Even shonen manga is not immune to the horror vibes, even if it mostly takes the form of demon fighters like this one.
GOKURAKUGAI, by Yuto Sano. First published in 2022 and first published in North America in 2024.
PLOT:
In the neighborhood of Gokurakugai, there are two troubleshooters named Alma and Ms. Tao. They are guns for hire, committed to hunting down demonic creatures known as magas in the Chinatown in which they live. That means doing everything from solving missing persons cases, comforting victims of familial abuse, or hunting down a serial killer.
STORY:
So even if you aren't the sort of person who keeps up with all the latest chapters in the Shonen Jump app, odds are good you've heard of this series because for a while it was a meme. The joke was that despite having only a handful of chapters to its name and rather middling rankings, Gokurakugai was the most impossibly popular, acclaimed manga to ever run in Weekly Shonen Jump.
I can see how these jokes would arise because Gokurakugai is aggressively mid. The premise is flexible, but there are countless other action exorcist/spirit detective styles stories like this one, even if you only limit yourself to Weekly Shonen Jump. Alma is pretty much every Shonen Action Boy you've ever seen: dumb, happy, gluttonous, eager to help, with hints of a dark past and the flashy ability to pull a giant knife made of blood from his chest. Tao is just an enigma, carried more by the coolness of her design than anything else. The rest of the cast is full of familiar shonen character types, ranging from the Token Cute Girl to the Token Sleezy Guy (who is both a money-grubber and mildly pervy).
The stories we see in this volume also have the same problem. They are perfectly fine, largely self-contained stories that follow a fairly firm formula. Someone brings a case to Alma and Tao, they go to the site, they have a big flashy action sequence, and all the loose ends are wrapped up tidily (save for the final story in this volume, which leaves off on a cliffhanger). Curiously, these fights are also often use for exposition dumps about Alma's supernatural origins or the demons they fight. I'd be lying if I wasn't amused at the fact that they are called "maga," and that Alma himself declares him and Tao to be "maga hunters." That term is a lot more loaded for Americans than it is for the Japanese, but there's no doubt that quite a few people would find the prospect a little more appealing after this year's election. It's just hard to understand how this otherwise unremarkable series survived when so many others like with much more memorable premises and characters did not.
ART:
This is apparently Sano's first serialized series, but you'd never guess it from looking at this book. Everything from the designs to the backgrounds are polished and technically competent. It's just a shame that despite all that effort, Gokurakugai still feels generic. Maybe they are a touch more realistic than you typically see in Shonen Jump, but you could probably swap them with similar characters from half a dozen other titles running in the magazine right now and not notice much of a difference. The only design that feels mildly inspired is Tao's, with her long braid of grey hair, cool shades, skintight bodysuit, and ever-present cigarette. Even then, she feels more like a thirst trap than a character in her own right. The most distinct thing this series has going for it visually is its Chinatown setting, and even then it feels very shallow, as if everyone is cosplaying in a theme park.
RATING:
This manga is published by Viz. This series is ongoing in Japan with 4 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and are currently in print. This series is also serialized weekly via the Shonen Jump app.
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