Hell’s Paradise

Hell's Paradise (Jigokuraku) is a dark fantasy action anime from MAPPA, adapted from Yuji Kaku's manga, which ran on Shueisha's Shonen Jump+ app from 2018 to 2021 and is complete in 13 volumes. It is set in the late Edo period. Gabimaru the Hollow, the most feared shinobi of Iwagakure, sits on death row, where every attempt to execute him fails. The shogunate offers him a pardon on one condition: sail with other condemned criminals to a far island rumoured to be paradise and bring back the elixir of life.

Every convict is shadowed by an executioner from the Yamada Asaemon clan, and Gabimaru's is Sagiri, a young swordswoman unsure she has the stomach for her family's trade. Their uneasy partnership is the spine of the show, and the other pairings, including the sly kunoichi Yuzuriha, keep the alliances shifting. The real star is the island itself: fields of flowers, temple-like ruins and monsters that mix Buddhist imagery with body horror, all beautiful and all lethal. Gabimaru claims he feels nothing, yet his reason to survive is a wife waiting at home, which gives a story about killers an unusually tender centre. Fair warning: the violence is graphic, and the stretch where the cast learns the island's Tao power system leans hard on explanation.

Kaori Makita directed the first season, 13 episodes aired from April to July 2023. Season two followed with 12 episodes from January to March 2026, taking the story into the manga's tenth volume. No third season or film had been announced as of October 2026, which leaves the manga's final volumes unadapted. Because the manga is finished, readers who cannot wait will find the complete ending in Viz Media's English edition of the manga.

Hell's Paradise suits viewers who want period swordplay with real dread and a cast nobody should get attached to. It sits first on our list of anime like Chainsaw Man, also makes our anime like Demon Slayer list, and Dororo is the closest match for samurai-era bleakness.