Cursed Child Arc

Prequel following Yuta Okkotsu and his cursed connection to Rika, introducing the world of jujutsu sorcery.

The Cursed Child Arc introduces the world of Jujutsu Kaisen through the lens of Yuji Itadori, an ordinary high school student with extraordinary physical ability whose encounter with the supernatural world of cursed spirits sets the entire series in motion. Yuji's grandfather dies with words that will haunt the narrative — protect others, and die surrounded by people — and almost immediately after, a genuine cursed object falls into the hands of his occult research club. When his friends are attacked by cursed spirits drawn to the object, Yuji makes a decision no ordinary person should: he swallows a finger of Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses, to gain the power to fight. Sukuna — a two-thousand-year-old demon of incomprehensible destructive power, whose physical form was destroyed but whose cursed energy endured in twenty severed fingers scattered through history — takes temporary possession of Yuji's body before Yuji reasserts control. This situation is unprecedented. Yuji is the first vessel ever capable of containing Sukuna's consciousness without being destroyed by it, which makes him simultaneously the most dangerous person in the world and the most valuable asset the Jujutsu world possesses for collecting and destroying the remaining fingers. Under the advocacy of Satoru Gojo, the world's most powerful sorcerer, Yuji is enrolled at Tokyo Jujutsu High and given a conditional stay of execution — live long enough to consume all twenty fingers, then be properly executed. The arc establishes the series' central tragic irony: Yuji is a genuinely good person condemned to die for what lives inside him.