Hell’s Paradise: Jigokuraku and BLEACH Have This Interesting … – GameRant

The 2023 Spring anime season saw the premiere of the MAPPA adaptation of Yuji Kaku's Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, a series that forms one third of a Shnen Jump trifecta of new-generation manga referred to by fans as the "Dark Trio"; three titles linked by their leaning towards darker thematic content and grizzlier visuals than their predecessors despite being published in Shnen Jump.

Of the legendary trifecta known as "The Big Three", BLEACH is the one that leans furthest into a horror-inspired narrative, with the supernatural foundation of the show enabling it to explore themes in a manner that is reminiscent of darker fantasy titles; however, it does not lean as heavily into the body horror and gore of Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, placing them firmly on different parts of the wide array of themes and concepts that make a horror title. Despite this difference; however, these two vastly different narratives are linked by their use of a single motif butterflies of death.

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BLEACH and Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku both contain their fair share of supernatural or fantasy elements; however, the former's narrative sets up a cosmology in which the afterlife is a real and accessible realm; while the latter is a little less concerned with the supernatural per s, setting up the island of Shinsenky as a place that completely ignores the laws of nature in a way that makes it supernatural. The fine line between Heaven and Hell is a major thematic component, as the island's beauty is directly tied to its horror. In the third episode of Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, the Vanguard Party finally arrives on the island of Shinsenky, and as Gabimaru and Sagiri explore the immediate area, Sagiri is taken aback by the vibrant beauty of the floral life and the dominance of nature in the area. This is mostly because Sagiri was skeptical that such a place truly existed, in addition to doubting the existence of the Elixir of Life they were sent there to retrieve, so the surrealness of the place was beautiful in a way she didn't think possible, therefore bringing comparisons to the cosmological concept of Heaven. However, Gabimaru didn't share her sentiment the random assortment of flora was evidence that the place did not follow any apparent rhyme or reason, making it eerie, rather than beautiful.

Towards the end of the episode, elsewhere on the island, the criminal known as Gantetsusai is also taken aback by the beauty, and a butterfly briefly settles on his left hand before he realizes the threat: the butterfly had a strange stinger at the end of its abdomen and a human face, with which it smiled eerily at him. Remembering the state of the only surviving member of a previous Elixir retrieval party, in which the man had beautiful flowers growing from his eye sockets and his mind reduced to an unresponsive state. Gantetsusai does not hesitate to chop off his own hand, afterwhich a number of monstrous abominations emerge from the nearby bushes to attack him and his attendant Yamada Asaemon Fuchi.

Generally, butterflies tend to be symbolic of aspects like transformation, change and rebirth and have been for as long as humans have observed them. In ancient Greek, butterflies were actually called "psyche", as the eponymous goddess in mythology was often represented as a beautiful woman with butterfly wings. Psyche was the goddess of the soul, and thought to be as beautiful if not more so than Aphrodite herself. Anyway, in Ancient Greek, the word for "soul" and the word for "butterfly" were one and the same, and the association of butterflies with transformation persists in a Japanese context; however, in both the Ancient Greek and the contemporary Japanese associations with butterflies, there is also a connection to death and immortality. A possible reason for this is tied to Psyche's journey, which involved several trials (two of which required her to journey to the underworld), an eventual marriage to Eros, the embodiment of love and a subsequent ascension to godhood through partaking of the drink of the gods ambrosia.

The word "psyche" in this context has also been used to mean "spirit" or "ghost"; however, in psychology, it refers to the totality of the human mind. In Japan, moths and butterflies are considered the same, with the "butterfly of the night"; and both can be associated with the spirits of the recently departed, which adds weight to the BLEACH series' using it in the very first "Death and the Strawberry", while Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku positions these butterflies in a realm where they are able to take life to support new life as their strange venom encourages the spontaneous growth of flowers across the body of the infected.

In BLEACH, the butterfly is used as a motif and also serves a functional purpose within the narrative. First seen as a representation of Rukia Kuchiki in the first episode in which she enters protagonist Ichigo Kurosaki's room, the Hell Butterfly (known in Japanese as "Jigokuch" is used by the Shinigami in the BLEACH universe to serve a variety of purposes. They have an ominous appearance, as they are completely black with some purple markings on their wings, and in certain situations, the fluttering of the Shinigami "Shihakush" (literally "Garment of Dead Souls") as they traverse through space gives the impression of the fluttering wings of a butterfly.

The main use of the Hell Butterfly is long-distance communication, with the Shinigami using them to send messages to each other across Soul Society as well as on the battlefield. They also guide Shinigami as they travel in between the Human World and Soul Society by means of the Senkaimon (VIZ "Tunnel World Gate"). Like most spiritual phenomena in the BLEACH universe, the Hell Butterflies are only visible to those with latent spiritual potential. In Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku, the apparent beauty of the butterflies briefly hides their grotesque nature, which is actually depicted as inherent to their very nature in this series, which has constantly emphasized the thin line between beautiful and grotesque; life and death, and of course, Heaven and Hell. Like the Hell Butterflies from BLEACH, the human-faced butterflies on Shinsenky serve as a kind of introduction to the various abominations present on the island, but are also a dark interpretation of the transformation associated with butterflies.

MORE: Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku Manga Releases Special One-Shot

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Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku and BLEACH Have This Interesting ... - GameRant