by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $9.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Asami Seto, Junya Enoki, Yuichi Nakamura, Yuma Uchida, Daisuke Namikawa
Intro:
… formless mush …
Not wanting to let 2025 close out without giving fans a proper look at the beginnings of the show’s final saga, something that was still in the whisper stage when the previous (and frankly disappointing) Jujutsu Kaisen film Hidden Inventory/Premature Death was released earlier this year, we are now finally beginning the Culling Game arc… we think?
Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution is a film of two halves. The first is a recap of the ‘Shibuya Incident’ arc that made up the bulk of the show’s second season, while the second is a preview of the first two episodes of the third season, which are slated to air separately at the beginning in 2026. In their own special ways, both of them have been botched here.
The ‘Shibuya Incident’ recap struggles due to sheer logistics, as it attempts to sum up eighteen episodes (clocking in at six and a half hours, excluding opening and closing credits) in around forty minutes. The attempts to do so mainly result in most of the arc being condensed down to a fight scene montage, and then slowing down slightly for the last handful of episodes to highlight the most plot-relevant bits for the upcoming preview.
The fun of seeing all the blood spray and spiritual shenanigans wanes quickly, and the actual summation is less Cliffnotes and more ‘excited otaku just binge-watched the show and wants to gush about their favourite parts’. Even from the perspective of having watched the arc in full, it is bordering-on-incomprehensible. And the only reason that it doesn’t completely topple over is that at least the crux of the essential plot, focusing on the immense trauma that Yuji is dealing with as a result of the everything that just happened, comes through clear enough.
But once the somewhat-expected truncation is dealt with, and the promising new start for the Culling Game begins… it is somehow even more rushed than what came before. Even across two episodes’ worth of run time, it is genuinely confounding how intent the film is to set the story arc up as quickly as possible, whether the audience understands it or not.
The promised clash between Yuji and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 lead Yuta, the big cliffhanger of season two, feels like an afterthought and not nearly as cool as it rightly should have been. To say nothing of the introduction of the Culling Game itself in-universe, which amounts to a drive-by monologue and a block of text on-screen tucked in right near the end. And tough luck if you can’t tell their hiragana from their katakana, because the English translations last about half a second of screen-time per block. As bad as the abridging was in Solo Leveling -ReAwakening-, at least the new material made sense. By comparison, what is offered here is functionally useless, aside from showing an admitted upgrade in animation quality between passages.
Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution, both as a recap and as a lead-in to the next phase of the show, fails. Rather than attempt to get across its information and new narrative hooks in a way that is actually digestible for viewers, the impulse to rush through everything just turns it all into formless mush. It not only sparks little confidence in how the Culling Game arc will actualise within the main show, it also ends up making Hidden Inventory/Premature Death look worse, as the incessant reliance on reheating old footage rather than letting the new drama and action breathe and speak for itself reduces both to pure needlessness. Unless things drastically pick up with the full season premiere, Jujutsu Kaisen will have to settle for watching on the sidelines while Chainsaw Man and Demon Slayer race light years ahead, if this is any indication.
