It's telling that the Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku manga is unavailable to read directly on the Shonen Jump app, at least not on Apple devices. It can only be read digitally via the Shonen Jump website. This is no doubt due to the manga's much higher-than-average (at least for Shonen Jump) incidence of sexualized nudity and brutal, bloody violence, running afoul of Apple's stringent content restrictions. Even the anime from studio MAPPA is comparatively censored. Yes, if you want to see pink-haired Lord Tensen Tao Fa's nipples in all their glory, you've little choice but to seek out either the website or the print edition. Thankfully, there are far more worthwhile elements than mere perky nipples to attract readers to this fantastic manga, also available in print from Viz Media in individual volumes, or alternatively as part of a rather hefty box set that comes with an exclusive 80-page epilogue volume. In total, the whole thing weighs almost ten pounds, possibly formidable enough to bludgeon an immortal hybrid plant-person to (temporary) death if the need arises.

Author Yūji Kaku's only other work published in English so far is the much shorter three-volume 2021-2022 series Ayashimon, cancelled after only 25 chapters. Shonen Jump is a cutthroat environment where even promising manga by established authors can be canceled early if they don't meet strict popularity metrics. We should be glad that Kaku was able to see his vision for Hell's Paradise through to its conclusion because it's one hell of a ride, from an intriguing beginning to a very satisfying end.

Nominal protagonist Gabimaru is something of a blank slate, as even his memories are suspect. Brought up as an elite assassin by a very dysfunctional-sounding tribe of ninjas, he's been trained to completely sublimate all human emotions to become a perfect killer. Now on death row, the only thing that motivates him to gain a pardon for his crimes is his desire to return to his loving wife… who may not even exist. Amnesiac characters are a common trope in genre fiction, but Gabimaru is one of the more compelling examples. His upbringing has clearly broken him in so many ways that he barely functions as a human being, and he's not “supposed” to feel emotions like love. Yet there's a core of decency and compassion hiding deep within him that only becomes more obvious as time passes. When he's not ruthlessly slaughtering all his enemies, of course. At times, he's surprisingly vulnerable, and even a little adorable – like a white-haired, fluffy murder-puppy.

Gabimaru's assigned minder, the executioner Sagiri, is another compelling character. She doesn't enjoy killing, but she's remarkably good at it, and measures her worth as a person via her skills as an executioner, juxtaposed against her family's opposing expectations for her. As a member of the Yamada Asaemon clan, her ranking within the family is judged according to her decapitation skill. Even with the exquisitely tempered and sharpened katana blades employed by the elite samurai classes, it's incredibly difficult to sever a human head in one single strike. Fans of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Samurai Executioner manga will find much thematic overlap between that classic of 1970s manga and Hell's Paradise, especially considering their shared time period and subject matter.

Hell's Paradise is far more fantastical than any of Koike's comparatively more grounded 1970s samurai manga, however. Fundamentally, it's another iteration of the typical shonen manga battle story, featuring a cast of larger-than-life characters who fight each other with exaggerated martial arts, supplemented by extravagant supernatural abilities. In this story, that means via the use of “Tao”, which in other similar tales might be “ki” or “chi.” The island of Shinsenkyo is overflowing with supernatural power, which eventually allows the various convicts and executioners to greatly hone and enhance their varied abilities, leading to ever more insanely spectacular fights.

Their quest for the Elixir of Life is complicated by a menagerie of freaky creatures, from insects whose stings infect people with virulent plant life that consumes their bodies, to titan-like monstrosities spouting religious platitudes, tree-like people slowly “arborifying” into immobility, and the sex-changing Lord Tensen immortals, who act as the story's main antagonists. There are seven of them in total, so they need to be taken down, tournament-style, for the plot to progress. In doing so, huge numbers of the cast die, as they're whittled down regularly with some really quite gruesome deaths. Kaku's art vacillates between gorgeous and gross, often both at once. The Lord Tensen are unemotionally amoral, as one might expect of creatures hundreds of years old, divorced completely from the normal concerns of mortal men. Their goal is to achieve true immortality by harvesting “Tan,” or life force, from human beings and using it to supplement their own. They view the humans intruding upon their island as little more than livestock or mere irritants as they fight. Therefore, it's quite satisfying when our “heroes” eventually succeed and defeat them.

Like any shonen series of this ilk, the battles can often span multiple chapters and only sometimes drift into tiresomeness. At thirteen volumes, this is a relatively brief series when considering the Dragon Balls of the world. Kaku ensures the plot moves at an even clip, with new concepts and developments arriving with pleasing regularity. Far Eastern history and mythology buffs will find plenty to chew on, as the islands' inhabitants' appearances, personalities, and practices reference many religious traditions, from Buddhism to Hinduism and Taoism. I don't pretend to be an expert in any of these topics, but I found their inclusion to add intrigue and color to the narrative.

Outside of the central duo, the other characters are varied and fun... or at least those who survive are. Some promising characters die all too soon, sadly. Most fit into fairly standard archetypes, from the enormous, battle-crazy Tamiya Gantetsusai, to the untrustworthy and sensual Yuzuriha. Yet they all develop beyond their initially tropey basic identities to become more fully realized and sympathetic. Their relationships with one another are often very funny, which helps to leaven some of the darker, grimmer aspects of this extremely violent manga.

Narratively, there's often a lot going on, with the large cast of characters often split up into smaller groups, as they tackle different opponents across the island. The manga works well when read as a binge, as I found when watching the anime adaptation; it was hard to keep track of events following the lengthy gap between the first and second seasons. I plowed through every volume in the box set over the course of a couple of days and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. I expect a third anime season will be required to adapt the entire story, so this box set is a good option for those curious to see how events progress, well before MAPPA gets their mitts on the material.

Exclusive to this box, the short epilogue Forest of Misfortune gets its own slim volume. It's hardly essential to the rest of the story, but it is a very fun extra that I appreciate getting to own. I won't spoil the contents here, but it left me with a big smile on my face by the end.

Overall, Hell's Paradise tells a complete, coherent, creative, sexually-charged, and violent story that doesn't outstay its welcome. As a whole, it's far more satisfying than Jujutsu Kaisen, and unlike that bloated wreck of a series, I'd happily go back and read Hell's Paradise again in the future. My main concern now is where on Earth can I find a place to store the formidable box?