Hell Girl

Alright, so I lied when I said I hadn’t been watching any new anime. I’ve discovered I can find pretty high quality videos of almost anything on Veoh.com, and since then have been watching more bootlegged fansubs than in my brief stints of using Bit Torrent. Of course I think supporting the industry is still important, so if I really like a series I’ll be likely to purchase it… really, I’ll buy Death Note one of these days!

Anyway, among the anime I’ve been watching recently is Hell Girl. I’ve watched all of the first season and started into the second, and I’m still not really sure about what to think of this series. The main character is quite alluring in her design, but the rest of the series seems to fall flat. Don’t get me wrong, it’s entertaining, and it can be very pretty at times, but I can’t see it as much more than brain candy.

I think this show is supposed to be creepy, or boggle your mind with plot twists. It’s generally a series of short stories loosely strung together by the main theme and an enigmatic, supernatural person, much along the lines of anime such as Boogiepop Phantom or Paranoia Agent (both of which I incidently own boxsets of.) Unlike Boogiepop Phantom or Paranoia Agent, however, the characters featured in each story are pretty shallow, seeming to make rash decisions far too quickly, and the “twists” in their stories are highly predictable, some you’d be able to guess from the first few minutes of the episode.

To explain the pattern of each episode I have to explain a little bit of the plot: there’s a website called HellCorrespondence.com (of course if you type that into your browser its an ad for the series) that only appears at midnight. You can type a person’s name in and have the Jigoku Shoujo (literally “Hell Girl” or if you will: “The Quintessential Emo Kid”) take revenge on your behalf. People who do this are later contacted by the Jigoku Shoujo and she hands them a- er… well I’d call it a “voodoo doll” but it’s actually something that used in Shinto curse rituals, with a red string tied to it. Once the person pulls the red string their revenge will be carried out  (the victim tormented with a surreal vision of their sins and then ferried to Hell in a traditional Japanese rowboat by the Hell Girl herself) but they also consign their own soul to Hell in doing so. Naturally, most of the episodes carry some sort of moral lesson. Hell Girl also has some lackies which together with her makes for a foursome of spirits with nothing better to do than harass people at the behest of indignant crybabies.

But like I said, the episodes generally follow the same pattern: Person A wants revenge against Person B for whatever reason to episode gives, Person A hears some giggly schoolgirls talk about HellCorrespondence.com, Person A contacts Hell Girl (and her lackies), Person A struggles with the decision wondering if its worth damning themselves to get revenge, something Person B does or says pushes Person A to the edge and they pull the string, Person B is tormented in an ironic manner and refuses to admit they did anything wrong, Hell Girl rowboats Person B into the foggy mists of Hell, cut to Person A’s life much happier for it but then they contemplate a mark on their chest that reminds them they’re going to Hell too. The end. Repeat.

Around episode 8 of the first season this begins to let up a bit when two reoccuring characters, a shadey journalist and his daughter who seems to have a psyhic connection of some kind to Hell Girl, are thrown into the mix. The only other thing of note about the first season is it contains a whole lot of implied rape. Seriously. Date rape, serial killer rape, blackmail rape, etc. etc. rape etc. It’s like every time the writers were gathered trying to think of a disturbing plot twist there was always one guy who always suggested rape, but they were on a tight schedule so they were all just like “Okay, whatever, write it in, we wanna go to lunch.”

The second season starts out a bit better but seems to have quickly devolved into episodes that deal with Person A having a grand misunderstanding with Person B. They also attempt to flesh out Hell Girl’s lackies (mismatched in design as they are) a bit, which is good for the most part, but she seems to start sending them in as detectives to see if the hell-damning is actually worth it. I think I’d prefer if it was just the lone mystery girl, but perhaps Hell Girl does need her lackies around because she barely says anything besides the same old speeches she drones off in each episode. This series has alot of that going on, as well as alot of repeat imagry, which I hadn’t seen in an anime in a while and struck me as sort of painfully old school.

But you know, I’m still watching it. Like I said, it’s brain candy. Overall the visual style can be very nice, especially in the second season, although some of the supernatural aspects are sometimes too over the top making them look ridiculous and laughable. The second season also puts some more thought into the characters in each short story, building up to the climatic pulling of the red string with better pacing.

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