Summary

• Jujutsu Kaisen gears up for a third season with the Culling Games arc, featuring unique and bizarre abilities.
• Kirara and Hakari, new third-year characters, the protagonists in the Culling Games with their strange abilities.
• The series embraces its weird side, drawing comparisons to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, with both series sharing unique and inspired concepts.

With the end of the Shibuya arc, Jujutsu Kaisen is gearing up for a third season, featuring the much anticipated Culling Games. At the climatic final moments of Season 2, Kenjaku absorbed and used Mahito's Idle Transfiguration on a mass scale, awakening two thousand sorcerers across Japan. One half were those who possessed Innate Cursed Techniques, but weren't born with the brain to utilize them. The other half were sorcerers incarnated from a past era just as Sukuna had been.

Over the course of the arc, the protagonists and readers become well acquainted with several individuals from both groups, and they've got abilities that completely flip the power system of Jujutsu Kaisen on its head, taking it to strange new heights. Bizarre new heights, even, as plenty of these new powers wouldn't be at all unusual to see in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.

Just as that shonen giant did before, it seems like Gege Akutami wanted to get weird with these new characters, and they've certainly succeeded. Here's what those waiting for the next season can expect from the Culling Games arc.

Kirara and Hakari Provide a Taste of What's to Come

The Unseen Third Years Become New Allies

Before Yuji, Megumi, and the other sorcerers hop into the Culling Games in search of a sorcerer who can free Satoru Gojo from his imprisonment, they need help. These two third years had only been talked about in hushed rumor, Hakari in particular having been suspended due to an argument with a conservative higher up of the Jujutsu world. Both are quite capable sorcerers, but both also have strange abilities that aren't quite like anything else that had been in the series beforehand.

Kirara's Love Rendezvous technique forces their enemies to go in a certain direction, with each individual being marked by a star in the Southern Cross constellation. It can make things barrel right at others, or make other things nigh impossible to reach. Almost like a puzzle more than a fighting technique. Hakari's technique utilizes a Domain Expansion in a completely unique way, using his sure-hit move to inform his enemies about how his Pachinko-based domain works – and if he hits the jackpot, he gains infinite cursed energy. This is but a taste of the conditional Cursed Techniques this arc introduces.

Cursed Techniques Get Stranger as the Culling Games Begin

The Sorcerers of New and Old Boast Unique Techniques

Once the protagonists get a hold of Hakari and Kirara, they descend into the Culling Games proper, and become acquainted with all types of Sorcerers, from long past eras to those who are new to the game, but thriving nonetheless. There's Hiromi Higarama, a Defense attorney turned killer with his trial technique and domain. Kashimo, an electrical fiend who seeks combat with the strongest sorcerer of all time, Sukuna; not to mention Reggie Star, another revived sorcerer who can recreate anything from a recipe with his technique.

The list goes on. There's a jet and helicopter hair couple who dominate the airspace. A comedian who can materialize anything so long as he thinks it is funny. An aspiring manga artist who can see the future with a drawing he places on his opponents. A man who throws around gasoline soaked body parts for explosives, regrowing them with his "Reverse Curse" technique. A lady who bends the skies to be her clothes. Interestingly, the United States Military shows up at a point too. These are really just the tip of the iceberg for whom the Culling Games introduces.

The Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Connection

Jujutsu Kaisen Embraces its Weird Side

All these strange new abilities take the series' battles in new directions entirely. They force the heroes to think fast, take every advantage they can get, and figure out how to counter these oddly specific yet creatively applied powers. Domains are reintroduced not as bombastic final moves, but as a method of expressing one's technique through a domain. Gege Akutami clearly wanted to push the system they'd built to its absolute limits, and possibly took inspiration from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure to do so.

The author themselves have never claimed as much, with Bleach in particular cited as a direct inspiration for JJK. But there are a number of characters who feel right at home in the wacky world of Jojo. It's easy to envision Giorno Giovanna fighting an enemy who throws their own explosive body parts and regrows them. A wannabe mangaka with the power to see the future through his drawings wouldn't be out of place in Morioh. Reggie Star's receipt-based fashion and recreations would fit Jojo's Bizarre Adventure like a glove.

Jojo's Is a Good Fit for JJK Fans Too

Killing Time Before Season 3 of Jujutsu Kaisen

While the third season of Jujutsu Kaisen has been confirmed, it likely won't happen for another year. But fans of the series can certainly give all six parts of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure a try instead; having been running for a decade now, there are six parts currently animated, another two in the manga, and an ongoing one as well. If Todo's antics and bombastic attitude were entertaining, Jojo's got plenty of that. If Megumi's Shikigami is cool to fans, practically everyone is a shikigami in Jojo.

While these similarities are superficial and likely unintentional, they both do something unique with those concepts that brings both series to the next level. Someone who's a fan of JJK should give Jojo a try, and the same goes for fans of Jojo who have yet to give JJK a watch or read. Then they, too, can the wait for the Culling Games to be animated, or JJK fans can the wait for Jojo's seventh part, Steel Ball Run, to be animated – if it ever will be.

While Jujutsu Kaisen and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure may not have a new season coming any time soon, both share similarities, likely stemming from similar inspirations. What both series do with it is unique, as the former becomes more like the latter with the Culling Games.