hell's paradise: jigokuraku [fuji kaku]

despite jigokuraku technically being animanga, i haven't seen the anime adaptation. thus, i will be labelling this review solely as manga. 

gabimaru the hollow, one of the most notoriously gruesome ninjas in japan, is unlawfully detained and held on death row. after discovering his will to live, gabimaru is given another shot at life -- with the condition that he (and several other inmates) find the elixir of life, located on a deserted island with supernatural obstacles.

review (i wrote this on liek 2 hours of sleep.... don't expect it to be competent)

when i initially read fuji kaku's ayashimon, i had low expectations for hell's paradise. this might be a little harsh, but i could honestly see why ayashimon got cancelled after only ~25 chapters. the characters were mostly dull & tedious to read, regardless of the manga's interesting premise.

so, when i had begrudgingly started hell's paradise, i was astounded as to how well the characters were written & how interesting the plot was. i mean, who thinks of that? deathrow prisoners fighting for the "elixir of life" on buddhist-taoist-chinese island?? are we fucking serious?

alongside the interesting plot, the characters were written in such compelling ways that i held mostly strong and positive opinions towards them (independent of their moral compass). in fact, i developed such an attachment to them that i was a little fucked up at the ending. the conclusion was surprisingly well-written, though -- the perfect ending to a macabre dark fantasy manga.

regardless of its literary contents, the art is quite good. i won't lie, in the early hours of the morning i read this, i'd js stop to stare at the panels for a bit. maybe it was the sleep deprivation, maybe it was the countless days i'd spent droning over this manga, but the art looked so breathtaking that i had to pause for liek an hour to take it all in.

overall, a pretty solid manga with interesting plot & compelling characters. 8.5/10