Jujutsu Kaisen season 3 episode 11 exposes the tragic irony of the Culling Game

Kenjaku's deathmatch jeopardizes a world where the vulnerable can exist

Jujutsu Kaisen presents Kenjaku’s Culling Game as one of the most bone-chilling acts of jujutsu terrorism in all of history. Season 3 has been steadily peeling back the unsettling layers of this battle royale, but its end goal has remained a mystery to the participants so far. Yuta Okkotsu had entered the game right after the events of episode 3, which was followed up by Yuji Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro’s attempts to gather allies and execute strategies to survive. Yuji and Megumi were separated as soon as they entered Tokyo Colony No. 1, leading up to an exciting fight between Megumi and reincarnated sorcerer Reggie Star in episode 10.

While episode 11 cements Megumi’s status as a genius battle strategist, it also highlights the ironic nature of the Culling Game. With the strongest sorcerers at the mercy of a game that doubles as a deathtrap, Jujutsu Kaisen redefines what it means to be “strongest” in a society that harbors disdain for the weak. It’s not about defeating every enemy to prove you’re the most powerful — it’s about exposing how meaningless that kind of power is inside a rigged system.

[Ed. note: This article contains spoilers for season 3 episode 11 of Jujutsu Kaisen and its source material]

Episode 10 ended with Megumi activating his incomplete domain, Chimera Shadow Garden, inside a school gymnasium. The penultimate episode of season 3, part 1, then picks up with Reggie underestimating this move due to his anti-domain technique, Hollow Wicker Basket. Reggie’s esoteric technique allows him to remain unharmed by countering domain barriers infused with cursed technique, which nullifies any guaranteed hits. As Hollow Wicker Basket doesn’t counter cursed techniques themselves, its efficacy depends on the presence of a domain barrier. But Megumi’s domain is incomplete and doesn’t even have a barrier, which is why he lured Reggie into the closed-off gymnasium to serve as a physical barrier instead. This allows Megumi to pummel Reggie with shadow clones, and he’s initially caught off-guard by this unexpected loophole.

MAPPA’s animation has been brilliant this season. The Megumi versus Reggie fight is crafted with visible love, with shaky-cam movements and fisheye lenses incorporated to convey urgency and dynamism. Even the sight of Megumi barely keeping his domain stable while weighed down by the pressure of Reggie’s conjured vehicles is beautiful to look at. The gymnasium’s dark space lights up with Megumi’s blue cursed energy, dragging Reggie inside the bottomless pit of his Ten Shadows Technique. While Reggie does his best to counter Megumi, he is outsmarted at every turn. Reggie attempts to crush Megumi by summoning a small house, but it breaks through the floor and lands along with him inside the swimming pool located right beneath the gymnasium. By this point, it becomes clear that Megumi hadn’t fled to the gymnasium in a panic — he had lured Reggie into a trap, which ends with Megumi dispelling the domain as soon as Reggie’s drenched receipts become unusable.

After a tense fist fight, Megumi stuns Reggie with Divine Dog: Totality to deliver the finishing move. For his last words, Reggie likens sorcerers to liars (“con artists” in Gege Akutami’s manga) while commending Megumi’s cunning. This is when Reggie reveals that he was never in cahoots with Kenjaku; he was just a spectator who got involved in the Culling Game. Megumi mentions Master Tengen to extract a possible confession about his involvement with the Game, but Reggie’s final words linger on the futility of the game itself. Reggie’s words make Megumi’s win feel hollow as he realizes that Tengen might not have been totally forthcoming about the true nature of the Game at all. Megumi’s already been forced to kill two sorcerers in self-defense, which must weigh heavily on him despite his perception that the means justify the end if he wants to save Tsumiki.

Kenjaku’s true endgame remains the most intriguing aspect of Jujutsu Kaisen’s story. He seems to be using the Culling Game as a literal means to cull the weakest in jujutsu society. The traumatic pressure of the matches may even trigger new cursed techniques among the strongest. There’s an illusion of control at play here, as the game’s convoluted system masks the fact that it is quite simply a ruthless mass murder ritual. This “adapt or die” dynamic radically changes the definition of the “strongest” since it doesn’t boil down solely to the strength of one’s technique. We are offered a glimpse of this when Tengen’s narration states that Fumihiko Takaba’s Comedian technique is so potent that it can even oppose Satoru Gojo’s Limitless, but Takaba remains blissfully unaware of his own strength. Another sorcerer who often inspires comparisons to Gojo is Yuta, who ends the episode by killing the ancient sorcerer Dhruv Lakdawalla in Sendai Colony. Lakdawalla’s death dissolves the power deadlock in Sendai Colony, setting the stage for some intense battles for Yuta in the upcoming finale.

The tragic irony of the Culling Game is the illusion of strength that it sells to its top combatants. Kenjaku ultimately wishes to use Sukuna as a “bomb” to trigger the breakdown of jujutsu society, which will inevitably endanger the vulnerable. This relationship between the strong and the weak was fleshed out in season 2’s Hidden Inventory Arc, in which Gojo and Suguru Geto held completely different worldviews before Riko Amanai’s murder. A young Gojo, in his hubris, had distanced his status as the “strongest” from moral responsibility, while a young Geto believed that strength only means something if the weak are protected. These viewpoints flip after Riko dies, pushing Geto towards a genocidal rampage fueled by his disdain for non-sorcerers. Meanwhile, Gojo’s trauma makes him realize that strength is meaningless without a younger generation of sorcerers to carry an empowered legacy steeped in empathy. This empathy involves the well-being of non-sorcerers, who must be protected from the noxious influence of curses.

Jujutsu Kaisen season 3 compromises this vision for a gentler world with Kenjaku’s plan to merge humanity with Tengen. Such an apathetic goal disregards individuality and views jujutsu sorcerers as pawns used for fulfilling empty whims. Following the rules of the Culling Game does not guarantee safety, especially since the outcomes are rigged but fluid. The vision of a winner is a lie, just as a world without survivors is as hollow as a waking dream. With season 3, part 1 of Jujutsu Kaisen coming to an end next week, we will be one step closer to witnessing the mockery that the Culling Game makes of its most gifted sorcerers.

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New episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen release every Thursday on Crunchyroll.