Reflection and Analysis

Jujutsu Kaisen (7/16/2021)

So, when we review series we're not supposed to comment on other reviews and reviewers, yet I'm majorly bothered as I watch this series regarding why said series has become popular in that people are pretty much - well, to quote ChrisBlitz from the , "No it's peak shonen. It has good character with incredible animation that goes with the action. The story as of now is not the best shonen story but I can feel huge story potential from it." and my thoughts are, no - no it isn't.

Okay. So I'll agree with the fact the series has incredible animation and action to go with it, but is that really a standard to go by when you can pretty much say that for pretty much any series these days? Animation's gone digital, so a lot of the issues which arose in older series are non existent in the newer series, but to truly get "bad" anime the series must be based on a SUPER bad style in the first place, have bad pacing for the action sequences or the bad animation results from some experimental process with the digital animation.

So, when people say this, what are they comparing it too?

One of two things are happening, the first being when they compare to modern series what they're really judging by is their personal tastes and not whether the art is good, but in the other cases they're comparing the newer series to older series yet openly choosing not to give an older series the chance they would these newer series. There's a reason why art doesn't factor into the scores as much as the narrative and characters in the newer series, yet this goes even for the older series and then and only then if the art side of things somehow detracts from what's going on, such as the series which used an experimental animation style which could potentially cause seizures.

Yet, this seems to be the major point coming up over and over again and not just for Shonen - that a series is good because the art is good and I'm like - nope.

What about the characters though? Are they likable?

Truth - I find myself struggling majorly with liking any of the characters and can only think of one which has grown on me to the point I'd want to write fanfic about them with another coming in a close second, but I'd find myself transporting them into another series to do it yet - well, the second one's still needing character development at this point and the first, I'm struggling to give crediting that likability factor to this particular show as I've recognized that said character is a knock off of a character from another series, a character who looks, talks and acts like a character from another series, but with a few changes here and there to make it different enough that people haven't noticed.

But then...

Well, there's a definite reason why people are calling this series "generic" in the thread I linked to, and it is, nor is this a good thing.

Specifically, I'm actually bothered by the fact nobody has actually picked up on the over use of pop culture references, but the reference to Lord of the Rings live action movie just made this stand out even more due to the fact that's one of the last pop cultural references I'd expect in a series, particularly one of the specific genre this one is of, yet those pop culture references are there overwhelming the narrative.

More specifically, practically everything in this series is some kind of pop culture reference, though I can't remember what it is off the top of my head beyond the fact there is this little thought in my head that what I am seeing is all to familiar and in that "you're not even trying to be original" kind of way. The power system people praise isn't really praise worthy, having major balance problems and not really sticking to the rules, but once narrative problems start they're hard to get rid off, contrary to popular belief. There is still only one series I've seen sucuessfully make a turn around in later seasons, but that can be acredited to the issues arrising in the first season resulting from rushed narrative due to studio budget and when they were allowed to not rush things -- they did quite well.

But - this - this isn't good Shonen. But then, when people feel the need to refer to the series as being of the Shonen genre you right there have problems because Shonen actually isn't a genre, but a target demographic and thus sweeping statements is faulty in the first place. I mean, typically these same people are the ones who insist Shonen can't involve romance at all, or that Shonen is always of the action genre, when GASP its series whose main target audience is males of a certain age group. Nothing more, nothing lesss.