Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2, Episode 13: One of the best chapters of anime I’ve ever seen
Have you ever experienced something where you thought, “yeah, this is probably going to be massively influential?” I’ve been feeling that a lot with the currently airing second season of Jujutsu Kaisen, but the episode that had me feeling that most of all was last week’s, i.e. episode 14, Red Scale. It was so good, in fact, I watched it again immediately. I couldn’t help myself, the entire time I was watching the episode I kept saying to myself “what the hell?” (except I wasn’t saying hell). And I think the reason why it felt like such a special episode comes down to one thing: light.
There’s an argument to be made that light is the most important part of filmmaking. It’s the thing that provides colour, contrast, brightness or darkness, and it’s a part of the storytelling process. You can of course use a whole bunch of colours to tell your story, but this particular episode focused on two to tell its story: red and blue. I won’t go into too many story details to avoid spoilers, but the main thing that’s happening in this episode is a fight between Jujutsu Kaisen’s protagonist, Yuji Itadori, and Choso, a character who holds a deep sense of hatred for Yuji over a personal vendetta.
Like most action shonen, the two of them are incredibly strong, both constantly switching back and forth between having the upperhand and having their ass handed to them. But the most captivating moments of the episode are the slowest ones. Moments where one half of their face is covered in blue light, the other with a dash of red, looking at each other as they try to figure out what the other is doing. That slowness culminates in one particular moment, though, that uses more so the concept of light than light itself in a stunning manner.