Many great stories have the trope of a villain who is considered to be the master manipulator working behind the scenes to further their own schemes while the rest of the world fights for problems that are much smaller in scale. Anime has introduced many great characters of this trope such as Aizen from Bleach, Madara from Naruto and Eren Yeager from Attack on Titan, to name a few. In Jujutsu Kaisen, Kenjaku fills this role.

Kenjaku is an ancient sorcerer who has been active for over 1000 years, during which he was putting plans into motion and setting the stage for an event he calls the Culling Game. After the horrors the heroes faced in the Shibuya Incident, things would not quiet down as Kenjaku would go on to begin the Culling Game from where the Incident left off. So, let's take a look at what the Culling Game is and what it could mean for the future of Jujutsu Kaisen.

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What is the Culling Game?

Right after the end of the Shibuya Incident arc, the Culling Game officially began its initial stages. The game itself is essentially a massive Battle Royale that pits a grand total of 1000 sorcerers and curse users against each other in order to optimize cursed energy in a way for Kenjaku to eventually achieve his final plan, which we will get into later.

The game is structured in 10 colonies all across Japan and is done this way because the fighting between the sorcerers starts to accumulate a lot of cursed energy, which is what Kenjaku covets. All of these colonies are connected with boundary-binding barriers and they stretch from the most Western part of Japan, with Hokkaido being the only unaffected area due to its relevance as a holy land.

There are 2 ways that the participants are chosen; those who ingested cursed relics, such as Hajime Kashimo and those who simply had their cursed technique awakened, such as Hiromi Higuruma. The former are essentially sorcerers who made a deal with Kenjaku decades or centuries ago in which they had to go into a deep sleep tied to cursed relics that Kenjaku would feed to innocent vessels in the modern day. When the seal on the relic expires, the sorcerer would wake up in the body of the vessel but be in full control of it. The latter are just everyday people who have their cursed technique unlocked. As they fight against one another, they continually release more and more cursed energy.

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It is then accumulated and moves all across the country, essentially covering all of Japan in a blanket of cursed energy and aside from Hokkaido, all parts of Japan are encompassed within this blanket. This is where Kenjaku's ultimate goal comes in. By doing this and effectively covering every citizen of Japan up in this blanket, the entirety of humanity is now primed to 'evolve', as Kenjaku puts it.

Rules of the Culling Game

Just as the Culling Game started, the 8 rules for the game were made public to all those participating and all those who had the option to. The way that the rules were structured made sure that no one, not even Kenjaku himself, was the game master. The game was essentially its own master as Kenjaku had designed it through many binding vows and rules to make sure that the game would achieve its purpose of harvesting cursed energy even if he died.

The rules are as follows:

1. For those sorcerers that were given an ability due to Kenjaku using Mahito's Transfiguration ability, these players must participate in the game within 19 days of the activation of their cursed techniques at a barrier of their choosing.
2. Any player who breaks the previous rule or does not comply with it by refusing to participate will undergo a cursed technique removal, which forcefully removes their cursed technique. Shoko explains that this would likely cause the death of the player as the forceful removal may be too much for their brains to handle.
3. Any non-player who enters a colony for whatever reason will be considered an active player within the Culling Game at the moment of their entry.
4. The objective of the Game is to accumulate the most points and the way to collect these points is by killing other players.
5. Points indicate the value of a player's life. As a general rule within the game, sorcerers are worth 5 points whereas non-sorcerers are only worth 1 point.
6. Any player who has accumulated 100 points in the Culling Game excluding the value of their lives may add their own rule to the game.
7. In accordance with the previous rule, the Culling Game must accept the rules added by players as long as they don't have a marked or long-term effect on the game and are in line with the already established 8 rules.
8. If the score of any player in the Culling Game remains unchanged for a total duration of 19 days, they too are subject to curse technique removal.

Another rule that was only stated after the players had started the Culling Game was regarding the entry to the barriers themselves. Since these barriers are quite vast and span a wide range around Japan, every member is teleported to a random location within the barrier upon entering it.

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Kenjaku's Goal with the Game

Kenjaku is Jujutsu Kaisen's most mysterious character as not much is known about his backstory. What we do know, however, is that he is extremely ancient and that the Culling Game was something that he had been planning for the last 1000 years. Due to this, Kenjaku had made a pact with all of the other ancient sorcerers like Hajime Kashimo to eventually awaken to take part in the Game.

Kenjaku's main motivation is very simple to define despite his mysterious nature; curiosity. Kenjaku's plan is for the amount of accumulated cursed energy to be so great by the end of the Game that he would use it for his greater plan. Since we already know that Kenjaku wants humanity to achieve the next form in its evolution by optimizing cursed energy, he wants to merge all of the human species with Master Tengen to make one, singular cursed entity. The fact of the matter is, even he doesn't know what this will do, just that he wants to see what it would be like. When it comes to villains in Jujutsu Kaisen, Kenjku might just be the final boss.

Jujutsu Kaisen is available to stream on Prime Video.

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