When it comes to anime, often, there is always that one protagonist who has that one driving force. In Attack on Titan, it’s Eren and his quest for freedom. In One Piece, it’s obviously Luffy and his search for that legendary piece of treasure that makes up the title. Even in Spy x Family, Loid has one mission to maintain peace between countries, his driving force.
But in the newest anime, Hell’s Paradise, what is Gabimaru, The Hollow’s driving force? Alejandro Saab, the English voice actor behind the protagonist, knows exactly what it is, and spoke about it to CinemaBlend in an interview to promote the english dub for the popular anime.
Gabimaru was raised just to be a killer, you know. Just do the job. Get it done. You're in. You're out. That's it. Feel nothing towards the people, you have no connection towards, and then comes along, you know his wife, and it’s the first person to show him, like, genuine human emotion.
Hell’s Paradise is the latest anime to become a huge hit for Crunchyroll, gaining the eyes of fans every week as both Gabimaru and Sagiri travel deeper into this world known as “hell’s paradise,” an island that looks to be the epitome of all things beautiful, but is filled to the brim with terrifying monsters.
The only catch is that Gabimaru – along with plenty of other criminals – have been hired in order to obtain the possible elixir of immortality that could be located on the island. And while Gabimaru doesn’t have much going in his life, he has one driving force that is guiding him right back home, and that’s his wife.
He's feeling things for the first time. It's like, ‘oh, this is what it's like to be human. I feel things, feelings. So I really do think the amount of happiness that his wife brings him justifies so much, saying that ‘it's the one good thing I have going for me. It's the thing that makes me feel so human in this world that I am literally holding on to all the baggage of the people I've murdered left and right, for so long, that it's the one saving grace I've got. So if anything's gonna drive him. It's definitely his wife.
Hell’s Paradise takes place during the Edo period of Japan, where ninjas were rampant and Gabimaru was trained to be one of the absolute best. The show, much like many other anime nowadays, is not for the faint of heart and features plenty of fight sequences and gore, much like another popular anime, Attack on Titan.
Even so, that doesn’t stop him from doing what he has to do in order to get home, taking out whatever monsters that he can – despite the fact that he is working alongside Sagiri at the moment in order to get home, someone who is hired to kill him if he steps out of line.
I feel like the closest connection he's got as a friendship, as someone he deeply cares about is Sagiri. Not in a romantic sense, but definitely in a ‘oh, you get me. You get what I'm about, and I and I want to protect you, even though you don't need it, like yeah, we’ve got each other kind of thing.
Saab has been given the chance to step into plenty of anime lately besides voicing Gabimaru in Hell’s Paradise.
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From the popular romantic comedy anime, Horimiya, to voicing Leon in Pokemon, another one of my personal favorite franchises with all its movies and its series that focuses on different regions, the voice actor has had the chance to voice some very fun characters.
However, Saab agrees that voicing Gabimaru is “a nice change of pace” in recent years in comparison to the energy that Leon and other characters bring to the table, and that the story of Gabimaru and Sagiri is one that is very special – even if in episode 3, Sagiri and Gabimaru did try to kill each other.
Hey, forgive him. Let's not, let's not worry about, you know. That's just semantics.
If you’re interested in checking out Hell’s Paradise on Crunchyroll, new episodes drop every week on Saturday. And if you want to check out some other awesome anime to watch, here’s the best that we saw in 2022.
