Hello fellow hivers! Today’s anime review will be for Hell’s Paradise: Jigoraku, a ninja-samurai fantasy series made by MAPPA (Attack On Titan, Dororo, Vinland Saga, Dorohedoro, Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man) adapted from the now-complete manga series by Yuji Kaku.

Hell’s Paradise: Jigoraku’s is about Gabimaru the Hollow: a cold ruthless ninja who, alongside other deathrow convicts and their ronin-executioner handlers, is sent by the shogun to retrieve the elixir for immortality from Shinsenkyo, a mysterious island to the southwest of the Ryukyu Kingdom.

So far I’ve enjoyed most of MAPPA’s work: they did a decent job picking up after Wit Studio on Attack On Titan and Vinland Saga but my favorite from them is probably Jujutsu Kaisen. MAPPA’s dabbled with CGI to varying degrees in recent years and JJK might be their best attempt at combining traditional 2D animation and CGI, so I look forward to seeing what else they do with Yuji Kaku’s Hell’s Paradise: Jigoraku.

Episode one’s The Deathrow Convict & the Executioner revolves mostly around the introduction of main character Gabimaru the Hollow, a cold ruthless supernatural ninja. Captured while on a final mission for his ninja-village’s chief so he could leave the clan, Gabimaru finds himself interviewed by ronin and executioner named Yamada. We learn that due to rigorous training from the ninja village that Gabimaru has become capable of supernatural feats, such as hardening his body enough to break swords. A magistrate orders multiple forms of executions which all fail against the supernatural Gabimaru so Yamada attacks and then offers him an official pardon from the shogun—on the condition he join other deathrow convicts and executioners like Yamada in a search for the immortality elixir on a fantastical island. Yamada seemingly convinces the death-seeking Gabimaru that though he talks of wanting to die—in their interview he displayed noticable attachment to his wife Yui, daughter of the ninja-village chief. This reveals that Gabimaru took that last mission to earn him and his wife’s exit from the village, only to learn the village chief had no intention of letting them go. In the hopes of reuniting with his wife after earning the shogun’s pardon, Gabimaru agrees to join the convict and executioner expedition.

I found episode one a little boring but I very much enjoyed the Yuji Kaku’s original manga series and am wiling to give MAPPA a chance. MAPPA slightly disappointed me with their adaptation of Chainsaw Man but being personally pretty far into Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga might have skewed my expectations. Strangely I found Hell’s Paradise: Jigoraku reminded me of a muted Demon Slayer but was happy to see the use of bright colors and extravagant detail in MAPPA’s rendition of the mystical Shinsenkyo island. Especially impressive is how they did Gabimaru’s fire ninjutsu. Because of massive hits like Kishimoto’s Naruto series, MAPPA’s going to have to pull off all the stops when it comes to depicting ninja-badassery, or cool swordsman alongside global hits like the previously mentioned Demon Slayer. I expect lots of super-violent battles and very flashy magic, so we’ll see.

I read the manga maybe a year or two ago so I’m a little rusty on future aspects of the story but I remember loving the fights, art, and thinking the story was pretty decent … hopefully the anime matches or surpasses that.

Here’s some trailers for the series: