Hell’s Paradise – Episode 10

Episode Synopsis:

After being saved by Mei, Gabimaru joins forces with Gantetsusai Tamiya and his guardian Asaemon. Now that Mei is a young adult, she tries to explain the concept of “Tao” to the two warriors in her broken speech.

In parallel Hoko, Sagiri, Yuzuriha and Senta learn about Tao as well, and contemplate the island as they journey to find Gabimaru.

Elsewhere, Choubei and Touma battle a Doshi and Shion and Nurugai try some trial by fire sword training in the woods.

Review:

This episode spans all the teams that are currently in play on the island and introduces us to “Tao”. Tao is the life force of all things, and you can basically equate it to any other power-up mechanic you’ve seen in numerous other shows. I’m just gonna be open about my opinion that the explanation for Tao is tired and dumb. It’s presented as opposing ideas being together at once (Yin/Yang, strong/weak, enraged/calm, etc). It’s being present yet balanced in all aspects you can think of. In short, it’s gonna be the Dues Ex Machinca B.S. Mechanic that gets our heroes out of trouble at convenient points. Maybe all our characters just need to do some yoga and then they’ll be ready to kick ass.

There’s a ton to traverse in this episode so let’s hop in. Each Team is learning/possesses knowledge about something unique which I feel is going to stack on itself later to help our heroes defeat the Tensen. My overall thought is that everyone is going to join forces at some point and the combined skills and knowledge of each person will get the destined survivors through their tough odds. As stated when I talked about Hikari no Ou, I like this kind of storytelling. It allows all parties to bring something to the table that matters to a greater whole.

I’ll discuss all the groups really quick. For starters, I like that Gabimaru was smart enough to realize that making an alliance was the best way through his situation. It enforces the maturity of the character that the show has been trying to display up to this point. It also helps us realize that he isn’t invincible and that he’s learned something from his mistake in bull rushing Horai.

The weakest revelation by far in my opinion is made by the Sagiri/Yuzuriha/Senta group. I suppose it’s informative to fully establish that the island is a man-made entity that uses a collection of religions to keep its residents enslaved, but I also…don’t care and I mostly figured that out on my own. I guess the global mysteries here are how the heck did the island get established, why was it established, and how did it permeate into the in-world current day Japan as “The land of the Gods wherein the Elixer of Life lies”? Senta basically spells out why all this in important. The island has a creator and of course that’s gonna be the Mega-boss. I just…can’t bring myself to care about the backstory of the island. I also am rolling my eyes already at the idea of a “Big Bad” for this story. Guys…we have 7 super powered immortal beings to deal with. Why do we need an Überbad?

Despite the group above discovering the thing I cared least about, the group that I definitely don’t see a point in is the Shion/Nugurai duo. What…exactly do we hope to do with these two? Nurugai is nutty if she thinks that learning sword skills in the middle of SUPER DEATH island is gonna come to fruition and while Shion is a cool character, he’s already lost his main motivating factor (Tenza). Maybe the idea here is that Nurugai will become his new apprentice and survive to…help him heal from his trauma around losing all his apprentices? Sure, let’s…pretend that’s a compelling enough reason to keep them both around. Shion already knows about Tao so that will help fold them into the group later on since they currently possess the least amount of information we as viewers know thus far.

I stated above that Tao was most certainly going to be used to bail our cast out of trouble and go “Super Saiyan” as needed by the plot. Choubei and Touma are likely here to kick this concept off. They get into a fight with a Doshi and look to be in dire straights (again…). The Doshi comments a ton about Choubei’s lack of Tao and I’m sure Choubei is gonna magically figure out how to harness than nonsense.

As an aside, I’m shocked these two survived, as I was certain their deaths were for the purpose of helping us understand the might of the Tensen. Choubei’s battle with the Doshi fares better than previous battles he’s been in. The action at least connects together animation wise. The fight is neither well choreographed nor interesting in any way but it helps things to have continuous motion. There really is a lot of talking in this show and lame ass fight scenes despite it being structured like a typical dark-shounen. I look forward to constantly thinking “His Power Level is OVER 9000!” as each member of our cast beefs up their Tao at just the right moments to surprise the enemy.

Summary:

There’s a lot of information to unpack here as the remaining groups divulge what they know and what they are discovering. If all of this is leading to one giant plan of attack against the Tensen I’d actually find that impressive. As a standalone episode this one was actually pretty good (if you are able to just buy into the concept of Tao). Some groups seem more relevant than others, but all the surviving individuals needs to figure out Tao (and fast) if they want to keep from becoming flower chow. Let’s see how it goes.

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