I find hilarious that the whole purpose of Kamutoke was to avoid Higuruma (confiscating) one of Sukuna's techniques (with his "Trial" domain expansion). It literally appeared some chapters ago, and It wasn't so useful for Sukuna in combat.
Yep. It was all just to setup the "Higuruma doesn't actually confiscate Sukuna's cursed technique" plot twist. Just like Yorozu being reincarnated into Megumi Fushigoro's sister was just a setup to add personal stakes and explain why all the Jujutsu Highschool students would participate in the culling game in the first place.
JJK, like plenty of other shonen fighting manga, is similar to porn. Sure, there
might be a plotline, and sure, it
occasionally might be compelling, but in the end it's mostly about being a setup for the action scenes. If we're going to compare, let's look at roughly equal tier occult fighting title - Chainsawman.
Chainsawman is, at its heart, a character study. Denji's poverty, his doggy's motivation to see him live a happy life, and those who wanted to separate them - everything revolves around those elements. The plot is determined by the characters' motivations and serves to reveal their nature. The action, the fighting and conflict, is predictable and inevitable based on the differing motivations of those characters, but, and this is key here: the pacing and the outcome of those fights serves to push the story forward. More simply,
in Chainsawman, the fighting is the engine that propels the plot forward.
JJK is, at its heart, an action fight sequence. Disagree if you like, and it certainly didn't...start...that way, but JJK has now had not one but TWO tournament plot lines - the Tokyo vs Kyoto campus thing, and now the culling games. Shows that devolve into fighting tournaments (sorry Toriyama!) make it plainly obvious that what they're about it the fighting itself. For fighting stories, it's the plot that drives the fighting - as setups and rationale for the next battle. No matter how interesting or enigmatic the characters, they're only interesting because the author wants to keep you guessing at who will win the next fight. More simply,
in Jujutsu Kaisen, the plot is the engine that careens the characters to smash together.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just recognize that the plot elements are
always going to be "just good enough" to propel the fighting. There's honestly little point in debating the plot and the logic and who would win, etc. Just enjoy the title for what it is. Unfortunately...it's trying to be something its not, which I think is creating frustration for some readers, myself included.
Where both titles start to struggle is when they try to be something they're not. Chainsawman's current arc is dogshit. Denji's character arc was basically complete so he stopped being interesting. The plot killed off all but one of its characters, and it's a plot-driven character study so that didn't work. It also tried to shoehorn in high concept fantasy at the end of the first arc. That element (the plot line that the demons chainsawman kills don't reincarnate, and when they die their whole CONCEPT ceases to exist) was super interesting conceptually. Except...the author didn't know how to write that, so rather than pull that thread, he just used it to justify the antagonist's obsession with the main character and went no further.
JJK is struggling, hard, with both its world-building, and its high concept philosophy. The nature of cursed energy, the future of humanity, this whole Tengen merging thing, etc. None of that has been particularly well developed, and it shows. I'm more interested in JJK for those elements, and the compellingly enigmatic characters occasionally captivate me (Gojo, Best Friend, Toji) but there's only so much sloppy action I can watch before I get bored with it.
Imagine if you only mildly enjoyed Rick & Morty and only stuck it out past the 3rd season because you found Rick's backstory compelling and wanted to see him face his nemesis. You'd get pretty frustrated and dissatisfied over time, coming into forums to occasionally complain, and then the writers would finally bury the hatchet in season 7 and you'd have closure, removing any motivation to continue watching. That's me right now.
