[Ed. note: The following may contain unconfirmed spoilers for Mojuro.]
If the leaks are to be believed, Mojuro will be a direct sequel to Jujutsu Kaisen, having as protagonists the descendants of some of the characters from the original series. We won’t discuss any other details here, and we suggest that everyone check the manga through the official channels when it comes out on Sept. 8. But it’s undeniable that this news opens once again the debate regarding Jujutsu Kaisen‘s divisive ending, which could end up overshadowing the excitement for the upcoming third season of the anime.
It’s rare for a manga to deliver an ending that satisfies the majority of its fans nowadays. In an age where anime and manga dominate popular culture and have created such dedicated fandoms, expectations for the conclusions of successful series are always sky-high. Every fan wants to see the story end in a certain way, and that’s usually not the way the author envisioned. For Jujutsu Kaisen, however, this issue was aggravated by the author’s habit of disseminating plot threads he never planned to conclude. The ending of the manga was a 44-chapter-long nonstop battle against the ultimate villain Sukuna, which didn’t leave much room for tying up loose ends.
The final four chapters and the epilogue tried to do that at least a little, but fans were still left with a lot of questions and things they would have liked to see. The most famous example is the Heian period (from 794 to 1185 in Japanese history), which is often mentioned in the series, and holds the keys to the mysterious past of Sukuna and the history of the jujutsu world. Nonetheless, it looks like Mojuro won’t be the Heian period spinoff that fans were clamoring for.
The connection between the new manga and Jujutsu Kaisen, if confirmed, won’t necessarily mean that Akutami will use it to tie up loose ends. However, if the two series are truly set in the same world, this could be a great chance to expand and populate the universe of Jujutsu Kaisen. Akutami never spent too much time on world-building, preferring to paint with broad strokes rather than minute details. Let’s see if his attitude will change in Mojuro — but regardless of that, this is bound to be an interesting new serialization.
New chapters of the Weekly Shonen Jump series can be read using the Manga Plus and Viz Media apps.
