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, Fuchi Supporting

Ichikawa, Aoi Japanese

Yamada Asaemon, Touma Supporting

Ono, Kensho Japanese

Yui Supporting

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Kawagoe, Wataru Producer, Production Assistant, Production Manager

Ishii, Nozomi Producer

Makita, Kaori Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Ebina, Yasunori Sound Director

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 1, 2023

Ionliosite2

Not Recommended

Funny

Jigokuraku is the newest member of MAPPA’s line of adaptations of Shonen Jump titles, and just like the previous two, this one is garbage. What I had heard from Jigokuraku before made me afraid, after all, I hear it being compared to Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man which is an immediate red flag, but I know some people recommend some series over the most superficial reasons, so maybe, this one won’t be actually that similar to those, maybe this one will be good right? Well, the answer is sadly no, I cannot even say I’m disappointed because I’m not, it turned out to be exactly ... as to what came to my mind the second I hear it was compared to those series.

The very first episode is already dumb, when the MCs changes his character abruptly by something he should have obviously known before, as you see Gabimaru started completely willing to die but no one could kill them because their methods were obviously bad, suddenly when the girl Sagiri talks a little to him he remembers that he has a wife and now wants to live. I don’t know if Gabimaru is dumb or simply has dreadful memory because the instant he remembered she existed he turned very differently from how he was introduced as if his wife suddenly materialized instead of her existing beforehand. And with that said, everything from Gabimaru is terrible he is the most OP character, so there is no tension when he fights, he won’t get stronger or develop because he is already the strongest and already has a clear goal in mind and his “development” was remembering his wife on the first episode. There some shinobi rules as well that he has to follow, but some of them are broken as much as they are said, stuff like “never get into a fight with an unknown enemy” is broken every single time, because he is in a completely unknown island. Sagiri is a person a girl executioner with a great fear of killing people and wants to achieve the same painless killing method her father could pull off, which is so painless that can cut the head of someone and that head would continue talking because the person didn’t realize they died or something, she gets subjected to people looking down on her for being a girl d that she clearly isn’t fit for the role of executioner, and while that is true, she tries to prove she has some worth, she is probably the only character that I can barely care what her development may be even if it will be pretty obvious and her personality is extremely uninteresting, sadly, she gets easily sidelined by the amount of characters introduced later so we are far off of seeing her actually achieving anything.

This suffers the same syndrome these edgy series have always suffered, it kills character left and right without giving me a reason to care about them, this series killed so many of its characters in so many dumb ways and so quickly that I cannot remember their names. And sometimes when it wants me to care about them it gives them flashbacks the very second they are dying as if I was watching Kimetsu no Yaiba or something to tell me their whole story to feel bad for their deaths, but I don’t, because they are cardboard cutouts without much if any character whatsoever that talk like robots, I could only laugh after the death of a certain character because it came out exactly as I’m describing it. Characters not named Sagiri and Gabimaru are even more empty, Yuzuriha is literally just there doing nothing, deciding to not go into most of the fights and her ability which covers her in definitely-not-cum is made as if I’m watching some ecchi anime where it is trying to make me think the slimy white liquid she is covered in is cum. There are two edgy brothers, one more edgy than the other and when more edgy they have less character. I honestly cannot care to mention some of them, I remember more this character that was hyped in episode 2 just to die stupidly by the next episode, he didn’t get a flashback at least.

There is this energy called Tao that some people within the island aled Tensen can use t and that makes them extremely powerful and unkillable and these unkillable person that can use it, they are what you can call the main villains, due to their Taos they are stronger than everyone and no one can face them in a battle, except Gabimaru, of course. And when the time comes where a little group of selected characters survive the dumb killings from the first part, they discover the way to fight the unkillable enemies they were facing because they just bullshited their way to their new powers unlocking Tao, and lacks a basic consistent power system that most action shonen series have. And I’m not impressed, what should I be impressed here anyways? I mean, I guess the body horror where people are turned into flowers is not so commonly seen? But I guess that’s the best things I can give credit for.

I hope I can see MAPPA doing a good looking or even well animated show again, because I haven’t seen them doing it in years. Jigokuraku looks unsurprisingly ugly, it has the absolutely dreadful and soulless MAPPA’s filter just like Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man which immediately makes it visually appalling, it is also subjected to obviously bad animation having no impact on any of their actions outside of fights, janky movements, bad compositing, ugly backgrounds, even fights don’t look that good either, they are extremely lackluster even for MAPPA standards, it is just my usual MAPPA’s animation complain that they haven’t managed to get over.

What was I expecting? Probably a series that is entertaining to watch, sadly Jigokuraku is as uninteresting as they come, it is just another ugly edgy schlock that MAPPA vomited out just like Chainsaw Man was and just like the next season of Jujutsu Kaisen will surely be.

Thank you for reading.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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