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Sometimes I just can't help it - I start watching anime, even though I'm pretty sure that it's genre doesn't really appeal to me. This is also the case with Jujutsu Kaisen. Fighting shounen are not necessarily my first choice, and I found Kimetsu No Yaiba - an anime that for me falls into the same category as JJK - extremely boring. Nevertheless, I decided to give the anime a chance - I just like to join in on conversations, and JJK seems to appeal to a lot of people. And unexpectedly, I did enjoy it a good amount, too.

Unsurprisingly - it's not a profound ... masterpiece. I would describe both the story and the characters as ‘appropriate to the genre’ at best. Nevertheless, I would like to dedicate the majority of this review to the characters in particular, because for me this season stands or falls with the characters.

Interestingly, the main character Yuuji has the worst backstory of almost all of them - in my opinion, he could have been given a bit more depth. The fact that his grandfather's last words ‘save people’ became his life's purpose within a day seemed a bit ridiculous to me. Especially that these last words were repeated over and over again as a flashback - I honestly had to laugh every time because I really didn't understand the intention behind it. Is it supposed to be epic, or sad somehow? A reminder that we shouldn't forget Yuuji's only character trait? Whatever it is, these flashbacks only revealed the lack of a proper Yuuji backstory to me every single time.

The other characters though?
Some of them (Panda, Inumaki, Toudou) seemed ‘lol, so random!!!’ funny to me at first, so rather annoying - haha, a talking panda, haha, someone who only speaks in sushi ingredients, LOL, a muscle man who likes an idol. However, after more things were revealed about them I found them surprisingly likeable.
Gojou and Nobara are a bit flat in this season, but that changes at least partially in the second season - here the anime cleverly holds back from firing all the bullets right away.
My personal favourite character was probably Nanami - I was quite fond of his ice-cold, formal manner in contrast to the heated tempers of all the others. They also managed to not put him onscreen long enough to make the "joke" annoying, so that's something.
Then there's Fushiguro, Maki, Kasumi, Miwa... Jujutsu Kaisen has a relatively large cast, so of course it's not possible to fill all the characters with too much life in the time available. So I was honestly relatively indifferent to these characters, but I wouldn't call them bad per se. They are solid fun when they are onscreen, but offscreen I forgot about them relatively quickly.

Another positive thing I have to emphasise about the characters from the Kyoto campus is how they were brought closer to you. You got to know them in a phase in which they were practically antagonists, as they were after Yuuji's life - I found this dynamic really quite fun, and far more exciting than if you had got to know them in a good-humoured in a friendly competition. In general, this Goodwill Event arc was probably my highlight of the season because it was the first and only time that the lines between good and evil were somewhat blurred.

Speaking of evil: I would have hoped for a bit more from the actual antagonists than ‘being evil’.
Mahito in particular was given a lot of screentime - but in my opinion, it didn't amount to more than ‘he's manipulative, evil and strong’. Nevertheless, he's probably still the most interesting antagonist, simply because his ability is absolutely horrifying.
The other antagonists in season 1... yeah, they're just there. They are evil. They're more or less strong. I would have liked there to be cursed spirits whose motivation is a little less clearly evil, whose actions might even be understandable from a human point of view - a little more ambivalence. But they are cursed spirits - that's probably just not in their nature, huh?

Despite all this negativity, the characters are paradoxically the majority of what kept me watching the 24 episodes. There are simply enough characters with enough story behind them to not be bored straight away, and the balance between seriousness and silliness is well achieved in the interactions.

What also absolutely doesn't leave you bored - the visuals and especially the animation. It's not very experimental, but it doesn't have to be in order to always look at least good, and sometimes even beautiful.

Perhaps a few words about the story, too. In my opinion, the basic premise at least offers solid potential. The fact that Yuuji has Sukuna in him means that there is at least one element in the story that is not clearly good or evil. The fact that some people protect the main character, others see him dead, others simply want to awaken Sukuna - these are dynamics that are much more interesting than ‘evil spirit is evil, does evil things'.

So would I recommend Jujutsu Kaisen? It.. depends
If you generally have a heart for shounen, you'll probably enjoy all of it.
If you just want to know ‘what the fuzz is all about’ - you can at least give the first season a chance. Even though I don't like action much at all, I always felt entertained by the 24 episodes.
The only catch: There's a season two, of which my verdict looks very different. I actually wanted to give season one a ‘Recommended’ - but after the movie and S2, I can no longer do that.
Isolated, I'd recommend season 1 to anyone even slightly curious - but bundled with everything after the first season, I urge you to rethink your choice. More on that in my review of season 2, which I'll.. probably do someday.

Do you enjoy decently animated fighting scenes and don't care about anything else? Then I highly recommend you stop reading this and start watching already!

Still there? Great. Apart from the fluid animation during fights, this anime has no redeeming qualities at all.
The characters are all unbelievably bleak. Of course, it's called SOLO Leveling - still, after watching all 12 episodes during the last three months, not a single character of this anime lingered in my mind for even a second. Jin-Woo goes from a timid, weak dude to a cold-hearted Gigachad with a flat, deep voice in the matter of about 4 episodes. That's all ... the character development there is - he carries his husky tone and ice-cold mannerisms all the way through the finish line. His sister, like all the other characters, seems to merely exist as reason-givers or stepping stones. Why does he fight? For his sick mother and for his sister, of course... right? It's hard to believe this, given his complete refusal to engage in friendly, light-hearted interactions with others. Even his oh-so-beloved sister only gets the cold shoulder from him whenever she tries to talk to him. Why should the viewer care for Jin-Woo's quest if he himself doesn't seem to care in the slightest for anyone or anything?

Then there's the world-building. I don't even need to go into much detail here. It's just the world we live in, but there are portals to mostly gloomy, fantasy-like dungeons. Some people awaken to powers that can neither get stronger nor weaker; a bit like in a caste system, you're forever locked into your rank. They have to go into the dungeon portals to slay the monsters, keeping the world safe from them and earning some bucks. It's not all that creative, and there hasn't been a single surprising moment. The world goes on as usual, but there are portals now. It doesn't seem to change society in the slightest. To top it off, the whole story unfolds in one place - a grey, anonymous city with nothing interesting to see.

This point is so important to me that it deserves its own paragraph. Everything looks SO boring. There's the city and there are the dungeons, which are mostly just caves with no interesting features. Visually, this whole anime has no imagination at all. It completely lacks character and beauty. Why do even the fantasy world caves have to look so dull? Even Sword Art Online, a show often cited as an example for how not to do... anything, gets this right!

And the show can't even make up for it with an interesting plot. The main storyline is basically "Jin-Woo has to become strong and faces some obstacles". Even the fact that he's the only one able to level up and get stronger isn't particularly interesting, as it doesn't seem to have any implications or downsides. It's just... there, instead of being presented as a mystery of some kind. Hell, if something like that happened to you, you'd be dying to know the "why" and "how"! Jin-Woo however just accepts it as it is, confiding in no one, never trying to find out if anyone else experiences this...

What makes it worse is that it takes itself extremely serious. I don't mean to say every anime has to include comedy of some kind - but Solo Leveling just doesn't contain any light-hearted moments at all. The only thing that made me chuckle was the sudden transformation from weakling to muscular chad - but even that seems to have been intended as a serious matter. His surroundings at least accept it as the most normal thing ever, even though one can barely recognize him after this.

The opening is just utterly silly - "Now I'm racking up the kills - I got to pay the bills" probably sounds like a cool line when you're about 10 years old. Yet, one could say the lyrics are kinda revealing - they're about as deep as the show itself.

I can only advise anyone with any standards at all not to give this series a chance. It's not even bad in a funny way, but rather a slugfest lasting 12 episodes, interspersed with decent but basically meaningless fights.