[REVIEW] MAPPA/Kaku Yuji - Jigokuraku (Hell's Paradise)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/922307

This is a spoiler-free review

Let’s start with the obvious: the animation is brilliant. It’s MAPPA after all. The production quality on this show is very good, and leaves very little to be desired. Sure, it’s not the pinnacle of modern animation, but it’s more than serviceable, and it posed no issue whatsoever.

Regardless, this show is very interesting, visually. The characters too, but mostly the environment is totally CRAZY! It’s weird, and beautiful, and creepy. The flowers are just stunning, and knowing what they mean in the story just adds a special layer to such stunning visuals.

The voice acting (sub) is great as well, but the general sound design was subpar. I felt like a lot of scenes were very silent, and not in a cool or creepy kinda way, just in a “they didn’t know what to put in the background” kinda way… The OP is a TOTAL BANGER though, and it was hard to skip, honestly.

Still, all of this isn’t that big of a deal if the plot and the characters make up for it.

But they didn’t really.

There’s a varied cast with their quirky personalities and origin stories, but they’re so poorly explored that that barely matters. The only characters that have any emotional weight are Gabimaru (MC) and Sagiri (MC). To be fair, these two do have very compelling backstories and cool chemistry. The rest of the cast either didn’t have enough screen-time for us to truly engage with their stories, or had basically NO backstory at all.

Gabimaru specifically is a very emotional character. His struggle with his up-bringing, with love, family, and freedom is really compelling, and so is Sagiri’s struggle with human nature, sexism, and her place in the world.

The plot is just OK. The setup is awesome, and promises a lot of action and adventure with lots of tension and high stakes, but that just ends up not being the case. We spend most of the time watching cool fight scenes. The fight scenes are very cool, sure, but where’s the substance? I think a big problem is that Gabimaru is way too strong. His plot armour is just too much…

And the ending… I mean, come on. IT’S A FUCKING JOKE! If they were gonna end the show like this, it should’ve just been a 24/25 episode release. I know S2 is already in the works, but this season simply felt incomplete.

Well, the show does a lot of things right, and a few things wrong. If more time was spent developing the characters and advancing the plot this would’ve been way more satisfying. For that reason, I’m still looking forward to the second season.

Rating: 3/5

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