My thoughts are currently still fresh on this movie considering that I watched it earlier tonight. I didn’t have enough time to make a thumbnail for this post, so you get the movie poster and I think that works for it here. But yeah, it was strange to have this movie at a local theater that is only 8 minute away by travel instead of the usual one that is 20 minutes away. My local movie is smaller and I wanted to get to it just to supported it because this feels very rare and I don’t know how that theater is surviving considering that I don’t think a lot of people to go it which is a good and a bad thing at the same time. So yeah, that’s the context behind this post.
If I had to say anything major about the film, I think it’s a good shonen jump film. I liked the character of Yuta and his strange relationship with the cursed spirit Rikka. A cursed spirit based on his childhood girlfriend that created an interested mystery. I liked a lot of the action and I liked seeing a lot of the characters that I loved in the series doing cool things. It was not a massive waste of time and I didn’t feel like immediately leaving into the film. So yeah, it was just fine for me. The problem is that this film feels like a typical shonen jump film with a protagonist we will never see again and the main story will remain unaffected and that it’s a prequel story on top of all of that.
Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is a manga that came out before the series itself came out. I really wish this film either came out before the series came out OR after the important art the main character in this story appears in so I know something more about it. The way this came out, this was like given a smaller flash light to see into the darkness while I already had one a much more powerful one from the series itself. It didn’t add anything for now. If anything, it is a smaller redux of character plots that were already given in the series but less. The fact that the story cut from one time period to another while also having fights for other characters that didn’t feel like anything until the main fight in the end that we knew the protagonist was going to win. Yeah, it’s like that.
The more interesting things that I wanted to see where Yuta going on more cases of spirits. They work like some sort of police cases with spirits that dug at least a bit heavily into Japanese society. The opening case with Maki and Yuta in the beginning of the movie was great because it was focused on the heavy subject of the death of Japanese citizens and such. The series itself did a little more with it and I would have just liked this movie with Yuta just going on cases in different locations with his friends and fighting cool demons. Instead, it did the normal shonen jump movie thing and became a lot less interesting to me.
All of which makes the case of why I don’t usually watch shonen jump movies. Most of them are just fun flash in the pan things like Mugen Train were and such. The only real one that I think about is Dragon Ball Super: Brolly because that was a sequel to the anime series and I think Super Heroes is going to be the same thing. This is also why I don’t watch ovas of series that I enjoy. For example, why do I want to watch a Votoms ova of Chirico being a bad ass again when the story of Votoms shows him being one already and him suffering from PTSD. It’s rather strange. Anyway, these were my thoughts on the film as I pour down rain on other people’s thoughts of them loving it.
Mechanical Anime Reviews 
Sounds like you definitely weren’t a huge fan of it although at least the film being entertaining is still good. For the protagonist not appearing part, did you mean Yuta? I know what you mean about the OCs not usually reappearing in films like this but between the post credits scene in the movie and Yuta being mentioned so much in the anime, that at least bodes well for the lead there.
At least the good thing about seeing these events first hand is you’ll be ready for when this is mentioned a whole lot. I forget if you watch the Marvel movies but just like how the 2012 Avengers film is referenced nonstop in the shows and movies afterwards, this Christmas Eve adventure will keep being referenced for the rest of the Jujutsu Kaisen series. Season 2, 3, 4, and beyond will keep mentioning this off hand so the cool thing is you’ll have a direct vision of the events in your mind.
(I seriously hope they don’t readapt this in the next season like what they did with Demon Slayer’s Mugen Train or the two Dragon Ball Super Movies) I prefer Yuta as a protagonist to Yuji just by a smidge so it was nice seeing him here. Ultimately I didn’t have much complaints except I do think Gojo should have been able to end the movie really quickly and think there should have been a better excuse as to why he didn’t.
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The thing about all that connective universe stuff is that I’ve really got exhausted from them. It was kind of strained after End Game and I’ve just had a small interest in watching some of those movies (and none of the tv series because I’m not in a positive place for Disney) because of how samey and how much the universe has to matter before the character’s story can matter.
And that’s kind of how I see this film in the end too. I don’t feel like I will need this knowledge going forward as indepth as it comes, I just need to see this character show up again and have a small flashback and that’s it.
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