Three different shounen titles; what makes them alike?
Summary:
- Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Hell’s Paradise are named The Dark Trinity of shounen anime.
- All three series have some similarities in the way they explore the shounen genre.
- They all are airing at the same time and have even more connections.
Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Hell’s Paradise (Jigokuraku) are known as The Dark Trinity (or Trio) in the shounen part of the anime community. Although all three series have their own unique worlds and are independent works, there are still some similarities that have been pointed out by the fans.
The most obvious similarity is the genre of the series: they are all shounen, packed with action and breathtaking fights. But the genre itself is not the only thing that’s become the foundation for such a union, it’s more about the way these anime deal with exploring it.
Why The Dark Trio?
Conversations about Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Hell’s Paradise being alike started back when JJK was the only one with the anime adaptation. And now that all three mangas are animated, more and more fans start noticing similarities. They say these series don’t have a lot of typical shounen anime tropes. Yes, the gist is the same: the main protagonist has / gets immense powers and he has to learn to live with them. But the way it’s done is different.
The word “dark” is in the name of the trinity for a reason. All shounens have epic fights and danger, so they tend to get a bit dark at some point, but it feels like Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Hell’s Paradise explore the new meaning of darkness. All these series are not afraid to kill important characters. If you’re an anime only, this sentence might puzzle you a bit, but trust the manga readers when they say that the stories are going to get really ruthless when it comes to killing your favorites. The JJK manga fandom is still burning with denial.
Darker topics like obsession, power hunger, depression and suicide are also very present in these series. Despite the shounen genre originally being targeted at the teenage audiences, some suggest that Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Hell’s Paradise are not appropriate for the ones who haven’t come of age. Especially if we’re speaking about the manga.
What about other anime?
You may want to ask the question about some other shounen series that explore dark themes, and why they’re not part of this trio instead of one of them.
Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) is one of the examples that might come to mind. However, AOT is comparatively older than any of the Dark Trinity series, and that’s why fans don’t think it belongs to the trio. Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Hell’s Paradise are coming out at the same time and have similarities, and people just love naming things, that’s it!
Their connection also continues in an interesting fact: Yuji Kaku (the mangaka of Hell’s Paradise) used to work as an assistant to Tatsuki Fujimoto (the mangaka of Chainsaw Man) during his work on the Fire Punch manga.