People can sometimes find it difficult to describe what the perfect paradise would look like. Traditionally, though, creating its opposite has been no trouble at all. The underworld has been a horrifying yet intriguing idea that’s inspired many works, be they old classics likePiers PlowmanandParadise Lost, or Japanese cartoons.
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Animehas produced hell on earth through the blasted landscapes inFist of the North Staror made their afterlife abstract yet dreadful likeJojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable.When it comes to producing themost brutal anime underworlds, however, there are a handful of shows that take the infernal cake.
7Saint Seiya
This cult classic 1980s show combined shonen actionwith Greek mythologyas Seiya and the other Knights of the Zodiac defend the goddess Athena against the other Olympian gods. The likes of Artemis, Poseidon, and Thanatos have stepped up to them, though their most notorious foe was Hades.
He runs the underworld, or Meikai, which is splitDante’s Inferno-style into multiple prisons for different crimes. The worse the crime, the colder and darker the prison gets. Its coldest and worst realm, a vast icy plain called Cocytus, sits at the very end to punish traitors both human and divine.
6Noragami Aragoto
The adventures of the human Hiyori and the stray God Yato saw the two delve into both the Near Shore, a land of humans and other creatures, and the demon-filled Far Shore. Both, however, are just the tip of the afterlife iceberg. The second season,Aragoto, found Yato and the fishing God Ebisu trapped in the Underworld by its goddess Izanami.
It’s a cold, dead realm where nothing can survive beyond Izanami herself. If any living being does come her way, she’ll clutch onto it desperately just to ease her eternal loneliness. It’s up to Hiyori to find a way to free the duo from her grasp, which takes a lot of effort and near misses to achieve.
5Hell Girl
With a name likeHell Girl, its underworld has to be particularly brutal, and it certainly isn’t pleasant. Its Hell is a land filled with fire and lava that sees its damned denizens tortured for all eternity. Usually, good people wouldn’t have to worry about ending up there when they die. However, the titular Hell Girl Ai Enma offers a service around that.
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If users submit a person’s name to her website, she’ll drag them to Hell while they’re still alive at the cost of the user’s soul. This can mean the particularly evil can get what’s coming to them early, but their victim will join them too when they eventually die. Even then, there’s also the chance that perfectly innocent people can end up in hell just because they were in thewrong place at the wrong time.
4Bleach
Tite Kubo’s samurai slash ‘em upBleachis all about fighting in the afterlife,or Soul Society. With this in mind, it was bound to feature a Hell at some point. Whenever Ichigo or others finish off a Hollow or two, giant skeletons will appear out of big purple gates to drag them away to their realm. It’s a vast, ashy wasteland filled with lava that can deform its residents into monstrous versions of who they were before.
For example, the manga built on it with the Echoing Jaws of Hell arc. Szayelaporro Granz became its Jailer, gained markings all over his body, and the ability to control long, black chains to trap anything he senses with his newfound clairvoyance. It took another hell-bound figure, Jūshirō Ukitake, to pull him back into Hell after he broke out into the human world.
3Berserk 2016
The Eclipse may be one of the most horrifying scenes in manga and anime in general, let alone just inBerserk. Even so, that wasn’t the show’s equivalent of Hell. It wasn’t until the much-maligned2016 3D seriesthat its Abyss would appear in animated form, and it’s not quite as simple as being the usual land of fire and brimstone. Its horror is more existential.
The Abyss is a constantly swirling vortex of evil that sucks in the damned/branded or pulls them in with long chains. Anything caught up in it is gradually dissolved until all that’s left is their consciousness. Over time, even that gets lost in the swirl like sugar in hot coffee. Nothing escapes its grasp, and nothing lasts once within it.
2Yū Yū Hakusho
Before Yoshihiro Tagoshi madeHunter X Hunter, he madeYū Yū Hakusho. Its teenage lead, Yūsuke, is killed ina traffic accidentbut is revived by the ruler of the Underworld on the condition he becomes a Ghost Detective. For a show involving undead spirits and the like, it isn’t exactly the darkest piece of material around. It’s more shonen fun than unspeakable horror.
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Even so, the evilest of evil people would still find themselves in Hell (or ‘Limbo’ in the dub). It offers 10,000 years of torture, cutting everything away from a soul except the ability to feel pain. While it’s not eternal, there’s often nothing left of the damned once they have served their sentence. Their only source of mercy is the Underworld’s management, which isn’t exactly forthcoming.
1Devilman
Go Nagai’s tale joinsBerserkin being a hard-to-read, bloody adventure in which hope is in short supply and bloody horror is in surplus. Even with its smootherDevilman Crybabyupdate, it was never as subtle as Kentaro Miura’s medieval epic. Yes, the series with the man-goat monster, Skull Knight, and the giant horse is more subtle thanDevilman.
A big reason for this is the series' version of Hell. It’s a fiery realm where might makes right, meaning that its demons torture, maim, and assault spirits and humans in any and every way possible. Even when they’re killed, the humans just gradually heal or come back together for even more punishment. Death is just a brief respite from their eternal fate. No one is safe, no one is spared, and no hope is left alive.
