Jigokuraku – 01

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「死罪人と執行人」 (Shizaijin to Shikkounin)
“The Death Row Convict and the Executioner”

Even this season I couldn’t bring myself to call Jigokuraku a sleeper – it’s too well-known for that. Nevertheless for me it’s a bit of a middle-feeder, what with all the enormous competition from series I know in manga form and sequels to previous top 10 series. That said, despite having next to no familiarity with the manga or Kaku Yuuji, I had a tickle in my brain telling me this one was going to be good. The staff isn’t exceptional, MAPPA is as generically non-indicative of quality as studios get, and Kaku’s follow-up manga wasn’t especially well-loved. But I just had a feeling.

Well, it certainly is good. For a week at least, and there’s no reason to suspect it’s a mirage. While the look is pretty much standard MAPPA it suits the material well, and the production values seem fine so far at least. More importantly this is an interesting premise staged in an interesting way, with a premiere executed patiently and cleverly. I only have the anime to go on but I liked that there was a certain trust in the audience here, showing us instead of telling us what was happening for the most part.

Opening with a botched beheading is certainly a choice. There is a bit of explanation to it, but it was worth doing since most people don’t realize that beheadings by sword were typically gruesome and drawn-out (which is why the guillotine was intended as a merciful invention). The one being beheaded is Gabimaru (Kobayashi Chiaki), an Iwagakure ninja who claims to be tired of life and ready to die. His body says otherwise, however – much to the frustration of the local magistrate – and resists and any all attempts to kill it. One has to buy into the mythology of superhuman ninja here of course, but Jigokuraku is hardly the first manga to ask that of an audience.

The events of the episode are framed as an interview of Gabimaru by a chronicler named Asaemon Sagiri Yamada (Hanamori Yumiri). Gabimaru’s life story unspools: his parents were killed by the village chief, he learned the secrets of the Iwa ninja and eventually became the strongest in the clan. He marries the chief’s daughter (a married Jump protagonist is a rare thing to be sure) Yui (Noto Mamiko) and claims that he tried to leave the village because he hated his life with her. As Iwagakure ninja are not allowed to leave the clan under any circumstances, Gabimaru accepts his death sentence as just and proper. But his body keeps betraying him.

It’s pretty obvious that “Garan” (Hollow) Gabimaru is deceiving himself. Sagiri is deceiving him too of course – she’s actually a sword tester and professional executioner for the shogun. But her real purpose here is not to kill Gabimaru (though she could if he truly wanted it) – it’s to recruit him for a mission to Shinsenkyo, the mythical paradise which apparently in this reality is a real place somewhere south of Okinawa. The Shogun seeks the elixir of life purported to exist in Shinsenkyo, and after his search parties all met with gruesome fates, his plan is to send condemned prisoners to retrieve the elixir, earning themselves a pardon in the process. That’s the only possible path for Gabimaru to live peacefully with Yui, beyond the reach of his clan, so he accepts the challenge.

That’s a lot of content to pack into a first episode, but things didn’t feel rushed to me. Pacing is a concern, though. There’s no official episode count but it’s been strongly hinted that Hell’s Paradise will run for two split cours (24 episodes). That’s not an awful lot for a 13-volume WSJ manga, and I don’t know how well the series lends itself to the sort of compression that would be required to make that happen. Nevertheless the setup here is very interesting, and I found Gabimaru to be a pretty compelling figure to build a story around. It’s another contender in what’s shaping up to be an incredibly competitive battle for my time this season.