Star Crossed Anime

Short Synopsis: One of the strangest episodes yet. Wanyuudo’s past gets revealed when Ai gets summoned to the place where she first met him. Good: I liked the narrative style a lot. The two cases at the same time were confusing, but very enjoyable. Bad: This episode had more freaking fanservice than a hot-spring episode of a harem-anime, and that has to say something! Overall Enjoyment Value: 7.5/10 Whoa, the fanservice, the huge amounts of fanservice. That’s definitely something you don’t expect from a series like this. Almost half of the episode was in a hot spring. While I can understand the small amounts of fanservice that have been featured in the show before, this definitely was way too much. Still, ignoring the fanservice, we have an excellent episode. It’s one of the first in which two stories are told at the same time. One where Ai meets Wanyuudo, near a local hot-spring resort which just opened, and one where Ai returns after 400 years, to carry out yet another grudge. The interesting thing is that these cases are very much related. The first case is about the owner of the hot springs. He refuses to let a girl marry his son, just because he wants him to marry the daughter of another hot-spring owner. The girl becomes so angry about this, since she already carries the son’s baby, and because of this she sends the father to hell. At that time, Ai still worked alone. She used a shrine, for her victims in order to contact her. The straw doll also was just an ordinary straw doll, instead of one of her companions in disguise. You’d wonder why Wanyuudo started to take over it’s role, though. She also used to walk to her victims, since she didn’t have the transportation facility that is called Wanyuudo yet. It does make you wonder, though. At one time, she’s able to just appear wherever she’d like, and at other times, she just has to walk. In any case, during this particular case, she heard a rumour of a Youkai which has been bothering travellers. I assume that she looked for people to help her, and then she finally found what she searched for in Wanyuudo, so she recruited him. Later, she found Ichimoku Ren, in sword-form, like we saw in one of the previous episodes. I’m suspecting that the next episode will be dedicated to how Ai ran into Hone Onna. I think that she also has a small story to share with us. In the second case, the descendant of the girl who was rejected starts blackmailing the owner, the descendant of the boy she was in love with, because she found out that the owner artificially maintains the hot springs, as it dried up long ago. Things are too late, however, and this gets leaked out before the girl can get sent to hell. It’s interesting to see that Ai and Wanyuudo were the first and the last customers in the hot springs. Another interesting thing to note is that at one point, Ai decided to make her victims vanish. In the case 400 years ago, she left the body, boiled and all. That was quite the shock. I wonder what made her decide to do this.]]>

Short Synopsis: A woman who once divorced from her husband has no other choice than to live with him, after being unable to move most of her body. Their daughter gets negatively involved in this. Good: Whoa, even though it was the usual formula, the antagonist this time totally made up for it! The father also was amazing. This also was one of the few episodes at which I didn’t need Memento in order to fully understand it. 🙂 Bad: The episode was amazing, but the usual formula did remain. Overall Enjoyment Value: 8.5/10 This definitely was one of the best episodes of Jigoku Shoujo Futakomori yet! I can’t believe how touching the antagonist became! We first get the illusion that she’s an incredibly old hag. The main character’s mother has never been enthusiastic about her, and she kept giving her the cold shoulder when she was young. Then at one point, her mother divorced of her husband, abandoning him and their daughter. Then, years later, she comes back. Most of her muscles are unable to move and the girl and her father now have to take care of her. The only problem is that her mother turned into an incredible bitch. She only yells and complains. Especially to her daughter. This was one of the few times where I actually wanted to see a person to go to hell. But then the history of the mother became clear. Boy, did that change my view of her. The girl isn’t her own daughter. At one point, it seemed that she could never produce a baby, so her father looked for another woman to have a child with. This worked, and the mother only had to watch this happen. It’s no wonder that she’d hate her child this way! Not only that, but none other than her father was responsible for her ending up in that state. By this point, her father also gets an even more amazing role, when he has to choose between his daughter and his wife. He clearly knows that his ex-wife bring great trouble to his daughter. She can’t even spend proper time with her boyfriend. I can SO imagine that it must have been a VERY difficult decision to send his ex-wife to hell, for the happiness of his daughter. That really was beautiful! Seriously, I do hope that the last couple of episodes of Jigoku will be just as good as this one. It’s great to see that the creators managed to make a very interesting case out of a usual formula.]]>

Short Synopsis: Ichimoku Ren is the last of the dolls to show his past. The case, meanwhile, involves the daughter of someone who had already been in contact with Jigoku Shoujo before. Good: Finally a great episode again! The changes that people make over 12 years were great to see. Bad: Can we now finally have some kind of main plot? Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 Finally, I’ve been waiting for another episode to bring a twist to the episodes of Jigoku Shoujo. The past few episodes have been rather disappointing. Episode sixteen showed some good signs again, and with this episode, this show is back on track again. I really like when Jigoku Shoujo deals with past cases, as it really gives some insights about how the characters changed. I would have loved to have seen the case of the mother, earlier in the series, but I guess that 12 years is too early for the start of the anime. It’s interesting to see how the woman has changed into a workaholic over the years. Because of this, her grandmother probably got enough chances to manipulate her to make her think that her mother is a bad person. It seems that she’s the real reason of tis story. She just couldn’t forget her son’s death, and she had to blame someone for it. I think she’s actually seeing her granddaughter as a substitution for her son. The mother, meanwhile is too sad. First her husbands abuses her, then she has to send him to hell to protect herself and her daughter. Because of that, she has to work hard to sustain her family. Her mother-in-law meanwhile tries to take her daughter away from her. Her daughter meanwhile thinks of sending her own mother to hell because of this. In order to protect her daughter from going to hell, she decides to take the initiative. We also see Ichimoku Ren’s history this time. His history also is the bloodiest of all. While Wanyuudo got in an accident, and Hone Onna got murdered as prostitute, he actually was a sword, which had been used by lots of people to kill, cheat, steal and other nasty stuff. That’s probably why he’s the most silent of the three dolls, even though he has the youngest body.]]>

Short Synopsis: The main character this time is very kind-hearted and trusting. Because of this, people start to use her. Hone Onna’s background gets revealed. Good: Thankfully, a lot better than the previous few episodes. Hone Onna’s history and compassion was a great touch. Bad: If it wasn’t for Memento, I wouldn’t have understood it. Overall Enjoyment Value: 7.5/10 Ah, finally we have an actually good episode again. The first half was decent, though I really liked the way the plot went in the second half. Hone Onna’s compassion with the main character, who was just too nice and ignorant helped a lot. She seemed to work in a brothel when she was still alive, killed by her boss and thrown into the river. This in comparison to Wanyuudo, who got into an accident, rather than having a rather dreadful life. You’d wonder about Ichimoku Ren. His clothes are more modern, so I assume that Ai actually recruited him only ten or twenty years ago. Anyway, I also liked how the main character actually died. It doesn’t happen often, and when it does, things often go a bit predictable. It’s a nice twist, but I’m still waiting for some kind of thing that will send this series to its climax, like Hajime and Tsugumi did with the first season. It could be, of course, that this thing already appeared, but a bit more subtle this time, in the form of Kikuri. But what can she really add to this series that can trump Hajime and Tsugumi at this point?]]>