Nope, still in the tutorial.
This week, we get taught more about Tao. The Bandit King (indeed bonded with native plants to be at least very sturdy) figures it out fighting one of the monster monks, winning that fight. Gabimary and the Dragon Swordsman receive instruction from both their opponent and their ally. This instruction allows Gabimaru to unlock his own Tao powers and start kicking rear. All sides seem ready to take on the Tensen, which is probably good since Yuzuriha and Sagiri have entered Hourai and encountered one, who casually flicked off the tree dude’s head from great distance to end the episode.
Along the way, we learned that Tao powers are often increased by getting both Yin and Yang energy to circulate. The Tensen, who can shift freely between masculine and feminine, have no problem with this, but lesser beings “train” via copulation, which the monster monks state was the little girl’s purpose in Hourai for them, which she clearly fled despite it costing her, among other things, her physical adulthood if I’m getting the flashbacks right. So, that is sort of classical, but I’m kind of with all the visiting humans being incensed at the treatment since it kind of implies centuries or millennia of rape, casually dropped.
On the interesting side, the flow of “strong and weak” said to be necessary to sensing Tao is directly likened to Sagiri’s mindset, so maybe she’ll level up her awesomeness before the end. It would really help.
But, whatever, the minibosses are dead and we’ve got two episodes (details now show 13 planned) to put a bow on this, probably by taking down the Tensen who’s at the gates. How is the show looking?
I’m torn, truly torn, on the pace of this thing. If you’re going to tell a complete story, the detailed explanations, when woven with decent combat, can play really well. Unlimited Bladeworks (and Nasuverse properties in general) really loved the sound of its own voice, and took every opportunity to exposit about how the magic in their universe was supposed to work. But on the other hand, we’re not really being promised a full story here. In the case where you know you’re going to leave off without resolving the main plot, you have to work hard to have satisfying beats throughout, in terms of the macro story as well as the micro scenes.
Hell’s Paradise is far from the first show to come up against this problem. Older Manga or LN adaptations that couldn’t do a whole series had to manage all the time. Unbreakable Machine Doll, for instance, gets away without the main conflict being more than halfheartedly addressed, because it was wrapped up in the smaller arcs getting there. Dorohedoro ends with a quite uncertain future and hardly anything at all resolved, but it was such a strange trip that you just sort of shrug and say “yeah, this feels like we’re really done with a phase and going to something else, roll credits.” More recently, Chainsaw Man struggled with the same idea of climax and closure, but it had more compartmentalized storytelling leading up to the end, and worked its pacing so that even though the story very clearly continues, it really does feel like a climax and not just another step of rising action.
But… I’m not confident in the ability of Hell’s Paradise to pull off the same thing. It’s actually really strange – I am very much enjoying each individual episode, even as I have less and less to summarize about them because of all the world building being dropped by the old and “should be a dead horse but isn’t” trope of enemies deciding that they’ll mouth off about how their whole reality works before killing the heroes. The micro-level pacing is really on point, the animation is gorgeous, the designs of the creatures and the world are creative, the magic and philosophy feels rightly like this magpie-made hodgepodge of incompatible philosophies that it explicitly kind of is in setting. The action is strong, the characters feel like they at least have the promise of good dimension… on the detail level, when you look at the individual moving parts, Hell’s Paradise ranges from good to great.
But it’s not thinking enough like a one-cour show for its own good, or at least not for my comfort. 86 got two cours, and used them beautifully, but if you showed me just cour 1 and told me that was where it ended? It would still have felt right, like there was a complete chapter and story told. A damn tragedy, maybe, but a complete and excellent story.
Hell’s Paradise really doesn’t seem like it’s going to do that. It feels like it doesn’t want to or care about doing that. Yeah, if it gets continued into season 2 and however long it needs the final product is probably going to be awesome for it, but right now the confidence it has in being the first act of an epic is coming off more as arrogance, and serves to mar the season when looked at as its own thing, which it currently has to be.
I’m open to the idea that with two episodes (As it is 13 and not the 12 I erroneously reported in earlier write-ups) Hell’s Paradise could surprise me and give us something really astounding and satisfying to capstone the season before going into more, but I’m not expecting it. Even with out that it’s still a good show, mark my words, but it’s certainly something to watch out for.