Jigokuraku – 09

「神と人」 (Kami to Hito)
“Gods and People”

After a week off (I’m pretty sure it was a table tennis tournament but I wouldn’t swear to it) Jigokuraku returns with another violence-driven episode. There was a bit more tonal variety here at least though, as we got into the details of the Tensen a little bit. As introduced they’re a pretty boring antagonist, but if they were truly as infallible as they were made out to be we wouldn’t have much of a story here.

This time around Gabi takes matters into his own hands, reasoning that waiting around for Senta to figure things out would simply take too long. So he heads off to find Hourai, the center of the island where the elixir lives, on the way passing through a forest of immobile Houko-like beings seemingly chanting sutras (and with an uninvited follower in his wake). Eventually he finds his destination (no ordinary human indeed) and with it one of the Tensen guarding it. Naturally a fight ensues, and naturally Gabimaru does a whole lot of damage that heals more or less instantaneously.

There are a couple of takeaways from this broadly predictable encounter. One of Gabimaru’s attacks seemed to work, eliciting a different response from the Tensen, although he’s not sure which attack it was (its gender appearance seems to be involved). And when a Tensen is really up against it, they employ some sort of massive Little Shop of Horrors transformation that levels up their game in a big way. If it hadn’t been for Mei – who has some of the same powers the Tensen do – trailing Gabi it seems very likely that would have been that.

Courtesy of Houko we know a little more than that, namely that there are seven of the Tensen, but they’re al split off from a single ascetic. We also know that all of Houko’s kind started off as humans, and at some point transform into their final forms and it’s the Tensen who supposedly decide if their souls get to enter Hourai (the true paradise). I think that conference among the seven also makes it pretty clear they’re neither truly immortal or indestructible – it’s consuming the elixir of life that makes them so. Take that away and I’m guessing they’d age and die just like a normal human (maybe even faster), if they weren’t killed in battle first (that also implies that if humans ever stopped coming to steal the elixir, the Tensen would be in real trouble).

Also of note is that at least one of the Aza Brothers, Chouhei, appears to have survived being dumped into the pit. And lest we forget, Gantetsusai and Fuchi are still alive, and they turn up after an absence of a what feels like several episodes. It’s nice to see a crack or two in the Tensens’ armor, and to have a little more meat on the bones of Shinsenkyo’s story. But we only have four episodes left, and it seems pretty clear that’s barely enough to make a dent in this premise. It’s widely rumored that Hell’s Paradise is a split cour, and that would certainly make sense, but until that’s confirmed we can’t discount the positively of a rushed – or read the manga – ending.