Jigokuraku Reviews

A rather typical series, it has ninjas, assassins, samurais, it begins as a typical battle royale and later on mutates to a typical fighting shounen.

Aesthetically it takes place in an appropriate time period and setting, and features conventional representations of its factions in fiction. The ninjas try to sneak attacks directed to vital points for a quick kill, they also use elemental techniques, along with close combat and illusions, all similar to what was already shown in Naruto, heck they even use that body replacement jutsu, but since the power scale never goes too crazy in this series, no ability is broken. Also, unlike that franchise, the characters here don’t have crazy hair nor they wear visible colors, all of them wear black clothes and masks to cover themselves. They are also pretty dehumanized, trained from kids to be ruthless killers that get the job done quickly with almost no emotions, no talk no jutsu here. They also can sacrifice any of their companions at any moment.

The samurais have conventional clothes as well, black, white, black and white, nothing crazy with them either. They are dehumanized in the sense that they give themselves completely to the orders given by their clan and Shogun, and fight with honor in battle, they also do that thing of posing before an attack and going for the kill with one quick strike. Nothing that really stands out here, since samurais are better treated than ninjas in manga and anime in general.

As for the actual visual quality of the manga, it’s overall good but it definitely becomes worse during some moments, the backgrounds are usually good but sometimes absent and they also become a little repetitive because almost the whole story takes place in an island. The effects are very good, as are the character designs, quite different from each other, with not much facial repetition, proper clothes as I already said, and the antagonists are either monsters that look like they came out of Gantz or hermaphrodites sex fluid no gender plant/human hybrids with regenerative abilities that also can turn into Gantz monsters themselves, so they are visually more impressive and stand out more than the protagonists, some of who get close to become monsters themselves at some point and it’s visually cool to see their bodies change during those moments. The final bosses do share faces but there’s an in-story reason for that.

Speaking of the story, let’s get into that. There is not much that stands out here, like I said, it’s a typical battle royale in an island full of monsters to try to get a McGuffin that it’s supposed to grant immortality, later on it mutates to a typical fighting shounen where the characters learn to use elemental techniques based on Ki/Qi/Chi and grow more powerful to beat the big baddies of the manga, who are typical villains that see themselves as gods that are way above humans and think of them as food that helps them grow more powerful in turn. Nothing new here. There are also some typical issues of fighting shounen with it:

-Obviously the fights defy all logic and the characters grow more powerful and overpower thousand years old experts conveniently fast.
-There’s some silly comedy that clashes with the overall serious and violent tone.
-There’s a lot of exposition and not very much of it is needed, the characters over explain the power system, which is rather typical and is basically a combination of the Chakras in Naruto or for a western equivalent the elemental Chi in Avatar, with the strengths and weaknesses against other attributes like in Hunter x Hunter (although not nearly as complicated), and the quick increase or decrease of power used in Dragon Ball. It’s not nearly as complex as it tries to make you think it is and thus it doesn’t need that much explanation. They also over explain their techniques to their enemies sometimes, stop doing that, why would you give away your advantage like that?
-Also, there are some flashbacks of the characters or the planning before a fight during said fight, which interrupts its flow and pacing. Also, as much effort is put into the pre-planning, if you show said pre-planning during or after a fight to caught the reader by surprise, it will still feel like an asspull to some degree, those things need to be shown before the fight, like in Fullmetal Alchemist or the Castlevania cartoon.
-There are some mysteries and reveals during the manga but they are pretty basic, nothing here will come off as a big plot twist.
-There are several different factions with hidden motives that seemingly adds more complexity and makes you think that there will be a three or four way war, but due to circumstances ends up being not exactly that.

But still, there is some good stuff within the plot, such as:

-The switch from a battle royale to a fighting shounen was well done, making the characters realize that they need to cooperate in order to survive.
-As an extension of that, despite the characters growing stronger, no one becomes ridiculously powerful to defeat a major enemy by themselves, every fight has teamwork and some sort of strategy in them, and even then no fight is won easily. Also, they are far more violent than their counterparts on most of the shows of its kind.
-Unlike the action shows that I compared it with, there’s no broken ability or in-story logic or rule defying technique, transformation, alternate source of energy, attribute manipulation, or last minute deus ex machina or power up.
-Despite having mysteries, this is not a mystery bait story, everything is properly revealed in time, and there are no surprise reveals near the end of the manga that go against everything that was previously shown.
-The comedy is never present during serious or dramatic moments, so there’s no mood whiplash.
-As I already said, proper integration of ninjas, samurais and Japanese mythology in it.
-Also, somehow it managed to incorporate sex with an in-story reason and not in a very explicit or exploited way.
-At some point near the end there’s a prophecy that is seemingly going to ruin the whole manga, but it manages to fulfill it and trick it at the same time.
-The fights have increasing stakes, and there are some deaths in here, and no obvious plot armor that I remember.
-No time is wasted, everything that happens is either important to the plot or the characters, also no fight lasts more than needed, as does the overall manga, which is fairly short compared to the big mainstream titles, also no very different second part for an already finished story like Chainsaw Man, Dragon Ball, Hokuto no Ken, etc.

There are other two things that stay in a middle ground between being positive and negative:

-There’s nudity, some of it has an in-story reason or is symbolic, some other is gratuitous and unneeded, or typical comical ecchi moments, meaning, fanservice.
-For such a bleak story, the finale sure felt way happier than expected, it definitely needed to be more bittersweet with more deaths. Also, probably not that many readers will be happy with the resolution of the final showdown, which was far more emotional than epic, maybe more mature to some but definitely corny for the target audience.

In the end what makes this manga worth consuming is the characters, they fit an archetype at first but no one remains static, every major character gets their tragic backstory and go through some sort of change to a proper conclusion or at least gets explored in a basic level. In specific but not in detail:

-Gabimaru begins as an edgy suicidal white haired shounen protagonist, he becomes a tragic dehumanized figure and learns love and compassion as well as to value his life and being a human being later on.
-Sagiri, a woman samurai that begins as a quiet badass fighter but also learns compassion along the way. She loses a lot of that badassery that gets replaced by naivety later on unfortunately, but at least has a female empowerment theme going on, and although it is told in your face, it is handled properly by having her being equally mansplained and respected by her fellow samurais. Ends up balancing traditionally feminine emotionality with traditionally masculine physical strength in a fine enough way to please both open minded and conservative readers. Also, the most serious character and voice of reason among the cast that tries to solve everything with less casualties as possible.
-Yuzuriha, a sexy, seducing, treacherous kunoichi that fools around a lot. Shown to fight for a dear one like Gabimaru, and learns camaraderie along the way.
-Shion, the character I liked the most, a typical badass blind swordsman, a teacher during most moments and fond of bad jokes usually regarding his blindness, ends up having the closest fights and a much closer relationship with his students than it seemed at first. In a way, is the serious Kamina of this manga. He also becomes a father figure for Nurugai, even if she wants something else. Unfortunately this Nurugai character doesn’t evolve past her background story.
-The Aza brothers, the older, Choubei, begins as a super edgy and self-destructive ruthless killer, is shown to be more cunning than expected and loves his brother a lot, learns a bit of camaraderie. The younger, Touma, learns to be less dependent of his brother.
-Jikka, a drunk and lazy swordsman, is revealed to be far stronger, manipulative and cunning than expected.

I would like to say more about the secondary characters and the antagonists but it would make this review far longer and I would have to explain each one more in detail, falling into spoilers. As long as you get that each character has more individuality and things going on in them than what initially looked like, fine.

As a whole, despite not being great in any particular way and more straightforward than it could have been, Jigokuraku uses typical premises, plot devices and elements and developments along with some other unusual plot elements with decent enough execution and handling, good characters that enhance the overall quality, while avoiding most of the issues of its bigger more mainstream counterparts in terms of duration, pacing and power scaling, and proper aesthetics to boost. So, out of the modern fighting shounen, I say this one is the one that’s worth getting into the most, and ranks among the better titles in its genre in general.