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Given the anime is starting, and this manga had blipped on my radar a few times over the last couple years I figured I'd dive into it. Gotta say this starts off a hard 10, and it remains a 10 until about the 2/3 point. Technically this is a seinen, but if we're honest it's really just a shonen with boobies, thankfully there's more boobies than cheesy fan service, so uh... Win? In any case, the art work is absolutely stunning, maybe not quite berserk levels of detailed but my goodness it's a 9.5/10. Characters are pretty cookie cutter, but you get some nice development that prevents them from being entirely droll, 6/10 but not in a bad way. Lore pulls very heavily from eastern religion and culture, and I think it combines and designs things in a really cool way. In terms of power ups, moves, etc, it's fairly standard in the whole "friendship and love trumps all" department. That being said the powers overall are quite cool, you can tell the author is drawing a lot from other series, while suffusing it with enough of his own flair for it to never feel like a rip off. Really cheesy move names though, even by shonen standards. However the artwork really brings the moves and combat to life, despite cheesy names and sometimes a bit of unnecessary repetition. Lastly, in terms of story it's a solid 7/10, nothing groundbreaking but it does some interesting things with a concept that hasn't been explored too much in manga/anime.
Given I haven't given it a 10 in anything, you might be wondering how it starts off as a hard 10 and stays that way for so long. Well it's ENTIRELY due to the pacing, I'd argue this as one of the best paced manga's I have ever read. Not too fast, not too slow, just the foot on the gas pedal cruising at the perfect speed for nearly the entire series. If you're a binge reader like me it's a perfect 1 day read, even a slow reader could make it through this in a week. I sincerely hope other mangaka's look at Jigokuraku as an example of a nearly perfectly paced manga.
Honestly the only downside to this manga is power scaling, and thankfully it's not until about the 2/3 point. Though I think that's just a shonen thing (I want to hammer home this is a shonen with boobies, it's not deep). Sadly the author presents a world with XYZ dangers, and then does the old shonen thing of introducing NEW characters that just waltz through the dangers with plot armor, cuz reasons. While it's not enough to bother me, it's enough to take Hell's Paradise from a solid 8 - maybe even 9, down to a 7.
Overall it starts off good, it ends good, and only some relatively common shonen issues detract from it. If you've been around the shonen block then it's flaws are easy to ignore, and it's qualities are easy to appreciate. Highly recommended.
