Jigoku Shoujo – 37

Short Synopsis: A girl who found a stray cat keeps getting harassed. Good: Beautifully paranoid. It really takes a while to understand what’s really going on. Bad: Absolutely none Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5 What a brilliant episode! After the past few episodes, I almost never expected this show to turn even better, but damn… it did it again. It perfectly developed its main character, Shizuko, combining it with some paranoid moments full of mystery. We have this girl, who’s just moved in to her new apartment. There, she finds a cat, and decides to adopt it. Little does she know that the cat belong to her neighbour. When the neighbour finds out, she starts making all kinds of strange phone-calls, and she starts harassing her in all kinds of anonymous ways. But that’s not even the real beauty of this episode. [SPOILER]Huge spoiler up ahead. Seriously, if you haven’t seen the episode, close this window NOW. You really NEED to see the episode first before reading it. Seriously! I’ve been depending on Memento’s summaries to fill in the small gaps of things I didn’t understand. I’m SO glad that I did this for this episode, because otherwise, I probably never would have gotten the real meaning of this episode. It’s basically one huge punishment-scene! We see the real Shizuka pull the string off the straw doll, and afterwards, we see an extra-lengthy punishment of her neighbour, who is basically being put in the same scene as she was! Brilliant! I kept wondering why Wanyuudo, Ichimoku Ren, Hone Onna and even Ai appeared so often in all kinds of different forms, but that totally explains it. When Kyouko, the neighbour, also gets carried to hell, it’s also great to see her side of the story. It seems that the cat has been the only friend she had for a long time. When she was asked why she didn’t just “talk to Shizuko” about it, she answers that she just didn’t think about that. It’s so interesting, she was so obsessed over her cat being taken away, that she didn’t notice the best solution. It’s now also really clear why Ren, Wanyuudo and Hone were lashing out at Kirika like that. They were in the middle of their play, while Kirika was trying to mess things up. ^^; It’s really too bad that so many people have dropped this in the first season. It’s starting to get more interesting by the minute right now. It’s such a pity.]]>