When Jujutsu Kaisen‘s manga lastly wrapped in 2024, the feeling was much less bittersweet than sheer aid. Gege Akutami’s megapopular shonen juggernaut actually delivered spectacle with its battles, however its story was skinny. At its worst, its fights might be frustratingly arduous to parse, be it from poor well being making an attempt to sustain with the rigorous weekly shonen crunch schedule or its labyrinthine energy system that had to be defined with such exhaustive mid-bout exposition that it rivaled Bleach.
So when Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, its sequel collection, debuted quickly after, I braced for a Boruto-style continuation that will solely double down on these flaws. Nonetheless, after catching up—curiosity lastly gained out—I can admit Modulo is not solely surprisingly sturdy however, dare I say, higher than its predecessor exactly as a result of it sidesteps the gripes that weighed the authentic down.
From the soar, Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo—written by Akutami and illustrated by Yuji Iwasaki—takes a daring step few sequel shonen have taken: it situates itself years eliminated from its predecessor and embraces the actuality that the previous heroes’ period has ended, clearing the stage for a brand new technology. Certain, nostalgia lingers in nods, cameos, and winks to the previous. However these gestures by no means overshadow the recent solid with the hole “what in the event that they have been adults now?” fanfare most sequel shonen collection pigeonhole themselves in.
Whereas Jujutsu Kaisen proper, all the approach to its finish, all the time felt prefer it was constructing its energy system because it went, by no means taking the coaching wheels off with explainers and shock deaths (ardently leaked/spoiled online by fans) that by no means rang deeper than their archetypes in a cool struggle manga, Modulo really units up the collection’ thrust early on and lets its story take heart stage. After which there’s the paradigm shift in its premise, going full Giorgio A. Tsoukalos by including aliens to the cursed spirit-fighting collection’ narrative gumbo.
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(by way of Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo) pic.twitter.com/psypZUNji2
— Shonen Soar (@shonenjump) September 8, 2025
Set 68 years after the Culling Game, in 2086, Modulo sees Japan at a precarious crossroads the place a humanoid alien race known as Simurians has arrived on Earth as refugees from a distant world, wielding an influence system strikingly related to jujutsu sorcery. The central stress of the manga to date lies in whether or not coexistence or battle between sorcerers and Simurians will outline Earth’s future.
Early chapters hint a fragile tightrope as Japan—functioning as Earth’s de facto extraterrestrial representatives, thanks to its supernatural sorcerers—seeks to perceive the vagabond aliens and suss whether or not fostering prosperity is in the playing cards with out frightening hostility. In the meantime, the Simurians themselves try to construct new lives after years of subjugation underneath brutal colonization.
At the coronary heart of this narrative are sorcerer siblings Yuka Tsuguri Okkotsu, joined by their Simurian ally, Maru. For JJK followers, Yuka channels Yuta’s mild essence with a extra playful edge; Tsuguri blends the grit of Maki Zen’in (finest character; argue with a wall) with Megumi’s composure; and Maru embodies an alien spin on Yuji Itadori’s golden-retriever exuberance. They kind a compelling trio as they enterprise right into a back-to-basics supernatural battle of the week that made early JJK a lot enjoyable to learn week after week before the collection dovetails again into the intergalactic elephant in the room that feels deliberate out as a substitute of improvised week to week. And layered atop the intricate is a miraculously genius combo of Akutami and Iwasaki, whose previous works would have made such a narrative really feel not possible to come collectively with out highlighting each creators’ previous pitfalls.
Cipher Academy is so infused with japanese wordplays that it merely broke the official translation, I am in awe pic.twitter.com/qAo9ZHGPp9
— Rukasu (@RukasuMHA) February 12, 2023
As famous earlier, when Modulo was first introduced, I used to be fairly apprehensive about whether or not the collection might cohere given the pedigree of its creators. Whereas I’ve waxed poetic about late-stage Jujutsu Kaisen sufficient, Yuji Iwasaki’s prior work—Cipher Academy, a death-game collection as soon as deemed almost untranslatable—recommended a possible for even better opacity. On paper, their pairing appeared destined to be much more unparsable. But the collaboration proved the reverse, embodying what Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto has often wished for himself: the freedom to focus on writing whereas one other artist handles the visuals, permitting every creator to lean wholly into their strengths.
The outcome is a fairly rattling nice team-up that’s additionally fairly rattling nice to learn play out. Iwasaki’s panels are clear, legible, and brimming with character, by no means drowning the reader in infodumps, whereas Akutami’s worldbuilding and character dynamics unfold with out the menace of runaway energy scaling. Collectively, their return to the sandbox of JJK’s world strips issues again to fundamentals at the same time as the premise expands into extraterrestrial territory—and in doing so, they coalesce into one thing unexpectedly profound. With a collection that’s received a story bone construction to help the emotional catharsis and hype of its struggle, Modulo is Akutami and Iwasaki cooking at the peak of their powers in a approach that doesn’t really feel as canned or pressured as many sequel manga collection chasing the hype of their predecessors usually do.
Failing to see eye to eye, the people and Simurians attain a harmful level of no return.
Learn Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, Ch. 13 in Shonen Soar without cost! https://t.co/fVTvWf9rcg pic.twitter.com/PlxXCR4O1p
— Shonen Soar (@shonenjump) November 30, 2025
Inside the first 20 chapters of the manga to date, its characters are deeply written, my favourite being Yuka and her unlikely bond with Maru’s Trigun-esque meaner brother, Cross; any callbacks to the authentic collection are much less showy for reasonable fanservice pops and extra in service of writing a deeper narrative that’s mainly an immigrant story with all the nervousness that comes with it wrapped in a shonen package deal. There’s actual stress and friction in Modulo that’s not restricted to its fights, of which there are scarcely any—a choice that solely provides to their pomp and circumstance. The story feels rigorously crafted quite than an afterthought to ferry you to the subsequent overly sophisticated bout. As with wrestling, it’s all the time cool to see a man get his shit in by doing gymnastic flips, however except there’s a narrative motive why they’re about to break their neck for people’ leisure, it’s simply vapid. Modulo is shaping up to be something however, and I’m glad to have my notions about the collection confirmed improper.
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