Short Synopsis: A teacher is bugged by an overprotective guardian.
Highlights: You have to love the messages of this series.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Oh, how I love this series, although for a completely different reason when compared to the other seasons. The first season had some really nice stories in its repertoire about people who were pushed to the limits. The second season then started to move to lighter reasons to want to send someone to hell, and here the third season comes and it instead focuses on the darker side of being a teenager. Anime has a real tendency to overglorify teenagers, and I believe that this series has a very strong message against that, with the “Kids these days”-themes.
This episode already started to deviate from the usual formula. What we have here is a teacher, where one of her students has an incredibly overprotective aunt, who makes a fuzz over the slightest thing that happens to her niece, and makes whatever effort she can to make in order to make the teacher’s life miserable. In the end, it turns out that that student had been setting up her aunt against the teacher, just for fun. She figured that her teacher was a grown-up, so she’d just be fine, even though she had to deal with her aunt.
It’s strange. When you look at the themes, it almost seems like this series has been written by a bunch of old guys who downright hate everything about teenagers, and yet they make some very good points. Teenagers these days do cause a lot of unnecessary trouble for others and don’t even seem to understand what they did wrong, and even though the teacher’s method was a bit extreme, it was the perfect one to teach her a lesson she won’t soon forget.
Another point this series is trying to make is about the ease at which people are willing to send others to hell. It’s not just a sign of that people are losing faith in these “fictional” places as heaven or hell, but also at how they fail to look at the distant future (a very recent topic, with the economy, and huge amounts of people who failed to pay their mortgage). It’s a conservative series, and yet it’s also the series that’s got the most actual topics. It’s the first anime I’ve seen that included the Vista-cursor, it’s got IPods, as compared to most other series, which are still stuck in Windows 98.
It’s really not something that just happened now. Rather, it’s all part of the usual teenage rebelling against their parents stage. Look at any past generation and you’ll see the same pattern. So it’s not “these days”, even if we think so – each generation of grownups tends to think like that.
Of course, if we absolutely must have an anime about teenagers (and there are precious few series that don’t feature teenagers as main characters), this is still better than having them be superheroes or have tremendous power in the form of giant robots land right in their laps (along with a naked, amnesiac bishoujo or two)
“a bunch of old guys who downright hate everything about teenagers”
Actually, I think the writers seem to hate people in general, because both the good and bad guys go to hell/are doomed to go to hell.
The message I get up to now is that people are too self-centred and short-sighted. They’re willing to go so far just to get rid of people they hate. Nobody cares anymore about each other or their own future.
There’s more of a sort of reality (albeit exaggerated) in this particular season which I like. The humour makes it even more fun to watch.
Adults can be much worse than children at times. Sure, there’s a rebellious stage for teenagers, but what harm can they do compared to full-grown (age-wise) adults? Yes, it’s less common, but adults can act just as senselessly as teenagers.
Personally, I think all of the episodes of Jigoku Shoujo have clearly illustrated the saying, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves” (I believe they’ve said something similar in the show). Nobody in this episode was morally right through and through. And honestly, I can’t say that there’s another, “deeper”, meaning behind any of it. The stories themselves are enough to keep the show interesting. To me there doesn’t seem to be any particular bias against children. Jigoku Shoujo herself has the appearance of a child.
I have to admit to really liking this latest season (and you blogging it!) Art work is strong and the new OP / ED are as good as ever. As for the storyline – it’s hit the floor running, no slow build up like Season 1 or 2. I’m really interested to see where it’ll end up this time.
One thing they did in this episode I really liked was when the student was sent to hell they never showed his punishment or Enma’s speech. The episode was about the teacher and the guardian, not the kid.
Yes, that girl deserves going to hell!!! She had such a nice teacher and she just twisted her feelings and personnality, what an awful creature!!!She should have had experienced school with cruel teachers, would have get what she desrved!