Hell Girl

Its obviously a very sensitive subject. Personally i think nothing in RL could be any worse than hell, but that doesnt seem to be the case in this show. Considering how many users complete the contract, it almost gets out of hand . Getting cursed to hell because some lady kills your puppies? Thats a little extreme. But for the most part, most of the stories are pretty cruel and unusal "train wreck" stories that range anything from grade school bullies to betrayal to medical malpractice. Considering the main theme of the story being revenge, they could easily make 100 episodes out of thin air.That is also the problem of this show, the theme starts to get repetitive after about the 7th show. Its the same formula again and again: Tragic story --> Hell request --> Retribution. But just when you think its going to be the same formula over and over again, they throw in a curve ball of a plot twist and introduce 2 new main characters: Hajime and Tsugumi Shibata. Thats when the show really starts to pick up, sortof. The story finally starts to pickup. No more spoilers here but if you lasted this long to reach this point in the series, then you shouldnt have any problem. The artwork is also a little mixed as well. At times its very artistic and beautiful and others it looks like your standard anime artwork. Even the art gets bitten by the repetative bug just like the story. Granted watching Enma Ai get out of the pool dripping wet in her white robe never gets old, but it hardly changes every episode. She even says the same lines over and over again every time as well, it wouldnt be a problem to me except hearing the same 20 sentences over and over and over again almost makes you think youre really in hell. There are plenty of characters drawn up for this show and they all look fine except for one trait... THE EYES. It takes a while to get used to the eyes...those damn eyes... I managed to keep my self awake for every episode and not even once fell asleep from the boredom (only once out of necessity). I think its because i always thought because the eyes were watching me. But I think it really means they at least did a good job feeling something for the characters in each story. On one side, you want to know if they\'re going to get what they wished for, or you want to know why somone (i.e. tweenie) would want to pour so much hate agaisnt someone. And on the other side you want to know how the person whos being targeted is going to die. Kind of like the train wreck theory (ppl slowing down on the highway just to look at accidents). Aside from the ending, the episodes that interested me the most was EP6, 13, 15, 21, and 23<--very sad alert. The sound effects are one thing that was constant, everything from screaming from terror to the enviromental sounds realy helped create tension and atmosphere. My favorite was in episode 5... you\'ll know what im talking about when you hear it. Things like that get stuck in you memory banks. All thought the music is always the same as in every anime, meaning they use the same chase music and the same action music in every episode. But the music doesnt intrude to the show, its hardly annoying and it defintitely keeps your atten to whats going on. Overall this show wasnt half bad, given the train wreck sadness theme of the story and a very small dose of lolicon, i would say this show isnt half bad. But it isnt half good either with the overuse of catch lines and and animations. It also kept me at the edge of my seat 80% of the time, and it was good enough to garner a new season (Futakomori). So the goods outwigh the bads in my opinion. 6/10

If you have not tried Jigoku Shoujo or as it is known in America, UK and Australia "Hell Girl", then all I can say is that you're missing out. Hell Girl is a very unique anime , each episode of the series focuses on another character going through a tough time before they turn to the legendary girl everyone is whispering about. Of course there's a price and even that doesn't stop the protagonist. The story's weakness is that it's very repetitve which doesn't rock everyone's boat as most of the time the protagonist will pull the string off the doll. However, the story getsmore intense when a detective and his daughter is involved to try to stop people contacting Hell Girl. There are surprises in this series, times when the audience is fooled that the ending might be a happy one. The art is brilliant. The character designs are amazing, especially of Ai and her assistants. The scenes of the Eternal Twilight world are beautiful. The sound is addictive, it's very hard not to resist the soundtrack after hearing some of the music from this series especially Snow's Opening Theme "Sakasama No Chou".The characters were very well thought out, even though the main character send people to Hell you can't help loving them. Most of the time you enjoy it unless again it's not your thing. Hell Girl is also a good series for discussing and bringing up the issues of bullying, stalking, murder, blackmail, slander, adultery, lying etc... The ending of the series was brilliant and I really can't say anything as to why because you have to watch it. Overall, an unmissable series.

Title: Jigoku Shoujo Manga, Live-Action Drama, Anime: Jigoku Shoujo was adapted into a manga after it finished its original TV run, with art and story done by Miyuki Eto. It began running in Kodansha's Nakayoshi magazine in the October 2005 issue, is still running, and has, for the most part, had an original story line and plot changes, though some episodes from the anime do get their own manga chapters. Del Rey has licensed it Stateside, and the third volume is due on August 5th, while it stand at six collected volumes in Japan currently. A live-action spinoff consisting of twelve half-hour episodes began runningon TV on November 4th, 2006, and finished its run on January 27th, 2007. There's not a lot about it, so I don't know how similar or dissimilar it is to the original anime. It will also not be covered in this review. Speaking of which, Jigoku Shoujo was originally a twenty-six episode anime, and ran on Japanese TV from October 4th, 2005 to April 4th, 2006. It was produced by Studio Deen (famous for their work on Fruits Basket and Fate/Stay Night) and directed by Takahiro Omori (famous for his work on Baccano! and Gakuen Alice). It has been licensed Stateside by Funimation, and the sixth and final volume was released on May 20th. Story: There is a rumor that if there's someone giving you absolute hell and you want to get revenge on them, there's a website that you can access only at midnight, known as Hell Correspondence. Once the name is submitted, Ai Enma (aka Jigoku Shoujo/Hell Girl) will appear to the client and give them a straw doll with a red string wrapped around its neck. If the client wishes to take revenge, then all they have to do is pull the string and Ai and her helpers will ferry the person to hell. However, there is a small catch to all this: Once the compact is made with Ai, the person who took revenge will go to hell once they've died as well. Jigoku Shoujo is, at it's heart, a Revenge of the Week episode. Once you've seen two or three episodes, you have the basic outline of every episode: Introduction to person being tormented and torment, tormented accesses Hell Correspondence, Ai and tormented meet up and she tells them the conditions and such, tormented ends up debating/angsting over whether or not the deal is worth it, things are escalated in some way, and the tormented pulls the string, sending the tormentor to hell. Rinse and repeat for twenty-three or so episodes. I'm really kind of disappointed, because there's almost no background about Ai until the last three or so episodes of the show, and even that is minimal, not to mention that the background of her helpers doesn't even get mentioned. The fact that the set up doesn't change one bit throughout the entire show, even when the show introduces two people who try and thwart Ai (the reporter Hajime and his daughter, Tsugumi, who has a psychic connection to Ai) does not help the show at all. Hajime and Tsugumi were only really vital to the plot of five episodes total; with the others, they could've not been around, and the same thing still would have happened, which makes their existence kind of useless. Also, the fact that Hajime has a tendency to come off as an incredible bastard at times, not to mention a bit of a hypocrite, doesn't help things. I understand what the creators might've been trying to do, here, but they missed the mark with these two. The quality for the Revenge of the Week stories average out to about half and half; half are excellent and have incredible writing and twists, and the other half are kind of... eh. The characters are always memorable, though. Admittedly, there is a second season, Jigoku Shoujo Futakomori, that can hopefully rectify these mistakes. Art: The art that has to do with the world that Ai occupies when she's not working, the revenges that they take on the tormentors, and to do with her helpers' and her own character design are absolutely stunning. The colors for these are incredibly rich, and the designs in general are beautifully done. As for the part that has to do with our world... eh. The backgrounds are done well, and the character designs for the people of the week start to blur together after a certain point and become incredibly generic, but they manage to remain slightly distinct. There is some stock footage, but it isn't all that bad. Music: The music for this is absolutely amazing, in my opinion, and one of the first things I really noticed about the series. There are several recurring themes throughout the show, and they are extremely memorable. The music is a mix of Western orchestration, rock numbers, and traditional Japanese instruments that always seems to catch my ear. The OP's a pretty standard J-Pop female upbeat number, but is still pretty catchy, all things considered. The ED is absolutely amazing, though; a typical J-Pop female ballad that uses cello and traditional Japanese instruments for instrumentation, and has lyrics that very directly relate to the show. Seiyuu: The seiyuu for this show did a good job, as always; no voices that seemed out of place or painful. Though I do kind of pity the seiyuu who had to play Ai, as her lines were mostly the same throughout all twenty-six episodes; hopefully, they'll vary up the dialogue for her next season. Length: If they cut out the crappy half of the show, we have a show that could easily have fit within thirteen-ish episodes, and still been a pretty good show. That cut probably should have been made, as most of the good part of the show doesn't really start to happen until the halfway or so mark. Overall: A really good concept that ended up lacking a bit in its execution, and in the long run, would've benefited from cutting the actual amount of episodes in half, so that the best parts of the show stayed intact, with beautiful art and music, and seiyuu that could have used more varied lines, really. But maybe its issues can be rectified in the second season, Futakomori. Story: 7 Art: 9 Music: 9 Seiyuu: 8 Length: 7 Overall: 40/50; 80% (B )

Fleeting thrills, occasional chills, definite cringes. That's what I would succinctly wrap up Hell Girl as. The main crux of the issue is this; Hell Girl is a morally and intellectually lazy at best, disingenuous at worst, show, that manages to stay partially afloat with a couple good lead characters and some occasionally deviously twisted stories. Let me get out of the way that the art, voice acting, and sounds are all wonderful. Distinct and atmospheric, they often times accentuate the best parts of the show. However, Hell Girl suffers perhaps most greatly from being very formulaic and repetitive. Most episodes boil down thusly: we have,"Persona A" and "Person B." Person A is wronged by person B. Person A gets Hell Girl and her cronies to kill and send Person B to hell immediately. Person A, as a result of this, goes to hell when he/she dies. The first half of this show is setup just like that; episodic in nature, new stories each time. At first, this manages to be a fairly convincing and exciting setup, because the stories seem fresh and relatable. After a while though, the show wears out its welcome. The structure gets too repetitive, the people, too unsympathetic, the stories, too hard to swallow. Firstly, I am not entirely sure what this show is trying to say, if anything. For Hell Girl to take on such a serious and close topic to many people (afterlife), it damn well better to a good job of broaching the subject. I don't think it really does. Most characters in the show are comfortable with the idea of not only sending another person to hell for eternity, but going themselves. This is tough to swallow, especially when, as is the case in Episode 10, there isn't much wrongdoing between the two people involved! Is this a show a twisted look at karma? Do wrong, and you'll have wrong done to you? If so, it's over the top. Sure, some of these characters are cruel, but an eternity in hell? That's harsh! And what does it say about the character who sends them to hell? They're being even more cruel if you ask me! So, maybe the whole show is about trying to get us viewers to think on the old Gandhi quote "an eye for the eye makes the whole world blind." Well, that doesn't work either, because just about every character is perfectly willing to not only trade an eye for an eye, but enjoy it too. Not only that, they usually get a huge short term benefit! Blind my ass! And what about Ai (Hell Girl) and her gang? They swoop along to enact revenge by torturing their victim in their final moments, before killing them and sending them to hell. We never really learn anything about them until the very end of the show. It's too bad, because it makes them out to be much worse villains than I think the show creators intend. A lot of the conflicts in each episode could also be healed with some communication and time. Physical abuse is one thing, and certainly bad, but a lot of the conflicts in the shows are monetary in nature, which, while potentially crippling, is not permanent for a lot of these people considering how young they are. If Person A thought about their predicament for a few days, they probably wouldn't be so quick to pull the proverbial trigger. Unless the show is trying to completely slam immediate emotions for being irrational or some such, in which case, whoopdee do. Not particularly riveting nor well displayed. And that's the problem with this show. I don't know what it's trying to do. Maybe it's not trying to say anything, which seems really bad, especially considering the nature of what the show deals with; revenge, death, afterlife. Not stuff to be scoffed at, in this case. If you're going to present a show with people lining up left and right to send a rival to hell forever and themselves too, you better have a pretty good thematic core. There isn't any here. It feels almost like some dude just wants to piss all over people and take revenge on people through an anime he is creating. Haha, enjoy hell, characters! Maybe I am reading too much into this. Maybe I need to look at this simply and try to enjoy it. In that case, it fares a little better. When the show finally gets some continuity going, we are introduced to Hajime, a disheveled, freelance journalist who learns of Hell Girl and seeks to stop her. He is a wonderful character; flawed but likeable, morally strong but conflicted. His struggle with his young daughter, who begins to feel sympathy for the people choosing to send their enemy to hell, becomes a well-done, central conflict. Their bonding and relationship is an excellent display of subtleties that the rest of the show seems to lack. Certain episodes are generally thrilling. Others are generally boring. It's indicative of the show as a whole having an inconsistent pace. Some episodes are allowed to naturally develop, showing a gradual buildup of a characters wrongdoings. Others take 20 minutes to set up a scenario, then instantly drop a bunch of cruelty on a character in a matter of seconds. Still, some of the stores are cynically enjoyable, certifiably twisted in a thrilling manner. It's just too bad that the show falls short elsewhere, and can never get a consistent level of thrills going. It's a watchable show, but also, ultimately, a forgettable one. 5/10