Jujutsu Kaisen

Gege Akutami has apologised to readers for how many characters the series kills. Jujutsu Kaisen started in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2018, sold more than 100 million volumes in six years, and reached that scale by refusing the one guarantee its genre normally offers: that the people you follow will survive.

2018: a shonen where losing is permanent

Akutami had published a short series that was cancelled, then a prequel one-shot that became Jujutsu Kaisen 0. The serial began in March 2018.

The premise is ordinary for the genre: a high school student swallows a cursed object and shares his body with a powerful spirit. What is not ordinary is the treatment of consequence. Characters die in the middle of arcs, off-page, without a rematch.

The magic system is built on rules that characters must state out loud. Binding vows trade power for restriction, and a fighter who explains his technique gets stronger by having explained it, which turns exposition into a mechanic.

The animation studio that overtook the manga

MAPPA adapted the series in 2020 and produced one of the most technically ambitious action anime of the decade. The first season pushed the manga's sales past every competitor for two consecutive years.

Jujutsu Kaisen 0 followed in cinemas in 2021 and took more than 190 million dollars worldwide, most of it in Japan. It adapts the four chapters Akutami had drawn before the serial existed.

The second season in 2023 drew attention for a different reason: animators described working conditions publicly, and the discussion about the industry's schedules moved from forums to mainstream coverage.

An author who keeps saying he wants to stop

Akutami has written in the volume margins about exhaustion, has taken repeated hiatuses for health, and ended the series in September 2024 after 271 chapters.

The ending divided readers sharply. A large section had expected a final confrontation the manga chose not to stage in the form they wanted.

He has since said the schedule was the deciding factor. A weekly serial in Jump requires around nineteen pages every seven days, and the system that produces these sales is the same one that ends the careers.

What it changed about the genre it belongs to

Jump's action manga had been running on escalation since Dragon Ball: a stronger enemy, a new transformation, a survivable defeat. This series kept the escalation and removed the survival.

Its influence is visible in what Jump has published since, with several new series adopting permanent death and explicit rule systems.

Whether that is an improvement can be argued either way. What is not is that a manga which kills its cast outsold everything else on the shelf for two years running.