⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: This guide covers the Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 Culling Games arc in full detail — manga and anime. If you’re not caught up on Season 3, bookmark this and come back. You’ve been warned.
If you’ve been watching jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games with your jaw on the floor every single episode, you are not alone. This arc is the moment the entire JJK story shifts from “dark shonen” to full-blown catastrophic war — and Gege Akutami is not pulling any punches. Sorcerers are dying, ancient curses are walking the earth again, and Kenjaku’s master plan is finally executing in real time. It is brutal, it is beautiful, and it is exactly the chaos we signed up for.
This guide breaks down everything you need to know about the jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games — the rules, the players, the colonies, the standout fights, and why this arc is setting up what will go down as one of the most jaw-dropping finales in anime history.
What Is the Culling Games Arc in Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3?
The Culling Games arc kicks off what is arguably the most ambitious storyline in jujutsu kaisen season 3. After the catastrophic events of Shibuya — where Gojo got sealed, Yuji got framed, and the world basically started falling apart — Kenjaku, the ancient sorcerer wearing Geto’s body, pulls the trigger on a plan he’s been building for over a thousand years. The Culling Games is that plan made flesh.
In simplest terms, the Culling Games is a death tournament. Kenjaku used Idle Transfiguration to awaken Cursed Energy in the descendants of ancient sorcerers across Japan — roughly 1,000 awakened individuals — and then trapped them inside colony barriers scattered across the country. Inside those barriers, the only way to survive is to accumulate points by killing other players. No mercy, no exits, no exceptions.
What makes the culling games arc so compelling as a narrative is that it isn’t just a battle royale gimmick. Kenjaku’s endgame goes way beyond just killing sorcerers. The real goal is to use the massive outpouring of cursed energy generated by thousands of sorcerers fighting and dying to fuel a ritual that merges humanity with Tengen — an ancient immortal sorcerer whose body has fused with the barriers that protect Japan. The scope of this plan is staggering, and jujutsu kaisen season 3 does an incredible job slowly revealing just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
The heroes — Yuji, Megumi, Yuta, Hakari, and their allies — are thrown into this nightmare with no good options. They have to fight inside the games just to negotiate their way out, all while every awakened sorcerer and resurrected ancient fighter is looking to score points at their expense. The jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games arc is a war of attrition, and not everybody makes it out.
The 19 Rules of the Culling Games — Explained
One of the most fascinating elements of the jujutsu kaisen culling games is the ruleset Kenjaku built into the barrier itself. There are 19 rules total, and they’re enforced by the barrier’s built-in Cursed Technique — meaning you can’t cheat, you can’t ignore them, and you can’t opt out. The rules function like a cosmic contract written in cursed energy.
Here are the key rules that drive the action in jujutsu kaisen season 3:
- Rule 1: Players must kill other players to earn points. Each kill is worth points based on the victim’s assigned value.
- Rule 2: Players who don’t score a point within 19 days are executed by the barrier.
- Rule 3 (the big one): Players can spend 100 points to add a new rule to the game — as long as the new rule doesn’t contradict existing rules and is approved by the barrier itself.
That rule-adding mechanic is where things get genuinely clever. Itadori and his crew aren’t just there to fight — they’re trying to accumulate enough points to add rules that let them do things like negotiate with other players, or pull a specific person out of the colony entirely. The culling games rules turn what could’ve been a simple bloodbath into a strategic puzzle, and watching the characters figure out how to game a system that was designed to kill them is one of the most satisfying threads in the whole jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games storyline.
It’s also worth noting that Kenjaku himself is playing. He enters as a participant, which means even he is bound by the rules — a rare constraint on a villain who has spent centuries operating outside every system. The 19 rules create a playing field where even a centuries-old mastermind has to operate within limits, and that makes the culling games feel genuinely high-stakes for everyone involved.
Key Players & Colonies — Who’s Fighting Where
The jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games are split across multiple colony zones, each one sealed inside its own barrier. Japan has been carved up into arenas, and different players — both protagonists and terrifying opponents — are assigned to different colonies. Let’s break down the main ones.
Tokyo Colony No. 1 — Itadori, Megumi, and Higuruma
Itadori Yuji drops into Tokyo Colony No. 1 as one of the first protagonists to enter the games. This colony becomes the stage for one of the most emotionally loaded confrontations in the arc: Yuji vs. Hiromi Higuruma. Higuruma is a defense attorney who was awakened and thrown into the games against his will. His Cursed Technique, Deadly Sentencing, holds trials inside a Domain Expansion — and the sentence is death. He’s brilliant, disillusioned, and incredibly dangerous.
Fushiguro Megumi also operates in this colony before the arc takes a catastrophic turn for his character. Megumi is trying to rescue his sister Tsumiki, who got caught up in the games as an awakened player — and the desperation behind every decision he makes here is heartbreaking to watch play out in jujutsu kaisen season 3.
Tokyo Colony No. 2 — Yuta’s Rampage
Okkotsu Yuta gets sent into Tokyo Colony No. 2, and what happens there is one of the most talked-about sequences in the entire jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games. Yuta goes in alone, and he does not play nice. His mission is to accumulate points fast enough to add a rule that protects civilians, and to do that, he unleashes a level of power that genuinely shocks even hardened JJK fans. Yuta copying Cursed Techniques at will is as terrifying as advertised, and seeing him operate in full combat mode against wave after wave of awakened sorcerers is a showcase moment for a character who had been largely off-screen since JJK 0.
Sendai Colony — Ancient Sorcerers Reborn
The Sendai Colony is where Kenjaku’s plan reveals its most disturbing layer. Among the awakened players are reincarnated ancient sorcerers — fighters from centuries past whose souls have been bound into living bodies through Kenjaku’s preparation. These aren’t regular awakened people; they are some of the strongest sorcerers who ever lived, now loose in the modern world with centuries of technique and zero mercy.
The Sendai Colony battles are visceral and introduce figures like Kashimo Hajime, a lightning-wielding ancient sorcerer who has been waiting a thousand years for a worthy opponent. His confrontation with Hakari Kinji — one of the most unhinged and entertaining characters in the series — is the kind of fight that makes you put down your snacks and just stare at the screen for its entire runtime.
Major Battles & Moments That Defined the Culling Games
The jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games arc is wall-to-wall with standout fights, but a few in particular have broken the community every time they’ve aired. These aren’t just hype moments — they’re fights with real stakes, real consequences, and genuine shifts in character.
Higuruma vs. Yuji — A Trial for Itadori’s Soul
The Higuruma vs. Yuji fight is the emotional centerpiece of the early culling games arc. Higuruma has sentenced hundreds of players to death inside his domain — but when he faces Yuji, the dynamic shifts in ways neither of them expected. Yuji, who has been wrestling with whether he deserves to live since the very beginning of the series, faces a literal trial for his existence. And the resolution of that fight doesn’t just determine who wins — it changes both characters fundamentally. Higuruma becoming an ally is one of the best character turns in jujutsu kaisen season 3.
Kashimo vs. Hakari — Unstoppable Force Meets Unkillable Man
If Higuruma vs. Yuji is the emotional fight, Kashimo vs. Hakari is the pure spectacle fight. Hakari Kinji’s Cursed Technique revolves around a pachinko machine jackpot mechanic — when he hits the jackpot, he becomes effectively immortal for a brief window, regenerating from any damage instantly. Against Kashimo, an ancient fighter who can output enough electrical cursed energy to level city blocks, Hakari has to hit jackpot after jackpot just to survive.
The fight is absurd in the best possible way, and MAPPA’s animation team clearly had a blast rendering Kashimo’s lightning and Hakari’s injuries and instant regenerations. The community has been going absolutely wild over this sequence, and it stands as a high point of the jujutsu kaisen culling games on screen so far.
Megumi’s Domain Expansion — And Its Cost
One of the most agonizing threads in the jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games is watching Megumi slowly pushed past his limits. His Domain Expansion — Chimera Shadow Garden — is one of the most visually stunning techniques in the series, and seeing it deployed in the colonies is spectacular. But the context makes it devastating.
Megumi is burning through everything he has to save his sister, and every step forward costs him something. The culling games arc is where Megumi’s story takes the turn that JJK manga readers have been waiting — and dreading — to see animated. Without spoiling the full outcome for anime-only viewers, let’s just say that what happens to Fushiguro Megumi in this arc has direct, shattering consequences for the endgame against Sukuna.
Yuta’s One-Man Rampage in Tokyo Colony No. 2
There’s a reason the JJK community started calling Yuta “the other strongest” in earnest after this arc. Watching him tear through Tokyo Colony No. 2 in the jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games is a reminder that this is a character who made Gojo say “this one might actually be stronger than me someday.” His Cursed Technique amplification and technique-copying abilities make him an absolute force, and the colony sequence gives him room to demonstrate that in full. This is peak Yuta — and anime fans are finally getting to see what manga readers have been hyping for years.
How the Culling Games Connects to JJK’s Bigger Story
The jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games aren’t happening in a vacuum. Everything that goes down in the colonies — every death, every power-up, every alliance forged under pressure — is directly feeding into the final confrontation that the entire series has been building toward. And that confrontation is with Ryomen Sukuna.
Kenjaku’s real plan involves merging humanity with Tengen to create something unprecedented — a new form of existence powered by the death and transformation of thousands. But even that plan has a complication: Sukuna. The King of Curses has his own agenda that predates Kenjaku’s scheming by centuries, and the culling games arc is where we start to understand just how outmaneuvered everyone — including Kenjaku — might actually be.
For Itadori specifically, the culling games are a crucible. He entered the series as a kid who swallowed a cursed finger to save people and has been asking “do I deserve to live?” ever since. By the time the jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games arc is done with him, that question has been answered in the most brutal and definitive way possible. His growth — and his grief — in this arc make him one of the most compelling protagonists in anime right now.
If you enjoy stories where the villain’s plan is this intricate and this terrible, you’ll appreciate why Kenjaku ranks among the best anime villains of all time — a character whose manipulation of history, human bodies, and cursed energy spans literal centuries. The Culling Games is his magnum opus, and watching the heroes try to dismantle it piece by piece is gripping storytelling.
The culling games arc also marks JJK’s transition from a shonen series with horror elements to something far darker. The rules of engagement change here. Characters you cared about get hurt in permanent ways. Alliances are messy and conditional. The world of cursed energy and sorcerers stops feeling like a backdrop for cool fights and starts feeling like a genuine catastrophe — a world that might not be saveable. That tonal shift is what makes jujutsu kaisen season 3 feel like a different beast from what came before, and honestly, it’s why we’re living in such an exciting moment for anime storytelling. We’re in the golden age of anime, and JJK is exhibit A.
The arc also delivers plot twists that rewire your understanding of the entire series. If you thought you had JJK figured out after Shibuya, the culling games will take those assumptions and scatter them. For the biggest shocks in the medium right now, JJK is competing at the very top — right up there with the most shocking anime plot twists the genre has ever produced.
Where to Watch Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 Culling Games
Ready to watch the jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games arc as it airs? The best and most reliable option is Crunchyroll, which simulcasts new JJK Season 3 episodes as they air in Japan — typically within an hour or two of the Japanese broadcast. Crunchyroll has subtitled and dubbed versions depending on your preference, and their catalog also includes all previous JJK seasons and the JJK 0 film so you can rewatch the full story up to this point.
Jujutsu Kaisen Season 3 follows the manga’s Culling Games arc (Chapters 158–222 of the manga, roughly), which means there is a substantial amount of story content to cover. The season is airing with a weekly schedule, and MAPPA — the animation studio behind JJK — has been delivering some of their best work on this season despite the brutal production demands of adapting this arc’s fight sequences.
For anime-only viewers watching the jujutsu kaisen culling games unfold week by week, this arc rewards patience. Some early episodes feel like setup, but when the payoffs hit, they hit hard. Stick with it through each colony introduction, because every player introduced early comes back with significance before the arc is done.
If you’re looking for more high-quality anime to fill the time between episodes, check out our roundup of the best anime on Netflix — there’s plenty to keep you busy while you wait for the next episode to drop.
| Platform | Availability | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Crunchyroll | Simulcast (weekly) | Sub & Dub |
| Netflix | Delayed (batch) | Sub & Dub |
| Funimation | Merged into Crunchyroll | Sub & Dub |
What Comes After the Culling Games Arc?
Without dropping full manga spoilers for anime-only viewers, here’s what you need to know: the jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games arc is not the end — it’s the setup. Everything that happens in the colonies, every sacrifice made, every rule added, every alliance forged under the worst possible conditions, feeds directly into the endgame confrontation.
The Sukuna problem has not gone away. If anything, the events of the culling games make it significantly worse. Kenjaku’s ritual and Sukuna’s own maneuvering are on a collision course with Yuji and the surviving sorcerers, and when that collision finally happens, the entire world of jujutsu kaisen will be transformed.
The manga’s conclusion — which has already landed and sparked fierce debate in the community — grew directly out of the choices and consequences established in the jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games arc. Even if you have opinions about where Gege Akutami took the story, it’s impossible to deny that the foundation built here is extraordinary. The emotional weight, the power scaling, the character work — it all converges from these colonies into a final act that left the entire fandom talking for months.
What the anime adaptation does with that material — with MAPPA’s animation, the full soundtrack, the direction, the voice acting — has the potential to elevate already exceptional source material into all-time classic territory. The jujutsu kaisen culling games arc animated is exactly the kind of content that reminds you why you fell in love with this medium in the first place.
So if you’re watching the jujutsu kaisen season 3 culling games week by week right now, you’re in the thick of one of the best anime arcs airing today. Stay caught up, protect yourself from spoilers, and appreciate what you’re watching — because this story, at this scale, animated at this level of quality, doesn’t come around very often.
The colonies are open. The points are tallying. And the King of Curses is watching it all with a smile.
Don’t miss a single episode.