I am not a huge fan of 301 redirects and any redirect beyond the first is basically a red flag. It's far from natural for sure.
Unless your domain is super related and anchors aren't too wild and it has shittons of firepower, then you are better of with PBN. 301 redirects requite a bit of experience to work, if they will work at all. It's not like you can just redirect it without being indexed and expect to see amazing boost. And more often than not, the 301 just doesn't work. So it's up to you, but I would stick with PBN.