When Jujutsu Kaisen‘s manga finally wrapped in 2024, the feeling was less bittersweet than sheer relief. Gege Akutami’s megapopular shonen juggernaut certainly delivered spectacle with its battles, but its story was thin. At its worst, its fights could be frustratingly hard to parse, be it from poor health trying to keep up with the rigorous weekly shonen crunch schedule or its labyrinthine power system that had to be explained with such exhaustive mid-bout exposition that it rivaled Bleach. 

So when Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, its sequel series, debuted soon after, I braced for a Boruto-style continuation that would only double down on those flaws. However, after catching up—curiosity finally won out—I can admit Modulo is not only surprisingly strong but, dare I say, better than its predecessor precisely because it sidesteps the gripes that weighed the original down.  

From the jump, _Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo—_written by Akutami and illustrated by Yuji Iwasaki—takes a bold step few sequel shonen have taken: it situates itself years removed from its predecessor and embraces the reality that the old heroes’ era has ended, clearing the stage for a new generation. Sure, nostalgia lingers in nods, cameos, and winks to the past. But these gestures never overshadow the fresh cast with the hollow “what if they were adults now?” fanfare most sequel shonen series pigeonhole themselves in.

Whereas Jujutsu Kaisen proper, all the way to its end, always felt like it was building its power system as it went, never taking the training wheels off with explainers and shock deaths (ardently leaked/spoiled online by fans) that never rang deeper than their archetypes in a cool fight manga, Modulo actually sets up the series’ thrust early on and lets its story take center stage. And then there’s the paradigm shift in its premise, going full Giorgio A. Tsoukalos by adding aliens to the cursed spirit-fighting series’ narrative gumbo.

According to your comments and replies, we are so back.

(via Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo) pic.twitter.com/psypZUNji2

— Shonen Jump (@shonenjump) September 8, 2025

Set 68 years after the in 2086, sees Japan at a precarious crossroads where a humanoid alien race called Simurians has arrived on Earth as refugees from a distant world, wielding a power system strikingly similar to jujutsu sorcery. The central tension of the manga thus far lies in whether coexistence or conflict between sorcerers and Simurians will define Earth’s future.