Black Torch is quickly becoming one of those anime that seems to be everywhere on Crunchyroll all of a sudden. The series climbed to No. 2 in FlixPatrol’s global Crunchyroll ranking on August 26, 2026, with only Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation sitting above it. That’s a pretty wild result for an anime that only arrived a few weeks ago, and of course the Jujutsu Kaisen comparisons have already started.
That “replacement” idea needs a little bit of a reality check, though. Nobody from Crunchyroll or the teams behind either show has actually called Black Torch the next Jujutsu Kaisen, so right now it’s mostly a comparison fans and entertainment sites are making. There’s another thing worth keeping in mind with the FlixPatrol ranking, too. It measures popularity across streaming and VOD platforms, but it doesn’t give us official viewing figures, subscriber numbers or total hours watched. So, yes, landing at No. 2 tells us Black Torch has some real momentum, but it doesn’t mean the show is anywhere near the enormous audience Jujutsu Kaisen has built over the years, especially with its fourth season still sitting high on the list of things fans are waiting for.
The comparison isn’t completely pulled from nowhere, though, because the two series do share some of the same basic supernatural DNA. Black Torch follows Jiro Azuma, a young descendant of the shinobi who can communicate with animals, which is already a pretty strange—and honestly pretty fun—way to start an action anime. His world gets turned upside down after he meets Rago, a black cat who turns out to be a powerful mononoke hiding in plain sight, dragging Jiro into a secret world of supernatural creatures, shadowy organizations and trouble he definitely didn’t ask for. That’s where the Jujutsu Kaisen similarities become easier to see, although Black Torch isn’t simply copying that formula and calling it a day. It leans much more into Japanese folklore and shinobi mythology, while Jiro and Rago’s relationship gives the story a different center of gravity.
The sudden attention around the anime becomes even more interesting when you look at where the manga came from. Tsuyoshi Takaki’s Black Torch began in Jump SQ back in 2016, later moved to Shonen Jump+, and finished after only five volumes, which is a surprisingly small footprint for something that’s now getting this much international attention. The anime from 100studio, which premiered on July 4, 2026, is basically giving that older manga another roll of the dice, only now the audience is global. That’s why calling Black Torch the “new Jujutsu Kaisen” is probably a bit premature, maybe more than a bit. Still, its quick rise is hard to ignore, because every now and then a short-lived manga gets a second chance through an anime and suddenly people everywhere are asking, “Wait, why didn’t I hear about this before?”
