Hell Girl Season 1 (Final)

Jigoku Shoujo Season 1:  B

I have been jokingly telling my friends "I've been watching Hell Girl.  It's the exact opposite of Hellboy.  Hellboy is action, nazis, violence, dragons and robots.  Hell Girl is horror, psychology, revenge, hate and pathos."

Like a lot of things I have to say about Jigoku Shoujo, I'm not *quite* criticizing it.  I liked it. It was enjoyable and interesting.  B means "good."

But.

It was slow.  Now, I watch anime at breakneck pace, I'll often get through 10+ episodes in a single night, more than that on weekends.  Jigoku Shoujo demanded to be taken slower.  It was written to be watched as it aired, one episode per week over the course of six months.  The mystery percolates well, we find out about Ai and the nature of the Hell Correspondence (Hell Hotline in other translations, but I think that sounds dumb) very slowly, and the show does not bother with fast action.  It's a brooding sort of conflict, very much in the way of Japanese Horror, the horror is not about the threat of imminent death, it's about the wrongness of the world, and how that wrongness might just swallow you.

The story doesn't surprise you with plot twists, but it clearly isn't trying to surprise you, the degree of formula used makes that clear.  Rather than surprise you, it makes you wonder if this will be the time that things end differently, like any series with a formula, you wonder if this will be the time when the formula breaks down, because it has to eventually.

And all the while there's a degree of wish fulfillment going on: Bad people are being punished in horrible ways.  Yes, people had to suffer to justify the punishment, but we are seeing something like justice done, and a certain part of us appreciates that.

Jigoku Shoujo speaks to a strange, somewhat unwanted part of the viewer's desires, and explores that part.  Is revenge ever justified?  Is one who enables revenge doing good?  Doing evil?  Should humanity be able to take into their own hands what is not in their hands?  The series does not provide a moral or an answer, simply a resolution.  As Enma Ai says as the final lines of the series,

"The rest is up for you to decide."

Hell Girl (Again)

So, after a bit of random investigation, I learned that due to a titling error in the copy I got had me watch the last episode of the first season first.

While I haven't finished the first season yet, the change in perspective brought by seeing the last episode first definitely changes the way the series is veiwed.  Not necessarily in a bad way, but it's definitely influenced my opinions of it to the extent that I'm probably not going to be able to provide a coherent description of it until I've watched the entire thing, and I may need to rewatch a few episodes at that point.

The entire thing has made me wonder what it's like trying to tell a story to which the viewer knows the punchline, though, perhaps, not the joke, and the literary inventiveness in this particular sort of project.  It is essentially the way I'm seeing this, I know the punchline but I only have the vaguest outline of the joke.

But, I am still interested in finding out how it all comes together.

Hell Girl (Season 1) 1-7

So a little while back a friend of mine posted a viral meme on Facebook saying "Post 15 anime series in 15 minutes and share it with 15 friends."  I freakin' hate viral memes, but this was harmless and had the potential to be interesting.  Most of the series that I found on the list I'd seen, most of the others I'd heard of, and among the ones I'd heard of was Hell Girl, which I will hereafter refer to by its title in Japanese: Jigoku Shoujo, for reasons that I will go into.  Some weeks ago it was mentioned, and while I had heard the name in passing I knew absolutely nothing about it.  Tonight I decided to find out.

First of all, the title.  I'm going to deal with the words backwards: "Shoujo" means "girl," though in Japanese the word also covers teenage girls without requiring the additional descriptor that English does.  "Jigoku" is a word for the Japanese underworld, the place where the souls of evil humans go upon death.  This does sound an awful lot like the western concept of Hell, and, indeed, I have no issue with the translation being "Hell Girl,"  my issue is with the difference in terminology and the implications it causes.  However, the greatest difference between the western Hell and Jigoku is the presence of the demonic: Jigoku is more like a very unpleasant Purgatory before souls are reincarnated, it is a land of death and suffering, but by its nature rather than at the hands of malicious entities.  "Hell Girl" implies, to the English-speakers ear, that the eponymous character is a demon, maybe even a succubus or some other such entity, where nothing could be further from the truth.  It is a small complaint,

It took me two episodes to finally classify Jigoku Shoujo is "supernatural horror".  When I realized that I was watching horror, I also realized the things that go bump in the night, the ones who drag humans into living nightmares and carry them off to an  existence of eternal suffering are our protagonists.

Given that, it shouldn't be a surprise that Jigoku Shoujo is a very dark series.  We are treated to witnessing the monsters among humanity through the eyes of their victims, who are unable to see these monsters punished by mortal man.  These otherwise powerless individuals are given a way out: a website exists that is only accessible at midnight.  Entering the name of the one they are unable to forgive there summons Enma Ai, our protagonist, the Jigoku Shoujo.  She presents the wronged party with a black straw doll with a red string around its neck, and explains the terms.  By removing the string, a contract is formed, and the one who was named will be taken to Jigoku.  However, there is a steep price: the summoner, too, will wind up in Jigoku upon their death, with no chance of going to heaven.  Ai is often kind enough to present her summoners with a view of what their existence in Jigoku will be like.

Despite its relatively formulaic nature and the fact that it introduces characters (and takes them to Jigoku) at a truly prodigious rate, the differences in situations and in characterization, as well as the slowly-unfolding understanding of Ai and her assistants that we get through watching them work makes each episode new and interesting for what small hints can be gleaned about the returning cast and whatever metaplot there may be.

The art is a relatively realistic style, and indeed the first thing I thought upon seeing it was "It looks like Serial Experiments Lain," another series which doesn't look like anime (or rather, doesn't look like what we've come to think of as anime.)  While it is horror, it is relatively light on gore and nightmare fuel, though the brief periods where the sinners are given time to confess their sins can be extremely creepy and terrifying, especially if you let yourself empathize with the circumstances.

Special mention also goes to Enma Ai's voice actress Mamiko Noto, (I know her as Hecate from Shakugan no Shana) whose delivery wonderful creepy ethereal quality which I never get tired of listening to.

What I've seen of it so far is not mind-blowing but is a very good and relatively placid horror story.  I'll post a further review when I've seen the entire first season.