Since the beginning, the idea sounds interesting and make us excited to know more about the Elixir of Life. When they go to the island, the place and the creatures there are the best parts of the show visually speaking. The beautiful landscape mixed with bizarre creatures and blood is pleasent to see. Don't get me wrong, I'm not edgy or a Mirai Nikki lover, but it's cool to see these contrasts. By the way, talking about edgy things, the protagonist SUCKS. His motivation (seeing his wife) is cool but... it's just that. Being emotionless, serious all the time and overpower isn't cool, it just makes him boring. The other main characters are also nice, specially Sagiri with her trying to surpass the prejudice she suffers. I specially have good expectations for Nurugai, her moments with Tenza made them a good duo and would be good to see her growing up to as a kouhai of Shion. Until the end of the show, Yuzuriha was there just to be used as ~~rule34~~ material, but her last moments with Senta got me. Gantetsusai is probably is one of the duller prisoners and I hope he dies in the begining of the second season. In addition to the main characters, I enjoyed the background of the other characters. Even though some of them will just die soon, knowing their stories gives a reason for them being there, they're not just random characters used to die or to make the story continue. Tenza and Rokurota backgrounds are particularly my favorites.

The power system of Jigokuraku, Tao, together with gurus, is also cool. The gurus themselves are not the best, they seem to be there only because the anime need villains, they all look the same and with no proposal or something that makes them stand out for each other. Also, Gabimaru, the edgy, learning how to use Tao almost instantly is pretty annoying. Wasn't him already OP enough? Anyway... Just like the landscapes and monsters of the island, the fights are pleasant to watch, mainly Gabimaru flames. And since I got into this topic of "pleasant to watch", MAPPA does a good work during the 13 episodes. It's not awesome and it's not terrible, it's just good. In addition of that, the soundtrack isn't memorable, it's just OK.

It's far from being perfect, this first season isn't enough to tell if Jigokuraku is a good story, but talking only about this season, it has potential to be better in the future. The fanservice parts are unnecessary (as always) and there are some other bad characters (I mean... despite his cool backstory, Aza is terrible. Just another generic character with the worst design of the series). To summarize, the problems are obvious, but you can have some fun watching this.