What a fantastic and slightly horrific series Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku is. I've completed it, I absolutely adored it, and it was incredible.

If you've not come across it, here's the pitch. In Japan's Edo period, the shogunate is hunting for the elixir of immortality, said to be hidden on an island called Shinsenkyo. It sends death row criminals to find it, and every one of them is shadowed by an executioner from the Yamada Asaemon clan. Bring back the elixir, and you're pardoned.

The quick facts

  • Written and illustrated by Yuji Kaku
  • Ran on Shueisha's Shōnen Jump+ from 22 January 2018 to 25 January 2021
  • 127 chapters across 13 volumes, so it's a complete story you can read start to finish
  • Published in English by VIZ Media
  • Adapted into an anime by MAPPA, directed by Kaori Makita, with a first season in 2023 and a second from January to March 2026

Kaku built the series around a simple, nasty idea: multiple pairs of people with clashing interests thrown into an enclosed space. Prisoners and executioners, paired up and stuck together on a strange island.

Gabimaru the Hollow

The story opens with Gabimaru's execution, and it fails, because nothing seems able to kill him. He's known as "the Hollow", the strongest ninja of his village, Iwagakure. Taken from his parents as a child, he was trained from the start to be a killer.

What makes him more than a cold-blooded assassin is his wife. Gabimaru fell in love with the village chief's daughter, the one person who treated him with kindness, and getting back to her is what keeps him fighting. Kaku has said he wanted a strong, immediate reason for his hero to survive, and she's it.

Yamada Asaemon Sagiri

Sagiri is the executioner who offers Gabimaru his way out. She's a master swordswoman and one of only two women among the clan's executioners, and she recruits him after seeing how strong his will to live is.

Her importance grows as the story goes on. Kaku has said Sagiri became the protagonist of the latter half. Reviewers singled out her partnership with Gabimaru as one built on mutual respect, with neither one dominating the other.

The rest of the main cast

Every prisoner comes with their own executioner. Here are the other characters you'll get to know best:

  • Yuzuriha of Keishu, a self-centred ninja who looks out for herself first
  • Aza Chōbei, the reckless leader of a bandit gang from Iyo Province, and his younger brother Tōma, who joined the Yamada Asaemon specifically to free him
  • Shion, a blind executioner ranked fourth in the clan, written as a kind teacher
  • Nurugai, the last of the Sanka people, who were a symbol of rebellion against the shogunate
  • Tenza, the executioner assigned to Nurugai, ranked 10th in the clan

Chōbei and Tōma show how Kaku plays with the prisoner and executioner setup: a pair who are supposed to be on opposite sides, except they're family. And there's more on Shinsenkyo than prisoners and executioners. Who, or what, is waiting on the island is something I'll leave you to discover.

If you've only watched the MAPPA anime, the manga has the whole story waiting for you in 13 volumes. Which pairing are you most invested in, Gabimaru and Sagiri or one of the others?