Revisiting Jigoku Sensei Nube

With the recent Jigoku Sensei Nube anime remake, I decided to pay a visit to one of my favorite Shonen manga in my teenage years once again after putting the series into backburner for so long. Despite Hell Teacher Nube being one of my favorite Shonen manga at some point as I owed my fascination toward Youkai genre through this series, I never really did complete reading for this series, considering Jigoku Sensei Nube fan translation back then did stuck around 50% for quite some time.

But over past few years Nube’s fan translation do reach around 75% and it is more than enough to allow for a complete reading experience of the series for me. As I did have physical copies to complement the gap for the current missing chapters from Online translation. Given that my old article for Jigoku Sensei Nube in this blog was written when I was about halfway through the series. In this opportunity I would like to write a full-fledged article with broader perspective as a proper homage to Jigoku Sensei Nube after I did a complete revisit.

Looking it back after accumulated my share of Shonen Manga experience, Jigoku Sensei Nube probably scores 6/10 overall as a manga and maybe fared abit slightly better as Shonen series. As a Shonen manga, Jigoku Sensei Nube is probably known for its explicit depiction of Japanese Youkai folklore and gratuitous fanservice. For an early 90s manga, Jigoku Sensei Nube goes on rather over the top route especially the fanservice which was quite a rarity on Shonen genre at the time. As for the horror stuff itself, some of the Youkais designed by the mangaka are definitely nightmare materials for Shonen main audience. It is rather an amusing experience to look back how the Youkais depicted as Waifus in other modern series like Onmyoji is rather grotesque caricature in Jigoku Sensei Nube. The combination of these two factors probably enabled Jigoku Sensei Nube to establish a presence back in its time but likely to be insufficient to last in 2000s era where mainstream Shonen series like Naruto, One Piece and Bleach establish an overwhelming Dominance. Not particularly its fault, because Jigoku Nube Sensei is a product of 90s era through and through.

The strength of Jigoku Sensei Nube lies in the core Main character cast. The Hell teacher himself, Nueno Sensei is one of the cooler Human exorcist characters that ever hailed in Youkai genre. Surprisingly, Young Adult competent exorcist as main character are not particularly common considering the Emphasis on Shonen genre which do favor Teens as the main character.

It might be often overlooked, but Jigoku Sensei Nube also have the best Yuki-onna waifu, Yukime who served as the golden standard of the Yukionna depiction in future youkai manga, embodying love conquers all archetype. The student main cast in Nube also had quite a personality. But I think most of them doesn’t really fit as Primary School kids and could have fared better as Middle schoolers. The amount of fanservice involving the schoolkids especially Miki definitely won’t cut it in present manga industry standard.

The most glaring weakness of Nube is probably the lack of overarching main arc. The series does have Baki, the Oni that becomes Nube’s Demon Arm who served as the main boogeyman of the series. However, his depiction in his main arc toward the end of the series is rather lackluster and more like an afterthought to have him to be taken seriously despite Baki have plenty to offer as a villain. The attempt of Nube’s exploring the theme of Demon’s redemption through humanity is not the problem, but it rather the execution itself.

From what I see, Jigoku Nube Sensei is likely got axed back then to have such a rushed ending because the Power Up version of Nube through the cooperation by Baki could still last for some time. But I suppose Jump editor team consider the jig is up thus the last arc got rushed. Even so the ending is still decent enough with Yukime winning the ship race.

Jigoku Sensei Nube along with Ghost Sweeper Mikami and Ushio & Tora forms the Trifecta of Classic 90s Modern Youkai adventure. While I am personally biased toward Ushio Tora since it got Top Tier BBEG. Each of these series have their own merits that warrant their fame in its time and exploring all of these 3 will give a unique kind of satisfaction. With Ushio Tora and Jigoku Sensei Nube had gottern their Modern anime treatment, I am quite sure Ghost Sweeper Mikami could get one in the future and for now I will probably take a look on the Nube’s new anime.