Jujutsu Kaisen offers a fresh take on the shonen battle manga. He is also responsible for finding a solution to one of the genre’s most hackneyed clichés.
Gege Akutami jujutsu kaisen it’s a good series. It has complex characters, great action, and a well-designed power system. All of these things go together to embrace and subvert common battle manga tropes under the shonen jump flag.
It is especially important for Jump artists to make sure the battle aspect of your manga is unique. Many of the shonen battle tropes have been killed off; they make so many otherwise distinctive manga feel like they’re ripping off Dragon Ball Z. JJK Sometimes he falls in love with this too, but there is at least one aspect of Shonen battles that he has been able to come up with a clever solution for. The trope is still invoked, but it’s done in a way that would otherwise make little sense. Out of all the shonen battle mangaka, Akutmi is the only one who knows how to justify characters announcing their dark abilities in the middle of a fight.
In most other battle manga, having characters advertise their abilities is a bad idea on all fronts. On the one hand, it is poor strategy on the combatant’s part to advertise his ability. One of the most important deciding factors of a fight is the ability to catch the opponent by surprise; if one gives away his ability early, his opponent can glide around and render that element of surprise useless. The only reason one would have to announce his ability is if they thought it wouldn’t make a difference, an arrogant play used by many shonen antagonists.
Another problem with characters advertising their abilities is that it’s often a sign of poor writing. It’s a lazy method of exposing a complicated power that would certainly need a lengthy explanation or diagram to understand. The problem is that there is almost no way to write such an explanation into a story that is presented as natural-sounding dialogue.
The best solution the writers have come up with for this trope is to have the opponent discover the mechanics of the ability. By constantly revealing more about the skill in this way, the author conveys the necessary information at a natural pace. He also helps put the audience in that character’s shoes; both parties learn about the skill at roughly the same rate. This way of revealing complex abilities is used by series like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventurebut JJK he actually has another method that is completely unique in its own history.
On JJK, cursed techniques receive a significant increase in power when their users announce them. It is a brilliant double-edged sword. On the one hand, the increase in power guarantees that they will be able to secure victory if they can land a clean blow on a strong opponent. On the other hand, that decisive blow becomes more difficult to land since the opponent knows what to look for. It’s an understandable tradeoff to explain one’s skills that come with all sorts of pros and cons.
Akutami has truly revolutionized battle manga with his discovery. He has not only found justification for one of the genre’s oldest tropes, he has raised the bar for future Jump mangaka Any Battle Shonen published after JJK You are encouraged to find your own solutions to this and other tropes. Meanwhile, Akutami can have all the beef jerky he wants.
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