Shin Karate Jigoku-hen

Introduction

A returning veteran and karateka from WW2 starts working for the yakuza, looking for a man strong enough to kill him. After becoming karate champion, he joins an Italian woman who is looking for revenge against the nazis who killed her family.

Audience ratings

MyAnimeList / Tenrai : 5.53/10 · 202

1/10	23
2/10	15
3/10	9
4/10	34
5/10	41
6/10	26
7/10	26
8/10	5
9/10	4
10/10	18

Audience reviews

2 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.

Kraanerg

Based on a manga written by Kajiwara Ikki, well-known for Ashita no Joe. What most western people have no idea is the fact Ikki was a revolutionary gekiga artist on writing absurd works depicting harsh reality, with poverty and cruelty on focus. I have no idea how this OVA adapted the original manga, since these rental-VHS-only releases are specially awful, but the results are such of a masterpiece of ultimately trashy anime. It starts very idiotic then gets over-the-top brutal and nihilist, without losing its cheap charm. You have a cheesy karate and yakuza plot conflicting with WW2 and italian/nazi political themes. Eventually you'll find suicide, abuse, racism, the exploitation of minors and natives. If you think you had enough of those themes.. well, you don't know how those are presen…

Read at the source

needmorecampari

This is pretty dire. Watching the protagonist slip from one group of horrible people to another, witnessing brutal acts of sick violence and desperate vengeance, starts to feel a little nihilistic. Suicide, murder, torture, sexual assault, racism—this OVA plumbs the depths of the worst things humans can do to each other, so much so that our karate champ often wonders why humans can be so depraved. As a viewer, I started to wonder what the moviemakers were trying to get at. Why tell this story in this way? It's certainly not subtle. In some ways the OVA seemed to bump against the edge of exploitation, as if the viewer should get some perverse thrill from watching a naked, screaming woman roast inside a cage perched on a burning tree. Story and themes aside, the animation is pretty crude.…