Jigokuraku

is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yuji Kaku. It was serialized weekly for free on Shueisha's ''Shōnen Jump+'' application and website from January 2018 to January 2021, with its chapters collected in 13 volumes. It was simultaneously published in English on Shueisha's ''Manga Plus'' online platform, while Viz Media licensed it for digital and print release in North America.

Set in the Edo period of Japan, it follows the ninja Gabimaru and the executioner Yamada Asaemon Sagiri as they search for the elixir of immortality.

A 13-episode anime television series adaptation produced by MAPPA aired from April to July 2023. A second season is set to premiere in January 2026.

Plot

Captured during an assassination mission, Gabimaru the Hollow is sentenced to be executed, but nothing seems to kill him due to his superhuman body. Believing his love for his wife to be subconsciously keeping him alive, executioner Yamada Asaemon Sagiri offers him the chance to be pardoned of all crimes by the Shogunate if he finds the elixir of life on Shinsenkyo, a legendary realm recently discovered southwest of the Ryukyu Kingdom. After losing five expedition teams sent to the island, this time the Shogunate sends a group of death row convicts. The convicts are each given a Yamada Asaemon executioner, who they must return with in order to obtain the pardon.

Characters

Main characters

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:The strongest ninja from Iwagakure, where he was taken from his parents as a child by the village chief and trained to become a killer. He is known as for his lack of emotion during his gruesome work. However, he is very much in love with his wife, the village chief's peace-loving daughter who treats him with kindness. When he wanted to cut ties with the village and live a normal life with his wife, the chief arranged for him to be captured and sentenced to death.
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:A master swordswoman from the famed Yamada Asaemon family of executioners, where she is one of the only two female executioners in the clan. She recruits Gabimaru for the expedition after seeing his talent and strong will to live. Sagiri is ranked last, 12th, in the Yamada Asaemon hierarchy.

Death-Row Criminals

Criminals that the Shogunate chose to embark on the journey to Shinsenkyo and find the Elixir of Life with an assigned Yamada Asaemon executioner.
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:A self-centered, female ninja who is known as .
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:A leader of a gang of bandits in Iyo Province, and Toma's older brother.
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:A famous master swordsman on death row who is known as . Despite being somewhat lecherous and shallow, Gantetsusai's swordsmanship is unparalleled, as he can match many of the Yamada Asaemons in a duel. After the Shinsenkyo expedition, he is pardoned by the Shogunate and opens a swordsman dojo/medical clinic, the latter being a tribute to his executioner Fuchi.
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:The last of the . Nurugai was put on death row after she accidentally lured Shogunate samurai to her village—as the Sanka were a symbol of rebellion against the Shogunate, despite living normally. Due to her physique and behavior, she is often mistaken for a boy.
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:A fearsomely large and strong criminal. Nicknamed , Rokurota is a mentally undeveloped man as he possesses the mind of a baby—as he is unable to speak and cry as such when he is hungry. He is feared for his immense strength, having killed many people with his bare hands, often with a single strike, including his parents, several villagers, and Yamada Asaemons Eizen and Genji. Following an intense fight with Gabimaru and Sagiri, Rokurota gets beheaded by the latter.

Yamada Asaemon

The is a prestigious swordsmen dojo in Edo. They train sword testers to become fully-fledged executioners for the Shogunate. Once fully trained, each swordsman has their name preceded by the title "Yamada Asaemon."

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:The executioner assigned to Chōbei. He infiltrated the Yamada Asaemon in order to free Chōbei, who is his older brother.
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:The executioner assigned to Gantetsusai. He has a blond bob cut, a high level of medical knowledge, and is ranked 9th in the Yamada Asaemon hierarchy.
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:The executioner assigned to Akaginu. He is blind and ranked fourth in the Yamada Asaemon hierarchy.
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:The fifth ranked executioner assigned to Yuzuriha. He is studious, chubby, wears glasses. He originally wanted to be an artist but was forced to train and become a Yamada Asaemon. He hated having to kill people which is why he turned to the study of religions and he becomes captivated by Yuzuriha's freedom of spirit.
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:Leader of the second team sent to acquire the elixir after the Shogunate becomes impatient with the first. He is ranked second in the Yamada Asaemon hierarchy.
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:The executioner assigned to Nurugai. He is ranked 10th in the Yamada Asaemon hierarchy.
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:The first ranked executioner and the head of the Yamada Asaemon during the first expedition.
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:Kishō is the 11th ranked executioner assigned to Warped Keiun.
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:Genji is the 8th ranked executioner assigned to Moro Makiya.
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:The third ranked Asaemon who's known to be the laziest of the clan. After the Shinsenkyō expedition which involved the deaths of Eizen and Shugen, he became the current head of the Yamada Asaemon.
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:Isuzu is Genji's little sister and an unranked Asaemon in the Yamada clan. She was chosen to join Shugen and Jikka as part of the second team sent to acquire the elixir.
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:Kiyomaru is an unranked Asaemon child, who was chosen to join Shugen and Jikka as part of the second team sent to acquire the elixir.

Shinsenkyo

, also known as , is an island located within the southwest seas that is far beyond the Ryukyu Kingdom. The island is inhabited by monsters and had been said to possess the legendary Elixir of Life, which had been sought out by humans for centuries.

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:The Tensen are powerful beings living in the Horai at the center of the island who have mastered the five levels of Tao, culminating in their ability to use qi to shift between yin and yang, female and male humanoid forms. Through the use of the elixir which they call Tan, their plant-like bodies are able to regenerate themselves, making them virtually immortal. They are served by Doshi, sentient half-human beings who are on the path to mastering Tao, and are a level above the mindless Soshin, who are monsters with the appearance of various deities and attack anyone who arrives on the island. Rien is the leader of the group, while the other members are called Zhu Jin, Mu Dan, Ran, Gui Fa, Tao Fa and Ju Fa.
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:A mysterious little girl with limited ability to speak who lives on the island. She has the powers of the Tensen but has been used by the yang Doshi as a yin sexual "training partner" against her will for centuries.
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:Hōko is the last living member of the Hōko, a race of immortals that once inhabited Eishū, the outer layers of the island. Hōko's entire body was made up of tree bark due to the effects of the Arborification taking over his former body.

Iwagakure

Iwagakure, meaning was a well-known shinobi village in Japan until its termination by the shogun.

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:The chief is the merciless leader of Iwagakure, as well as the father of Yui.
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:The eighth daughter of the Village Chief and Gabimaru's wife.
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:Shija is a Iwagakure shinobi chosen to potentially succeed Gabimaru of the alias Gabimaru and position as number one Iwagakure shinobi.
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:Ginkakubō is a jōnin-class shinobi of Iwagakure, who uses the Transformation Jutsu to impersonate others.
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:Kumokiri is a jōnin-class shinobi of Iwagakure, who uses ninjutsu to manipulate his hair or nearby rocks.

Production

Yuji Kaku originated ''Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku'' from a framework that had "several pairs of people whose interests aren't aligned eingthrown into an enclosed space and forced to work together." The story was initially about children sent to a youth detention center and the lawyers fighting for them. But through discussions with his editor, the setting was dropped and they added different characters to the same framework, which was kept because Kaku has always liked the way human relationships change and wanted to write a story about that. He felt a Shinsenkyo setting would work with any type of story and be easy to write, and thought it would be more interesting if a character "who isn't supposed to die" finds themselves in a near-death situation.

The storyboards for the first three chapters of the manga were brought to the ''Shōnen Jump+'' editorial staff in 2017. A big fan of Kaku's art since ''Fantasma'' in ''Jump Square'', Hideaki Sakakibara enthusiastically volunteered to take on the series and became its second editor with chapters two and three. He believed that ''Hell's Paradise'' was the "mainstream battle fantasy" series that ''Shōnen Jump+'' was still lacking and could become a best-seller in print. Sakakibara was initially concerned with the "multi-protagonist story" of the prisoners, executioners, and the island's creatures. Although he thought having the '' Battle Royale''-style story in a manga would be interesting, he worried it would cause a badly paced story where they would have to split up the pages between characters and be unable to show the main characters' actions as much. However, he credits Kaku's genius at quickly and simply introducing characters and his drawing talent for making it all work.

Kaku and Sakakibara planned out what was going to happen in sets of 10 chapters, or a whole volume. At first, Kaku wrote the story with Gabimaru as the protagonist and with a focus on his growth. But while writing, he realized the themes had shifted towards the Middle Way, paradoxes, and conflict and felt it should be Sagiri who deals with those, "so for me, Sagiri became the protagonist of the latter half". The editor gave Kaku free rein as far as illustrations were concerned. Sakakibara said that from the first chapter the series has had "extreme" illustrations, which has resulted in popularity among readers, but made it hard for new readers to get into. Towards the end of 2019, he and Kaku were trying to earn more female readers. With Kaku having been a former manga editor himself, Sakakibara said it is easy to communicate things to him as the artist is quick to figure out what he means. However, Kaku admitted that this has caused him to unconsciously hold back creatively by thinking objectively like an editor. As his first serial on a digital platform, Kaku said he was conscious of how speech bubbles and text needed to be larger for smartphones and drew double-page spreads so that looking at one page at a time did not feel strange.

Kaku created details and backstories for every character in ''Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku'', regardless of whether or not they were actually included in the series. He always intended for Gabimaru, with his extreme attachment to love, and Sagiri, with her concerns about being a woman, to have the same values as someone living in the 2020s, saying, "Despite condemned criminals and executioners being difficult characters to empathize with, if they share our perspective, then we feel close to them, and they stand out as unique characters" in the Edo period, when people had totally different ideas about ethics and human rights. When Kaku first described the character Shion to Sakakibara, the editor imagined him like Kazuo Kiriyama from ''Battle Royale''. But after talking it over, Shion became the kind teacher he is in the manga, while the crazy personality was given to Shugen instead. Yukinobu Tatsu, the author of ''Dandadan'', was one of Kaku's assistants on the manga.

Media

Manga

Written and illustrated by Yuji Kaku, ''Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku'' began weekly serialization on the ''Shōnen Jump+'' application and website on January 22, 2018. The series ended with the 127th chapter on January 25, 2021. The chapters were collected and published in 13 volumes by Shueisha between December 4, 2020, and April 30, 2021. Shueisha also simultaneously published the series in English for free on the ''Manga Plus'' app and website. Special chapters were published in ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' on August 6, 2018, and June 10, 2019. A special one-shot, titled , was published on ''Shōnen Jump+'' on April 8, 2023.

, a comedic spin-off manga created by Ōhashi, began serialization on ''Shōnen Jump+'' on January 20, 2020. It ended with the 21st chapter on June 29, 2020. The chapters were collected and published into a single volume on September 4, 2020.

Viz Media began publishing the manga in English digitally on its website on May 17, 2018. The 13 volumes were published in print from March 17, 2020, to March 15, 2022. In fall 2025, they will release a box set containing all 13 volumes plus an additional book that contains the "Forest of Misfortune" story. The series has been published digitally in vertical scrolling format on the Webtoon online platform since October 21, 2024.

Volumes

Anime

An anime television series adaptation was announced by ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' in January 2021. It is produced by MAPPA and directed by Kaori Makita, with Akira Kindaichi writing the scripts, Koji Hisaki designing the characters, and Yoshiaki Dewa composing the music. The series aired from April 1 to July 1, 2023, on TV Tokyo

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