Jigoku Shoujo – 69

Short Synopsis: An elderly woman calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Episode Rating: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Haha! It’s the bizarre episodes like this one that really make Jigoku Shoujo worth watching. This episode tells about the backstory of Yamawarou, the new kid in the third season, and it’s a really imaginative one. He once was a fungus spirit (or whatever that’s known as in Japan), watching over a family as they lost their son. Eventually when the father and mother grew older, he appeared in front of them as the son that they lost.

The husband and wife both reacted very differently. The wife saw Yamawarou as the reincarnation of her son. The husband instead, was a scientist and never saw Yamawarou as a human being, and instead performed his experiments on the guy, in order to find a cure for his wife who was about to die. When the wife found out, she sent Yamawarou away in order to prevent him from being taken advantage of. He then ended up by Jigoku Shoujo. A while later, the wife couldn’t take it anymore and wanted also revenge on her husband and so she calls Jigoku Tsuushin. Yet again wonderfully off-balanced on the moral scale.

It’s also great to see finally what’s up with Yamawarou. There was no hidden purpose to the guy, and instead he simply was the fourth doll that Ai collected. He just happened to arrive when he lost his body. The big mystery now of course is Kikuri, and she definitely showed a different side of herself in this episode. But then again, with this show you never know which questions it’s going to answer, and which ones it’s going to reserve for a potential fourth season. ^^;

I do wish for Yuzuki to become a bit more involved than she has now. Especially since this episode so forcefully wrote her away, I really want to see her become more involved with the different victims in her own way, and see the reality of the Jigoku Tsuushin. This is why I consider the first season of this series to still be the best of the three: in the second half, the revenges weren’t simply random, but so chosen in order to get some great character-development out of Hajime and Tsugumi. In the second season, the stories at this point were merely arranged to show some background on Ai’s dolls. While that’s important as well, it’s less awesome than seeing people’s beliefs challenged like the first season did. I’m really hoping for this third season to show sort-of a combination between the two, but for that to happen Yuzuki really needs to get some more confidence.