Jujutsu Kaisen – Episode 6 Review: After Rain

After thinking about it some more, episode five last week actually left me kinda wanting. While it did give us a phenomenal fight scene between Sukune and Fushiguro, I still felt like the show was going a touch too fast and leaving me in the dark a little when it came to the state of the world. Episode 6 is the first one that seems to settle down a bit and start to really let this world and its characters sink in a bit.

After Rain begins within Itagori, or to be more specific; within the mind of Sukuna, who is in turn within Itagori. The two have a scuffle as Itadori is understandably upset at the Curse demon for that whole killing him thing from last week. While Sukuna had been talking big about not caring whether he died along with his host, something seems to have changed since then.

After his battle with Fushiguro, the demon seems to have taken an interest in the young Sorcerer and has become interested enough in his potential that he wants to stick around within Itagori for at least a little while longer. During their “fight”, if you can call it that, Sukuna proposes a pact with his host. One forged in curse energy that would make it so he couldn’t break it even if he wanted to. Obviously, Itagori throws his deal back in his face.

Despite the fact that I don’t really think it’s a terrible deal. Especially considering the other option is to, y’know, die.

Sukuna wants to be able to take free control of Itagori’s body for one minute at some point in the future and is even kind enough to promise that he won’t injure or kill anyone whilst in control. The other condition being that Itadori retains no memory of the deal once he wakes up.

Again though, our hero is pretty pig-headed and insists the demon bring him back without conditions, sucker punching the demon in the process. Sukune ends up tricking our dopey protagonist to get what he wants in the end though. Offering a fight to the “death” to see who decides the rules of their resurrection. A fight that ends before Itadori even has time to finish agreeing to it, getting his head sliced off rather abruptly.

So, even though he snuck a sucker punch in there, it seems like the demon is still far stronger than his host. Outside of Itadori’s ability to stop the demon taking over his body anyway.

From here we actually get a bit of development and world-building for the rest of the cast. Before Itadori sits up from his slab. We see Satoru sat next to his corpse, angrily going on a diatribe regarding his distaste for the leadership looming over them all. He essentially gives up his plan that he wants to shake up the leadership, get the old stuffy and lazy men out and replace with fresh faces. Younger people who would be more willing to try new things and make positive change rather than just rest on tradition.

The way he sees it: he has two options. Either he just rocks up and kills everyone, which would probably hurt him in the long run seeing as everyone would just view him as some insane murderer. Or teach. Ah yes, the classic route of all people who get into education as their career: either teach or kill them all. Either way, Satoru doesn’t seem all that shocked when Itagori sits up from his morgue slab.

He actually asks everyone else present to keep Itagori’s Resurrection quiet, at least until the interschool tournament. That way he can have some time to actually train the kid and give him a basic introduction into the world of curses and monsters before the leadership send him into another situation designed to kill him.

So now we’re into the full-on shonen training sequence. And as you’d expect, our main character’s method of training is going to be… let’s say unique. Despite his impressive physical capabilities, Itadori is still an utter novice when it comes to controlling curse energy. So we’re overdue time he actually gets crash course into knowing what the hell he was actually doing. So he gets the introduction 101 class to using curse energy.

Does that mean he’ll be plopped into a classroom or other standard teaching environment? Haha, of course not. That wouldn’t fit with Saturo’s image of being the goofy, carefree sensei at all.

Itadori’s first bit of training is to generate curse energy through negative emotions, which is how everyone generates it. But keeping it in check while feeling all kinds of different emotions himself. His way of doing this? Movie marathon. Yup, Itadori needs to watch movie after movie after movie while babysitting a little homunculus that will punch him in the face every time he lets his concentration slip.

Silly, but no doubt it’ll be effective.

Elsewhere, we see the second years training with Fushiguro and Kugisaki, as both of them need to work on their close-quarters combat skills. Neither of them knows that Itagori is still alive at this point. Although Sukuna’s words of Fushigori’s potential seemed to have incepted their way into the kid’s mind, and through that, he discovers something about himself. Although he don’t exactly see what new power he is going to figure out.

The other major event of the episode follows on from something that began in the previous episode. The strange man hanging out with the demons in the cafe continue to plot against the sorcerers and start to enact their plan to take Satoru Goto off the board, planning to seal him within a cursed object. A prospect that delights the demon he’s chatting with so much that his head starts erupting like a volcano and everyone else inside the building starts erupting into flames.

It’s pretty gruesome actually and reminds me that this show pulls no punches when it comes to its violence and brutality. There’s a scene at the start where Fushiguro goes to visit the mother of the kid they found in the warped school a couple of episodes ago, apologising to her for not being able to recover her son’s body. It’s a pretty sad and personal scene that shows the cost of even normal, inconsequential people dying, giving it all some weight.

The episode ends with the volcano headed demon ambushing Satoru as he makes his way to visit the leadership. I enjoyed this episode, it gave some more context to the world and was really the first “quiet” episode that gives us some time to get to know out greater cast a little bit better and see them in a not life or death situation for a little while. That being said, I’m looking forward to seeing Satoru kick the crap out of this new curse monster in what will be, no doubt, another fantastic looking action sequence.