Between Tradition and Transformation: Gender Representation in Jujutsu Kaisen
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2025-07-08
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en
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This thesis explores gender representation in Jujutsu Kaisen (2018), analysing how the series uses the visual flexibility of animation to reflect and challenge gender norms within the constraints of the shōnen genre. Through close readings of key characters, it examines how gender is constructed, resisted, or transcended. Drawing on theories from gender studies, psychoanalysis, and animation criticism, the study highlights three main dynamics: characters constrained by traditional gender roles, characters who embody fluid or ungendered identities, and characters whose transformations express repressed gender anxieties. The analysis shows that while Jujutsu Kaisen remains rooted in a male-oriented genre, it also disrupts its conventions through symbolic and visual strategies unique to animation. Ultimately, the series reveals how gendered identity in popular media is both shaped by structural expectations and opened up through artistic abstraction.
Keywords: gender representation, animation, shōnen genre, psychoanalysis, monstrosity, identity, Jujutsu Kaisen.
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