Short Synopsis: A guy has lost his wife and son in a truck accident five years ago, and his daughter has been in coma ever since. But why would he want to access Jigoku Tsuushin?
Good: Lots of Ai-airtime this time. Nice ending.
Bad: This episode just doesn’t match up to the quality of the previous episodes.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10
Dammit. Here I was expecting a huge episode, and then it comes with such a usual one. We have this guy who has this grudge against a number of idiots who tried to be on television while his wife just died. Right now, he’s feeling that his time is coming, and he at least wants the idiots to die before he does. In the end, he can’t kill the last of the idiots, so he lets Ai do it for him.
Still, I do feel that this episode featured a turning point. No major one, but Ai and Kikuri were exceptionally present in this episode. Especially Kikuri was finally more than the annoying brat of the past episodes. She finally shows a bit of what she can do, and the effect this has on the different cases. I’m suspecting that the following episodes will continue to delve deeper in this. Ai also actually contributed to the research. Either that, or she wanted to try out being a waitress. I’m not sure what that purpose was, same with her, eating a snack at the Oden. Okay, it was amusing, and she looked REALLY cute, but the point…?
Still, the ending was surprisingly good. Okay, his daughter waking up was unavoidable, though the creators actually found a good reason for her to wake up at that exact time. I also like how this episode put emphasis on the punishment of hell and the punishment of killing someone. The guy now has to live his life with two punishments: seeing his daughter find out that he’s a murderer, and if that wasn’t good enough, he’d have a nice and cosy hell for him as soon as he dies, which probably won’t take long.
I’ve also been wondering… will Hell Boy return? And what about Hajime and Tsugumi? The fact remains that the final few episodes of this series will bring some kind of conclusion to this series. Though so far, we’ve got no clue as to what this might be, in contrary to the first season, which clearly focused on Hajime’s struggle against Ai. I’m suspecting Kikuri and the spider will be playing a huge role in this. Especially the spider. He’s been getting an awful little amount of development, though. I want to see more of him… err.. it.]]>
Jigoku Shoujo – 39
