Jigokuraku
Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku

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Looking at the cover page of the very first chapter feels like opening the gate to Hell, matching perfectly with its title: Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku. This contrast of Hell and paradise is exactly what you will get in this manga. Suffer and joy, beauty and ugly, rough and smooth, all this at the same time! How could such a contrast story work? How is it possible to create a pure evil protagonist, but still be a kind-hearted hero? How can you make a total madness of action, but remaining sane? All these questions will be answered in this Hell’s paradise!

Note: see below for a short ... overall review.

- Story (8/10):
The story itself starts as simple as it could: a bunch of criminals go to an island where nobody came back from until now. Each of them gets an executioner to overwatch their doings. The mission: bring the Shogunate the elixir of life, which may lay on the island. However, just one of them gets a full pardon if she or he comes back… Until now, it sounds like any other battle royal story. Of course the action, the characters and art are nice to watch, but with such a simple story the joy remains simple… At least, that’s what you may think! After the start it begins to develop and construct its own world on this island, literally!
The best way to show that, is the power concept. For example in Naruto or My Hero Academia the concept of chakra/jutsu or quirks are mentioned at best in 2-3 sentences, and it is there from the beginning. You just accept that is the power of this world. However, not in this manga! You will experience a new kind of power or the evolving of it at the same time as our characters. It is like seeing the birth of something new, but not like in a ‘training arc’, rather like fighting an undefeatable boss again and again, until you suddenly learn something which increases your chances to kill it. So you try harder and harder, until you finally win! This struggle makes it so exciting and real!
Okay-okay, these are the reasons for a really good action manga and a basic good story, but for an 8 out of 10 you need more… And you get it! After the roots of this power concept are deep enough, the main story, worldbuilding, character development and backstory trees can finally grow! Learning more about this living hell of an island, about our protagonists and antagonists, while the outstanding action keeps the whole natural and thrilling! Not to mention, that at every corner something sudden can happen, which holds the death tense permanently.
And while you learn more, your own morals get questioned. Are the criminals good? Are the Shogunate/executioners bad? Is being weak the true strength? Is the meaning of life to die? Of course, right now these sound like total nonsense, but this balance of contrasts is the core of this manga. It makes you think. And a story which does that, is truly outstanding!
However, there are some little stains on it. First, it touches the dark/mature surface, but at the end it fears to really dive in. So nearing the end the surprise elements get duller. The second problem is the enormous amount of action, which is amazing, but suppresses the story.

- Art (9/10):
I saw some truly extraordinary manga artists in my life, like Boichi (Dr. Stone, Sun-Ken Rock) or Takeshi Obata (Death Note, Bakuman, Platinum End). To be such one, you have to have your own special style with long-term high quality. The speciality could be super realism, high variety or both (just to name some). For heavier/darker mangas the “rule” is, the more realistic, the more it devours you. If the mature parts of the story are not realistic enough it could easily feel childish and it won’t convince you.
I wouldn’t say that Yuuji Kaku is on the same level (for example) like Boichi, however it is still on a very high level. That is because of his outstanding artistic style. While other mangas feel like robotic drawings (even if some of them are really high quality) due to a too simple/uncreative world, this feels definitely more like art. As mentioned, the very first cover page catches the reader’s eyes instantly! It looks like a surrealistic portrait. This is also true for the character designs (particularly the antagonists), the action scenes and the whole environment in it. It feels literally like a famous painter would have drawn a manga.
Further on, the diversity. It isn’t as simple as you may think, because you have a specific style, so to draw different characters is not easy. For example, delete 1-2 individual marks of a character and it looks equal to another one where you delete 1-2 particular marks. That’s one of Boichi’s weak points (in my opinion), but one of the strengths of Tite Kubo (Bleach), and also of Yuuji Kaku. Jigokuraku shows you many different character types, physically and mentaly. This is especially important for the villains, where the gender characteristic became meaningless.
However, the manga has one deficit. There are too many backgrounds which are empty or at least felt like it.

- Characters (8/10):
Continuing with the characters. Every character has its interesting and mostly individual backstory, development and goal – especially the protagonist, Gabimaru, is well-written, and his struggle represents the manga’s contrast theme perfectly! – however, the problem is with this ‘mostly’. We get a nice amount of characters, so we have enough time to focus on each of them. Learning their backstories and goals one after one, but with the 6th or 8th character you will get suspicious. Something doesn’t feel right…
Thinking about it a bit, the solution was simple. Villains or heroes, side- or main-character, everyone has kind of the same development and backstory. Of course, they are all criminals or evil beings, so they have one certain point where they turn vicious, but I don’t talk about that. And don’t misunderstand me, their stories are different, but somehow still are the same. For example, one character's purpose is to fight and defeat as many as possible, and he doesn’t care about others. But at the end, he is one of the team helping and fighting together. Okay… Then we have another one, she is rotten to the core, egoistic and wants an easy life. But at the end, she is one of the team helping and fighting together. Hmm… Sounds familiar… Then we have… I think you got the picture, so let’s stop here.
So the best way to describe this, it’s like all our anti-heroes, villains and heroes turn from pitch black/bright white to greyish. And yes, that’s also somehow the concept of the whole story. Nothing is pure bad or good, everything is both. However, it still felt a bit uncreative, and I missed, like I mentioned at the beginning, the risk of going really dark and not just touching it.
One other thing which was disturbing is the amount of characters. As mentioned we have… or had a really good pool, but nearing the end ‘suddenly’ we get 3-4 new totally unnecessary personas. They had their own short backstory and even shorter developments, but their purpose was just to be there or to die, which felt like failed story dragging or deus ex machina events.

- Enjoyment (10/10):
This manga has some weak points, yes, but none of them are really disturbing. The art is amazing, the action is overwhelming, the story concept is basic but modified to something interesting! Especially how the powers in this world got explained and constructed was very exciting,and that is what I loved the most.
The characters are also really enjoyable. I'm the kind of person, who is bored of all this shiny and perfect or super weak but with huge development protagonists. Also I love anti-heroes. So a manga full of them, plus brilliant designed villains and different ideologies are more than satisfying.
However, someone who is searching for a darker and more mature, or a less action manga I would rather recommend something else. You could still find it good, but not as good as a 10 out of 10.

- Overall (9/10):
Altogether, we get a great constructed story, especially if it comes to the powers in this world, but it is missing a scent more darkness and due to a lot of actions it gets a bit duller/predictable with time. The art is amazing, with an artistic style. Action scenes and character designs are positively unique, however, the backgrounds are time-to-time too empty for such a good fantasy. The characters are all individual and well-written, with good back stories and developments, but they show little similarities. But at the end, the enjoyment is at the maximum, if you can overcome these small mistakes. It’s definitely a high-class manga and not some average work.

Overall relatively mediocre but with good art. The manga has some very good visuals especially at the start, and the mystery aspect of it is pretty engaging, however it quickly starts to fall apart.

The characters are mostly boring until they're about to die which is when the author remembers they forgot to make you care about them, so they have to put in some backstory to make it sad. This happens for most of the characters at the start, some characters are developed later and do actually have good arcs, Shion/Nurugai being the best written characters in the entire manga. They actually change in a ... meaningful way as the events of the story play out, it's nothing spectacular but it's well done and the two are a likeable team. The main characters Sagiri and Gabimaru are unfortunately pretty boring. Gabimaru's entire character is really that he seems like a bad guy but because he loves his wife he's actually a nice guy, and Sagiri's entire arc is that accepting her weaknesses make her strong. Ultimately I found the side characters a lot more interesting, they're more stakes and character development, Gabimaru is just an extremely boring shonen protaganist, while Sagiri is better I still didn't care that much. All the side characters like the brothers, Yuzuriha and Tamiya Gantetsusai are more interesting albeit still not great.

Another major problem is the pacing, it seems like the author had the structure planned out but didn't put much thought into how these events connect or why. For about five fights in a row we hear from characters that they're at their limit from fighting and could die if they make one mistake, well the fight ends and then not even few hours later another fight starts and the process repeats. The issue here is there's just no tension, characters are pushed to their limit and then go on to fight an even tougher enemy in this weakened state multiple times, it's not a one off occurence. Even a quick explanation of "I need to rest for 30 minutes to gather tao from my surroundings before I can fight" would have sufficed but especially from the middle to the end it's just a nonstop string of fights with increasingly tougher enemies.

This pacing issue is also really noticeable at the end, it's almost comical how the way the author tries to increase tension is adding a bunch of characters we don't care about to die to really up the stakes. During the final confrontation a second group out Iwagakure and Asaemon show up, it's been teased throughout the manga, these characters are tough and you're looking forward to how they impact the story, and then they really don't. The Iwagakure except for one are all just cannon fodder, they could have brought 50 or 100 or 500, it's totally irrelevant. The Asaemon are all boring and extremely forgettable, none of them except for Shugen and Jikka are memorable. Shugen is only memorable because he plays a major role in the ending confrontation with the main antagonist, however his character is another that is just extremely boring. If Jikka had never left the island and a second expedition was never launched, it would have almost no affect on the story, the only point to it was to try and make the ending more exciting by introducing a ton of new characters to fight who are even more boring than the ones we already have.

The ending aside from that is fine, I liked the final antagonist Rien more than the rest of the Tensen group, Tao Fa and Ju Fa were the only other Tensen that were interesting. What happens after the final confrontation was also good. The author does have talent no doubt but I was not surprised to see this was their first full work. I'd pay attention to their future works but Jigokuraku as it is has a lot of issues that are hard to ignore.

Holy shit, this is probably one of the most overrated things I have read in a long time. I hope this is one of those things that I couldn't get because after 20 chapters or so this is probably one of the most boring mangas in terms of story and character writing I have read. I cannot believe I was foolish enough to manage to read through it expecting something good at the end.

The story loses its initial hook very quickly when you realise any fucking random thing is possible with the author's convenience, it does not even have a basic consistent power scaling system ... that most shonen mangas have and the fights have 0 suspense or tension behind them.

I wish I could say at least one of the characters was interesting but all of them are very one dimensional and most of them seem to serve no fucking purpose in the grand scheme of things but the author wants to forcefully enter them somehow in every context.

The only good thing about this manga is it sometimes looks great with the art, and the side stories were almost okay i guess ?
But the main take away is that at least for me this manga did nothing good to justify reading 127 chapters. I wish I could say this was an average shonen manga, but at least for me, this manga had nothing to offer after 50 or so chapters to warrant even reading the whole thing.