Representation in Media

    This show is called Jujutsu Kaisen. It is an anime which follows a society where skilled “cursed energy” users called sorcerers use jujutsu and cursed energy to fight curses and humans against society. This scene actually uses ability/disability, gender and female representation, and class. The entire show actually focuses on all the aspects of identity but I am only going to analyze this particular scene shown above. Our protagonist for this scene is named Maki. I will give some background information. The Jujutsu Society has 3 main clans whose offsprings always have cursed energy and a cursed technique. Basically their ability and how many times they can use. Maki is from one of the largest clans called the Zenin Clan. It largely consists of men, and whoever has no cursed energy, or technique, then you are basically useless to the clan. But woman hold more prejudice in the Zenin clan. Maki received a lot of misogyny when she was growing up because she does not have a cursed technique or cursed energy. This makes her rely on cursed tools to fight curses, and she is looked down upon in the Zenin Clan. Moreover, she has a fraternal twin sister, and when twins are born they are viewed as one person, so their cursed energy splits and becomes weaker. Both the sister faced a lot of misogyny in the clan. After the strongest sorcerer was incapacitated for fighting, the Zenin clan decided to execute Maki and her twin sister Mai. But, Mai had killed herself after realizing that their own parents did not even love them. This is when she told Maki to “destroy everything”. Now when twins are born, if one of them dies, the rest of the cursed energy/ability transfers over to the other twin. Now in this scene Maki decides to kill everyone in the Zenin Clan because of all the suffering they cause to society because of their high egos and misogyny and bullying that she and her sister faced.

    Now for the analysis of the scene, Maki is scene fighting all the clan members on a glass floor, representing how easy it is for her to shatter and break the clan. The fighting scene also turns black and white while there is red blood to represent how she detached herself and isolated herself from humanity. The non-diegetic music is very fast paced and upbeat which shows her having fun with eliminating her clan and it is supposed to be celebrated. When Maki is fighting the clan, the directors used a style of editing called cutting on the action, which shows an action being performed midway through another angle. They also use proxemics to show how inferior the rest of the clan is to her after her new awakened power. She also slides on the blood of her enemies and does not use a weapon to kill a clan member but uses her bare fists as a way to mock them and their legacy. When a cursed technique is used, and the hands hold her above the Zenin clan house with blood running down, it symbolizes the control they have over her. When one of the top fights of the clan member says, "she is the same as Toji". It refers to the trauma the clan had because of a son without a cursed technique being stronger than their entire clan, and they had only lived on because of his mercy. This symbolizes Maki and Toji being similar because of their cursed-less status. When one of the top fighters Jinichi, is slowly approaching Maki to land his punch, he moved very slowly because of all the trauma he had from his little brother who had surpassed the clan's power and could kill them anytime.

This is just the beginning of the episode, and it gets way deeper with the plot. Through many cinematography edits, animation, and symbolism through binary opposition. The directors for this episode were able to create a meaningful episode in the aspects of identity.