Category: Jigoku Shoujo

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.

Short Synopsis: Yuzuki continues to try and prevent people from pulling the string… without much success.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Haha! Another excellent episode this time. This series’ finale promises to become better than the two previous seasons, if it’s already this busy with building up. It’s great to see Ai as the bad guy again, rather than the protagonist as the second season portrayed her. In this episode, Yuzuki really was just caught up in her own paranoia when she saw people fiddling with their mobile phones. She actually could have done something if it wasn’t for Ai who got in her way, which pretty much is a first in this season: normally she’d just use her dolls in order to get rid of any annoying people (i.e. Hajime in the first season and Kikuri in the second).

The story this episode was also quite interesting. A guy who genuinely likes a little girl sent a possible potential paedophile to hell: the guy hadn’t done anything yet, and if he wasn’t sent to hell, there’s no telling as to whether he would or would not have done something to that girl. I also have to admit: I didn’t see the ending coming until the lead character of this episode knocked over the picture frame: the potential paedophile had a girlfriend, and this girlfriend is now taking revenge on the one who sent her boyfriend to hell. Not only was it a great plot twist, but it also showed Yuzuki that preventing revenges really isn’t going to be that easy.

Now that this series is about to enter its final third, I’m really curious to see what the creators have planned for it. The first season featured some really creative cases that tested the differences between Hajime and Tsugumi to the limits, the second season revealed the background of the dolls, and in the same pattern, the third season should be about the war between Ai and Yuzuki. The question is of course going to be how far the creators are going to carry this: with already such an extreme first half of this season, what exactly are the creators planning? The past few episodes have been much more focused than the first ten episodes, but it has already focused at building up Ai vs. Yuzuki, so at this point there’s no telling what the creators are up to.

Short Synopsis: A girl whose brother is a rising DJ calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
What is it with anime and sibling complexes? Heck, it’s supposed to be a taboo, but you see it broken so much in anime that it’s become an exception for a brother and a sister to not have romantic feelings for each other. Good grief, do all Japanese grow up as only children or something?

Having said that though, this episode was actually a pretty good character-study of both brother and sister, who both unknowingly looked up to each other. The sister was a huge klutz and has a stupid smile all of the time, but because of that she gets lots of attention, and her brother dislikes that because this causes himself to get no attention at all. The sister at the same time is well aware that everyone just finds her stupid and talks about her behind her back, and is just smiling because otherwise she couldn’t bare it. She in turn is jealous of her brother’s successes as a DJ. And as it indeed turned out, the brother’s dreams of becoming a DJ fails, so both envied each other for things that didn’t exist. I like that, it’s down to earth and a typical problem that siblings like them can have.

Of course, the ending where the sister sends the brother to hell because her brother refused to keep a promise he made when they were small, about how he’d marry her once she became pretty was a bit forced, to say the least. Do people really put that much value into a promise that was made as six year olds? But then again, that’s also where the premise of Jigoku Shoujo comes in, and the ease at which you can send someone to hell.

Yuzuki’s role was pretty pretty small in this episode, but not wasted at all. This episode was really designed to make her stronger, and to teach her to not give up, or simply assume that everything is the way it looks.

Short Synopsis: A girl who misses her train calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Usual revenge, but Yuzuki is finally coming in action!)
And with this episode, everything suddenly becomes clear: Yuzuki was indeed meant to be the next Tsugumi, and she’s also going to play Hajime by trying to stop the revenges in the rest of this season because of what happened to her best friend. It’s definitely a better motivation than Hajime had, who simply was fundamentally against revenges. Yuzuki, instead, has a very good reason to hate Ai.

This episode played with the anxieties that the elite have about their reputations. I liked how the lead girl in this episode may have been a bright student with good grades, but she nevertheless was a normal girl. I’ve lost count of how many great students in anime have been portrayed as the perfect human beings, brilliant at every thing they do. While the lead girl did know how to avoid the biggest kinds of trouble, she did put her trust into someone who later turned out to be a criminal and ended up sending him to hell when a picture of both of them was taken that could have damaged her reputation. I actually had a lot of respect for the two of them before the creators went and showed the huge weaknesses of the both of them. ^^;

The interesting thing is how the creators are going to play in the future episodes, with Yuzuki trying to prevent Ai from taking her revenges. Compared to Hajime, she’s really shy and not very charismatic, and that guy failed nearly every time trying to convince characters that were a lot more sane than the people we’ve been seeing in the third season. I’d also love it if the creators threw in a bunch of psychopaths in front of her. Yuzuki has a lot of potential to grow, and I’m really curious to see where the creators plan to go with her.

Short Synopsis: A woman whose father was struck by a car calls Jigoku Tsuushin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
OMG! OMG! OMG!

At times like these, I just have to resort to pure and utterly biased fanboyism. Enma Ai is back in action, baby! This episode was so beyond all expectations that I could have had of this third season. Since episode 13 of the second season wasn’t that impressive, I didn’t expect anything from this series, and what an important episode it turned out to be! Something’s telling me that the storyline for the third season is going to be even bigger than that of the second one!

After the previous episode, I actually made a prediction for this series: that the second half of the third season would focus on fleshing out Yuzuki’s classmates, just like it did in the second season with Ai’s dolls. Then this episode comes, and not only REVIVES AI, but also actually SENDS ONE OF THOSE CLASSMATES OF HER TO HELL! On top of that, it already starts to give some new hints about what hell in this series really, at this early stage of the series.

This is really why I fell in love with Jigoku Shoujo: it may seem like a very strange series with a revenge for EVERY FREAKING EPISODE, but then it actually develops, and show that there’s much more behind the revenges of the week. And at the same time, a lot of the revenges just remain entertaining in lots of different ways.

Short Synopsis: A loser who works part time at a swimming pool “tries” to access Jigoku Tsuushin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 9/10 (Uhm… yeah…)
The best episode of Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae yet. This episode was awesome, but god… it is SO for the wrong reasons. This episode featured the single biggest idiot we’ve seen on Jigoku thus far, and his stupidity really reached epic levels in this episode. This guy is really the typical case of an emo teenager.

To give you a bit of an indication… he’s hiding a poster of a cute girl in swimsuit behind a picture of “the scream”. Every time someone pisses him off, he adds a sticker somewhere on this girl’s body, starting from her feet. The person that reaches “goal” (come on, it’s easy to guess where “that” is) first is the one he’s going to send to hell. In the end, when three people are about to reach the “goal” he chickens out and wants to savour the moment. And indeed: soon his mind becomes distracted by something entirely different and he completely forgets his plans with Jigoku Tsuushin in his enthusiasm.

And to think that in the end, he managed to find himself a date in a way that actually makes sense: simply asking the girl he likes! Dear harem leads: you can learn A LOT from this little idiot, remember that. And to think that in the end, he was the one to end up in hell because one of the girls he looked up to turned out to be even more emo than he was.

I also loved the little self-parody by Studio Deen, as the Magazine that was crazy enough to publish the work of this idiot. Also, I absolutely loved the “Tatanic” with “Hiroshi Watanahe” as the lead character. Could that be the creators’ way of saying “… yeah thanks.”?

But the real icing on the cake was the single best punishment scene that Jigoku Shoujo has shown us up till now aside from the one that took up the entire action. I mean… seeing the guy getting tortured in LIVE ACTION cardboard cut-outs! Brilliant!

On a more serious note, during the last episode I started to wonder what the second half of Mitsuganae would be focusing on. Of course, I should have known: it’s going to flesh out and develop Yuzuki’s classmates. This episode already made a small start with the shy girl in glasses, and this would also mean that there’s a very good chance of Tsugumi returning.

Short Synopsis: A young teen kills people based on what he read in a novel.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10 (Awesome)
Haha! Best episode of the third season yet! It’s episodes like this one that remind me why I originally fell in love with this series. Sure, the normal episodes are entertaining, but the real gem of this series is the collection of stories in which the creators really start playing with the concept. This episode also wasn’t awesome in the overblown way that we’ve come to get used to from this series: everything was wonderfully written, and you could see why the people wanted to send others to hell.

I must say that it was quite creative of the creators to come up with a topic that has been such a recent news item kids who commit murders because they’re inspired by their favourite anime, novel or movie. It’s been a subject debated heavily, and I really liked the different sides to the problem that this episode showed: to the overblown image that the mass media provides, to the feelings of the original author, to see people influenced by his works in that way, to the victim’s relatives, who go and blame the original author. It all fits so well, and I loved how the three main characters of this series came to the conclusion of sending the involved people to hell. It was basically their way to make peace with the whole affair.

On a different note: I’m beginning to get curious about the second half of this season. It’s subtle, but the overall mood and direction did change in the past two season: in the second half of the first season, Hajime and Tsugumi really became main characters, and the cases became more extreme. In the second half of the second season instead, the cases became less extreme, and instead that half focused on fleshing out the different important characters. I really wonder what the direction of the second half of the third season is going to be, with such an extreme first half. Are things going to be even more extreme? Will Tsugumi come back? Will Yuzuki actually get to DO SOMETHING?

Short Synopsis: A boy whose mother is nearly committing adultery calls the Jigoku Tsuushin.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
(A small note: I’ve decided to pull the “highlights”-bit from my entry introductions. I just have too much trouble for each episode to come up with something to say in it)

A surprisingly quiet and focused episode for this series. The whole themes of sending someone to hell who doesn’t deserve it still remains, but for once the main character spends a lot of time trying to figure out whether it’s worth it to send a random guy to hell, just because he’s toying around with his mother.

What we have here is a typical mother’s boy. His parents are starting to live apart from each other: his mother is irresponsible and only thinks off buying pretty kimonos, while his father is out all the time and takes out his frustrations on his wife. Very down to earth flaws… when compared to all the emo teenagers of the past few episodes (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, of course ^^;).

For once, I also felt that the main character in this episode was smart. At least for a Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuaganae-main character anyways. Sure, he does send a random guy he dislikes to hell, but in the end he does come out as a bad character: he feels regret, and yet is willing to move on despite the screw-up he made. He realizes that it’s his mother’s nature to want to be surrounded by guys who tell her she’s great, and I understand how Hone Onna could sympathize with the mother.

I think that at this point, Yuzuki should become the next Tsugumi. In this episode, she got enough chances at trying to save the next victim of Enma Ai, but she took none of them. Where the main guy learned from his mistakes, you should suspect that the same is going to happen to Yuzuki. In any case, it would be great for her to become more than just a simple bystander. While I’m normally in favour of main characters who simply play as bystanders, it shouldn’t be that their roles become completely oblivious. I mean, has she actually done something useful in the series?

Short Synopsis: A girl who believes she can use Kokkuri-san takes this obsession to the extreme.
Highlights: Interesting take on bullying…
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so this was one of the most disturbing episodes of the third season so far. The sheer level of stupidity in this episode is truly unrivalled, and yet it somehow remains down to earth in a very creepy way, and it shows what can happen if a teenager secludes herself too much from others, and suddenly gets the power to kill people.

Unlike what most anime try to teach you, most teenagers who are given these powers aren’t going to end up using them for the forces of good, but raher for their own personal gain, including getting rid of annoying teachers, or just having fun by bullying the weak who are too afraid to stand up to themselves, which has pretty much been the general message this series has been trying to convey.

This episode takes the whole concept of this show even further, by making the lead character of the episode send someone to hell that she barely even knows. With people you’ve got a direct grudge against, it’s somewhat understandable, but sending someone to hell in a desparate attempt to become popular, while you don’t know anything about that guy.

There’s one thing I’m missing in this show, though. Because it’s set at a school, it’s got much less variety. Of course, there are enough idiotic adults walking around there, and I’d love to also see a few episodes dedicated to that. And again, the finale of the second season did have enough of them, not to mention the number of very disturbing episodes in the first season.

Speaking of that first season, do you reckon that Hell Boy is going to make his comeback somewhere in this series?

Short Synopsis: A middle aged woman gets bothered by her neighbour who owns a Chihuahua
Highlights: That’s … a very smart dog.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 (Excellent)
Okay, at this point, I don’t care anymore. I don’t care how politically incorrect this series becomes, I’m not going to care about how unrealistic, repetitive or predictable the stories are. This third season is the typical sort of series that you don’t need to take too seriously, and instead need to look at the messages. This series is just awesome, although for completely different reasons than usual.

This episode really shows that it’s not just teenagers that the creators hate. It goes back to the first season, where at least the one who accesses Jigoku Tsuushin has a valid reason to send the other one to hell. The focus this time goes to a rather clueless woman in her twenties, keeping a Chihuahua (fully dressed and all), and her neighbour who is very easily ticked off by this. Aggressions build up over time, and after a while she tries to poison the poor little animal.

The woman in her twenties wasn’t totally good either (after all, she let her pet walk around in such an embarrassing little outfit), but this really was a typical episode of the first season, with a few of the impulsive influences from the third season (especially when the dog suddenly came running with the straw doll). For some strange reason, the thing I liked best about this episode was the large amount of crazy ideas that the woman got into her head. And of course the punishment scene this time was pure win.