Highlights
- Ultimate Mechamaru's battle with Mahito was visually impressive, but ultimately inconsequential to the plot. The "ghosting" issue affected certain scenes but will be fixed for the Blu-ray release.
- The episode paid homage to mecha anime, with references to Gurren Lagann and Evangelion. However, Mechamaru's storyline felt forced and forgettable, especially with the sudden shift to the Shibuya Incident.
- The anticipation around Satoru Gojo's arrival creates tension and sets up the next episode. Critics may see the cliffhanger ending as a ploy to keep fans engaged.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Jujutsu Kaisen Episode 31, "Evening Festival", now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Fans of the Jujutsu Kaisen manga were eager to see how the anime would adapt the fight between Mechamaru and Mahito, and it didn't disappoint. Although some might think Mahito's facial expressions could have been even more creepy, overall it was a spectacular encounter. Some scenes though were heavily affected by what's known as ghosting, a necessary element for the TV version that will be solved for the Blu-ray launch.
What this battle also brings is the first of a long list of victims among the main characters from Season 1, and the episode of course didn't end there to continue the trend of two halves with a great contrast. At last, the Shibuya Incident officially begins.
How To Defeat Mahito, Or Die Trying
Like in the previous episode, one of the main highlights was the direct references to mecha anime. Evening Festival had identical shots to Gurren Lagann when Kokichi charges against Mahito, or Evangelion, specifically the film Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance apart from the original TV series. It's as if everything about Ultimate Mechamaru was carefully designed and orchestrated to pay homage to series that were a big inspiration for Jujutsu Kaisen.
Apart from that, this whole event and Mechamaru's demise was rather inconsequential. He played the part of the mole, he came prepared to fulfill his dream of meeting his classmates and walk with them, he had a plan to defeat Mahito, however his condition for victory which was contacting Satoru not only never happened, but he didn't even try or had a way to do it.
He was, surprisingly, able to push Mahito to use his Domain Expansion: Self-Embodiment of Perfection, he used the Simple Domain as a proven effective weapon against him which made him think that he won for a second. But in the end, it felt more as something forced, a tribute to Evangelion, than a key element for the plot. Miwa's conversation was somewhat successful at making it feel heartbreaking, but this whole Mechamaru story seems forgettable, specially with what's coming next. The fact that it moved to the start of the Shibuya Incident without a moments notice, in the same episode, takes away even more of its importance. If anything, it just helped the wrong guys to figure out how to counter Simple Domain and make the perfect veil.
The Veil Comes Down
Kokichi was the first victim of the Shibuya Incident, even before it began, sure, but there was still time in the episode to get things moving. Perhaps the best part of the second half of Evening Festival was showing how people that just went out partying at Shibuya during Halloween reacted to the Veil being placed. A lot of funny moments, great animation and character design, great voice acting for such secondary roles, although the show it's a bit frivolous with the death of a good number of people simply absorbed into the station without much of an explanation yet. Almost aligning with Geto's ideas about the value of certain lives.
A group of the best of the best sorcerers quickly gets to the scene, a few new faces, and a few others, well, let's not get into that just yet. All of them are about to face a crude reality. Waiting out for Satoru to finish things off might not be as easy a job as it used to be. Maybe the value of Mechamaru's side story resides on the: what if he was able to warn them about their plans? How many lives could have been saved? But at the same time, it was his information as the mole what made everything possible for Geto and company.
Who Even Is Satoru Gojo?
No one knows how, no one knows who said it, but the name keeps resonating in their heads. Satoru Gojo. The only one who could get them out of there, or at least that's what they were told. By who or why remains unknown. The last few moments of the episode create a tension, an expectation that will reach its peak next week. They animated the scene where Gojo bumps into a bystander to end the episode with just a sentence, Satoru Gojo arrives at 8:31 PM.
In other circumstances some may have found this ending as a reason to criticize this episode. It was all for nothing, just to leave on a cliffhanger, just to keep fans on the loop, engaged. However, considering the length of the episode and that very few moments could have been cut out, it was the perfect moment to end. Still, it's somewhat easy to see that these first couple of episodes of the Shibuya Arc serve to a much longer story lone and can't be as well directed and with such a great pace as it was during Hidden Inventory/Premature Death.
The good thing though is that it will only go up from this point and until the end of this season of Jujutsu Kaisen. This also implies a good amount of moments that will be a hard pill to swallow for anime-only fans. The best approach might be picturing the worst, so when things actually happen perhaps aren't as bad as the expectation.