Jigokuraku

Sentenced to death, ninja Gabimaru the Hollow finds himself apathetic. After leading a blood-soaked life, Gabimaru believes he deserves to die. However, every attempt to execute him inexplicably fails. Finally, Sagiri Yamada Asaemon, a fledgling member of a famed executioner clan, is asked to take Gabimaru's life; yet Sagiri makes no move to kill him as requested.

Insisting that Gabimaru will not die because of his love for his wife, Sagiri instead offers him the chance to obtain a full pardon for his crimes. If he can travel to the island of Shinsekyo and obtain the Elixir of Life—which supposedly grants immortality—and bring it back for the shogun, then his freedom will be assured.

But of the many who have traveled to Shinsekyo in search of the mythical Elixir, not a single person has returned sound of mind, if at all. Though unaware of the numerous dangers ahead, Gabimaru decides to accept the offer—alongside ten other death row convicts—in hope that he and his wife may finally live in peace.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Gabimaru Main

Kobayashi, Chiaki Japanese

Yamada Asaemon, Sagiri Main

Hanamori, Yumiri Japanese

Yuzuriha Supporting

Takahashi, Rie Japanese

Yamada Asaemon, Shion Supporting

Kobayashi, Chikahiro Japanese

Aza, Choubei Supporting

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Yamada Asaemon, Tenza Supporting

Kobayashi, Yuusuke Japanese

Tamiya, Gantetsusai Supporting

Inada, Tetsu Japanese

Yamada Asaemon, Touma Supporting

Ono, Kensho Japanese

Yamada Asaemon, Fuchi Supporting

Ichikawa, Aoi Japanese

Yui Supporting

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Tannawa, Yuusuke Producer

Kawagoe, Wataru Producer, Production Manager, Production Assistant

Ishii, Nozomi Producer

Makita, Kaori Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jul 1, 2023

Marinate1016

Recommended

Out of all the big shonen shows MAPPA have done lately, Jigokuraku stands out to me as the most interesting story, characters and most entertaining experience.

I know that’s going to come as a surprise to many considering the big name titles they’ve done of late, but with the exception of Vinland Saga s2, which I’ll count as a WIT production due to the staff involved, they’ve been “meh” for me. Overhyped animation spectacles with little in the way of a good story.

Jigokuraku on the other hand actually has one of the coolest set ups in recent history for me. The idea of ex ... cons being thrown on an island with samurai, and made to search for an elixir, while fighting monsters and gods just clicks for me. The world feels alive and rich. Mystery and danger are around every corner and the threat of someone dying is a constant concern. The brutality of the show and gruesome reality of the island were amazing. I love a gritty anime and this delivered.

The main cast of characters have good chemistry and bounce off each other well. Each of the main cons is assigned to a samurai chaperone who at some point develops a soft spot for the con. This allows for some good character development and bonding. Some characters were a little lacking, but I can excuse it because I know this is a longer running series and after 12 episodes I don’t expect to have everything done. I’ll say there’s an obvious path forward for everyone in the story, though and that’s enough for me.

Also huge props to the author for not taking the easy way out and making an MC that falls in love with the samurai chaperone and become a generic battle shonen romance. Having Gabimaru be married and fully dedicated to his wife, as well as using his wife as his motivation to return home was a great touch that adds to the uniqueness of the story. I think it’s more challenging to show a platonic relationship between men and women in anime than creating generic ships, and this author does it perfectly.

Now, the story is great, but one thing you’ll hear a lot from people is the production aspect of the show. I personally have no issues with it because story+entertainment> great animation, but there are a few moments in the show where it’s obviously lacking some polish. Particularly in the compositing of backgrounds and some character models looking really janky. There’s also a few episode ends that feel very jarring. I feel like that was down to creative intent as opposed to budget constraints, though. The last 3 episodes looked very solid to me and it was apparent that the week off they took helped the production tremendously. The action scenes down the stretch were much better.

Again, the production side didn’t matter to me as I prioritise the substance of a show and my overall enjoyment over how it looks. But it is something that’s worth mentioning.


Jigokuraku may not have the flashy lights and crazy action scenes of its fellow MAPPA titles, but what it lacks in spectacle it makes up for in story and substance. If you’re an action anime fan and looking for something different and more on the mature side, this is the one. You’ll get a really interesting world, fun characters and some good action scenes. I loved this one and I can’t wait for a season 2.

Jigokuraku gets 9 out of 10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jul 2, 2023

Mcsuper

Mixed Feelings

First of all, a quick writer’s note, as I’m writing this, it is June 30th, and it’s late at night, and I’ll be heading to bed right after I write this. The final episode of Hell’s Paradise airs in around nine to ten hours, and I’m just starting on my review. I did this intentionally though, to imitate a MAPPA style of production, rushing and submitting the work just a bit before it’s due to see how poorly this review will turn out.

Studio MAPPA has been known for taking on big name action or shounen titles as of late, with the likes of Jujutsu Kaisen, ... Attack On Titan, Chainsaw Man, Vinland Saga, and now Hell’s Paradise. They've taken on so much that they have become a popular name amongst anime fans. While their shows generally look decent, it is clear that because they’ve taken on so much, their production schedule has been a literal hell, with very overworked staff, and poor working conditions. Of course, I’m sure many other studios experience these kinds of things too, but MAPPA has been brought into the limelight due to how many popular titles they’ve done recently. Clearly, Hell’s Paradise was not their favourite child, as this show looked considerably worse visually than their other shows.

But before we get to all the production things, let’s talk about the story. On paper, this looks like a somewhat generic action shounen, with a death convict in Gabimaru being tasked, along with the rest of the death row convicts to find the “Elixir of Life” on an island called Shinsekyo, in order to escape their death sentence. Obviously, the convicts fight amongst each other, as only one can have this elixir to evade death. This island looked very interesting and colourful, with some scary creatures around them, all around a very intriguing, perhaps a unique setting. However, what this anime fails at is the most important narrative technique, which is “Show, don’t tell”. Time and time again, we are told about what this environment is like, the religion aspects, the creatures, how the world works, but we don’t really get enough showing of the environment itself, either through simple background shots, or just cutting back on the expository dialogue. There is no need to spoon-feed the viewers every single narrative detail about what is going on, people can figure things out. There was solid potential in what the environment could bring us, but I wasn’t really invested due to the overly saturated dialogue.

The characters felt interesting at first, but slowly also devolved into being rather gimmicky or generic. Gabimaru is the typical protagonist who starts out cold but ends up warming up to people and becomes more kind. For the female characters, there is a sense of empowerment that they were trying to go for, especially with Sagiri looking to escape gender norms and become a samurai, instead of the “norms” that this anime instills upon women. While on its own this would be a cool concept, the fact that all the female characters were so sexualized, and somehow getting saved via princess carry, defying all logic of physics by the men just felt a bit hypocritical to the potential message the show was trying to convey. Furthermore, people died before we could even really have a chance to know them, and adding a sad backstory to try and make us feel emotions just felt like such a weak way for characterizing them. At least the backstories weren’t too saturated after the first few episodes.

From a production standpoint, the show looks fine, but disappointing by MAPPA’s standards. Some of the fight scenes were genuinely very decent and tense, but the other moments of the show had this very weird filter where the characters didn’t really “fit in” with the background art. The compositing was awful at some points, and characters went off model a lot. It was clearly the product of rushed production, as most episodes were outsourced to between ten and twenty different anime studios and animation directors, which signalled how poor the production schedule was. It more or less just felt like MAPPA gathering up all their buddies to finish their homework just as the teacher was coming to collect it every week. This might feel a bit harsh and nitpicky, but if we’re comparing it to other MAPPA works, this is probably one of their worst productions, but from a wider perspective outside of MAPPA, the show looks average to fine visually.

Overall, there is decent entertainment value to be seen here, but it could have been so much better with more time spent on production, and more showing instead of telling. This will undoubtedly get more seasons, so I just hope the next time this show comes around, it’ll be a much improved product compared to what we got this time around. MAPPA, you just got to chill with the amount of projects you got.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jul 4, 2023

Jebmond

Not Recommended

Each character is a surface-level cardboard cutout of an archetype, and none receive any meaningful development. Gabimaru the so-called hollow’s greatest feat as a shinobi is convincing fans that he is a deep and complex character by cramming down his love for his wife down the audience’s throat. He is a broken record of a character that knows two sayings, “I love my wife” and “I am hollow” (coping). Besides this master of illusions, the rest of the cast is blatantly one-sided in terms of characterization and development, no character really worth mentioning has emerged from the entire show. With how bad the main cast ... is, its pretty surprising that the show managed to churn out even worse antagonists; they are terribly uninteresting in everything they do, they aren’t charismatic, they aren’t compelling, they aren’t complex, and the greatest offense is that all of them have terrible designs.

The story is similarly uninteresting, from its bland plot to its lazily crafted mystery, not one bit of it is good. The premise is fairly simple and not too complex, and already unoriginal as it and the characters are loosely based on pre-existing historical and mythological figures and narratives. It doesn’t try to say anything new with these concepts unlike other series that incorporate these aspects better. In Hell’s Paradise, these aspects are simply just there, and not expanded on in any meaningful way. This is also done with the incorporation of Asian schools of thoughts like Daoism, as well as other concepts like reincarnation, these aspects are also not fleshed out or expanded on in any meaningful way, yet their presence gives off the illusion of depth. Their presence instead of adding anything of import to the series really just detracts from it, because it all comes off as pretentious and shallow.

The production value of the show is mediocre, not much to critique but I don’t think that there is terribly much to praise, either. The art style is pleasant, the animation is decent, but those positives are slightly detracted from because of the directing. A lot of potential in action scenes are squandered by misplaced flashbacks and exposition, or just cutting the action sequence entirely. While being passable in this regard, it sadly cannot boast the title of “carried by animation” like demon slayer, which actually somewhat makes up for its lackluster story with good visuals.

To make matters worse, Hell’s Paradise also falls into the typical shounen pitfall of sexism. Each female character in the cast is almost constantly being sexualized, seduced, or saved by a male character. Despite its blatant sexism, the series attempts to include a character arc of Sagiri breaking gender norms. The reason I say attempt is because nothing really resulted from it. The sexist character literally had to die to admit he may have been wrong about women not being able to fight, and after that scene, nothing changed. Sagiri went back to being the same character she was before, the lasting impact of it wasn’t that great, and it didn’t have any impact on other characters or their perceptions, so it feels pointless and ham-fisted.

The lazy writing, bad characters, pretentious nature, and sexism of Hell’s Paradise are all perfectly packaged together with its exceedingly overhyped protagonist, Gabimaru the Shallow, to create the ultimate 2/10 anime.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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