The official pamphlet for the anime film Jujutsu Kaisen: Shibuya Incident Special Compilation × Culling Game Pre-Screening (now in theaters) includes a newly released portion of an interview featuring Junya Enoki (voice of Yuji Itadori), Nobunaga Shimazaki (Mahito), Asami Seto (Nobara Kugisaki), and Subaru Kimura (Aoi Todo).

Jujutsu Kaisen is a dark fantasy series in which Yuji Itadori, a high school student, becomes involved in battles surrounding curses after the seal of a powerful Cursed Object is broken. Based on Gege Akutami’s manga serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from March 2018 to September 2024, the series has surpassed 100 million copies in circulation.

The first season of the TV anime aired from October 2020 to March 2021, followed by the theatrical film Jujutsu Kaisen 0 in December 2021, which became a global box-office hit earning 26.5 billion yen worldwide. The second season aired from July to December 2023. The story will continue in the upcoming third season, Jujutsu Kaisen: The Culling Game – Part One, set to broadcast in January 2026.

InterView

――This October marks the fifth anniversary of the Jujutsu Kaisen anime. Looking back, how do you feel about the series?

Shimazaki
For me, Jujutsu Kaisen was a series I felt a connection to from the very beginning. Junya (Enoki), who is the same age as me, plays the protagonist Yuji, and I was cast as Mahito, a character who is in a sense his counterpart. The fact that the two of us came to play such roles felt like a strange kind of fate. In terms of my career, Mahito allowed me to broaden the range of characters I can portray. I received so much through this role, so I want to give back to this series as it continues.

Kimura
The chance to portray a character who evolves so dramatically over five years is rare, and it has been incredibly fulfilling. That said, recording sessions often take long breaks in between, and during those intervals, I grow as a person and my environment changes. Even so, viewers must see the same character as a continuous entity. So I often review previous seasons, reminding myself, “Ah, this is how I performed him before.” I then think, “How would I approach this now?” That process is genuinely enjoyable.

Also, Jujutsu Kaisen is a series that changed the way people look at me. After playing Todo, I received around two other shirtless roles.

Enoki
So people started to see you that way? (laughs)

Kimura
It became “If you need a muscular shirtless guy, call Kimura.” (laughs) In the “Shibuya Incident,” Todo suffers a major injury, so I am also looking forward to seeing what condition he appears in next.

Seto
From the moment I auditioned, Nobara was a character I really wanted to play. Until then, I had never played a character who speaks roughly or has such sharp lines. I was in a phase of wanting to break my previous image as a performer, so when I landed the role, I was thrilled.
For Nobara, I always knew the “Shibuya Incident” would be a major emotional peak. Now that we've passed that point, I feel a sense of fulfillment within myself.

Enoki
That was a scene where all three of us recorded together. It is a sequence full of highlight moments, and since fans of the manga had very high expectations, the pressure on us as actors was enormous. But the two of them supported me through those difficult parts, and I am very grateful for that.

Shimazaki
The feeling is mutual. But this episode really belonged to Seto-san. “Fired up” might sound too simple, but I felt an incredibly strong determination from her. I felt the same kind of intensity from Tsuda-san (Kenjiro Tsuda) during Nanami’s final scene. Mahito’s role is ultimately to snuff out characters like Nanami and Nobara who have given everything. So rather than thinking “How should I act this?”, my feeling was, “Excuse me, but this is where I take over.”

Seto
Even beyond the three-person recording session, there was always a high level of tension throughout the Shibuya Incident dubbing. I just wanted to give everything I had to my performance. But there were times when the emotion I wanted to convey in a particular line didn’t quite match the pacing of the animation, and I had to redo it multiple times. Still, that struggle was enjoyable, not painful.

Also, in Nobara’s final moment, she tells Yuji “It wasn’t bad,” while looking at his face. When I first read that scene in the manga, I wondered: Is she saying that out of kindness? Or is it driven by some other emotion? If her intention were to avoid leaving a deep impression so Yuji wouldn’t be hurt, she probably wouldn’t look him in the eye. But maybe she looked at him precisely because she believed it might be the last time. These questions kept circling in my mind.

I don’t think you must always find a definitive answer, but when acting, considering various possibilities makes the performance richer.

Source : ORICON NEWS