The Culling Game is where Jujutsu Kaisen really lets the gloves come off. The Culling Game is like Gege Akutami stating, “You thought it was dark before?” What appears to be a dark free-for-all is actually one of the most meticulously evil plans in the series—and fans still debate whether it might be Kenjaku’s magnum opus.
What is the Culling Game?
On paper, it’s an enormous death match that takes place throughout the country of Japan, divided into sections of land that are separated by barriers named Colonies. In reality, it’s a pressure cooker that forces sorcerers to fight without rest, producing an obscene amount of Cursed Energy. This Cursed Energy isn’t being wasted, though. It’s being saved to fuel the final stages of Kenjaku’s plan: uniting the entire country of Japan under Master Tengen. For longtime Jujutsu Kaisen fans, the mention of the Heian Era, the mythical time of monsters such as Sukuna, isn’t overlooked. Kenjaku isn’t saving the world; he’s attempting to revive the time of day when Cursed Energy dominated everything, without regard to cost.
The players (and why it hurts)
The Culling Game puts together sorcerers we’ve known and loved, Incarnate Sorcerers, ancient monsters reborn in the bodies of modern humans, Awakened Civilians, ordinary citizens who are brutally introduced to the new world of Jujutsu. But the last one is the one that suffers in this arc. They are not warriors; they are collateral damage. You enter a colony once; congratulations, you are a player whether you want to be or not.
The rules, which are overseen by the Shikigami Kogane, are as follows:
- Players must declare participation within 19 days of awakening their technique.
- Killing other players earns points (generally 5 for sorcerers, 1 for non-sorcerers).
- If a player’s point total doesn’t change for 19 days, they face cursed technique removal—which is effectively a death sentence.
- Spending 100 points allows players to add a new rule, as long as it doesn’t halt the game entirely.
This is the one that the fandom immediately latched onto because this is the one that Yuji, Megumi, and others attempt to circumvent rather than become killers. It is a chess match, a very dark chess match, but a chess match nonetheless, with a lot of fighting.
It is not about strength; it is about eliminating individuality. Each time someone dies, we are one step closer to the Great Merger, in which all humanity loses all individuality and becomes one being, full of cursed energy.
But for the fandom, this is what makes this arc unforgettable. The fights are insane, the characters are insane, but it is knowing that this is not just a fight arc, this is an apocalypse, an apocalypse that is always counting down.
