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Overall, this DVD is a great one to own, especially for mecha and Gundam fans. Continuing the legacy of the series that started it all, Mobile Suit Gundam is packed with energy and excitement, coupled with emotional interludes that make the DVD one that repeat watching couldn't mar. Even for dub-haters, the content of the series should make it reason enough to overcome all the prejudices necessary to check out this DVD. After all, despite how much dub-bashers preach the necessity of having "pure" anime, no one could ever be complete without watching Mobile Suit Gundam, one of the biggest foundations of anime history.
(Unless you believe Hell Girl.) But in Hino's universe, Hell is much more than a mere bad roll on the roulette wheel of karma. After all, one of the tenets of Buddhism is that existence is suffering; the difference between hell and your ordinary life is just a question of degree. In Panorama of Hell, the narrator's whole life is suffering. Life is hell.
The manga is told in the first person by the narrator, a painter who sits in a studio with boarded-up windows and paints hellish paintings by candlelight. We immediately realize that this is not going to be a conventional horror story about 'normal' people in 'abnormal' situations. The painter talks directly to us, the reader, welcoming us to his world. He takes off his clothes to reveal a body covered with scars from cutting himself and gathering blood to use in his paintings. He has even started drinking hydrochloric acid to vomit up blood clots for more paint. "Oh beautiful, glistening blood…" He needs paint for his masterpiece, his life's work, of which we only see a glimpse at first. "I call it 'The Panorama of Hell.' It depicts the end."
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