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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe story follows teenager Yuta (Megumi Ogata, and I\u2019m going by the Japanese version with English subtitles, rather than the English-dubbed version that is alternately available) as he struggles with a powerful curse he accidentally put upon himself as a child. The curse takes the form of a powerful monster named Rika (Kana Hanazawa) that pops up and attacks enemies whenever he gets too upset. He doesn\u2019t want to hurt anyone, and even contemplates submitting to an execution to rid the world of his curse, but blindfolded teacher Gojo (Yuichi Nakamura) tells him there is another way. Yuta can come study under him at a special secluded school and learn how to control the curse so that it benefits the world and even help rid it of evil curses. Comparisons to \u201cHarry Potter\u201d and \u201cX-Men\u201d are unavoidable, but the template is used to its full potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yuta has a hard time fitting in the school, but then again none of the other students fit in anywhere either. Maki (Mikako Komatsu) knows everything about curses and how to handle them with various objects, but is secretly inept on a very basic level. Toge (Koki Uchiyama) is an already-established warrior skilled in curse-speak, but limits his standard conversation strictly to ingredients in rice balls (\u201cTuna Mayo\u201d is the new \u201cI am Groot\u201d). Panda (Tomokazu Seki) is\u2026 a panda\u2026 with the ability to turn into a bigger panda. He picks up on some attraction between Yuta and Maki. Because in 2022, where there are hormonal teenagers, there has to be a panda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yuta and the school soon find themselves pitted against evil former student Geto (Takahiro Sakurai), now a powerful sorcerer with the creepiest smile you\u2019ll ever want to see. He wants to rid the world of non-sorcerers, which would seemingly leave it with a population of about a few hundred people, but whatever. Geto rightly deduces that Rika is the most powerful curse in the world, and all he has to do is kill Yuta to absorb the curse and make him unstoppable. He unleashes a thousand curses in Tokyo and Kyoto to keep Gojo and the other students and faculty busy so he can attack an unattended Yuta back at the school. These urban battle scenes are filled with characters that barely appear elsewhere in the film, and I assume they are cameos from other arms of this franchise. The \u201c0\u201d in the film\u2019s title indicates that it is a prequel to a supposedly-familiar, properly-numbered series, but outside of a few scenes where maybe the world-building was a little too ambitious, I thought this worked perfectly fine as an introduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found myself really getting invested in the culture of \u201cJujutsu Kaisen.\u201d It doesn\u2019t hurt that the creative curse\/creature designs are incredible. They\u2019re nightmarish, but I can\u2019t get enough of them. This movie does have the same problem as \u201cDemon Slayer\u201d when it comes to battle sequences, where there\u2019s a huge explosion every few minutes that should wipe out the entire setting, but often all participants will be okay, so it makes the action and stakes hard to understand. Still, I was eager to see what happens next with these characters. If \u201cJujustu Kaisen 0\u201d is this engaging, I can only imagine what it\u2019s like when the installments actually have value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: B<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJujutsu Kaisen 0\u201d is rated PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, language, thematic material and some suggestive references. Its running time is 105 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver Last year, the Japanese anime \u201cDemon Slayer: Mugen Train\u201d racked up an impressive $49.5 million at the domestic box office. It even accomplished the rare feat… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":52683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1169],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52684,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52682\/revisions\/52684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}