{"id":299894,"date":"2026-01-23T18:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299894\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T18:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T18:13:10","slug":"jujutsu-kaisen-peaked-with-maki-zenins-rebirth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299894\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Jujutsu Kaisen’ Peaked With Maki Zenin’s Rebirth"},"content":{"rendered":"

In real time, it\u2019s very rare for anime fans to witness so-called generational moments that\u2019ll stand the test of time. In the past, one of those great moments was and forever will be Naruto\u2018s Rock Lee Chunin Exam fight, where even though fans didn\u2019t have the internet, you could hear the world all but collectively gasp when the shonen character without powers in his ensemble dropped his leg weights and proceeded to put belt to ass on an adversary billed as hot shit. There\u2019s just something about witnessing a character without powers in a world filled with the \u201cgifted\u201d running rings around the whole lot. It\u2019s an underdog story. It\u2019s wrestling. It\u2019s concentratedly euphoric.<\/p>\n

Jujutsu Kaisen is no stranger to its fair share of euphoric beatdowns. Mappa operates as if they\u2019re mandated to deliver at least one meme-worthy ass-whooping per season. And for the most part, they\u2019ve delivered on that front with Yuji Itadori and Kento Nanami\u2019s double-team beatdown of Mahito in season one<\/a> and Nanami\u2019s hot-and-heavy hair-pulling brutalization<\/a> in season two. Season three kicked off seemingly having already found its moment with the Culling Games\u2019 shithead character Naoya Zenin<\/a> taking a moment to fix his hair toward the camera while punching the hell out of Choso<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Jjk\u00a9 Mappa\/Crunchyroll <\/p>\n

Despite the moment being tantamount to an RPG character spamming punches that deal -1 HP, Mappa\u2019s Naoya sequence quickly became a viral meme on social media<\/a>, with artists recreating the sequence with characters from other series like Steven Universe<\/a>, Dragon Ball Z<\/a>, and Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/a>. The JJK trend\u00a0became so famous that even artists from other anime, like\u00a0Fate\/Strange Fake<\/a>, recreated it while promoting the fact that they were animators on a different show.<\/p>\n

While the trend definitely delivers on the aura farming World Star moments anime fans clamor for, it\u2019s not of the same ilk as Naruto\u2018s Rock Lee fight. That distinction goes to JJK\u2018s fourth Maki Zenin-centric episode, which not only put the trend to rest (literally), but also delivered arguably one of, if not JJK\u2018s, most emotionally cathartic fights ever. A fight deserving of being hung in the rafters alongside Rock Lee\u2019s Chunin exam fight as one of the most satisfying episodic anime battles of all time.<\/p>\n

\"Jujutsu\u00a9 Mappa\/Crunchyroll <\/p>\n

\"Io9<\/p>\n

Episode four, \u201cPerfect Preparation\u201d, primarily follows Maki, a jutsu sorcerer who, like Rock Lee, wasn\u2019t blessed with magical powers. To make up for that in Jujutsu Kaisen\u2018s world, she utilizes cursed weapons to bridge that gap. And what with the Culling Games sorcery fight tournament looming over the cast of heroes\u2019 horizon, Maki\u2019s tasked with going to her clan\u2019s compound to collect as many weapons as she can. Her family, however, are the worst kind of assholes who, while dealing with their own hierarchical politicking, have decided that Maki is better off dead to them.<\/p>\n

Aside from Naoya (who is Maki\u2019s cousin) having already talked hot shit about Maki\u2014being both weirdly incestuous as well as blatantly sexist\u2014the whole of her family up until this point in the show has treated her as a mark of shame for not having any powers. To further hammer this point home, Maki\u2019s own father appears, towers over her bloodied twin sister, Mai, and has no qualms with leaving both siblings near death for cursed spirits to finish them off. Gone are the days of early JJK merriment. This cast was born to shojo and forced to shonen.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Jujutsu<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\u00a9 Mappa\/Crunchyroll \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Jujutsu<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\u00a9 Mappa\/Crunchyroll \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Jujutsu<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\u00a9 Mappa\/Crunchyroll \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Jujutsu<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\u00a9 Mappa\/Crunchyroll \t\t\t\t \t\t <\/p>\n

After an emotional moment between the sisters, Maki proceeds with the single-handed slaughtering of her clan. Not a new concept in shonen anime, granted, but Maki\u2019s vengeance is one that she\u2019s all but earned against a family that has made her and her sister\u2019s lives a living hell. And what a helluva fight that was. The rest of the episode, which hews so emotionally close to the agony and imagery of Mappa\u2019s work in the\u00a0Chainsaw Man\u00a0film, is a nonstop battle royale between Maki and her entire clan that stylishly references Kill Bill with its staging and in its black and white colors that erupt in a Kurosawa-esque blood splatter as Maki achieves divine retribution.<\/p>\n

The episode contrasts everything we\u2019ve ever been told about the Zenin family in JJK, with Maki almost immediately tearing them apart with ease. She even puts a satisfying end to her misogynistic cousin\u2014now, whenever you search Naoya\u2019s name, it\u2019ll be him getting posterized by Maki instead of his memetically smarmy grin.<\/p>\n

What makes the fight so satisfying to watch is that Maki\u2019s whole journey has been toward becoming stronger by her own means. It\u2019s led her to not want to be referred to by her last name, because she\u2019s never felt that love and affection from her conservative-ass family, and that throughline has been maintained across both the anime proper as well as its prequel film, Jujutsu Kaisen 0<\/a>. That hasn\u2019t stopped the rest of the cast from putting respect on her name as the hardest worker and best fighter when it comes down to fisticuff fundamentals, but it becomes something else when we see Maki bask in the limelight of bringing down her family.<\/p>\n

While the manga version of this scrape came with its share of issues on account of creator Gege Akutami being sick at the time, leading to this moment\u2019s release having harsher early draft lines compared to the illustrative clarity the series is used to, it hasn\u2019t stopped the fight from being the most cherished of the manga\u2019s litany of battles. That isn\u2019t to say that the season ahead of us won\u2019t have any more hype-worthy fights\u2014but in terms of battles with a killer story hook behind their punches, as far as we\u2019re concerned, JJK peaked here with Maki, and we look forward to following her career as the character who puts fight into\u00a0sorcery fights as the show progresses.<\/p>\n

New episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen Culling Game Part 1 air every Thursday on Crunchyroll.<\/p>\n

\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In real time, it\u2019s very rare for anime fans to witness so-called generational moments that\u2019ll stand the test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[15465,27405,18,117,19,17,27406,27535,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-299894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-anime","9":"tag-crunchyroll","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-jujutsu-kaisen","15":"tag-mappa","16":"tag-tv"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115945774016297274","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}