‘Jujutsu Kaisen’ Keeps Looking So Damn Good

The third season of Jujutsu Kaisen is in its early stages, and this week’s episode was an action-packed doozy that made for some of the best stuff Mappa has done with the series to date. Of the four episodes, three of them have had old and new characters go at it with their various powers, and it’s all looked great.

Both on the page and screen, Kaisen‘s been a looker; mangaka Gege Akutami has an art style best described as “scratchier†compared to, say, My Hero Academia or One Piece. Even when things are at their most chaotic, his work has looked clean and made it easier for demonic Curses to pop on the page when the situation calls for it. Across its current three-season run, Mappa’s worked to match the source material’s energy and evolving art style, allowing for each individual season to look different from others without feeling like a complete betrayal.

In season one, character designs were handled solely by Tadashi Hiramatsu, who shonen/horror fans may best remember for his work on Madhouse’s adaptation of Parasyte and recently did a short for Star Wars Visions. The Jujutsu cast have sharp faces and look the most detailed here, particularly during close-ups where their faces twist into various emotions. (Hiramatsu didn’t help Mappa with Attack on Titan, but it’s easy to imagine his work inspired that show’s look, however partially.) He was joined in design work for season two by Sayaka Koiso, an animation director and sub-designer for the first season. Here, the cast have less detail, but Hiramatsu and Koiso’s art styles feel in conversation with one another, an intentional choice since the “Gojo’s Past†and “Shibuya Incident†arcs are meant to play off the other.

Going solely off fights, that first season of Jujutsu Kaisen is slower than the second. Many times, the emphasis is on the impact of attacks rather than the motion of battle itself, as seen in cousins Maki and Fushiguro going up against Hanami. You’re meant to understand these attacks hurt the Curse and that the two humans are putting their efforts into making it bleed so they can finish it off. Even a fight where Yuji and Todou tag in wants to enforce everyone’s strength.

On the other hand, season two’s action amps up the speed: when you watch the show at the framerate it’s meant to be in, you see Toji Fushiguro is a force of nature for young Gojo and Geto because he’s so speedy, or that Yuji needs to be fast if he’s got any hope of holding his own against Choso. Power is still important to these brawls, but they also convey how everyone’s trying to surpass and outthink their opponent instead of just trying to find an opening to do more damage.

With Jujutsu season three, Koiso and Hiramatsu have stepped away and been replaced by Yosuke Yajima and Hiromi Niwa. While the pair have been in anime for years, this show marks their first time as character designers, and everyone’s new looks feel shaped by past iterations. You’re not just seeing the weight of time on Yuji and the surviving sorcerers; you’re also seeing their looks come into greater focus. And if season two put a focus on speed, the fights in season three so far want you to think about scale. Nothing’s been as titanic as last season’s Shibuya Incident yet, but these scraps have felt big thus far: Maki’s Kill Bill-inspired massacre of her family’s bodyguards portrays her as a murderous ballerina skating and weaving her way through the battlefield, while Naoya and Choso’s much-memed beatdown goes from frame-focused punches to rivers of blood flooding the streets.

That speed and scale are particularly important when it comes to this week’s episode. Naoya’s Projection power lets him move at 24 frames per second, effectively giving him superspeed and letting him pummel Maki. Anything he touches has to play by the same 24 FPS rule, and if it doesn’t, it’s completely immobile (and vulnerable) for a full second. This is how he got an edge on Choso in the season premiere, and it gives the anime an excuse—likely not a coincidence, since Naoya would’ve possibly been conceived early into its production—to make any fights involving him play out as they do. At first, it seems like he’s got Maki on the ropes; he’s knocking her all around the Zenin estate and ranting about how she’s not Toji and will never be.

But because Maki’s new body allows her to perceive things in different frame rates, she opens herself up for an attack just to punch Naoya so hard a part of his skull breaks, like a Mortal Kombat X-ray move. It’s the money shot of the entire episode, in case it wasn’t clear when they replay her fist hitting his face from four different angles:

MAKI PUNCHING THE SHIT OUT OF NAOYA’S BUM ASS…I NEED A STRONGER WORD THAN GOATTTTT pic.twitter.com/OapruFJic8

— nay (@getovrz) January 22, 2026

The way Jujutsu Kaisen has been moving, Mappa is guaranteed to keep making it beyond season three and go even more all out than it is now. When that finally happens, it’ll be interesting to see how the show’s visual style further evolves and how it visualizes the manga’s frenetic fights. A bar’s been set, and the studio seems determined to keep topping itself whenever it can.

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