Jujutsu Kaisen’s Culling Game Explained (Because Everyone Is Confused)

Spoilers for Jujutsu Kaisen’s Culling Game arc, including manga details.

If you’re just as confused about the Culling Game as I was, don’t worry, besties. I took notes.

There’s a moment in Jujutsu Kaisen where Tengen starts explaining the Culling Game and suddenly it feels like we’ve been dragged into a group project nobody signed up for. The rules keep piling up, everyone’s asking questions, and I’m sitting here wondering if I should be drawing diagrams.

“Hold on. Am I supposed to be taking notes right now?”

If you finished the arc thinking, “I think I get it… but also maybe I don’t?” you’re not alone. Even the characters keep asking Tengen to run it back, so I’m not about to pretend I understood all that shit the first time.

So let’s go through it piece by piece and figure out what the hell is actually happening.

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The Short Version

If you just want to know what the hell the Culling Game is before we start going through Kenjaku’s ridiculous rulebook, here’s the quick explanation.

Kenjaku sets up ten colonies across Japan to gather cursed energy for a ritual involving Tengen. Players earn points by killing other players, with sorcerers generally worth five points and non-sorcerers worth one. Collecting 100 points lets someone propose a new rule, which becomes pretty important once Yuji and the others start looking for ways to keep people alive.

There are also two separate 19-day deadlines, and breaking either one can get you hit with cursed-technique removal. So even avoiding fights doesn’t mean you’re safe.

That’s the basic setup. Now we can get into why Kenjaku decided any of this was a reasonable thing to inflict on the population of Japan.

What The Culling Game Actually Is

At its core, the Culling Game is a mass ritual wearing a battle royale skin.

Kenjaku built this entire nightmare to gather cursed energy on a massive scale. The fighting inside the colonies feeds a ritual designed to prepare the people of Japan for a merger with Master Tengen.

And if you’re wondering why anybody would want that, welcome to Kenjaku’s particular brand of insanity. Tengen has evolved so far beyond an ordinary human that merging Japan’s population with them could turn humanity into something nobody can really predict or control.

So while everybody inside the colonies is worried about surviving their next fight, Kenjaku’s busy trying to fundamentally change the human race.

If you want the quick version: it’s Fortnite, but the map is Japan, the storm is a barrier, and the guy running it has been planning this for a thousand years and absolutely does not care who dies.

The Map: Colonies, Barriers, And Registration

Kenjaku sets up ten colonies across Japan, each surrounded by a barrier. Hokkaido gets left out, which might be the nicest thing anybody in JJK has ever done for Hokkaido.

Anyone who enters a colony without already being a player generally gets registered once they join. Civilians who were already inside when the barriers first went up got one chance to leave, but people marked for the game don’t have that same easy escape.

And those barriers have another job. They’re part of the ritual Kenjaku needs for the merger, so every colony is contributing to something much bigger than the fights happening inside it.

Who Gets Pulled Into The Game

Now you’ve got three types of players.

Existing Sorcerers

People like Yuji, Megumi, and Yuta already know how cursed energy works, which gives them at least some idea of what they’re walking into. They’ve fought curses, dealt with dangerous sorcerers, and have actual reasons for entering the colonies.

Maki’s a different story, though. After losing the last of her cursed energy, the barriers can’t recognize her the way they recognize normal players. She can move between colonies without getting registered or restricted like everybody else, which is one hell of a loophole in a game Kenjaku spent so long putting together.

The others still have to follow the rules, and knowing how to fight doesn’t help much when the person across from you has been waiting several centuries for an excuse to throw hands.

Newly Awakened Players

Here’s where it starts getting unfair fast. Kenjaku used Idle Transfiguration on civilians, so now you’ve got regular people waking up with cursed techniques and absolutely no clue how to use them. They barely get a chance to figure out what the hell happened before the game is basically like, “Hey. You can use cursed energy now. Also you’re in a death game.”

Hiromi Higuruma is probably the clearest example of how wild this gets. The guy was a defense attorney before all this. He woke up with a technique literally built around courtroom logic, a technique that puts people on trial.

No combat background, no idea what Jujutsu Kaisen even is as a world, just suddenly dropped into a death match with a gavel. And he’s one of the more dangerous players in the game. That tells you everything about how unpredictable the newly awakened group is. Takaba is a different flavor of terrifying, a comedian whose technique runs on belief and commitment to the bit, which sounds ridiculous until you see what he actually does with it.

Reincarnated Sorcerers

And then you’ve got the worst group: sorcerers from past eras brought back through modern bodies. Some of these people have old grudges, ridiculous combat experience, and absolutely no interest in making life easier for anybody stuck in the colonies.

Kashimo Hajime is probably the best example of how ridiculous this group can get. The man’s from roughly 400 years ago, and after being reincarnated in the modern era, his biggest concern is finding Sukuna so he can fight him. Imagine waking up four centuries later, seeing how much the world has changed, and deciding your first order of business is catching a fade with the King of Curses.

He starts piling up points, adds a rule to help track down other players, and generally behaves like this whole death game was organized specifically for his entertainment. Meanwhile, Yuji and Megumi are trying to figure out how to keep people alive, and the newly awakened sorcerers are still getting used to abilities they never asked for.

Kenjaku really threw all these people into the same game knowing damn well they weren’t coming in with the same priorities. Kashimo’s out here trying to arrange the fight of his life while everybody else has to worry about surviving long enough to see tomorrow.

The Point System (How You Actually Stay Alive)

Every player has a point total, and the original rules award points for killing other players.

Here’s the exchange rate, because apparently murder needed one.

Sorcerer killed: 5 points.

Non-sorcerer killed: 1 point.

That’s an actual rule Kenjaku put into this thing, because I guess assigning point values to human lives is just something we’re doing now.

The reason everybody starts obsessing over points is that collecting 100 lets you negotiate a new rule with the game master. For Yuji and Megumi, that’s a possible way to save people who never wanted anything to do with Kenjaku’s plans.

Unfortunately, getting those 100 points is an entirely separate problem.

The Rule That Forces Everyone To Fight

There are actually two separate 19-day deadlines, which is where I start understanding why everybody needed Tengen to explain this shit.

People whose cursed techniques Kenjaku awakened have 19 days to enter a colony and declare participation, or they face cursed-technique removal. Once you’re playing, there’s another countdown to worry about because letting your point total sit unchanged for 19 days gets you hit with the same punishment.

And according to Shoko, forcibly removing a cursed technique would affect the brain, so we’re talking about something that could very easily kill you. Since Kenjaku decided the death game needed a built-in deadline for dying too.

Early on, killing other players looks like the only reliable way to keep your score moving. That’s why the possibility of changing someone’s points without killing anybody becomes such a big deal for Yuji’s group, especially once Higuruma introduces point transfers.

The Weirdest Mechanic: Players Can Change The Rules

If you’ve got 100 points, you can spend them to propose a new rule. The game master generally has to accept it unless it would seriously interfere with the game continuing.

So no, you can’t just save up, propose “everybody goes home,” and call it a day. Believe me, Megumi would’ve loved that option.

Kashimo uses his points to add a rule that lets players look up information about everybody else, including their points and colony locations. Which is great if you’re trying to hunt somebody down, but probably a lot less exciting when you’re the one being searched for. Now everybody can see who’s been piling up points and where to find them.

Higuruma later adds a rule allowing players to transfer points to one another, which means they can change their scores without killing anybody. Imagine getting dragged into a death game and finding out someone can save your ass by sending you a point through cursed-energy Venmo.

Why The Culling Game Feels So Confusing

Part of why the Culling Game is such a pain to follow the first time is that Gege keeps handing us information while everybody’s already busy dealing with something else. We’ll get one rule explained during a conversation, then another comes up later because somebody found a loophole or suddenly has a very good reason to care about it.

Yuji and the others are still figuring out how to work around parts of the system themselves, so we’re trying to keep track of the rules while they’re testing what they can get away with and dealing with whatever fresh bullshit Kenjaku planned. I had to go back and reread a few explanations because bro, why am I studying for a death game I’m not even participating in?

Once you know what Kenjaku was setting up, the Culling Game starts making a lot more sense. Yuji and the others spend so much time looking for loopholes to keep people alive, while the bastard who wrote the rules is using the whole mess to push his merger with Tengen forward. And it’s not like anybody can just walk up to Kogane and ask it to cancel the murder tournament.

I still think Gege made us work way too hard to understand all of this, so I can’t even judge anybody who had to reread Tengen’s explanation. Going back through the rules and realizing just how much Kenjaku accounted for makes the whole thing even more ridiculous. Bro had entirely too much time on his hands, and somehow Gege managed to make all of us sit through the orientation.

Now that you know what the hell is going on, watching everyone actually play the Culling Game hits a little different. If you want to jump into one of the colonies, our Sendai Colony breakdown gets into Yuta, Uro, Ryu, Kurourushi, and that three-way Domain Expansion disaster.

We’ve got more Culling Game breakdowns coming too.

What part of the Culling Game had you the most confused the first time through?

If all this made you want to run it back, Jujutsu Kaisen Vol. 16-20 covers the wreckage of Shibuya and helps set up the nightmare that’s coming next. We may earn a commission if you grab it through our link.