Should You Start Jujutsu Kaisen in 2026? Warnings and a Rushed Finale
A deconstruction that lands and a finale that does not. Warnings, pacing and whether it is still worth starting in 2026.
Jujutsu Kaisen establishes a rare premise — cursed energy as a labour market, with a bureaucracy that quietly decides who deserves saving — and for its first two thirds it delivers on that promise. Yuji is written as a protagonist the story steadily dismantles, and the Shibuya Incident is one of the strongest sustained sequences in modern shounen.
After it, the series changes shape. Fight sequences grow longer and more mechanically explained, secondary characters are resolved in a line or off-page, and the finale lands fast. A large part of that is circumstantial: an unforgiving weekly schedule and the author's documented health issues show plainly in the linework.
The deaths are frequent and unglamorous, which is the point, but readers who committed to supporting cast members will feel the trim. Read it for the deconstruction and the fight choreography; temper expectations for the closing chapters.
Editorial Discussion
The finale is the fairest criticism and it deserves stating plainly: major resolutions arrive in exposition, secondary characters are closed off-page, and the last arc is compressed relative to everything before it. Much of that looks circumstantial - an unforgiving weekly schedule and the author's documented health issues are visible in the linework. What is not diminished is the achievement of the first two thirds. The Shibuya Incident remains one of the strongest sustained sequences in modern shounen, and building a protagonist the story steadily dismantles rather than empowers is genuinely unusual for the genre.