Hell's Paradise

Ninja assassin Gabimaru the Hollow has been condemned to die, yet he meets his sentence with an eerie detachment. After years of violence, he believes he’s earned his end—but no execution method can seem to finish him. When Sagiri Yamada Asaemon, a junior member of the renowned Asaemon executioners, is ordered to carry out the killing, she hesitates instead, seeing something in Gabimaru that won’t let him simply disappear.

Sagiri argues that Gabimaru’s will to live is bound to his love for his wife, and offers a different path: earn a full pardon by sailing to the island of Shinsekyo and returning with the legendary Elixir of Life for the shogun. The catch is that those who have gone in search of it have either never come back or returned broken. Even so, Gabimaru accepts the mission—joining ten other death-row criminals—clinging to the chance of a future where he and his wife can finally live in peace.