Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 41 Review

Eight-Grip Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Makora

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 41 may be the last good episode of the season. In case you aren’t aware, things aren’t looking so good for the production of this series. Animators have been complaining about tight deadlines and being overworked.

But, I’m no expert in the Japanese animation industry. So, that’s all I’m going to say about that. We’ll just have to wait and see if the series melts going forward. I hope it doesn’t. However, there’s a very real possibility that it does.

Anyway, Episode 41 introduced some shiny new stuff for me to go over. And the first of those shiny new things is Fushiguro’s 10th shikigami. His ability allows him to make pacts with 10 powerful shikigami. But, no prior users of his technique were able to forge a pact with the strongest of the shikigami, Makora.

Shikigami and curses aren’t the same thing. I don’t know the technical differences. But, there are differences (source: trust me, bro). One piece of evidence pointing to that is that Makora is divine. He’s somehow connected to the Buddha, which would be weird if he was a curse.

Through his fight against Sukuna, we also learn that Makora’s ability is that it can adapt to anything. If Sukuna hadn’t figured this out fast enough, there’s a good chance Makora would have won the fight. And, if Makora won the fight, Fushiguro would die.

Why doesn’t Sukuna want Fushiguro to die, though? It’s not because Fushiguro and Itadori are best friends. Instead, it seems to be because Fushiguro is one of the few sorcerers who could defeat Gojou. This information comes from Gojou himself. But, it’s unclear exactly how Sukuna would use that to his advantage. Gojou’s sealed and Fushiguro wouldn’t help Sukuna.

Domain Expansion: Malevolent Kitchen

I can’t say that I was expecting Sukuna to be revealed to be Gordon Ramsay. But, that’s kind of what happened in this episode. Previously, I theorized that Sukuna represented Hell as a curse. The fire we saw him use would therefore be hellfire.

But, it turns out that wasn’t quite right. In Episode 41, he reveals that his domain expansion is Malevolent Kitchen. And within his domain, he can do a variety of cooking-related things. He can slice things, he can dice things, and he can boil/bake things.

What if I wasn’t entirely wrong, though? What if Sukuna still represents Hell in a way? Maybe Malevolent Kitchen is actually an alternate translation of Hell’s Kitchen? Now are you seeing why I said he’s Gordon Ramsay? It all makes sense. Well, except for the part about Sukuna being the strongest curse.

I can’t say I understand how a curse whose ability has to do with cooking is the strongest. Though, I’m sure there’s more to Sukuna than what we know right now. And that’s why I’m not giving up on my representation of Hell theory.

You see, when he was fighting Makora, Sukuna commented on how Makora could see his ability. This is an odd thing to say if Sukuna’s ability actually only has to do with cooking things. His comment implies there’s still something we don’t understand about how it all works. And, we should also consider what he said to Jougo in Episode 40.

Jougo thought slicing things up was Sukuna’s ability. But, Sukuna said that’s not his true ability. Could Sukuna’s true ability have to do with gaining power through eating curses? That could tie into the cooking motif. And, it could explain the whole “eating Sukuna’s fingers” thing.

Destruction of Shibuya

By the end of the episode, Shibuya is in rough shape. There are multiple blocks that simply don’t exist anymore thanks to Jougo and Sukuna. And, there are thousands of people who lost their lives as a result of Sukuna’s fights.

One of those people who lost their lives is Haruta Shigemo, the guy whom Nanami killed a couple of times. He ran out of backup lives and Sukuna finished him off. But, I wanted to bring Haruta up because it turns out that I was somewhat correct when I predicted his ability.

Back in my review of Episode 36, I pointed out how the marks on Haruta’s face disappear every time he dies. That’s exactly what was happening. But, what I couldn’t have predicted is how he gains those extra lives. He gains them by erasing his own memory of little miracles that happen every day.

Basically, if something good happens to Haruta, like he finds a coin on the ground, he gets an extra life. But, he won’t remember that he found a coin on the ground. So, he doesn’t know what happened to give him that extra life. That’s why he doesn’t understand his own ability.

Anyway, we know Haruta is dead now. However, what’s more important is that we know Nanami is alive. He looks like Two-Face from Batman now. But, things could be worse. He could have died from Jougo’s fire blast.

We don’t yet know how Nanami survived with only half of his body being burnt, though. And since we don’t know that, we can’t assume that Maki and Naobito are dead. They could have survived in the same way. And, as I predicted in a previous review, Maki, in particular, seems too important to die like that.

Final Thoughts

What do you think about Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 Episode 41? Why do you think Sukuna wants to keep Fushiguro alive? Is Sukuna really the curse of cooking? Or, do you think there’s more to his ability than that? And, how do you think Nanami survived? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to share it with everyone you know. Also, follow me on your social media of choice so you don’t miss out on any future articles — links are in the footer.

Finally, I’d like to thank Roman and JasonHK for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about supporting this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of Episode 42 is available now.