So, let’s dive in and see what inspired the JJK the most shall we!
JJK is filled to the brim with psychologically frightening horrors; the supernatural enemies aren’t your average super powerful ghost. They are a mix of lovecraftian horrors, Freudian monstrosities and humanities hatred birthed into abominations. This shouldn’t be too surprising considering the authors inspiration from evangelion.
He took notes from evangelions themes of Christianity and Man vs God to build his world and mythos. He also credited Get out, Heridatary, and found footage horror films for influencing JJK type of scares.
The power system of JJK follows the idea of channeling emotions and life energy into cursed energy. The amount of power depends on how emotional the fighters are, hence making fights have higher stakes.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because gege base his power system on HxH and yu yu hakusho. The power system in HxH is called nen; nen is the manipulation of life energy which can be used to create spiritual powers or imbue energy into weapons. While also being able to spike in power depending on the characters emotional state.
And JJK has an ability called domain expansion, which allows the user to trap someone in their world; subjugating them to their rules. This is heavily inspired by yu yu hakushos territory ability. In YYH, territories are abilties that trap their opponent in their territory, forcing them to fight on their terms; failing to do so, leads to major consequences.
Also, JJK takes from HxH complex themes, especially from the chimera ant arc theme of man vs beast. Which can be seen from constant struggle between survival of humanity and demons' goals to become the true humans in JJK.
And the core setting of JJk shares is a very strong mixture of YYH and Bleach. All 3-protagonist become exorcist, killing demons in their town, befriending a group of powerful allies, and have dark power inside of them that can consume them if they’re not careful. However, I would say Yuji follows ichigo more than yusuke because of the orange hair, similar personality, and motivations to fight.
Speaking of dark hidden powers; JJK takes clear influence from narutos conflict with kurama. Both are at risk of an extremely powerful demon taking over their bodies, but it’s also their main source of power. And it’s obvious that gojo is just a cooler version of kakashi right? Come on guys, it’s literally the same character. Same hair, mask covering powerful eyes, laid back personality, badass and powerful.
It’s kakashi 2.0 but cooler.
JJK isa very delicous salad mixed with various shounen, and it’s already one of the best shounen in a decade, and I can only see it getting better from here out.
Let me know what you think about Jujutsu Kaisen. Do you agree with my comparisons?
