The most controversial moment in Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 wasn’t animated violence. It was a song choice.
When Yuji collapsed in grief after the Shibuya massacre, “SPECIALZ” didn’t fade respectfully into silence.
Instead, “You are my special” rang out over his breakdown like a taunt. Half the fanbase called it genius. The other half thought it ruined the scene entirely.
Both reactions miss the point. That discomfort was intentional.
Controlled Chaos From the First Frame
“SPECIALZ” doesn’t ease you into Shibuya. It drops you mid-disaster, already spinning.
The opening riff hits like you’ve walked into a building that’s been on fire for hours.
No preamble, no gradual build. Just immediate, unstable energy that never quite settles.
King Gnu made this choice deliberately. The song shifts between melodic hooks and grinding dissonance without smoothing the transitions.
Pop gloss collides with metallic edges. The tempo lurches sideways just when you think you’ve found the rhythm.
For an arc built on characters losing control, it’s perfect. Shibuya feels like watching someone juggle chainsaws whilst standing on a collapsing floor. “SPECIALZ” sounds exactly like that looks.
Tokyo as Pressure System
The English lyrics translation reveals structure beneath the chaos. Tokyo isn’t backdrop here. It’s an active force.
“On the frontline of Tokyo, the thriving city” appears repeatedly, but the city isn’t thriving. It’s devouring. The “sea of corpses and blood” line makes that explicit.
The maze imagery cuts deeper. “A lifetime of wandering in a maze / Rendezvous, dizziness” captures Shibuya’s spatial nightmare.
Characters don’t navigate the station. They’re trapped in its shifting geometry, hunted through corridors that lead nowhere useful. Even the survivors emerge disoriented.
“Devour everything heartily” reads almost gleeful. Which brings us to the real question: who’s singing this?
Sukuna’s Victory Lap
The most compelling reading treats “SPECIALZ” as Sukuna’s internal monologue.
Not metaphorically. Literally his perspective during the massacre. “You are my special” isn’t romantic. It’s possessive. Mocking. A reminder that Yuji’s body belongs to someone who treats human life as spectacle.
“No matter what others say, you are my special” lands differently when you remember Sukuna spent fifteen fingers’ worth of power tearing through Shibuya for his own amusement.
The “special” relationship isn’t affection. It’s ownership. A cursed spirit reminding his vessel who’s actually in control.
This explains why the song played during Yuji’s breakdown. It wasn’t poor timing or tonal deafness.
It was Sukuna refusing to let Yuji grieve in peace. Even his emotional collapse becomes another form of entertainment for the King of Curses.
The discomfort fans felt watching that scene? That’s the point. Yuji doesn’t get catharsis. Neither do we.
One YouTube comment captured it perfectly: “0% drugs, 0% bad words, 0% sex, 100% traumatizing a 15 year old.”
Another added: “Yuji gets eternally traumatized / Mappa honest reaction.”
That gallows humour reflects exactly what the opening achieves. It refuses to comfort. It doubles down on cruelty.
Visual Overload and Foreshadowing
The opening sequence rewards obsessive rewatching. Fans posted timestamped breakdowns: Megumi’s dogs at 0:09, Nobara’s hammer and nails at 0:51, the Prison Realm at 1:26, Sukuna’s domain at 1:30. Every frame carries weight.
Classical art references appear throughout. Distorted echoes of Munch’s The Scream, Klimt-style embraces folded into the chaos.
Kenjaku appears as observer rather than mastermind, watching the Culling Game like someone examining insects under glass.
The disaster curses lit by candlelight, depicted as classical oni, all dead before the arc ends.
Megumi summoning Mahoraga successfully. Gojo’s six eyes before the Prison Realm seals him.
According to Kyodo News, Daiki Tsuneta approached the project as a viewer first.
The visuals prioritise thematic resonance over literal narrative sequence. The opening doesn’t follow manga chronology.
It captures how Shibuya feels. Disorienting, overwhelming, too much happening simultaneously to process properly.
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The Grower Phenomenon
“SPECIALZ” ranked #2 in Anime Corner’s Fall 2023 openings, just behind Frieren’s “Yuusha” by YOASOBI.
Impressive, considering how many fans initially bounced off it. The Reddit threads from September 2023 are filled with comments like “didn’t grab me at first but now I can’t stop playing it” and “took three listens to click.”
That delayed payoff mirrors King Gnu’s previous Jujutsu Kaisen work. “SPECIALZ” behaves like their earlier tracks.
Initially alienating, eventually indispensable. The difference is “SPECIALZ” commits harder to abrasiveness by design. It doesn’t want to be immediately catchy. It wants to mirror Shibuya’s hostility.
The official music video now sits at 177 million views on YouTube. Released digitally September 1, 2023 (alongside Season 2’s Shibuya premiere on August 31), with physical CD following September 6. Three versions, because of course there are.
Recent comments show fans returning after the AIZO announcement: “Came back here because king gnu doing the opening for jujutsu kaisen season 3.”
Why It Works
Compare “SPECIALZ” to “Ao no Sumika,” the opening for Hidden Inventory. That song offered emotional clarity.
Beautiful, melancholic, appropriately tragic for Geto’s origin story. It gave viewers space to feel.
“SPECIALZ” refuses that courtesy. It overwhelms instead of inviting. Distracts instead of focusing.
For an arc where characters are pieces in someone else’s game, where spectacle matters more than survival, where the architect watches from a distance treating carnage as entertainment, that approach is honest. Possibly more honest than a traditionally emotional opening would’ve been.
Now with “AIZO” serving Season 3, we can see King Gnu’s evolution across three Jujutsu Kaisen collaborations.
“SPECIALZ” sits between “Kaikai Kitan’s” accessible energy and “AIZO’s” full sensory assault. Each opening gets progressively more chaotic because the arcs do too.
“SPECIALZ” doesn’t try to convince you it’s important. It doesn’t need to. It just keeps moving, keeps shifting, refuses to resolve.
For a story about systems that treat people as expendable, about spectacle triumphing over humanity, about curses that mock suffering, that might be the most fitting approach King Gnu could have taken.