Jujutsu Kaisen: The Culling Game Part 1

呪術廻戦「死滅回游前編」 (Jujutsu Kaisen: Shimetsu Kaiyuu - Zenpen)

8.2(6)

OtakuDen

8.6(267,038)

MAL Score

Ranked #106

Popularity #477

Action
Supernatural

Episodes: 12
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Jan 9, 2026 to Mar 27, 2026
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Kenjaku—once known as Noritoshi Kamo and most recently as Suguru Getou—moves forward with a centuries-spanning scheme aimed at reshaping humanity and wiping out ordinary people. In the aftermath of the Shibuya incident, Satoru Gojou remains sealed away, and the jujutsu higher-ups reinstate the execution order for 15-year-old Yuuji Itadori. Unaware of the decision hanging over him, Yuuji roams the deserted streets of Tokyo alongside Chousou, cutting down cursed spirits wherever they appear.

Tensions also flare within the Zenin Clan when Megumi Fushiguro is named the next clan head, dealing a blow to the proud Naoya Zenin. Determined to lure Megumi out, Naoya targets Yuuji—only for Yuuta Okkotsu to step in as the sorcerer tasked with carrying out Yuuji’s sentence. As Kenjaku’s “Culling Game” begins—a deadly, Japan-wide battle royale that forces jujutsu participants to kill one another—the younger sorcerers enter the conflict to confront lingering grudges, seek a way to free Gojou, and stand against Kenjaku’s growing threat.

Otaku Consensus

The Culling Game Part 1 lands as one of Jujutsu Kaisen’s strongest televised runs, with critics and fans singling out Shouta Goshozono’s direction, MAPPA’s combat animation, and Hiroshi Seko’s unusually clear handling of a rule-heavy battle-royale structure. Its best-received quality is how it turns a dense escalation arc into propulsive weekly television without flattening the cast’s motives. The recurring criticism is that its cinematic polish can outpace its emotional substance, making parts of the season feel more like elite spectacle than fully digested drama.

Why You Should Watch

Watch this if you want shounen combat that treats choreography, rules, and psychological pressure as one system rather than separate pleasures. The Culling Game Part 1 scratches the same itch as Hunter x Hunter’s tactical battles and Fate-style supernatural matchups, but with Jujutsu Kaisen’s harsher urban texture: abandoned city spaces, cursed techniques with lethal consequences, and fights that move like horror set pieces before snapping into martial-arts precision. It is especially rewarding for viewers who liked Shibuya’s density but wanted a cleaner throughline, since reviews praised this season for making complex motivations and large-scale conflict easy to track. If you want a battle royale without tournament-arc padding, and action direction that turns every encounter into a character argument, this is the season’s selling point.

Key Characters

Y
Yuuji Itadori
Yuuji remains compelling because his physical fearlessness is constantly undercut by the moral weight fans associate with his role in the series.
M
Megumi Fushiguro
Megumi’s appeal here comes from watching a reserved tactician become the center of clan politics and survival-game pressure without losing his cold, problem-solving edge.
Y
Yuuta Okkotsu
Yuuta brings a different temperature to the cast: calm, almost soft-spoken menace that fans value because it reframes power as restraint rather than swagger.
K
Kenjaku
Kenjaku stands out as a long-game antagonist whose horror comes less from raw strength than from centuries of planning and identity manipulation.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
MAPPA’s return is not just a brand label here: early reactions and reviews specifically praised the season’s action animation, sharp direction, and opening episode presentation as evidence that the studio carried forward the high bar set by earlier Jujutsu Kaisen arcs.
2
The season is built around a death-game and battle-royale framework, reflected in AniList tags of Death Game at 91% and Battle Royale at 90%, making it a more rules-forward and survival-oriented entry than a standard villain-of-the-week shounen stretch.
3
Hiroshi Seko handles series composition, and the reception repeatedly notes that the plot remains easy to follow despite involving modern sorcerers, reincarnated fighters, competing motives, and Japan-wide stakes.
4
Shouta Goshozono directs with Yousuke Takata and Takeru Satou credited as assistant directors, giving the season a production profile centered on kinetic staging rather than simply reproducing manga panels.
5
The audience response is unusually strong for a sequel season: it holds an 8.61 MAL score from 267,038 votes, an AniList score of 86/100, and 9,450 AniList favourites.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The official Japanese title, Jujutsu Kaisen: Shimetsu Kaiyuu - Zenpen, marks this as the first half of the Culling Game adaptation rather than a self-contained one-cour endpoint.
Fun fact 2: The season aired as a 12-episode run from January 9, 2026 to March 27, 2026, giving the arc a compact winter-season broadcast window.
Fun fact 3: Character design duties are credited to both Hiromi Niwa and Yousuke Yajima, while Tatsuo Ishino is separately credited for title logo design, a rare production detail that highlights how the season’s visual identity was broken into specialized roles.
Fun fact 4: Junichi Higashi served as art director and Eiko Matsushima as color designer, two credits that matter for a season so heavily defined by urban locations, deserted spaces, and high-contrast supernatural violence.
Fun fact 5: Critical coverage was not unanimous despite the high scores: alongside praise calling it the peak of Jujutsu Kaisen, at least one review framed it as style over substance, making spectacle-versus-depth the clearest debate around the season.