatant views the value of life.
Things start to be broadly more warlike following the Shibuya Showdown and Itadori’s Extermination arcs. Nonetheless, it still avoids the cadence of war in the same senseAttack on Titanputs it.
For this reason, it can be argued thatAttack on TitanandJujutsu Kaisenshow two broadly different perspectives on war. WhileAttack on Titanfocuses more on war as an external occurrence and internal conflicts tend to be presented as an after-the-fact “gotcha!",Jujutsu Kaisenfocuses on war as an internal conflict: how do people decide to dominate one another, and what are the motivations behind it? FromJujutsu Kaisen’s vantage, the external events are accidental to the internal conflicts.
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In a way, it’s a reverberation of the tireless opposition ofOne Piece, with its extensive emphasis on world-building, andNaruto, with its character-driven ruminations. There’s hardly a better example of this than each series' respective ending.Attack on Titan’s endingfocuses on the impact of the world and of Eren’s actions. Meanwhile,Jujutsu Kaisen’s ending places far less emphasis on the world and far more emphasis on shifts in the personalities of characters like Sukuna.
The Role Of Truth InAttack on TitanAndJujutsu Kaisen
War Is A Matter Of Will And Domination
However, by far the best example of this rests in howAttack on TitanandJujutsu Kaisenboth treatthe politics of truth. When someone says something like “justice isx” or “a better future looks likey”, those aren’t just opinions. They express a person’s framework for seeing the world, and they give insight into how a person sees truth.Attack on Titan’s Zeke Jaeger is a great example, as his drastic and self-loathing euthanasia plan is the product of social, political, and psychological conflicts. The politics of self-loathing is endlessly evident in the series, and it’s a real depiction of how oppression can frame people’s perceptions of themselves.
InJujutsu Kaisen, on the other hand, truth is shaped in front of the viewer’s/reader’s eyes. Geto’s journey from a stalwart defender of non-sorcerers to the kind of person who sees non-sorcerers as monkeys doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of a long chain of processes that showsjust how deepJujutsu Kaisencan really be.
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InAttack on Titan, the checkered history begetting different positions on Eldians is treated like a given. It’s occasionally expounded in momentary flashbacks or explanations, but overall, the impact on characters of the modern day is very much a game of interpretation. While this different focus can lead to some of the series' most interesting moments—see, for example, Gabi Braun’s slow reinterpretation of Eldians as humans—the process by whichAttack on Titan’s characters come to see Eldians as worthy of life (or not) is largely left to the imagination.
Jujutsu Kaisen’s Subtle Politics Of The Value Of Life
Both Series Ask How We Define The Abominable, AndJujutsu KaisenDoes It Better
At the heart of war is alwaysthe question of the value of life. War opens up an entire calculus of the value of life that enables people to see past horrific war crimes and can even make people hate themselves. Beyond that, on a global stage today, this life-value calculus even determines which wars we pay attention to and which we don’t. The subtle movements in the value of life throughAttack on TitanandJujutsu Kaisenare an invaluable, if subtle, connection.
ForJujutsu Kaisen, there’s hardly a better example of this than Mahito. Mahito was born as a curse that literally grows through slaughtering humans. He sees himself as human perfection, and psychologically, he rings true as a human by seeking validation from substitute father figures like Kenjaku and Sukuna. It’s no coincidence thatMahito gets the final word inJujutsu Kaisen, either.
I’ve been watching a lot ofHouse, M.D.lately, and the series' most poignant moments have been when the lead character, House, empathizes with somebody that all the other doctors wish to desert. Apply this to Mahito: is Mahito deserving of life? The answer would be a round “no” for the majority of people, and that’s intentional.
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At the same time, if one can’t empathize with Mahito and graspwhyhis position against humans (and for a world where humans have been overtaken by curses) develops, then Mahito remains abstractly evil and annoying. He stays at the level of an uninterrogated Marleyan who simply wants to do away with Eldians. But empathy doesn’t necessitate giving people a pass for their commitments or actions. Nor wouldAttack on TitanorJujutsu Kaisenlet us get away with failing to interrogate said Marleyan.
All empathy serves to do is to grasp how and why people take the stances they do—how somebody could determine that a group of people don’t deserve to live. If onecanempathize with Mahito, grasping how and why he sees humanity the way he does, it opens up a way of understandingJujutsu Kaisenthat makes it clear it works on the same themes asAttack on Titanfrom a slightly different vantage point. This is especially pertinent to us today, precisely because it doesn’t taste good on the tongue and challenges us to view things beyond good and evil.
Jujutsu Kaisen
Jujutsu Kaisenis a Japanese anime and manga series created by Gege Akutami. The story is set in a world where Cursed Spirits, born from negative human emotions, prey on humanity. It follows high school student Yuji Itadori as he becomes entangled in the world of Jujutsu Sorcery after swallowing a cursed talisman—Ryomen Sukuna’s finger—and becomes the host for one of the most powerful curses. Yuji joins the Tokyo Metropolitan Magic Technical College to learn how to combat curses while searching for the remaining fingers of Sukuna to exorcise him permanently.
Attack on Titan
Attack on Titanis a globally successful manga and anime franchise created by Hajime Isayama. The story is set in a world where humanity lives inside walled cities, threatened by giant humanoid creatures called Titans. The series follows Eren Yeager and his friends as they fight to uncover the truth about the Titans and the world. First serialized in 2009, the franchise has expanded into anime series, films, video games, novels, and live-action adaptations.
