Back to Eza09's Profile Eza09's Profile

Shut Hell is one of my favorite manga of all time. I love everything about it. I believe if you want to create a historical manga that is full of creative writing and fantasy element and staying to the source this is one of the greatest examples.
What bothers me the most is how many mistakes in the translation. The author did amazing research about Mongolian culture, tradition, and names. However, when the English translation came out butchered many things. I understand how hard it must be to translate something that has been translated from where else and information about Mongolia was probably scarce ... on the internet when the translation started.
So now I would like to point out mistranslations. Firstly the title of the manga and the heroine's name. Well, the Japanese title is "シュトヘル, Shutoheru" which actually is "Чөтгөр" written in katakana. It means evil spirit, devil or demon. So the correct translation could have been just "Demon", "Evil spirit" or just keep the original title.
Next, some of the character names. Yurul's name is fine, I believe they corrected it after the first few chapters. Since there is no single "d" in the Japanese alphabet, Boldu/Boldo is actually Bold /Болд/. And there is no "L" in the Japanese alphabet and they replace with "R" so Yaralt (the eagle) is most likely Yalalt /Ялалт/ which means victory and Bektel (general) is probably Bekter/Behter /Бэхтэр/ (actual name of Gengis Khan's half brother). Harabal's title "Melgen (God’s Arrow General)" is supposed to be "Mergen" /Мэргэн/ meaning wise or accurate with their shooting. But I still can't figure out what Harabal's name supposed to be. My guess is Harbar /Харбар/ meaning black tiger.
And that is all that I can remember from the top of my head.

Usually historical manga depict characters living in some certain time of period in certain place so doing much research about the culture and history is must but this manga is truely do not deserve to be called that.

Story
The manga follows Genghis Khan back when he was still called Temujin. He is extremely powerful and blessed with divine protection from the heaven and with that he trails bloody path to create one of the largest empire.
The main premise align well with the history but everything else contradict it. It's fine to take creative liberty or have interesting ... twist on it but it was so loosely adapted might as well as make a whole new manga that has nothing to do with Genghis Khan. To give you an example in first few chapters there is character named Borokhula who becames a comrade and swore his loyalty to Temujin but in reality he was adopted son of Genghis Khan and was found after the destruction of the Jurchen, one of the tribes of Mongolia, and given to Genghis Khan's mother to be raised.

Art
So the art style isn't that bad and action scenes where it truly shines. I also enjoyed the background art and character design. It manages capture that rustic Mongolian feeling really well.
Characters have distinctive features and it's easy to tell apart who is who but Temujin sticks out like a sore thumb all the time. I don't mind the crazy gravity defying hair but did he really needed to have white hair. It clashes with everything else and he literally looks like your typical shonen protagonist in traditional mongolian clothing.
Speaking of clothing, sometimes characters would be dressed in clothing from wrong era. Deel (traditional mongolian clothing) from that time didn't had collar and woman didn't wore belts which is where the word "бүсгүй" meaning lady or young woman derived from a word "бүс үгүй " which literally means belt less.

Overall
If you take everything it says with grain of salt and just go along with it's badass manga but not something I would like to reread again.