“Jujutsu Kaisen” is a different kind of anime; it reflects what we deal with in real life.

This show is not about silly problems or almost stupid issues. It is about a high schooler named Yuji Itadori who joins his school’s occult club for fun out of boredom and ends up eating a cursed finger that had been cut off the King of Curses, Ryomen Sukuna.

His decision creates danger for himself and everyone around him. Luckily, our golden boy, Satoru Gojo, steps in to help him. He gets Yuji to enroll in Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School (yes, that is a mouthful) to have him eat all 20 of Sukuna’s fingers (this man has two sets of arms, 10 fingers each). The ritual would lead to a complete exorcism, but it would cost Yuji his life (haha, no…).

The anime depicts depression, anxiety and fear of failure as actual curses that affect all characters in the story. These curses are fueled by negative emotions, and they resonate with the struggles we see in society today.

As a college student, I relate to this anime very much, and I believe other people will too. In a world that constantly feels heavy—climate anxiety, student debt, the pressure to succeed—this anime validates those feelings and reflects our world. It shows negative feelings as physical curses to connect with people.

The show tells us that even though we as everyday people are not jujutsu sorcerers, we are not powerless. This is where hope comes in—the kind of hope that helps heal our emotional wounds. This is what hope does, it helps heal the wounds caused by depression and anxiety.

As my roommate says, negative energy is the killer of your positive energy. This negative energy causes our curses. But seeing curses comes at a cost to their own positive mentality.

Instead of giving up, the characters in “Jujutsu Kaisen” keep fighting—not because they can magically fix everything, but because they want to be the change they see in the world. A cursed world born from human negativity and fear. It gives us a voice and a language for what many people are feeling: burnout, grief and exhaustion from trying not to break down. As the show’s creator, Gege Akutami, says, “To live is to be cursed,” and this is true, but we have the power to change it for the better.

As one Reddit user puts it, “Jujutsu Kaisen” validates feelings of overwhelming grief and the desire to give up, which can comfort people who feel alone in their pain. Another Reddit user says the series shows how to grow through the pain. There is also a flip side—it shows what avoiding grief can do to the human psyche, which can be detrimental to mental health.

As Medium notes about grieving, Todo explained to Yuji that everyone we have ever loved and lost left to let us continue their fight—like Nanami dying in Shibuya at the hands of Mahito—and that they are not truly gone as long as we keep their stories alive.

As someone who has lost my own mother, I know that more than anyone. This anime has made me laugh, cry and get angry, but I will say it is one of the greatest shows of all time, and I believe the rest of my Skyhawk brethren will think so too.