In anime fandom, there is an old joke about how white-haired boys are always the most likely to die. What if there was a show about a white-haired anime boy who couldn’t die? From an advanced screening ahead of its premiere on April 1st, Crunchyroll’s newest shonen tentpole, Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku, is a uniquely fresh examination of death, immortality, and attachment within the context of a pronounced Japanese period piece setting.
Adapted from Yuji Kaku’s web manga of the same name, Hell’s Paradise centers around an immortal protagonist, Gabimaru, whose personal attachments grant him the ability to survive seemingly any physical attack—even the most brutal tortures imaginable. The show’s first episode, titled “Criminal and Executioner,” quickly sets the intense tone of the series by illustrating Gabimaru’s inability to die under execution.
What is Hell's Paradise?
When all of the attempts to murder the immortal protagonist meet only with his sighs over any bloodshed, an observer from the shogunate deduces that his immortality is connected with his attachments in life. By exposing his personal fixations, the observer Sagiri—who has her own secret revealed in the episode—also functions to potentially open Gabimaru up to the dangers of the death he had claimed to be unafraid of. With the dynamic of these characters established, they begin a quest together to uncover the possible secrets of a fabled land that holds the secret elixir of immortality.
Produced by the legendary anime studio MAPPA (whose work includes Attack on Titan’s final season, along with Chainsaw Man, Zombie Land Saga and Jujutsu Kaisen), Hell’s Paradise continues their tradition of fast-paced, intense shonen. With much of the color palettes and candlelit ambiance taking cues from Attack on Titan, that same energy is transposed onto a more historical period piece setting of Edo Japan (roughly from the 1600s to the mid-1800s). The first episode of the anime does more to set up the plot of the series than it does to show off all of the specific feel of this era and setting, although what is shown has the promise of a unique take on historical fantasy-horror not often seen in common shonen.
Hell’s Paradise’s theme of immortality is hardly new in shonen anime, and the period-piece examination of immortality, its creation, and the lengths one is willing to achieve it call to mind plot elements of the iconic 2006 shonen Baccano!. Unlike Baccano!, though, there is an interesting—if not necessarily fully-realized-yet—dynamic of one’s personal attachments on status of immortality. The setup to the plot is in many ways a classic call to adventure, and the magic system of the fantasy teeters between the curiosity-piquing (what the magical underworld land of “hell’s paradise” is like, how the immortality elixir is made) to the standard shonen trope (specially-named, spoken fire attacks coming from white-haired anime boys).
​​​​​​​However, the ambiguity of the plot mechanics are never enough to distract from the hook of wanting to know more, and the fluid animation and MAPPA-esque usage of shot composition and movement keep the story very fast and engrossing. While it’s too early to tell how the rest of the show will build off of its first episode and Yuji Kaku’s source material, Hell’s Paradise does a good enough job of convincing you of the same promise it gives its main character. That being, hey, it won’t kill you to come along for the journey.
Hell’s Paradise is currently being simulcast on Crunchyroll.