The third episode of Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku marked the arrival of the Vanguard Party upon the legendary island of Shinsenkyo, while developing the relationship between Gabimaru and Sagiri and delving further into the former's past. It was already revealed that Gabimaru's parents were murdered by the chief of Iwagakure; however, episode 3 brings more context into the origins of the ninja known as Gabimaru, the Hollow.
What could have been at play in the murder of Gabimaru's parents? Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku episode 3 shows why baby Gabimaru was snatched from the corpses of his parents, and just a bit of information on who they were.
Iwagakure
As we already know, the ninja known as Gabimaru hails from the village of Iwagakure, a rough place where every individual is just a number, another cog in a well-oiled killing machine. The village chief is an individual rumoured to have partaken of the legendary Elixir of Life, and is touted to be able to endure several different forms of injury, including disembowelment, with a smile on his face. The third episode of Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku shows a flashback to Gabimaru as a child, witnessing this for himself, and the display by the chief was to make it perfectly clear that he is the strongest person there.
The ninja training endured by Gabimaru and his contemporaries is especially gruelling, and only the strongest survived. On top of the dangerous training, the ninja did not have free will and were not allowed to act in ways that were contrary to the village chief's orders. Even Gabimaru's marriage was the will of the village chief. As we already know, insubordination and plotting to leave the village were the reasons for Gabimaru's arrest and subsequent placement on death row; however, that is probably only because Gabimaru couldn't be killed by his fellow Iwagakure ninja. Effectively, the usual punishment for attempting to leave the village or abandon one's lethal profession are grounds for execution as ordered by the chief.
The Hollow
Over the course of these introductory episodes of Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, it has been expressed several times by Gabimaru, especially in the first and third episodes, that emotion is a fatal flaw of any ninja (or warrior) as the only way to be a true monster as Gabimaru, The Hollow is, is to kill off your emotion (therefore, abandoning your humanity) so that the deeply traumatizing act of killing does not erode your skills which have been honed over several years. In an attempt to cut himself from all emotion, Gabimaru tries to forget his wife; however, Sagiri is able to reconnect him to his memories of a soft life with Yui, filled with love and an approach towards the kind of normalcy that the average couple would have. Yui's desire to live normally; away from all the bloodshed, began to rub off on Gabimaru, who found his wife's pained smile upon his return from each subsequent job becoming less bearable to witness. Yui's deep desire to hold onto kindness, love and genuine emotion meant that even though she lived a life that was so profoundly affected by her father and the Iwagakure lifestyle, she maintained her humanity and sense of self.
Gabimaru, fearing that his increasing desire to retire from his work was an indication of his growing weakness, began to struggle with the new-found difficulty of performing the work that he always did. He grew less vicious, less eager to get the job done and more eager to return to his wife. This development of a normalcy to life for Gabimaru enabled the man who had developed a notoriety for the inhuman ways in which he'd put an end to human life to understand the complexity of his emotions, and in the business of killing, emotion is a gateway to one's own demise. A flashback to a job Gabimaru completed prior to his defection, in which he hesitated to kill one of his targets because he invoked his wife and child, showed that the legendary ninja began developing empathy, which is the opposite of the emotionless husk the village chief raised him to be. Episode 3 of Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku revealed that Gabimaru's unnamed parents weren't civilians – they were Iwagakure-bred shinobi, just like he is.
No Use For Weakness
"This is weakness. Emotions, even love between a parent and child make you weak. Unless you're strong, you can't protect anything."
– Iwagakure Village Chief, Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku episode 3
After the village chief murders Gabimaru's mother and father, he tells the seemingly unfazed baby that such is the fate of the weak. He reveals that the moment the couple had a child, they expressed a desire to leave Iwagakure, which is of course in contravention of the rules. He also adds that it is pathetic for Jōnin-ranked shinobi to express such views, and as Naruto fans would know, the Jōnin rank is the highest tier of ninja, reserved only for the elites. He tells Gabimaru to take a good look, saying, telling him that the dead bodies of his parents are the image of weakness.
For the chief, love equals weakness, and as he says this, his bloodied sword is briefly made visible from the baby's perspective. There is nothing reflected in the chief's blade. He tells baby Gabimaru to relinquish all that is precious to him, and an image of his wife Yui flashes before the clashing of Gabimaru's blade with Sagiri's can be heard. Even though his parents were murdered when he was a mere baby, Gabimaru's mind has the village chief's lesson etched into it, and it is possibly the most profound building block in the creation of the monster known as Gabimaru, The Hollow.