The Shibuya Incident of Jujutsu Kaisen S2
The Shibuya Incident, AKA the turning point of the original Jujutsu Kaisen manga. On Halloween night, 2018, Jujutsu society was rocked by an event that would change it forever and take a dark story and make it even darker. With season three of JJK coming next year and a compilation movie set to release in December, now is the perfect time for us to recap what happened on that Halloween Night. If you haven’t read the manga or seen the anime, then I highly recommend that you stop reading this, because there will be spoilers from here on out!
How it all Started
The root cause of the Shibuya Incident stems from the existence of one man: Satoru Gojo, the CHAD-master and strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer alive. Time and again, the group of “Geto” and the special-grade Cursed Spirits had tried to kill Gojo, only to fail. So long as Gojo was around, they could never enact their plans of causing chaos in the Jujutsu world. So they decided to change tactics by doing the next best thing by sealing him away. Over the course of several months, their group gathered allies and tools they would need to fulfill their goal. And by Halloween night, 2018, they were ready, with the Shibuya District chosen to be their stage.
At 7 pm local time, a massive curtain was drawn up around the Shibuya District. All civilians and non-sorcerers were trapped inside and unable to escape, and all phone service was cut off. The only way they would be let out is if they started demanding the arrival of Satoru Gojo. So the leaders of Jujutsu society (who are total jerks) told Gojo to head in and take care of the people responsible for this, alone. Four other squads would remain outside to act as backup.
Being the Jujutsu equivalent of Superman, Gojo would be able to handle everything inside the curtain on his own. That’s why Pseudo-Geto and the Curses rigged everything in their favor. The civilians would slow him down while Mahito transfigured hundreds of random people to slow him down even further. Being Gojo, though, he manages to deal with all of this in about five minutes or less while also battling the Curses. But that was all the time that Pseudo-Geto needed to get the Prison Realm close to him and activate it. In one stroke, Satoru Gojo, the strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer, was sealed within it, much to the shock of all of his comrades. Yuji’s team races to get to the Prison Realm before the enemy can escape, but they already prepared for this. They’ve filled Shibuya with Curse Users, Cursed Spirits, and transfigured humans to attack anyone that gets inside the curtains. It’s pretty much open season as everyone starts fighting all over the place. But this was only the beginning, as two even bigger threats soon join the fray: Toji Fushiguro and Ryomen Sukuna.
The Return of the Chick Magnet Toji
If you know Gojo’s backstory, then you know about Tojo Fushiguro, the father of Megumi, AKA the man who came closer to killing Gojo than anyone else. Despite not having any cursed energy, nature compensated him by giving him strength and durability beyond that of any sorcerer alive, allowing him to make a living hunting them. Gojo only survived because he unlocked his reverse curse technique. And in the midst of all this chaos, this old woman decoded to use her grandson as a medium to call Toji’s spirit back to the land of the living. Her plan was to use the strength it gave her grandson to have him start killing all the sorcerers they could find. But it backfired when Toji’s spirit overtook the grandson and left him in full control, bringing him back from the dead. And since he didn’t use cursed energy, there was no way to stop the technique. It’s honestly surprising that that old woman didn’t think this through in the first place!
Toji would proceed to go on a rampage throughout Shibuya, fighting anyone with cursed energy. At one point, he even entered the domain of one of the Special Grade Curses the others had been fighting, and proceeded to slay them without almost no effort. His relative, Maki, and her comrades had been struggling, and he did it so effortlessly. After that, he went after Megumi as he tried to escape. However, that proved to be unnecessary, as Toji stopped his assault as soon as he realized that Megumi was his son all grown up. Rather than keep on killing, Toji regained his senses and, content that Megumi had taken his mom’s last name, chose to take his own life, removing himself from the equation.
But that was just a prelude to the real carnage that was about to go down.
The Dawg Has Returned
In the middle of all this chaos, Yuji is trying to make his way to Geto, whose currently guarding the Prison Realm. However, he gets waylaid by multiple Cursed Spirits, Curse Users, and lastly, Choso, the last of the Death Paintings, these hybrids of Cursed Spirits and Humans that Yuji and his friends defeated. They fight, and Yuji ultimately loses. But before Choso can kill him, he gets these memories that tell him that, somehow, Yuji is related to him. But before that can be explained, he leaves, and then these two girls that were raised by Geto show up and feed Yuji one of Sukuna’s fingers. They wanted Sukuna to save Geto for them, but all they were doing was sealing their own fate. Then Jogo the Special Grade Curse shows up and proceeds to feed Yuji ten of Sukuna’s fingers. And this feeding session was all that was needed for the dog to be let off the leash. And without Gojo around to stop him, he wasn’t going to pass up this chance to let loose.
The first thing that Gojo did was murder those two girls for trying to order him around by saving Geto. Jogo was a little more tactful, though, and Sukuna was in a good mood from the fingers. So they made a deal: if Jogo could land one hit on Sukuna, he would work under him and kill everyone in Shibuya except for Megumi. But this was just Sukuna wanting to play with his food before going in for the kill.
Sukuna proceeded to go on a rampage, throwing off everything Jogo and everyone else threw at him while killing anyone unfortunate enough to get in his way. Jogo can’t keep up, and while the King of Curses says he put up a good fight, Jogo still dies. And then he proceeds to go after Megumi, saving him from another enemy just so he could fight him himself. Not even Megumi’s Mahoraga is able to stop the King! But Sukuna stops just short of killing Megumi, leaving him with his allies. And with his control over Yuji running out, his last act is to head to where the Shibuya Crossing once stood just so Yuji can see the full carnage for himself when he comes to so he can break the kid.
And it works. When Yuji regains control and sees what has happened, he is absolutely traumatized! But his suffering was not over.
Mahito is a Worthless Nobody
At this point, the only major enemies left were Pseudo-Geto and Mahito, the latter of whom was continuing to hurt innocent people. He made Yuji watch as he killed his mentor, Nanami, and proceed to main Nobara. And for a long time, we weren’t even sure if she made it out alive or not. Not to mention how he kept mutating innocent people, forcing the Sorcerers to kill them. And all of this just destroys Yuji in mind and spirit. The young man is scarred for life by what’s happened. But it is at this point that Yuji crashes out.
Thanks to the arrival of his self-proclaimed brother, Aoi Todo, Yuji locks in with the single-minded goal of making Mahito pay. The sadistic embodiment of Mankind’s hatred of itself throws everything he has left at the two, but it’s not enough. They plow right through it until, finally, Mahito runs out of gas in the tank. And then Yuji just looks at him and tells him that his existence is less than worthless, and that he needs no reason to kill him. Terrified, Mahito runs, only to be stopped by Pseudo-Geto. Instead of helping him, though, Geto decides he has no use left for him and proceeds to absorb him into himself. Crazier still, Choso shows up and reveals that “Geto” is an imposter whose been jumping from body to body for centuries. And in one of those bodies, he had been the creator of the Death Paintings, and might somehow be related to Yuji.
That’s when the fake Geto reveals he did all this to unleash chaos by making cursed energy users stronger than ever. To that end, he activates a technique that causes hundreds of people across the country to awaken as Jujutsu sorcerers, some of whom being possessed by the spirits of sorcerers from ages past. With that done, Geto manages to escape with Prison Realm, despite the best efforts of everyone to try and stop him.
Thus, the curtain falls on the Shibuya Incident, AKA the worst Halloween Japan has ever seen.
Where Season 3 Picks Up
The next episode and chapters show how Japan has been plunged into chaos in the aftermath of the Shibuya Incident. Hundreds of people are dead, hundreds more have become Jujutsu Sorcerers, and tens of millions of Cursed Spirits have been unleashed upon Japan. Tokyo’s a warzone, the economy is in shambles, and the existence of the Jujutsu World has been exposed to the entire country. Jujutsu Society has been rocked to its core, and it only gets worse thanks to the leadership.
If you’ve read or seen Jujutsu Kaisen, then you should know by now that the leaders of Jujutsu Society are the epitome of toxic conservatism. They’re made up of a bunch of backward-thinking, sexist old men who refuse to change with the times and run things the same as always even when it’s clear that won’t work anymore. The forward-thinking Gojo has been their greatest opposition due to being the strongest and able to keep them in check. But now that he is gone, the higher-ups decide to do everything they want, declaring him an accomplice of Shibuya and unsealing him to be a crime. They sentence his and Geto’s teacher to death, reinstate Yuji’s death sentence, and assign it to be carried out by Gojo’s other student, Yuta Okkotsu. Thus, Yuji has to go on the run, while his allies are left to deal with the aftermath of everything on their own.
And with that, we have now covered a general overview of the Shibuya Incident. Hundreds are dead, Japan is on the brink of collapse, and the main protagonist is a fugitive. Yet the real fight has only just begun. In January 2026, we will see the start of the Culling Game Arc with Season Three. However, a compilation film will be released on December 5th, covering the Shibuya Incident and giving us a look at the first two episodes of Season Three. That should be plenty of reason for fans to get excited!
Until then, Happy Halloween!
