Jujutsu Kaisen: What Is The Culling Game? Arc Explained

With the Shibuya Incident arc wrapped up in season 2, the Jujutsu Kaisen anime has set the stage for the ruthless Culling Games Arc for the upcoming third season.

Updated on Apr 24, 2024  |  08:58 AM IST |  305K
Explaining Jujutsu Kaisen’s Culling Game Arc
Yuuji Itadori in Jujutsu Kaisen anime (PC: Mappa Studios/Gege Akutami/Crunchyroll)

The Culling Game arc is the ninth overall arc in the Jujutsu Kaisen manga by Akutami Gege. In the manga, the arc immediately follows the Shibuya Incident arc which unfolded in the second season of the anime. Culling Game is the longest arc of the story yet, spanning from chapter 159 to chapter 221 and is filled to the brim with violent action as powerful Jujutsu sorcerers are forced to face-off against one another by the scheming villain Kenjaku. 

The Culling Game is a battle royale between the strongest Jujutsu sorcerers devised by Kenjaku. The cursed spirit plotted this so that humanity could optimize their cursed energy so that the world’s merger with Master Tengen works. The whole arc is based around several insanely high-intensity battles amongst sorcerers who all have to kill their opponent to survive the game. The Culling Game arc will be covered in the third season of the anime and will be filled with action scenes throughout the episodes and there will be a lot of death and destruction as well.


Who is going to participate in the Culling Game? 

As mentioned before, Kenjaku devised the Culling Game to pit sorcerers against each other in a death game in one of the most densely-crowded areas of Japan. The participants are Jujutsu sorcerers of all ages including some sorcerers from the past whom Kenjaku invoked in vessels that he had prepared. The game divided the Tokyo Jujutsu High students into four different colonies with a lot of other characters including cursed spirits. 

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The first colony of the game was the Tokyo Colony #1 where the members of the game were, Yuji Itadori, megumi Fushiguro, Hiromi Higurama, Fumihiko Takaba, Rin Amai, Hanyu, Haba, Hana Kurusu, Reggie Star, Remi, Iori Hazenoki, and Chizuru Hari. The second colony was the Tokyo Colony #2 where the participants were Hajime Kashimo, Charles Bernard, Panda, Kinji Hakari, and Momo Nishimiya.

The third colony was the Sendal Colony where the participants were, Yuta Okkotsu, Kasumi Miwa, Dhruv Lakdawalla,  Ryu Ishigori, Takaka Uro, Kurourushi, Sukuna, and Yorozu. And the fourth colony was the Sakurajima colony where the participants were, Maki Zenin, Noritoshi Kamo, Cursed Naoya, Hagane Daido, and Rokujushi Miyo.


The Culling Game Arc includes some of the most gruesome bloodshed in the story 

Kenjaku has some really dark and malignant intent behind the Culling Games, but to hide it, he includes a lot of really complicated a long list of rules for the game. However, what makes the games even more confusing is him allowing the players to negotiate and add more rules to the game at a price. The students of Jujutsu Tech will all have to band together to come up with rules that can stop the bloodshed. 

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There are multiple high-stakes and high-tension battles that play out during this bloody arc. All of the students from Jujutsu Tech take on multiple battles, especially Megumi, Yuji, and Yuta Okkotsu, whom the fans will see again after the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie. The points-based Culling game becomes a game of death for the students and other sorcerers alike.

One of the main focuses of this arc has to be the King of Curses Sukuna who takes upon multiple battles himself. However, his most important battle will be against Yorozu, who is a sorcerer from the Heian era and invoked in the body of Tsumiki Fushiguro, Megumi’s older sister. The end of the battle proves to be devastating for him. But the intense battles that took place in the arc were breathtaking and the anime adaptation is going to be full of action.


What happens at the end of the Culling Game arc? 

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At the beginning of the Culling Game, Yuji goes to trial for the Shibuya Incident and is found guilty by Hiromi Higurama who uses his domain expansion to trap Yuji. However, in the end, Higurama realizes that Sukuna is responsible for all the death and destruction and not Yuji, which prompts them to make a team and navigate the Culling Game together. 

But probably the most important part of the Culling Game arc is the end where all the sorcerers are able to free Gojo Satoru from the prison realm. As the arc comes to a close, Gojo finds Kenjaku and tries to kill him. But Sukuna steps in to stop him from killing and all of them agree to fight at a later date. Which means that this arc ends on a cliffhanger as the Gojo vs. Sukuna showdown will begin in the next arc. 

Even though a release date for the season 3 of Jujutsu Kaisen has not been revealed, it will probably come out some time in 2026. Anime watchers will be glad to see some really intense action sequences that will take place one after the other in the anime. The Culling Game arc is easily Jujutsu Kaisen’s most brutal and bloody arc to date.

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ALSO READ: Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 257: What Is Yuji's Connection With Sukuna? Spoilers

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About The Author

Gargi has a Masters degree in English Literature from The University of Calcutta. She has been a content writer

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