Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 Episode 8 Review & Recap: Higuruma Debuts

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 Episode 8, titled Tokyo No 1 Colony Part 2, is not the episode you'd expect from a shonen anime entering its tournament arc. Ep 55 (in total) opens with a legal drama, shifts into a psychological thriller, and ends with two cliffhangers that will make the next week unbearable. MAPPA adapted Chapter 159 ("Judgment") and Chapter 163 ("Tokyo Colony No. 1, Part 3"), filling in the backstory they skipped last week while pushing the Culling Game's stakes considerably higher. The episode arrived after a one-week delay and recap special, and the extra production time clearly paid off.

This was also a production standout. The courtroom sequence was solo key animated by Kouki Fujimoto, with second key animators handling the clean-up. That means one person was responsible for all the movement animation in that stretch. Direction by Yousuke Takada matches the standard set by series director Shota Goshozono earlier in the season, and frankly, the first half could function as a standalone short film.

Higuruma’s Backstory and Japan’s 99.9% Conviction Rate

The episode opens with the backstory of Hiromi Higuruma, and for about ten minutes, it does not feel like Jujutsu Kaisen at all. It feels like a grounded legal drama. Higuruma is a defense attorney in Japan, a country where 99% of criminal trials end in a guilty verdict. That statistic is real.

Being a defense lawyer in that system is about as mentally taxing as it sounds. Even Higuruma's former employer checks in on his mental state. His assistant clearly cares about him. He is, by every measure, an incredibly decent person who wants to help the helpless. That instinct is what drove him to take on the defense of Keita Oe, a man accused of robbery-murder under questionable circumstances.

Against absurd odds, Higuruma won. He secured an innocent verdict for Oe. And then the appeal came. No new evidence. No meaningful procedural change. A higher court simply overturned the verdict and sentenced Oe to life imprisonment. You can feel the exact moment Higuruma's faith in the legal system dies on screen. MAPPA does not oversell it. There is no dramatic screaming. There is no villain monologue. He is just a man staring at the reality that the system he built his life around was hollow.

That moment of collapse is what awakens Higuruma as a sorcerer. The sheer disappointment. He starts hammering the table, maniacally, demanding a retrial through the power of his newly awakened Shikigami. It is a deeply sad scene disguised as a power-up, and it is one of the best character introductions in the entire series.

Given how the Culling Game operates, with clear rules, no hidden influence, and no appeals overturning outcomes, it makes complete sense that Higuruma would be drawn to it. For a man who watched true justice fail, the brutal honesty of the game is almost comforting.

Megumi Falls Into Reggie Star’s Trap in Tokyo Colony No. 1

On the other side of the colony, the cliffhanger from Episode 7 resolves quickly. Amai was telling the truth about Higuruma's location in Ikebukuro. Remi was not. She led Megumi directly to Reggie Star, an incarnated sorcerer who has been using Remi as bait to lure players to him.

The moment the trap is revealed, Megumi's face changes and he calls out Divine Dog ready for combat.

But Reggie does not immediately attack Megumi. Instead, he offers information. He tells Megumi that much of what he knows about how the Culling Game works is just a bluff. Reggie believes the game's actual purpose is to weed out weak sorcerers until only the strongest remain and a stalemate is reached. Once that happens, Kenjaku is going to drop a bomb on the whole thing. This reveal has also been teased in the OP of the anime.

Reggie also seems to recognize Megumi's strength and appears more interested in an alliance than an immediate fight, though Megumi is not the type to negotiate.

Yuji Meets Higuruma: The Bathtub Scene and Deadly Sentencing

The best sequence in the episode is Yuji's encounter with Higuruma. Amai leads Yuji to a bathhouse, and there is Higuruma: sitting in a bathtub, fully clothed, calm, and completely detached.

The direction in this scene is exceptional. The screen becomes a storytelling device, reflecting what is happening inside Higuruma's mind. The coloring shifts. The pacing slows without losing tension. It is the kind of scene where every technical choice, direction, animation, sound design, all pull in the same direction.

Yuji is straightforward. He needs Higuruma's 100 points to add a new rule to the Culling Game. If they can enable point transfers and let players quit, they can reduce the forced killing and work toward unsealing Gojo. Higuruma listens. He does not dismiss Yuji outright. But he also does not agree.

For Higuruma, the Culling Game is not broken. It has clarity. It has structure. It has permanence. No bribery, no hidden influence, no appeals overturning outcomes without evidence. For a man who just watched the legal system betray everything he believed in, this game, brutal as it is, at least follows its own rules. He does not want to fix it.

The conversation ends when Higuruma decides the talking is done. He activates his Domain Expansion, "Deadly Sentencing," and pulls Yuji in. We do not see how it works yet, but the name alone tells you this is a courtroom inside a domain. A lawyer who lost faith in courts now runs his own.

How strong is Higuruma? Domain Expansion in just two weeks

To understand what Higuruma's debut means in terms of power scaling, consider Kento Nanami. Nanami was the gold standard of a jujutsu sorcerer. Trained since his teens. Achieved Grade 1 status, the highest rank any sorcerer can earn. And Nanami was never able to use a Domain Expansion.

Higuruma became a sorcerer roughly two weeks before meeting Yuji in this episode. He has already killed at least 60 sorcerers in the Culling Game and accumulated 100 points. And by the end of this episode, he activates a Domain Expansion ("Deadly Sentencing") on Yuji without hesitation.

Two weeks. That is the timeline. Whether Higuruma's raw talent or his courtroom-forged conviction is responsible, the result is the same: he is one of the most dangerous players in the game.

The episode closes with a brief scene of Kenjaku in what appears to be a meeting with foreign government officials. It is a quick shot, easy to miss, but it connects to manga material involving Kenjaku's negotiations with world governments about the Culling Game's "output." Anime-only viewers, keep this in mind for future episodes. It is going to matter.

What Manga Chapters Does JJK Season 3 Episode 8 Adapt?

Episode 7 had notably skipped Chapter 159, which contains Higuruma's full backstory. Episode 8 circles back and adapts it in full, placing it at the beginning of the episode rather than where it appeared in the manga's chapter order. This was a smart structural choice. By saving the backstory for the episode where Yuji actually meets Higuruma, MAPPA turned the introduction into a complete narrative arc within a single episode.

The episode also adapts portions of Chapter 163 ("Tokyo No. 1, Part 3") covering Yuji's encounter with Higuruma in the bathhouse, and jumps ahead to pages from Chapter 167 for Megumi's confrontation with Reggie Star. The Kenjaku meeting scene, which corresponds to later manga material, is teased briefly at the end.

Overall, the episode covers roughly 2.5 chapters worth of material, but the pacing does not feel rushed. If anything, the first half is deliberately slow, trusting the audience to sit with Higuruma's story before the tension escalates.

JJK Season 3 Episode 8 Animation, Direction, and Sound Design

Everyone will talk about the animation in this episode. It deserves the praise. But two other elements carried this episode just as hard.

The direction by Yousuke Takada made the structural shift from legal drama to JJK feel seamless. The first half genuinely could be its own show. But the transition back into Jujutsu Kaisen's world is handled so well that the tonal change feels like a slow boil rather than a jarring cut. You are watching a courtroom drama, the tension builds, and then you remember, oh right, Higuruma is one of the most dangerous players in the Culling Game. The gavel scene is where it clicks.

The sound design in the final stretch of the episode is worth calling out specifically. During the exposition scenes leading into Higuruma's domain activation, there is an almost entrancing quality to the audio. It pulls you in rather than pushing information at you. That is difficult to pull off in a dialogue-heavy episode, and MAPPA nailed it.

JJK Season 3 Episode 8 Review: Final Verdict

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 Episode 8 is slower than what fans might expect at this stage of the Culling Game, but it is better for it. Higuruma's introduction is heartbreaking and grounded in a real systemic failure. His power scaling is absurd and earned. The parallel between Yuji's attempt at diplomacy and Megumi's immediate combat readiness adds real texture to both characters.

With Deadly Sentencing activated, Reggie's ambush underway, and Kenjaku apparently negotiating with foreign governments, the back half of Season 3's first cour has plenty of threads to pull. Four episodes remain before the mid-season break. The season has already topped Japan's Winter 2026 anime rankings, and episodes like this one are the reason why.

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Netflix.