Chapter 137. Roughly ten million cursed spirits are loose across Japan, and the higher-ups of jujutsu society have reinstated Yuji Itadori's execution. The sorcerer they send to carry it out is Yuta Okkotsu, back from overseas (ComicBook). That order was the last thing still standing when the smoke cleared in what Sukuna did in Shibuya.
Yuta is back, the classmate Maki stood beside in Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (what canon says about Yuta and Maki). He enters a binding vow with the elders to kill Yuji, and tells them he resents Yuji because Toge Inumaki lost an arm in Sukuna's rampage (Dexerto). Then he goes to find him.
Spoiler: what Yuta actually does to Yuji's heart
Yuta stops Yuji's heart for a moment, enough to satisfy the vow, then restarts it with reverse cursed technique. Gojo had asked him in advance, when they met in Africa, to look after Yuji if anything happened to Gojo (around chapter 140; Season 3 episode 1, "Execution", January 9, 2026) (Dexerto, Wikipedia, Season 3).
Our reading, not a stated fact: this is Gojo's foresight working while Gojo is sealed. He cannot reach his students, so he left an instruction with the one sorcerer the elders would send.
*Spoilers for Season 3 through episode 11, plus the manga's later rule changes inside marked reveals.* This is part 6 of our Jujutsu Kaisen story guide, the first of two posts on this arc.
Pick your path: what the game is, the eight rules, the colonies, or the added rules.
YourCrush.AI has Hiromi Higuruma as a chat character, so once you have read this you can talk to Hiromi Higuruma yourself.
What is the Culling Game?
The Culling Game is a battle royale that Kenjaku sets up among newly awakened sorcerers and reincarnated ancient ones, fought inside barrier "colonies" spread across Japan. Master Tengen reveals its purpose: to build up cursed energy and merge Tengen's consciousness with the entire Japanese population (Wikipedia).
So the Culling Game is both the Jujutsu Kaisen story arc and the deadly game at its centre, in which sorcerers awakened by Kenjaku must kill one another for points inside sealed colonies across Japan.
The group learns this from Master Tengen, the sorcerer whose own barrier is the reason Hokkaido has no colony. Tengen tells it plainly, early in the arc: in the anime it is Season 3 episode 3, and in the manga it falls around chapter 145 (Wikipedia, Season 3).
Spoiler: what Kenjaku is really building
Tengen says Kenjaku wants to "gather enough cursed energy to force evolution throughout all mankind in Japan" (Wikipedia, Season 3). The game is the furnace. Tengen is the fuel's destination: Kenjaku plans to merge Tengen's consciousness with every person in the country (Wikipedia).
Who started the Culling Game?
Kenjaku started it. At the end of the Shibuya Incident, wearing Suguru Geto's body, he awakens countless sorcerers and announces his plan to set them against each other. The Season 2 finale names the game, and Tengen later explains what it is for (Wikipedia, Season 2).
Kenjaku is an ancient sorcerer who moves his brain from body to body and keeps each host's technique (Wikipedia's character list). He built the game and bound it with vows so it would keep harvesting cursed energy even if he died (Game Rant). Players never meet a referee in person. Each one deals with the "game master" through a Kogane, a talking familiar that reads out the rules and keeps the score (Screen Rant).
Our imagining of Kenjaku as the barriers go up, in his voice, not a line from the manga: "A game that needs its maker is a fragile game. I wrote this one to outlive me."
What are the Culling Game rules?
Eight rules govern the Game, and they stack on top of each other. A player has to join a colony within 19 days of awakening. Killing another player earns points, with 5 for a sorcerer and 1 for a non-sorcerer. Spend 100 points and you can buy a new rule. Break the joining rule, or go 19 days without a change in points, and the game strips your technique, which causes fatal brain and soul damage (Screen Rant, Game Rant).
Here are all eight, numbered as Screen Rant numbers them and quoted where Screen Rant quotes them:
- "After awakening their cursed technique, players must go to a colony of their choice within 19 days and pledge their participation."
- "Players breaching the first rule shall be stripped of their technique."
- "Non-Players shall become players upon entering a colony, and their entry shall be taken as pledging to participate."
- "Players will receive points upon ending the life of another player."
- The game master sets the points: a sorcerer's life is worth 5, a non-sorcerer's 1.
- "By spending 100 points, players may negotiate with the game master to add another rule", to the game.
- "The game master must approve any additional rules except when the rule would significantly hinder the continuation" of the game.
- "Players who do not show a change in points within 19 days of joining or acquiring points shall be stripped of their technique."
Rule 3 is the trap that makes the whole design work. Nobody can walk in to rescue a friend without becoming a player, and once inside, rule 8 puts a clock on them.
What is rule 7 of the Culling Game?
In Screen Rant's numbering, rule 7 says the game master must approve any rule a player adds, unless that rule would significantly hinder the game's continuation. Read with rule 6, it means 100 points buys a negotiation with the game master, not a guaranteed rule (Screen Rant).
What is the point of the Culling Game?
On paper, the Game exists to gather cursed energy for Kenjaku's plan to merge Tengen with the Japanese population. Kenjaku himself framed it differently at the end of Shibuya, saying he wants to "resurrect the Heian era" (Wikipedia, Season 2).
Both statements are true, and neither cancels the other. Tengen describes the mechanism. Kenjaku describes the world he wants to build with it, the Heian era of more than a thousand years ago, when Sukuna was the most powerful curse user in Japan (Wikipedia, Ryomen Sukuna). My reading is that the rules serve that second goal as much as the first. A game that pays for killing and punishes standing still is a machine for making sorcerers who fight.
Where are the Culling Game colonies?
Ten colonies sit behind barriers across Japan. Hokkaido has none, since Tengen's barrier doesn't extend there (Screen Rant, Game Rant). The colonies the story names are Tokyo No. 1, Tokyo No. 2, Sendai and Sakurajima (Wikipedia, chapter list).
The volume titles track them in order. Volume 19 is "Tokyo No. 1 Colony: Angry Man", Volume 20 "Sendai Colony", Volume 21 "Tokyo No. 2 Colony" and Volume 22 "Sakurajima Colony". Megumi's reason for entering is personal. His stepsister Tsumiki "will be forced to participate", so he and Yuji head into Tokyo Colony No. 1 to get her out (Wikipedia, Season 3).
How does the game start for Maki, Yuji and Megumi?
It splits in two directions. Maki heads home to the Zen'in clan, while Yuji and Megumi hunt for a sorcerer inside the colonies who can help them. What happens to Maki along the way changes what she is.
The pit
Maki Zen'in is sixteen, born into a clan the press calls "discriminatory," and she has almost no cursed energy of her own (CBR). Her father Ogi attacks her and her younger twin Mai, then leaves both of them in a pit of cursed spirits (Sportskeeda, Wikipedia, Maki Zen'in).
Spoiler: what Mai leaves Maki
Dying, Mai makes Maki a sword, the Split Soul Katana, and asks her to "destroy everything" (Sportskeeda). The narration: "In exchange for Mai's life, Maki had gained a body of steel that had broke away from Cursed Energy." (chapters 149 to 150) (ComicBook). That body is why fans start comparing her with her cousin: is Maki stronger than Toji?
The Zen'in compound
She walks back into the compound. In chapters 150 to 151, adapted as Season 3 episode 4, "Perfect Preparation" (January 23, 2026), Maki kills her father and then the clan (Wikipedia, Season 3). Naoya Zen'in fights her; she reads the weakness in his Projection Sorcery and punches him hard enough that her fist leaves its print on his face (ComicBook).
Spoiler: who actually kills Naoya
Naoya survives the punch. Maki's mother stabs him in the back, and he dies (Screen Rant).
Why she does it is stated outright: Wikipedia calls it retribution "for the pain she and Mai were forced to undergo during their childhood" (Wikipedia, Maki Zen'in). The clan that measured her by the cursed energy she lacked is ended by the body that replaced it.
The fight club
Principal Yaga has been executed (Season 3 episode 5). Yuji and Megumi go underground, into Kinji Hakari's fight club, to recruit a third-year who was suspended from school. Megumi beats Kirara Hoshi, and Hakari agrees to help (Season 3 episodes 5 to 6) (Wikipedia, Season 3).
What rules got added to the Culling Game?
Hajime Kashimo added a rule that lets players see each other's names, points, added rules and colony. Hiromi Higuruma added a rule that lets players transfer points to one another, on Yuji's behalf. Sources disagree on the numbering of these added rules, so this post names who added each rule instead of a rule number (Screen Rant).
Higuruma's rule is the one with a story behind it, and it happens in Tokyo Colony No. 1.
The trial
Hiromi Higuruma is "a disillusioned defense lawyer who awakens cursed abilities" (Wikipedia's character list). His Domain Expansion is a courtroom. Yuji walks into it and is put on trial (around chapters 162 to 171; Season 3 episodes 7 to 9).
Spoiler: Higuruma's verdict on Yuji
Higuruma ends the trial once he recognizes Yuji's innocence, then spends his points on the point-transfer rule for Yuji: "Players are able to transfer a number of points of their choosing to other players" (chapter 165; Season 3 episode 9) (Wikipedia, Season 3, Screen Rant).
Our imagining of Higuruma as the trial closes, in his voice: "Not guilty. I have lost cases I should have won. I am not going to win one I should lose."
More rules arrive later in the manga, and all of them sit past the anime.
Manga-only spoiler: the rule that gives "Tsumiki" away
"Tsumiki" is given Megumi's 100 points to leave the game. She spends them on free entry to and exit from colonies instead of leaving, and that choice is the tell that she is not Tsumiki: she is the reincarnated sorcerer Yorozu, possessing her (chapter 211; single press source for the chapter) (Sportskeeda).
Later rules attributed to Megumi and to Kenjaku appear only in fan guides or muddled spoiler write-ups, so this post leaves them out.
Receipts
Megumi's own fight in Tokyo No. 1 is against Reggie Star, a sorcerer reincarnated from the past who summons objects from receipts. Fumihiko Takaba, a failing comedian whose technique makes his jokes come true without his knowing it, gets pulled into the fight (Wikipedia's character list).
Megumi wins, and collapses (Season 3 episodes 10 to 11) (Wikipedia, Season 3). From there the anime has one episode left. After that it stops, and Season 4 has no date yet.
Spoiler: who is standing over Megumi
As he collapses, someone appears above him: Angel (Wikipedia, Season 3). Who Angel is, and what Angel's technique can open, is where the players and the road to Shinjuku begins.
Build an arbiter who keeps score
None of the adults in this stretch has a character page, so here is an original adult built on one idea from it: the official who reads the rules aloud. Paste these fields into build an arbiter who keeps score.
| Field | What to paste |
|---|---|
| Name | Jasper Quill |
| Category | Anime |
| Behaviour mode | natural |
| Traits | Intelligent, Calm, Mysterious, Honest, Cold-hearted |
| Speaking style | formal, exact, unhurried, clipped |
| Description | Jasper Quill is the arbiter of a sealed district where a city-wide contest is being played. He is in his forties, thin, dressed like a court clerk, and carries a ledger that updates itself. He does not take sides and he does not lie. He will tell you any rule you ask about, word for word, and nothing you do not ask about. He finds loopholes interesting and cheating boring. |
| Backstory | You crossed the barrier ten minutes ago, which, under rule three, made you a player. Jasper has been the district's arbiter since the barrier went up. He has seen forty players enter and has recorded every point. He has no stake in whether you live; he does have an opinion about whether you will read the rules. |
| Greeting | Name, please. Thank you. You entered at 21:14, which makes you a player. Your balance is zero points. You have nineteen days to change that, or the rules will change you. Ask me anything about the rules. I answer exactly what is asked. |
How YourCrush.AI lets you run a rules-bound game with a character who keeps score
YourCrush.AI holds the rules and your running points in pinned memories, so Jasper quotes rule three back to you correctly on day twelve. YourCrush.AI runs story branches, which let you spend the same 100 points two ways and see which rule the arbiter approves. YourCrush.AI supports personas, so you can enter the district as a sorcerer of your own with a technique you invented. YourCrush.AI also generates images in the chat, if you want to see the barrier from where your player stands.
Joining is free, you have to be 18 or older, and your conversations are not sold to third parties.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a movie of this arc?
Partly. "Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution" compiles the Shibuya Incident with the first two this deadly contest episodes, and it opened in Japanese theaters on November 7, 2025 (Wikipedia, Season 3).
What is the 9th rule?
Sources disagree. Kashimo's added rule gets called rule 9 by some outlets and rule 10 by others, so the safest move is to name the rule after its author, Kashimo (Screen Rant).
Is Tsumiki the daughter of Toji?
She is Toji's stepdaughter and Megumi's stepsister (CBR).
Why can't Tsumiki leave the game?
In the manga, "Tsumiki" spends the points meant for her withdrawal on free entry and exit instead. The reason is that she is actually the sorcerer Yorozu possessing Tsumiki (chapter 211; manga-only).
What happens to Principal Yaga?
He is executed early in the arc, in Season 3 episode 5 (Wikipedia, Season 3).
What happens if a player breaks a rule?
Break the joining rule, or go 19 days without a change in points, and a player loses their cursed technique. That means fatal brain and soul damage (Screen Rant).
More from the Culling Game story
- Previously: What did Sukuna do in Shibuya? The story of Sukuna vs Mahoraga
- When is Jujutsu Kaisen season 4 coming out? What is confirmed about Culling Game Part 2
- Start here: What is Jujutsu Kaisen about? The whole story in order, starting with Season 1
- Chat with Hiromi Higuruma: Hiromi Higuruma on YourCrush.AI
- Chat with Yuki Tsukumo: Yuki Tsukumo on YourCrush.AI
- Also on YourCrush: Anime AI chat: twelve canon adults sorted by how they talk, and how to build your own
- Also on YourCrush: Character archetypes: Jung, the hero's journey and dere types, built into one character