Hell Girl is a very Higurashi-like Anime that follows a young girl, Ai Enma, who runs a website, called "Hell Correspondents". This website provides a service to the angry, revenge-hungry population of the world; with this website, you need only to log on at Midnight and type the name of someone you truly despise, and the Hell Girl will visit you, and offer you a chance to send your victim into the depths of Hell itself.
"However, you too must bring up your end of the bargain. There always has to be a price..."
When the consumer pulls the red string form the doll's neck, they enter a covenant with Ai; although their victim is brought to Hell, they're also bound for Hell when they die, regardless of how good they are before they go. This is the basic formula of the Anime as a whole, and it both benefits Hell Girl, and cripples at the same time.
The animation is pretty average. I can't say it's BAD, because it really isn't; I've seen way worse, but other Anime (Especially 80's/90's Anime) have way better animation. Hell Girl is mostly passable, but a few times the animation hiccups, seems choppy at times, or is just recycled motion. Yeah I know, recycled animation is very common in Anime, but it's still an issue. At least the quality of the recycled Animation is astounding; the constant use of a shaky camera angle adds to the suspense and fear that the series portrays.
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| This sad face will likely bring upon vengeance. |
"Little Girl singing" Exorcist-like songs, to full-on orchestra, to Metal, and back to traditional Japanese music. I guarantee you will have songs making you think, "Wow, this is fitting!", and even a song or two that makes you think, "Where can I download this?!". It's simply an amazing soundtrack.
The voice acting is mostly spot-on! I think I recognized a voice in the series to go back to Desert Punk's Kosuna also cast as Tsugumi. She did a great job at portraying the morbid nature of the 6-year old girl, in contrast with the spunky and good-natured Kosuna. That's more of a compliment to the voice actress, Luci Christian. Still, I have to give props to her great talent, and to the casting director for making that wise move. Tsugami is such a pivotal part of the Anime, that a bad actress probably would've broke the series.
The voice for Ai is pretty much everything I could've asked for in a voice role for a character like her. Everytime she talked, I was basically pissing myself. Her character really added to the tension of every situation she was in. When she wasn't coming off as frightening, it was just plain badass, which is exactly how an anti-heroine like Ai should be portrayed; marvelous work!
The episodes in the series start out with troubled girl or guy living a complicated life. Just picture things that would normally make you hate your life: Alcoholic parents, secret affairs, dead relatives, etc. Just the typical Anime stuff. Well, these situations always have a root cause, and one way or another, the troubled teenager wants to provide these hellish enemies with their "Just Desserts".
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| Ai, the Hell Girl. Notice the tears? |
Through their own blind thirst for vengeance on their adversaries, the helpless souls go to Ai's website and submit a request for revenge, which ends in the horrible people getting the shit scared out of them, killed, then dragged into hell via a rowboat. It's pretty satisfying to see these jackasses get hauled off to Hell and get what they deserve! But then, once they're gone, you get to see the other side of the pancake: the ill omen that rests with the struggling teenager after their deed is done: they'll be burning in Hell with their enemies in the end, no matter what. It gives off this really bittersweet end result, and like a cup of black coffee, always seemed to leave a bad taste in my mouth, but at the same time I wanted to take another sip.
As you can probably tell from what's been said so fr, this is a Psychological Horror-style Anime, and being so, I"ll do a brief critique on that. I'll put it like this: If you enter this series in the right state of mind, and are looking to really open to any creepy situation, you'll be...Well, not scared, I'll say that much. I'll admit that a lot of event in this series are a little unsettling, but it's not so much fright as it is just regular Shock Factor. Perhaps a Suspense-style Anime is what they were going for; perhaps it's all in how you perceive it.
Like I said, there's some messed up shit in this Anime, and probably some things that will disturb you, or maybe just make you empathetic. You've got some really touchy issues, from Divorce to Murder to torn-apart families, to murdering dogs (On several occasions, actually). A lot of the stuff just left me a little rattled, and it added more to that Shock Factor I was talking about.
So what didn't I like about this show? Quite a few things, actually. While I did love the sequences with Ai doing her thing and killing all these people, I found a few of the torment scenes with the illusions to be a little corny and overdramatic. Things like a giant head of the victim laughing, and Ai's friends subtley lecturing the wrong-doer about his sins made the whole experience feel more juvenile, like a bad dream in a kid's show. The overuse of skeletons also made a lot of the sequences uninspired and just added to follow protocol.
Speaking of protocol, that leads me into my second negative thought: the outline of the series. A lot of Anime falls into the syndrome of just being plain formulaic, but this one really knocks that table over, almost as badly as Pokémon does: Subject is sad, subject gets harassed by some asshole, subject calls Ai to kill them, subject is indecisive about pulling the string, harasser annoys subject more, subject pulls string, Ai kills the harasser. In the later episodes with the recurring characters, add in parts about investigation and catching the subject about to pull the string; at least from there, it feels like an episode of Criminal Minds, which actually interested me a lot.
The plot itself doesn't even begin to move until about a third into the damn series, and with 26 episodes, that's pretty unforgivable. You aren't even introduced to the main characters until the eighth or ninth episode, and even then, it takes a while for the realization to sink in that these characters ARE going to be the main characters. It was a plain example of bad pacing. However, once the ball finally started rolling (Episode 12 and on, maybe?), the series was executed pretty well, but I just hated all the beginning crap. I get that the producers wanted to introduce the viewer to Ai and what she's all about, but I think three or four episodes would've pulled that off fine.
As for what I liked about the Anime, well, everything outside of those three paragraphs! The music is awesome, the voice acting is spot-on, the main storyline is actually pretty amazing, and the overall theme of the Anime is one that's rarely pulled off appropritely: Revenge is such a trivial matter, so why try to sway it? By the end of the series, you finally realize that a once-willing character becomes so worn by the Hell Girl, that he doesn't even want anything to do with her anymore. It also portrays a classic Anime theme where the main character has had enough of dealing with said plot device, but the plot device just won't screw off. A classic and almost always-used ploy, but a ploy that can be presented in more ways than I could count.
In the end, Hell Girl is an entertaining show to watch; it may not stick in my head as much as Desert Punk and Witchblade did, as it's a little too gritty and Gothic for my own tastes, but if you're into that kind of stuff, then check this show out. The pacing is slow at first, and the first few episodes are basically just copy-pastes of one another, but stick with t, as those episodes set the stage for the actual story. Overall, I have to say that it's a little unmemorable, but a very nice thing to watch if you're on a break or vacation!
~WILL
Like I said, there's some messed up shit in this Anime, and probably some things that will disturb you, or maybe just make you empathetic. You've got some really touchy issues, from Divorce to Murder to torn-apart families, to murdering dogs (On several occasions, actually). A lot of the stuff just left me a little rattled, and it added more to that Shock Factor I was talking about.
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| The fangirl reaction to me saying negative things about this Anime. |
Speaking of protocol, that leads me into my second negative thought: the outline of the series. A lot of Anime falls into the syndrome of just being plain formulaic, but this one really knocks that table over, almost as badly as Pokémon does: Subject is sad, subject gets harassed by some asshole, subject calls Ai to kill them, subject is indecisive about pulling the string, harasser annoys subject more, subject pulls string, Ai kills the harasser. In the later episodes with the recurring characters, add in parts about investigation and catching the subject about to pull the string; at least from there, it feels like an episode of Criminal Minds, which actually interested me a lot.
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| the main story characters, Hajime and Tsugumi. |
As for what I liked about the Anime, well, everything outside of those three paragraphs! The music is awesome, the voice acting is spot-on, the main storyline is actually pretty amazing, and the overall theme of the Anime is one that's rarely pulled off appropritely: Revenge is such a trivial matter, so why try to sway it? By the end of the series, you finally realize that a once-willing character becomes so worn by the Hell Girl, that he doesn't even want anything to do with her anymore. It also portrays a classic Anime theme where the main character has had enough of dealing with said plot device, but the plot device just won't screw off. A classic and almost always-used ploy, but a ploy that can be presented in more ways than I could count.
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| Your general reaction to episode 18. |
In the end, Hell Girl is an entertaining show to watch; it may not stick in my head as much as Desert Punk and Witchblade did, as it's a little too gritty and Gothic for my own tastes, but if you're into that kind of stuff, then check this show out. The pacing is slow at first, and the first few episodes are basically just copy-pastes of one another, but stick with t, as those episodes set the stage for the actual story. Overall, I have to say that it's a little unmemorable, but a very nice thing to watch if you're on a break or vacation!
~WILL
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