Short Synopsis: A famous idol has a past she’d like to not think back to.
Highlights: The theme of growing up versus staying the same.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7/10 (Good)
Okay, so in my next attempt to make the episode-rating a bit less confusing and more expressive, I’m trying to associate a word-rating with each number. It’s obviously incredibly inaccurate, but I hope it helps both the reader and me a little. Basically, the rule of thumb is that if the episode rating is six or higher, it means that I liked it.
In any case, in this episode a famous idol becomes the victim of Jigoku Shoujo. When she was a middle schooler, she was pretty much your typical teenager, and she grew up together with her best friend, as they both aspired to become idols. At one point, she ditched her best friend and went on to become a famous idol. Over the years, she grew up and realized what an idiot she’s been, though her best friend still can’t forgive her, and she also longs to be a famous idol as well, even though she can’t sing to save her life. Since she never grew up, she acts like the teenager she is and sends her former friend to hell.
In the meantime, it seems like the new boy on Ai’s party comes from Kikuri’s side, and is something like a servant to her (calling her “Hime”). One thing that felt a bit off in this episode was how Mikage just keeps running into potential Jigoku Shoujo-victims. I mean, I can understand how the Ai inside of her is directing her towards these cases or something, but I’d like to have that actually confirmed WITHIN the show.
In essence, the general formula of this episode was pretty much the same as in the previous two episodes, but that’s of course something to be expected, since the first and second season did this too. Right now, this series is busy creating a solid base, and of course the real fun is only going to begin when the stories start diverging from this base, and it’s always going to be a mystery as to when that’s going to happen. The base for this season seems to be a bit different from the previous seasons. Even though there were quite a few exceptions, the general formula was basically Ai and her minions handing out a strange sort of justice. In the third season though, Ai has only been carrying out the wishes of whiny and spoiled teenagers, with the great thing being that the creators seem to be having lots of fun to make all sorts of teenagers suffer as much as possible. I sense a strange sort of sadism in this season, which gives off a pretty nice effect.
I’m also glad to finally see another series that shows that recycled scenes aren’t necessarily a bad thing: you just have to know how to use them. Obviously, if they’re used as an impulsive way to save a bit of budget, it’s a bad thing, and at the same time the technique has been made infamous by various mahou shoujo. However, when they’re used for creating a sort of ritualistic feeling, they can actually contribute to the series they’re in. It doesn’t happen often, I only noticed this effect in Jigoku Shoujo and Revolutionary Girl Utena so far, but repetitive shows like these are excellent at creating a ritual that appears in every other episode. The fun then comes from everything that plays around it.
Oh, and one final comment: three episodes in, and I obviously can’t say yet whether this is going to be the best season of Jigoku Shoujo, but I can say one thing: it’s definitely going to be the season with the best visuals. It’s incredible: the graphics for this series already looked great, and the creators managed to succeed in making things look even better.
I think Noein did well with repeated animation as well. The Dragon Torque materialisation/dematerialisation scene was a staple of the show, and there were some episodes that coped with Timespaces and such that used repeated animation(e.g. Haruka’s Dad answering the phone in different ways)
Though obviously the bad examples are shows like Soul Eater which, whilst good, use very obvious examples of repeated animation which really does not flow so well.