Hell's Paradise Season 2

Episode 9

Last week, I complained about the episode feeling padded. This week, it covered tons of ground in a very short amount of time. I wouldn't have minded if the fight scene in the first half of this episode was a little bit longer, but considering what this episode seems to be setting up, I guess it makes sense that the show needs to start hitting major plot points sooner rather than later before the season ends. It looks like next week will set up two major confrontations with the remaining groups that are fighting the Tensen. Sagiri has made it to the ritual circle where the cast is being tracked. Shion and Nurugai are fighting against Zhu Jin.

The big reveal with this episode is that even if everyone just drops the search for the elixir of life, it would be pointless because Tensen has finally decided to leave the island and go to the mainland. With all of their weird, creepy-looking insects that can be used to transform people into flower people, they would have seemingly infinite resources of Tao to continue producing the elixir. I like the explanation about how people going through intense, emotional struggles, like despair, seem to produce more Tao, which also acts as a good explanation for why the cast have been able to speed up their ability to learn or generate their Tao for combat. What perplexes me, though, is why this is only being decided now?

The Tensen have been working on the elixir of life for over a thousand years, and it's implied that they already have a completed version. The show isn't going into details about how they were able to do that or what they seem to be missing, except for more energy from people, but even if they were nowhere close to being done, I don't know why it took them over a thousand years to finally decide that it was time to leave this island to find more resources. After extinguishing and going through all of the people that were originally brought to this island to perform this research, the Tensen started putting out bait to draw people to the island, and it's implied that that was going on for at least a couple of hundred years. This comes off as a manufactured plot point to prevent characters from asking, “Why don't we just leave?” I don't think that was a prevalent question I was asking myself because I was invested in the show's drama. I guess there wasn't really anything stopping the cast from leaving, but now that option is just straight up a nonstarter. This was definitely one of the clunkier moments of the show's storytelling thus far.

Which is a shame because I thought the first half of this episode was absolutely fantastic. Not only was the action choreography on point, as was the case for the last couple of episodes, but I thought it was a very strong thematic conclusion to Ju Fa and Tao Fa's character, creating a parallel between them and the two bandit brothers. Ju Fa and Tao Fa are attached physically and emotionally, which ends up being their downfall. However, the two brothers were able to grow separately for a little bit and operate independently. It's very on the nose, but I liked the symbolism and emotional feel for the end of this suffering. The irony is that in killing them, our cast might've released them from the eternal suffering that they always wanted to stop. After spending a lifetime trying to perfect something that makes them live forever, the greatest release from all of their suffering was death. It's beautiful, and the visuals accompanying it were spectacular. This is an uneven episode where the first half was great and the second half was clunky as it transitioned to a new narrative direction.

Rating: