Shota Goshozono directed episode 17 ofJujutsu Kaisen, and it’s a spectacular display of his skills as a director, especially ashe is now the director of the next season. But there’s something even more impressive about this episode, beyond its technical wonders, and that is the way it brilliantly dissects some of its most fierce female characters.
The Kyoto Sister School Exchange Event pits the students of Jujutsu Tech against their Kyoto cohorts, which the headmaster, Yoshinobu Gakuganji, is using as an opportunity to eliminate Yuuji Itadori. What’s meant to be an exercise in eliminating spirits turns into a battle to protect Yuuji from some equally skilled and motivated rival exorcists. The episode opens with Kasumi Miwa coming to blows with Maki Zenin and realizing just how powerful this Fourth-Grade jujutsu sorcerer truly is, in stark contrast to what Mai told her beforehand. From there, the episode is almost completely dedicated to two fights,each one between two female combatantswhose battles reveal much about their personalities and values.
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First, A Matter of Expectation
Nobara Kugisaki is one-third of the main trio ofJujutsu Kaisen, an initially stand-offish and overconfident loudmouth with a love of the city and a hatred of the countryside. Her opponent is Momo Nishimiya, the very image of a classical witch, using wind sorcery to ride on a broom. Very quickly into their fight, their smack talk turns into a discourse onthe expectations placed upon womenin their field.
To her credit, Momo recognizes how society has competing expectations for women that tend to contradict each other. She talks about how women who are strong need to be pretty as well, and how if they are pretty, they are expected to be strong. The world of sorcery is no different in this regard, merely more fantastical. The world demands perfection from women.
In response to this, Momo seeks perfection in herself andlooks down on Nobara’s masculine qualities, namely her reliance on brute strength, finding it ignorant. She even takes it somewhat as a slight against her and especially someone like Mai, who had a far tougher childhood and has persevered in spite of those expectations. It serves to reveal that Momo is a far more empathetic person who feels sorry for Mai.
But Nobara retaliates against this idea, citing Mai’s rude and unlikable character. In her view, Momo and Mai are using their victimhood to justify their actions. Even if they are victims of such high expectations, playing into them and conforming to them without a genuine idea of one’s self will only perpetuatethose ideas about who women “should be.”
Momo’s view comes off as saying that Mai is right because she wasn’t born as skilled as Maki, but Nobara has seen good people who were talented be dragged through the mud as well. She finds the act of trying to meet the demands of society to be an utter drag. Why should she care about gender roles? She’s perfectly content with the parts of her that are feminine and masculine.
Second, A Matter of Sisterhood
Maki Zenin vs Mai Zenin is a sister vs sister duel with a lot to dissect, both visually and narratively. Maki was born without the ability to see curses or used cursed energy and the qualities that she did possess went unrecognized by her awful family.Refusing to tolerate her family’s abuse anymore, she left to become a successful sorcerer on her own.
Mai, on the other hand, was born with the ability to see curses and use cursed energy but lacked the qualities that made her sister so incredible. Maki was fearless and despite technically being “weaker” was still the older sister that she looked up to, so her leaving was taken as a huge betrayal. She didn’t even want to be a jujutsu sorcerer but had to become one after Maki left.
The question this episode asks is thus: was Maki right to leave Mai alone even though it was to escape a toxic home environment and achieve her own self-actualization? A pretty good case is made in the episode that, yes, it was a valid choice, though one could understandably say that leaving her alone was wrong.But consider why that choice had to be madein the first place.
Mai was only pushed so hard to become a sorcerer because her father wanted to use her against Maki. It was a cruel tactic by a heartless father to mock a daughter he’d already written off, and for Maki to leave despite that couldn’t have been easy, but neither would staying. At the end of the episode, she tells Mai that she would have hated herself for not leaving.
At the end of the day, Maki deserved the opportunity to be recognized for her talents and to live the life she wanted. It came at the cost of her relationship with her sister, but that’s just as much the fault of her family and the ways of thinking that created their archaic rules as it is hers.It was never going to end perfectly.
Third, A Matter of Praise
Episode 17 is frankly a masterclass in character writing, visual direction, pacing, and animation. It has so many moments where the animation and just the camera leave the viewer awestruck, and the script is similarly smart. Mai went from being a fairly unlikable character to someone whose flaws feel deeply understood, and her brief phone conversation with Momo says a lot about the care they have for one another.
Similarly,the way this shonen action seriesso directly and adeptly tackles ideas of female empowerment, gender roles, and sexism is fascinating. There are so many diverse depictions of femininity in the four women prominently featured in this episode, and each one of them is deeply layered beyond that. This is without even touching on the brief moments shared with the other women in the cast.
Altogether,Jujutsu Kaisenepisode 17 stands as one of the best episodes of the first season. In a show already littered with great characters, it finds a way to make every character shine in a meaningful way, contributing to a greater more poignant meaning in the process. With any luck, fans can expect more great episodes like this when Goshozono takes the director’s chair full-time in Season 2.
