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.
Was the promise really the reason Usagi ultimately sent Michito to hell? I thought it was just a continuation of a bad memory that turns out that not all was so bad between the siblings.
It seemed to me that it was actually the brother’s encouragement that Usagi can indeed accomplish things that pushed her. It’s just that it was going through the Jigoku Shoujo contract was what she decided to accomplish. Talk about bad timing …
It’s not that.
She remembered that time when her brother won’t MARRY her at all costs or won’t even be attracted to her AT ALL, since they were children.
Too bad the brother reminded her of that pledge when they were ironing things out.. “I know you can always get a boyfriend. Even YOU can get a boyfriend if you try harder..” or something like that. Apparently to Usagi that’s not enough because in her mind she always loved her brother with MORE than just a sibling relationship and that’s when she decided she should push through in sending her brother to hell – because her brother will never be attracted to her.