Jigokuraku
Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku

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In terms of story this manga actively tries to subvert common shonen tropes actively leaving readers on edge. When characters start dying you think it starts to go down the death game trope and everyone is going to mindlessly be killed off, but it doesn't. Almost every death has a meaning. On the other hand you think characters will start to defy logic and somehow still be alive suffering mortal wounds, but they don't. At some point you're afraid of it falling prey to power scaling, but the author puts systems in place to prevent that showing how logical and calculated the characters have to ... be to creatively reach their goal. The overall worldbuilding is logical in its setting (the context and culture) yet illogical in nature. At the same time nothing is static and characters, motivation, and the reader's understanding of the world keeps changing. Throughout the story there is a really fine balance, yet it still draws the reader in.

The art is really good in driving the characters and story. Its not the best I've ever seen, but I was really blown away by the character design of the non human creatures and the world itself.

This manga is a solid read with no wasted chapters or fillers. Only reason why I gave it a 9, is because I like comedy and there wasn't a lot of laughs (which is to be expected haha).

Jigokuraku is a fine shounen battle manga. I hoped that it would be great, and it is - for a long stretches of time. But I certainly have some problems with it.

Act I is sometimes needlessly brutal, almost comically gory and overtly cynical. But gradually manga sheds its edginess, and its characters turn from over-the-top caricatures into more or less relatable and certainly lovable humans. The premise is wonderfully ridiculous, the mysteries are captivating and exiting, the horrors of the deadly island are disgusting, thrilling and alluring.

Of course, there is an impressive rogues gallery. Villains are completely amoral and hopelessly evil. It is ... very easy and very stimulating to hate them. And their inhuman wickedness makes it easier for us to accept our (anti)heroes as a force for good. Because, yes, almost all of them are criminals, almost all of them are “bad people”. But at least there is Something good in them. At least they are People, not literal monsters.

Act II is all about classic shounen fighting, duels to the death, rapid evolution and self-actualization of characters. You know, the good stuff.

Unfortunately at this point lovely and nuanced relationships between main characters Gabimaru and Sagiri begin to fizzle out, because story forces them to spend too much time apart from each other. Author decides to just stop developing their friendship, as if there is a limit to how many friend-points two people can get. They hit 100, and their friendship is locked, and now they are friends forever and don’t have to bother anymore. Their internal conflicts are also very cleanly resolved by this point, so nothing to see here.

As a result, our “protagonists” are constantly being upstaged by crazy, charismatic secondary characters. Which is not a bad thing. It’s nice to have a robust and diverse team of colorful individuals. They gel together very well and develop strong bonds. Every time someone dies, it hits hard, it is painful to accept. Every time they score a point it feels exhilarating.

It is true that characters spend too much time explaining to each other various powers, abilities and affinities. But when the time comes to punch and kick and slice and dice, they enthusiastically get down to business.

Then Act III comes, and everything starting to fall apart.

Author decides that he have to throw more able bodies into the mix. So he brings a second expedition of fighters to the island. Naturally, it poses a problem. Because the whole story up to this point was about maintaining a delicate power balance between heroes and villains. Heroes sacrificed a lot to figure out how to fight the bad guys, and then spent a lot of time and effort to catch up to them. It feels immensely satisfying to see them fighting back, hurting and even killing their ridiculous inhuman opponents.

But now we have new fighters on the island, bursting onto the scene like a bunch of overpowered paid DLC characters. They don’t have to level up, don’t have to learn new skills. They are regular humans. But it doesn’t matter, because they just steamroll through everyone and everything to jump into the fray as soon as possible. Our heroes have been fighting gods up to this point but suddenly find it difficult to deal with samurai and ninja.

By the way, badass newcomers bring with them a squad of 40 shinobi, to use as cannon fodder in battles. And it feels like there are not dozens, but hundreds of them. Everyone and their grandma fighting these shinobi, everyone killing them. But there is always more. As if there is a spawning point hidden somewhere on the level.

The most embarrassing scene comes when The Main Villain of the story suddenly confronts one of the newcomers and a bunch of her goons. In previous episodes this guy demonstrated power that far surpasses even his closest comrades. But now he is being outplayed and outsmarted in the most ridiculous ways. It is true that he never before encountered opponents so cunning, but it is not the point. Imagine Dio Brando being robbed in the middle of the street and then helplessly watching thieves running away from him.

At this point I just started rooting for the villains. Not because I found some sympathy towards them, but because I wanted them to eradicate foreign elements and get the story back on track. But, alas, it couldn’t be salvaged at this point.

Like many shonen manga before, this one devolves into ridiculous mess during its final volumes. The Final Battle goes on forever and escalates to the point of absolute absurdity, when any suspension of disbelief is being thrown out of the window, every single person involved it the story "dies" several times. At this point we look not at the characters, but at toys being crashed into each other. One is like - BAAAM! And the other is - DRUUM! And then - CRAAASH! It is utterly exhausting to read.

But it is not the end of the world, it does not ruin the experience. For the most part the manga is very well paced and visually unique. Sometimes even educational, because it is bringing up a lot of interesting mythological information. Like a said before, it is fine. I am genuinely happy for characters that managed to survive it.

Hell's paradise review:

It's a cliché power fantasy that feels like it should be the final arc of any other manga.

Setting:

The manga is set almost entirely on an island called Paradise. (Spoiler-ish about the design of the island) The island is full of religious body horror monsters with some being quite creative. But the island itself is quite boring besides that which lives on it. The only standout areas in this entire claustrophobic area the manga takes place in is the Palace. The palace has some memorable scenery and is just as wild as the monsters that Guard it. However the fast paced nature of ... the manga makes it so that you can never truly appreciate the palace as there are barely any establishing shots, especially during fight scenes. The inner palace is very dark and dull, with all rooms being samey (for story reasons, alas) despite having the opportunity to be wildly different because of the characters which inhabit each room pursuing different "goals" but end up being quite plain and traditional old Japanese and Chinese architecture. The opportunity to have a truly stunning island with creative flora and fauna and an even more beautiful Palace is instead opted for a run-down, bland and barren setting in both nature and buildings. For story reasons this is acceptable, however it is insanely stale and uninteresting.


Art/Structure:

The art in general is fine. With Lackluster and mediocre panelling, choreography and layouts. Though some panels with Hatching and calligraphy-esque art are praise worthy albeit rare. The manga has many Biological-Lovecraftian horrors that are genuinely creative and unorthodox. There are a few outliers with some panels genuinely leading well into the next, which warrants praise albeit it's few and far between. Ultimately, this manga is as standard as you can get. There's no creative angles, the medium of manga is not used in any way whatsoever to enhance the structure in an out of the box way. For an action battle shounen, there NEEDS to be unending creativity to keep your reader hooked, Lest the action becomes stale. Which is exactly what happens here. So much repetition.
A good thing about this manga is it's uncensored freedom. The mangaka always says that they let him "draw whatever he wanted" and that shows, that freedom you feel from this manga is pretty unique and adds to the visceral carnage of the unrelenting world of Hell's paradise.




Story/Characters:

Interesting premise with a cliché execution. The manga consists of 90% fighting with little character development, though the "The strongest bonds are formed in the toughest situations" saying can apply here. Characters are eerily similar to Bleach both in design, function, and looks and are all 1 dimensional. The problem with battle shounen, Is that there is no hype. No buildup. It's constant stimulation and you get numb to it without periods in between to build up tension and hype, leading to boredom no matter how good the choreography or art is. There is a story reason for this initially, but it still does not negate the issues in retrospect. Villains are extremely boring and offer nothing, despite being different in designs, they all offer the same functionality despite supposed to be filling different roles and could easily be merged into one entity with the way the awful power scaling functions.
Characters are laughably overpowered, to the point where a Character who lost their right hand literally learns to become left-handed after a few swings of a sword. There is a power system in which almost every character masters or is a prodigy at immediately. Therefore, the fights have no tension or stakes behind them. The wishy washy power system leaves lots of plot convenience, anything can happen so long as the author wills it, rather than it being grounded in the power system's scaling and rules. Pretty good ending that's not rushed. The biggest issue I have with this manga is that it feels like the last arc in any other manga. All of the characters are already trained, and have already been through large moments of their lives. Unlike Naruto for example, we don't experience that with them, we are simply told them. Leading to not being attached to the characters, being told what to feel is not an effective way to make people care about your characters. As such, while all the characters have decent designs, they are all shallow. Or rather, Hollow.

Overall, If you only care about fights, this is the manga for you. I do not recommend this otherwise.

Rating: 4/10