Jujutsu Kaisenis a story that features gruesome body horror, terrifying monsters, and gut-punch betrayals that often lead to bloodshed. Yuji Itadori is a high schooler who becomes the vessel for the all-powerful demon Ryomen Sukuna to try and save his friends’ lives, a decision that sends him on a journey of fending off legendary curses, fighting a team of eerie bad guys seeking to align with Sukuna, and surviving plenty of attempts on his life.
Adam McArthur voices Itadori in the English dub of Jujutsu Kaisen, and despite the horror elements of the show, he affectionately refers to Itadori as a “golden retriever” a couple of times when we sit down to talk.
“I know he went through so much, but what I love about Yuji is he is still Yuji,” McArthur says of his character. “He still wants to do good, and he still wants to be the best he can. I think that even though the light might be a little dimmer coming out of season two, he’s still our sunshine boy.”
Playing A Protagonist In A Dark Shonen Series
This optimism and compassion serve to counterbalance the power-hungry malice of Sukuna, the demon sharing a body with Itadori. Yuji is the only human capable of containing the all-encompassing spirit, and while Sukuna snarls and taunts those he deems too weak to entertain, Yuji is a more empathetic character. I ask if he has a favorite quote from the show, and McArthur recalls a grim moment from the end of the second season, a series of episodes thatsaw Itadori’s closest friends and mentors battered(or worse).
“The whole ‘I am you’ speech [Yuji] gives Mahito, where he finally corners Mahito and he’s realizing he’s just a cog in the machine." One of the primary antagonists throughout the series so far, Mahito is a curse who’s hell-bent on exterminating humanity, and he taunts Itadori that they’re one and the same, since Yuji’s mission is to exterminate curses like Mahito. After denying this initially, Yuji somberly admits it to be true at the height of a tense chase scene. “That whole last bit was so emotional!”
JJK is a story of heavy loss, and while McArthur appreciates the moments of levity throughout, he knows the forecast for the characters we’ve all come to love can often be grim. He’s read the manga in its entirety, and he prepares to record each episode by listening to Yuji’s Japanese voice actor Junya Enoki’s recording before doing his own in English. And while most of his costars spend their time in the booth doing battle cries, the real challenge of recording Jujutsu Kaisen for McArthur comes from the heaviness of Itadori’s story.
“My thought behind the trauma and the Shibuya incident was that I wanted it to feel as real as possible; I didn’t want it to feel like it was anime crying or whatever,” he says. “And how you do that is just make it as real as possible for yourself, so it was difficult going from week to week into the studio and sort of living in that headspace for almost the entirety of season two.”
The Megan Thee Stallion Effect
When we chat over Zoom, Jujutsu Kaisen has recently been namedthe World’s Most In-Demand Animated TV Showby the Guinness Book of World Records for 2024, a relative newcomer beating out long-beloved series like Attack on Titan and One Piece, which have held the title in the past.
McArthur says he’d send Yuji into the universe of One Piece, if he had to choose another show for his pink-haired protagonist. “I feel like Luffy and Yuji would get along well,” he says, “and also, let’s give Yuji a little bit of a break.”
This year’s decision was a toss-up between Jujutsu Kaisen and One Piece, but a bump in popularity halfway through 2024 gave JJK the push to victory. Perhaps not coincidentally, the spike happened shortly after the release of the song “Otaku Hot Girl” by rapper Megan Thee Stallion, which begins with an amended line of Itadori’s from the anime and makes numerous references to the show throughout.
When another character asks what kind of woman he likes, Itadori replies, “I like a tall woman with a nice big ass, just sayin’,” a voice line that wound up going viral on social media. The original quote talks about Jennifer Lawrence, but McArthur says he saw people arguing about the choice of celebrity online and re-dubbed the line to be about Megan Thee Stallion in 2021 following her Grammy win. He then heard nothing outside of social media chatter about it until his phone went wild at 9:30 one night.
“So I picked up and people were like, ‘Congrats, you’re finally on a Megan Thee Stallion song!’” he recalls with a smile. “And I will say, when I made that [recording], I was like, it’d be silly of her to not use this in an opening.”
I ask what kind of music he thinks Itadori would produce. “I’m a big nineties hip hop guy, but I don’t know if Yuji would pick the same thing. I feel like Yuji would pick a Blackpink song, like some kind of K-Pop.”
What’s Next For McArthur?
Just because Jujutsu Kaisen is between seasons doesn’t mean McArthur hasn’t been busy. His most recent work ranges from roles like Reno Ichikawa in another popular anime Kaiju No. 8, to voicing Troy Simpkin in WWE 2K24. Keeping busy into the remainder of 2025, he’s on track to play a yet-unrevealed character in the upcoming dating simulator Date Everything!, a game about dating your anthropomorphic home furniture.
“I am still trying to find a simple way to explain the premise to people without it just sounding so out there,” he laughs. “You date furniture. It’s a game where you can date anything and everything in your house. They do turn into a person, though, so that’s good.”
Fellow Jujutsu Kaisen voice actors Ray Chase (who plays the demon Sukuna) and Robbie Daymond (who voices Megumi Fushiguro, Itadori’s classmate) arethe minds behind Date Everything!, and I ask if McArthur can share a bit about the role. His IMDb page lists the character’s name as Cam, but when I suggest he’s perhaps a Ring doorbell or webcam, he replies, “I’m not going to confirm exactly what he is, but I will say that you’re not right.”
He does offer some teasers, though. “You’re going to love the pun they did. He’s moody, he’snota sunshine boy, quite the opposite! It’ll be a different sound than people are expecting.”
When he’s not recording for one of his various roles, McArthur appears at conventions around the world. When I ask how he and his co-stars feel about the hordes of fans eager to hear them echo their characters' iconic quotes, he smiles. “We’re so lucky; there are no complaints at all,” he says. “If someone asks me every day to say that I like a tall woman with a nice big ass, or asks [co-star Kaiji Tang] every day to say ‘You crying?’, how lucky are we that that’s even a thing? It’s so funny. You never imagine life ending up there. It’s all good.”
The first two seasons of Jujutsu Kaisen are currently available to watchon Crunchyroll, Netflix, and more.
