Hell's Paradise

Episode 10

I love how this episode starts with Gabimaru concluding that now is the point to exchange information instead of just brute-forcing through everything after what he went through in the last episode. The episode follows that advice to a tee by having almost the entire episode be just about talking and exchanging information. Yes, this is a very exposition-heavy episode but I don't mind that there were some interesting revelations here, and I do like some of the narrative parallels in the episode's presentation. So, as far as the island goes, there are two major things that we discover: the first is that this island seems to have been intentionally crafted to be the way it is. The island has a mix of different symbols and ideas from various religions, from the deformed giants to the creepy pedestals of worship. However, none of this indicates that the island is some kind of holy place where everything started and branched off from. Instead, the island had to have had a specific creator that brought things together superficially. I'm not sure to what end these religions were specifically picked and brought together, but it might lead to more revelations down the road regarding who the original hermit was that ended up discovering the elixir of life.

The second major piece of information we find out in this episode is what I can only assume will be this show's version of power scaling. So Dragon Ball has ki, and Jujutsu Kaisen has cursed energy. This show has Tao, a life energy that flows around everything. By harnessing a person's Tao, they're able to achieve enhanced or even supernatural feats, like a blind man being able to see or being able to regenerate from life-threatening injuries. I like how the episode communicates this information by basically having multiple people talk about Tao as different things. I think the idea here is that Tao isn't something exclusive to the immortal heads of the island and can be something that arguably anybody can harness with enough skill and practice. The blind swordsman Shion uses it to see, and it seems that the little girl Mei also has some kind of mastery over it. Is it possible that using the energy is also tied to her age and mental development? That might explain why she suddenly got older after using it.

I guess Gabimaru's ninjitsu is also based on the use of Tao, as his master seems to have some ties to the elixir of life, and it would explain some of the reactions that the Tensen had in the last episode. Based on all this, we could probably conclude that the Tensen isn't so much immortal as they just have an overabundance of Tao from the sacrifices and humans they've accumulated. This means that as long as they are forced to use up all their Tao, that would probably put a stop to their immortality altogether.

I also like Chōbei's observation towards the end of this episode about how Tensen's bodies seem to function like plants: they grow from the bottom up whenever they sustain massive damage or have parts of their bodies blown off. It suggests that their power source is somewhere in the lower center. However, mastering Tao seems to take people an exceptionally long time to achieve. Even if we can assume that about two or three of our ensemble cast members know how to use it, I'm not sure what that means for the rest of the cast. It feels like we're finally setting the stage and some intricate setups now that we sort of know what the power scaling looks like. However, how high is this ceiling that our main cast needs to hit and potentially surpass to accomplish their goals?

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Hell's Paradise is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.