Jujutsu Kaisen: The Culling Game Part 1

Jujutsu Kaisen returns for a third season, subtitled The Culling Game Part 1, picking up right at the darkest point of the Shibuya arc: Satoru Gojo trapped in the Prison Realm and Kenjaku, now free to act, launching the Culling Game, a gruesome tournament that forces recognized sorcerers and ordinary people carrying cursed energy to fight each other across Japan on pain of death. Still produced by MAPPA, the season centers mainly on Yuji Itadori and Yuta Okkotsu, whose return to the forefront of the story, following the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 film, reshuffles the dynamics among the surviving protagonists, joined by figures such as sorcerer-turned-lawyer Hiromi Higuruma, called upon to judge Yuji for the killing of a fellow student. Narratively, this is one of the darkest, most violent stretches of Gege Akutami's entire story, marked by the loss of long-running characters and an escalation of power that pushes survivors to face increasingly lethal opponents, in a setting where the moral rules of the sorcerer world are constantly called into question.

MAPPA maintains the technical standard that made the series famous, with combat sequences built on ambitious digital animation, particularly in the clash between Yuji and Yuta, among the most elaborate the series has produced, though critics have also flagged some shortcomings, chiefly a script that repeatedly leans on lengthy verbal exposition to convey complex plot developments, and an ensemble cast that, in this first stretch of the Culling Game, narrows around a handful of protagonists, leaving side characters fans wanted more of pushed into the background. It remains, all the same, a chapter manga readers had waited years for, one that restores tension and unpredictability to a saga heading toward its conclusion. Premiering in Japan in January 2026 and arriving globally on Netflix that July, the season confirmed Jujutsu Kaisen among the year's most-watched anime, with viewership that in several weeks outpaced even other seasonal heavyweights like Frieren, a sign of how central the franchise remains in the current shonen landscape.