The Dark Trio Explained

the most iconic nickname for any group of manga is without a doubt the big three and just to clarify for anybody that argues against this it's bleach one piece and naruto there's no debate to be had here but recently there's been another group of manga that have a nickname kind of similar to this that being the dark trio the name dark trio is terrible way too edgy i would have chosen something anything else really but unfortunately it is what caught on so we'll just keep calling it that but within this dark trio it consists of three darker toned stories that being chainsaw man jujutsu kaizen and hell's paradise all of which being new manga that of course do have a darker tone to them hence the name dark trio now to explain these best i'm just going to start off with the most popular one jiu jitsu kaizen because most people are at least aware of this one and because people are aware i'm going to spend a very short amount of time talking about the plot so within this world filled with sorcerers and curses we have our main protagonist yuji itadori somebody who is physically extremely gifted but at the same time feeling kind of aimless right now because his grandpa just passed away and he doesn't really have any living relatives and that actually does end up working out for him because pretty soon he'd basically have his entire life planned out for him while at the same time making plenty of people that he would probably consider family at this point and i do say all of that because he ends up ingesting a finger of one of the most deadly curses in all of human history and luckily for him he can contain it to a certain extent making him the perfect vessel to eventually kill off the curse completely the only major downside to this is the fact that they actually have to kill him as well now outside of jiu jitsu kaizen's main plot which i just described there are some other real strengths to it as well just talking about the larger cast that it does have it doesn't really seem to leave many characters behind this is something that really bothered me with series like naruto they had these fantastic characters these fantastic side characters that had certain arcs but never really got expanded on beyond that first arc and i'm not saying that this is super groundbreaking or anything like that other series do it too specifically bleach which was a large point of inspiration for this manga as well but i feel like jujitsu kaizen has a very good balance which is something that i believe is supposed to happen not hating on naruto or bleach but this is just something that i noticed something negative that i always see people bring up is the art i kind of disagree here it's a lot like attack on titan at least when it comes to people perceiving the art jujutsu kaizen doesn't have the best art out there especially compared to you know other series even within shonen jump right now even within the dark trio i feel like it has the weakest art but with all that being said i feel like it does its job i never really look at the manga and get disappointed by what i'm seeing or anything like that it doesn't really hinder my enjoyment of the series at all it's just the artist's specific style some people are gonna love it some people are gonna hate it now i did talk about jiu jitsu kaizen first because it's the most popular but there's another reason too it's also my least favorite of three i do definitely prefer chainsaw man and hell's paradise a lot more and that's going to lead me to what i think the second best series is out of the dark trio and this is pretty neck and neck anyways it could flip-flop depending on how i'm feeling a specific day but for right now i'm gonna say hell's paradise now before i get into the actual plot a very distinct advantage hell's paradise does have above the other two manga i just mentioned that being chainsaw man and jiu-jitsu kaizen is the fact that hell's paradise is complete and it's one of the most perfectly paced stories i've probably ever read and i say that specifically because that's something i think most manga mess up on the story either gets dragged out or cut short and with hell's paradise it ended at a perfect time it didn't really overstay its welcome or get cut too short i read the story got done and i felt extremely satisfied and i say that because it's just not something that happens a lot but the story of hell's paradise or jigokuraku starts with our protagonist gabby maru now he's a shinobi from the hidden stone and it seems like he can either be killed but at the same time he doesn't really seem to want to live on either at least like i said it does seem that way because at times and especially under circumstances where gaby marrow could be killed he does seem to resist in a certain way and his executioner actually points out to him that there is a reason that he keeps trying to live on and for gabby morrow his reason for living just happens to be the fact that he loves his wife and he wants to reunite with her and that's when he's given an ultimatum by his executioner he can either be beheaded by an executioner or have the chance to be pardoned now obviously with the realization that he does in fact love his wife he does choose the pardon but this task is said to be next to impossible which is why they're sending death row inmates in the first place and it just so happens that to get this pardon he has to travel to a very mysterious and mystical island where the name of the series describes perfectly what's going on the place that they're on it looks like a paradise but in actuality it's basically hell now not long ago i brought up the cast as being a strong point in jjk and i'm not going to take away from that that's arguably one of the best aspects of jiu-jitsu kaizen but the cast here in hell's paradise is so much better i feel like there's more characters and not only are there more characters they're more fleshed out which doesn't really make sense considering there are less chapters but i guess you can cover up to the fact that like i said the story is perfectly paced in terms of just the overall narrative it's a very lean story but i do want to take the time to focus on our protagonist gabby maru because out of the entire dark trio he is my favorite protagonist i mean he's a character on the exterior that's one of the more edgy characters the way he fights even feels pretty edgy now don't get me wrong it's fitting within the story i'm not trying to argue against that but in his appearance and the way he acts sometimes it does come off as edgy but in actuality the more we get to know his character he's more of just a wholesome character that's been through a very terrible experience that being basically his entire life was spent as a ruthless shinobi our deuteronomy also has one of the more compelling arcs i don't really know where i'd rank her compared to fushigoro and aki but she's also just really well written where this cast of characters really takes off though is with these side characters the ones we spend a little bit less time with but in the end they end up just becoming some of the best characters in the entire series especially chobe he was my favorite character for the vast majority of the manga just in terms of entertainment value and that still might be true just in retrospect the dude is an absolute menace and the art solid i'm not going to spend too much time talking about it it's not really a controversial point like with jjk but i do really enjoy the art we get some really nice spreads and stuff like that i would of course rank it higher than jjk i feel like it's just a better art style for me especially when it comes to fitting the tone of hell's paradise it does a fantastic job and then we finish things off with chainsaw man now the story is mostly known because of how ridiculous the story ends up becoming but that's just mostly in the details because the outline of the actual narrative is pretty simple especially if you just look at the beginning the concept for this manga i feel like it's been done a good number of times but we start off following our main character dingy in extreme poverty and i'm not talking about he's just a little broke where he only has a couple dollars on him i'm talking about he's so poor that a slice of bread may be the only food he eats for an entire day and this is all because of debts that his father racked up before leaving him on his own making dingy the one who has to pay off all those debts and he really only gets the opportunity to pay off these debts because of a chance meeting with a devil by the name of pochita aka the chainsaw devil and after they do meet dinji makes a contract with this devil and after that they start to go into the devil hunting business and because of this he does manage to start paying off his debt pretty fast i wouldn't necessarily say he's living better off than he was before but you know i guess a little bit better is still better but just as things started going well for dingy it immediately nose dived basically what i'm saying is the people that dingy owed money to eventually ended up betraying him they wanted the power of their own devil but at the same time that devil wanted to kill all devil hunters so that's why dingy got targeted right here this did lead to his death it was only for a moment but still he did end up dying and this is when pochita decided to merge with him making dingy now the chainsaw devil or more accurately the chainsaw man and the rest i don't really need to go into too much detail about he curb stomps the people and the devil that ended up killing him the first time and then he meets makima and here once again like gabby maru he's given an ultimatum he can either be killed or become a devil hunter and it just happens that along with being a devil hunter he gets everything he really ever wanted so this was a really easy decision for him and this is how the story of chainsaw man begun but moving beyond just the plot i wanted to talk about the cast just like i've done with the other two manga and the cast here is really different in the way that it's written jjk and hell's paradise they all have a huge cast so the focus a lot of times with those large casts it just takes focus away from our protagonist and just that main circle of characters but chainsaw man handles things a lot differently sure it still does have a pretty big cast but all these other side characters they don't really get the focus the time that some characters in hell's paradise or jjk would the majority of the focus in the series is on dingy power makima and aki and this ends up working for the series because while i do think hell's paradise has the best you know larger cast how it divides its focus chainsaw man has the best central group of characters the best main cast of characters of the entire dark trio i wouldn't ever fault anybody for saying that dingy is the best protagonist aki is the best dura antagonist or even beyond that with power being the best female character and especially when it comes to makima just being the best overall antagonist at least compared to these other two series but then we have the art i feel like chainsaw man has easily the best art especially when it comes to just the characters themselves because the art and chainsaw man when it comes to its characters is so expressive and the paneling is absolutely fantastic is one of the easiest reads i think i've ever had with manga not just limiting it to that the action just flowed so well and the spreads were absolutely fantastic but like i said what fujimoto was able to do with the facial expressions was just unparalleled it made all the heart-wrenching moments in the series hit that much harder but to finish everything off let me go ahead and give a ranking of sorts for these series just the series as a whole it goes chainsaw man then jigokuraku and at the bottom i have jjk like i said not saying it's bad i just like the other two better protagonist wise it switches up a little bit i'd probably put gabby maro at top denji in the middle and itadore again at the bottom enduro antagonist we kind of go to the original setup once again with chainsaw man being on top with aki then we have sigiri and finishing off we have megami and then i wanted to end off the ranking with the antagonists at number one i have makima this is the obvious pick she had much more presence than any character in either of the other series she became so immediately iconic for a reason she's a fantastic character and an even better antagonist and then we've got the numerous antagonists and villains in jjk there's a ton of them that i could talk about but i feel like there's just a good amount that are really good like i said i don't think any of them are like maki mater but they're all pretty solid then at the bottom we do have hell's paradise unfortunately i do think that the antagonists here were a bit lacking not to say that they were terrible or anything but in plenty of stories it's kind of the antagonist that carries the story within hell's paradise it's definitely the opposite but that's gonna be pretty much it and i'm out

Channel: Walking The Shelf

Views: 97,164

Keywords: Dark Trio, Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen, Jigokuraku, Hell's Paradise

Id: zNbhf2vCNGI

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022