The concept: somewhere on the net, there exists a website. When you access that website, you can enter the name of a person you want to take revenge on. This person then gets sent to hell immediately. There is a catch, however. When you die, you also get sent to hell. Your soul will never find peace, and it’ll burn forever. In some anime, concepts like these never work. Jigoku Shoujo, however, somehow manages to turn this into something awesome.
Each episode is a standalone episode, except for the latter ones. In each of these, a person wants revenge on another person, and struggles whether it’s worth it or not. While some of the cases may look like each other, the majority of these cases manage to produce a unique standalone story, with beautiful characters, beautiful motives and furthermore great storytelling. I especially liked episode 7, 16, 22 and 23.
The characters are amazing. Each of the main characters has a unique personality, a good background (in most cases great) and really adds to the story. There were no annoying main characters at all. The characters who only appeared for one episode, even though there were a lot of them, all had something different from each other, and each of them had some kind of background. At the end of each episode, we could really enter the mind of these characters.
The art looks amazing. Especially the character art is among the most crisp ever seen in anime. The music also has turned into a masterpiece. The storytelling also couldn’t have been done better.
Overall, Jigoku Shoujo is an amazing anime. I’ll definately recommend it to anyone. Although, I have to say that there were a number of episodes which didn’t really seem too impressive. Apart from that, I have no complaints about this series.
Final Rating: 92/100
There hasn’t been any official date for the second season,but it should normaly begin to air in the next winter season.
And yes,they were some boring episodes.
You, dear author, have quite a weird taste. I fail to see anything spectacular about this show. While I thoroughly enjoyed the first episode, and liked the lines repeated in the second, all the rest were killing me.
Why you gave such a high score to this show, while calling Code Geass a trainwreck is beyond me.
For me, this anime is on the top of all kinds of rates(music, storyline, etc.).
On episode 14 or 15 when they showed us pictures of Ai, art work of a artist that used the Hell Correspondence and he was on his way to death(hell)… when his ligh started to fade.. Ai’s portrait on the wall started to cry… i was absolutely amazed i stood like O_O for whole minute and tears started to slide on my face… absolutely beautiful and delightful, she is.
I totally agree – Enma Ai/ Jigoku Shoujo art is truely beautiful and you cant help wonder if some characters of the stories are good or bad – if the action of sending somebody to hell is correct. The Episode with the Ai’s Art portrait tears falling down had me breathless… It so well done.. Also Noto Mamiko did a great job with the voice of Jigoku Shoujo – Eerie, lonely and haunting without falling into overacting.
Jigoku Shoujo definitely was something new for me. It was executed quite beautifully, and that goes for the art as well. Especially the way they draw Ai-GUSHHH.
I do wish they did speed up a bit more though. Sometimes it took forever to get anywhere. 😛
Really it is one of tge best animes i have ever seen…… In most episodes the artwork is brilliant……. The character design of Ai is beyond words………
I specially liked episode 25 of the first series…..