Hell’s Paradise – 13 (Fin) – The Space Between Life and Death

Shion arrives to save Sagiri and Yuzuriha, with enough knowledge on the “waves” that make up tao that he’s able to fight a sustained solo battle against Jiujin, impressing both Sagiri and Yuzuriha. Realizing he still can’t defeat the monster alone, Sagiri and Nurugai don bandages and cover themselves in Yuzuriha’s ninja mucus in order to protect themselves from any scratches that could lead to flowers blooming.

True to form, Yuzuriha doesn’t directly involve herself in any more fighting, but she is able to prop Senta up so he can tell Shion where their opponent’s true weak spot is: the ovule, since it’s a plant monster. When Shion focuses all of his tao into one point and uses that to slash the ovule, Jiujin is finally killed for good, and even thanks Shion for doing it, as it ends a thousand years of life, much of which must have been pretty dull.

With the first tensen defeated, proving that they can be killed, Yuzuriha is frank in her assessment of Senta: he’s not going to make it and it isn’t worth wasting precious medical supplies on him. That said, she does hold Senta in her arms until he passes.

Sagiri, perhaps the most well-adjusted of the characters there (not saying much, I know) is wrecked by the death of a fifth comrade. As for her charge Gabimaru, he wakes up having no idea where he is or what he’s doing. It would seem his excessive uses of tao has resulted in amnesia.

But it might be even worse than that. As they rest in a nearby stately house, Yuzuriha somehow finds an even cuter outfit to change into, then plants a new seed of doubt in Sagiri’s head: what if Gabimaru was wrong about the village chief drinking the elixir? What if that was just another ninja illusion drilled into him as a kid? And what if his wife isn’t even real, but simply another illusion designed to motivate him?

When Mei uses her tao-vision on Gabimaru, he seems to be missing the whole top of his head-tao, which can’t be good. Now the veil of uncertainty has been cast over a number of things I took as a given (the elixir exists, Gabimaru has a wife named Yui. It’s a particularly cruel way to close this first of presumably two cours of Jigokuraku. 

At the same time, I have faith in Sagiri’s goodness, humanity, and commitment to not let anyone else die. I don’t know if she’ll succeed, but I do know she’ll try her damndest, and for all the right reasons. As for the rest, I can only hope Gabi isn’t a fake wife guy and can recover what he lost with some rest and/or meditation. In any case, we won’t know what will become of these folks until that second cour comes around. But what a first cour it was.

Hell’s Paradise – 10 – Wave Theory

When Gabimaru ends up face-to-face with Tamiya Gantetsusai and his Asaemon minder Fuchi, he and Gantetsusai have a number of battles just in their heads, in which they’re fairly evenly matched. But while Gabimaru has drunk the Elixir of life and is for all intents and purposes immortal, Gantetsusai is simply immensely strong, which is arguably more impressive.

The “immortality” he seeks isn’t living forever; that would be boring. Rather, he wants the immortality that comes from having your name be known far and wide long after he dies. If no human has defeated a Tensen yet, he’ll be the first. Rather than fight, Gabimaru convinces the three of them to work together. He then turns around to find Mei has suddenly grown into a young woman.

Sagiri and Yuzuriha sadly don’t have much to do besides listen to Senta geek out about this place, and determining through his extensive knowledge of religions and cultures that this place must have been man-made. He even suggest a man names Moro Makiya, who once tried to overthrow the shogunate, may have been responsible.

Elsewhere on the island, Nurugai continues to follow Shion, and even tries to launch a sneak attack, trying to convince him to train her in the Asaemon ways. He defeats her by knocking her sword away in such a way that it lands right back in its scabbard on her back, which he nudges her just a little to the left so it doesn’t kill her.

It’s not just that Shion doesn’t want to train another young person who will just get themselves killed—he learns Nurugai doesn’t simply want revenge, but to prevent others from dying, which is noble. It’s that sensing the “waves” that everything has isn’t something that can be quickly or easily taught. He’s a busy man, so if she wants to learn it will have to be self-study.

The older Mei is able to speak, but she speaks in riddles. The waves Shion speaks of? Another term for them is “Tao”, another loan word from a distinct religion. Whoever can master Tao has a good chance of holding their own against the Tensen, so Gantetsusai scoops of Mei and asks her to teach him more.

As for the Tensen, Tao Fa and Mu Dan are gettin’ it on (because how else should virtual gods spend their ample free time). Mu Dan explains why no human can escape from the flower pit because anyone who falls in is too weak to climb its sheer walls, form which the limbs of others grab hold to keep them down there.

This explanation is followed by an almost comedic cut to Choubei climbing out of the pit with Touma on his back. And Choubei is pissed. Whatever Touma says to him, he responds with “We’re killing those shitheads, Touma.”

While urging Touma to eat the flesh of the flower people to keep his strength up, they are suddenly confronted by a new, third class of being on the island, a Doshi. The serve as the right hand of the Tensen, acting as servants, fixers, and go-betweens. The Doshi can speak and reason, unlike the “defective” Soshin.

This Doshi has one reason for approaching the brothers: to insist that they return to the pit so his master can harvest their tan (I assume life energy). Choubei responds with violence, but the Doshi responds in kind, and proves an extremely powerful opponent.

Unlike the hordes of Soshin Touma easily slashes down, the Doshi carefully assesses Choubei’s tao and determines that not only has he not achieved full awareness of his own tao (and thus can only harness it imperfectly), but he’s also too injured and exhausted to pose a threat.

To drive these points home, the Doshi strikes Choubei down, relieving him of much of his blood. Will Touma fight, or try to solve things with talk, as the Doshi initially tried before Choubei attacked him?

Hell’s Paradise – 08 – Blooming Potential

There’s no Sagiri or Gabimaru in this episode. It’s given over entirely to the duo of Tenza and Nurugai, the island’s cutest couple. Tenza came from nothing, was nothing, but was taken in by a member of the Yamada Asaemon clan who believed he had potential.

Now he himself is a Yamada Asaemon, and like his master, has decided that simply executing someone of Nurugai’s potential (both as a person and a wife) would be a waste. Unfortunately, on this island, both of them draw breath at the pleasure of the Tensen.

When then Tensen attacks, Tenza is thrown back and disabled, but before the Tensen can attack Nurugai, he finds his second wind, lops off both the head and hands of his opponent, and flees through the forest with Nurugai. When the quickly regenerated Tensen instantly catches up with them, they’re both saved by Tenza’s master, Shion, a blind mad with a kind heart.

When Shion points his sword at Nurugai and asks why Tenza hasn’t executed her, Tenza shows how much he’s grown by speaking like a man, insisting to Shion that he’s only doing the same thing Shion did with him. Not only does he see potential in Nurugai like Shion saw in him, but she is that something Shion told him he’d come to want to protect.

But while Shion tables the question of Nurugai’s fate for another time, all their time grows short as long as the Tensen persues them. It cuts Shion’s throat, and Tenza digs deep into his swordsmanship to simply buy time for his master and Nurugai.

There was a time when Tenza didn’t believe in his potential like Shion did, and had decided to quit his training. Shion agreed to let him go if he could land a single strike on him.

When fellow Yamada executioner Eizen showed Tenza the grave of Shion’s former student who had fled and become a criminal Shion himself had to execute, it motivated him to not only land that strike on his master, but decide that he wanted to stay and continue to be taught rather than run away.

In the present, Tenza doesn’t run away, but fully realizes the potential Shion believed he had by sacrificing himself to allow his master and Nurugai to escape. Nurugai is beside herself and wants to go back to where Tenza is, but Shion insists that’s not what Tenza would want.

It’s clear that no human, no matter how skilled, is a match for a Tensen. It’s also clear that Jigokuraku is not above teasing enticing executioner-prisoner ships and then promptly sinking them with extreme prejudice. Tenza’s past was efficiently and compellingly laid out this week, and his death is a cruel gut punch.

Hell’s Paradise – 05 – Choosing to Live, and How

Hell’s Paradise is not a show I thought would remind me of Laid-Back Camp, but when Sagiri wakes up in a cavern recovered from the butterfly poison, she finds a campsite where Gabimaru is making dinner, Senta is mending clothes, and Yuzuriha is “supervising”, AKA relaxing in a hammock. Needless to say the group dynamic has changed appreciably since she was last conscious!

While foraging for ingredients for kikatsugan (“starve pill”, a ninja ration), Gabimaru scouted the area with Senta, but found no sign of the Elixir of Life as illustrated in the shogunate flyer. Senta adds that this place doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, either ecologically or spiritually, but is like a “sick mandala” of malformed deities and creatures.

Still, Gabimaru posits that if such strange creatures thrive here, it’s not any more unrealistic for the Elixir to be here too. I also like how Gabimaru tells Yuzuriha he’s never heard of the Elixir before now…that’s a need-to-know basis and let’s face it, while she’s a cutie, Yuzuriha can’t be trusted!

As the sun sets on their first day on the island, Sagiri’s senpai Genji tells her he’ll take over the guarding of Gabimaru, and she should return to the mainland. After all, she’s a “daughter of the Yamada clan first, and a samurai second.” Genji deems her insufficiently strong enough for this island and for guarding Gabimaru. She’s better off going home and tending to her “womanly responsibilities.”

Genji may be an unrepentant misogynist (and his beliefs ignore how strong Yuzuriha is), but he’s a product of his time and upbringing. Another Asaemon guard, Tenza, has a similar relationship to his prisoner Nurugai as Sagiri and Gabimaru. Only in Nurugai is actually only guilty of being the sole survivor of a remote village that defied the Shogunate … simply by existing.

Tenza is done with the island, and is rowing Nurugai through the fog and back to the mainland where he’ll plead his case, but he’s also a samurai of limited knowledge of sea currents, and they end up in a shipwreck graveyard that is home to a colossal kraken-like, many-tentacled monster. As the sole survivor of a village of people who lived for the mountain and the village, Nurugai no longer sees a reason to remain alive.

But Tenza does, and even though Nurugai doesn’t dodge the tentacles, Tenza protects him by cutting through them. Tenza may be a bit of a simpleton, but in this situation, Nurugai need only answer one question: Does he want to live? He thinks of his life at his village and with his gramps, and realizes he does, and fights alongside Tenza to get back to the island.

Once there, the two are bloody messes, and when they disrobe to wash themselves on the beach, Tenza learns that Nurugai is a girl. I love the Dororo-like twist that I should have seen coming, but I love the chemistry of these two characters even more. They truly complement each other, and it will be hard not to root for them even if supposedly only one prisoner will be spared beheading.

Back at Sagiri’s camp, nothing she says gets through to Genji, probably because he only sees her as a walking womb playing at being a samurai. Senta’s position is more nuanced; he’d prefer if she returned purely for her safety, but also believes there’s something about her and Gabimaru that makes her the best, and possibly only, Asaemon who can keep him in line.

That night when she has the wach, Sagiri knows why that must be: the little cathartic moment the two shared that got them both to calm down and agree to cooperate. She and Gabimaru, who is also awake, have a neat little moment where they speak at the same time after a pause. She lets him speak, and he thanks her for calming him down so he can plan for the Iwagakure and work to get back to his wife.

When Sagiri calls him strong, he shocks her by saying so is she; stronger than him, and with a very practical strength. His village taught him you don’t know how strong you are until you’ve been through some shit, and Sagiri certainly has so far. I’m really enjoying the growing bond between these two.

Gabimaru’s words help galvanize Sagiri to refuse to leave the island the next morning when Genji urges her to do so. She prostrates herself in deference to her senpai, but also insists that after a life of being caught between the Yamada clan and his Asaemon father and the ridicule she got for being a woman samurai, she believes it’s her right to choose how she wants to life … and she wants to live as a samurai. Like Gabimaru, she’s done running from those who get in her way.

Genji still isn’t moved, and in fact flashes a cruel grin before drawing his sword. If she won’t listen to “reason”, he’ll demonstrate how ill-equipped she is to be on this island with his sword. Only before he can complete a slash, the sword disappears from his hands and ends up in Sagiri’s.

When he protests for having his “samurai’s heart” stolen, she reminds him he just said this was a battlefield, and tells him procuring weapons on the battlefield is fair game. Then the giant who killed his Asaemon guard suddenly appears behind them, and Genji gets cut nearly in half by his massive bare hand.

I’m confident in predicting Sagiri will be fine, as the others in their camp aren’t far away and would have a decent chance of slowing this guy down with teamwork. Also, Gabimaru has shown he’s willing to protect Sagiri when needed, just as she’s willing to let him get back to his wife. He’s also, ya know, immortal, so even if the giant lops off a chunk of him, he’ll be fine. But it’s still a tense situation to end the episode.

P.S. The OP is probably the best banger of the season.