Review: Jigokuraku

True hell is being separated from your wife.

I kept going back and forth on Jigokuraku. The first episode definitely piqued my interest, starting with Gabimaru and Sagiri’s first meeting. It had some edgy undertones, but that’s not a bad thing in itself. The idea of a protagonist who acts like a cool shounen edgelord but really just wants to go home to his wife is pretty funny and different. I was also interested in this mysterious island that nobody had returned from alive -only corpses with flowers growing from them.

But then we meet all the other convicts, and it quickly got… a bit stupid. Before we even get to know any of them, they’re ordered to fight each other and it turns into a big dumb brawl. These ‘death game’ vibes continued even after they arrived at the island, and for a while it seemed like the show was just going to be a bunch of fights for the sake of having fights.

But once the smoke cleared and most of the chaff was dead, the show started picking up again. I genuinely liked the design of the island and its strange inhabitants, with monsters cobbled together from parts of different religions. and their near-immortal masters who are more plant than human. It all clearly looks wrong.

The story itself also improves at this point, as we get deeper into the mystery, and the few remaining characters get fleshed out a bit more. I particularly liked the episode about Tenza. It was a good self-contained story within the greater whole, and the only time so far I actually cared about a character dying.

But it started losing me again towards the end, as we’re introduced to the show’s own Shounen Battler Power System: Tao. It’s not so much the system itself that’s bad (even if it wasn’t exactly interesting) but the way it’s explained. There’s so much annoying exposition. The action gets interrupted so the enemy can explain how his powers work to the people he’s supposed to be killing, which of course allows them to immediately pick up on it and turn the tables on him

It also felt like the mystery was getting resolved too quickly. We learn about the Tensen and where they came from, which more or less explains everything about the island. There may be additional layers left to uncover, but for the time being it seems like all that’s left for the characters is to beat all the bosses.

There is one other plot point raised during the final episode, which is the suggestion that Gabimaru’s wife may not be real. Honestly, I have a hard time even entertaining the idea that it might be true. It would be way too disappointing if it were. It would take away the one thing that makes Gabimaru an interesting character. I don’t know where it’s going with this, but I have just enough faith in the writing to believe it won’t make that mistake.

 

There’s parts about Jigokuraku I liked quite a bit, and parts that kind of bored me. It all evens out to a show that’s… fine, I guess. Apparently the manga is relatively short (for a shounen battle series) at just 13 volumes, and with a second season already announced, we’re likely getting a complete adaptation. At least that means the story doesn’t get dragged out. I can’t say I’m excited for season 2, but I’ll almost certainly watch it.

Rating: 7/10