Hell Girl

I really think the anime is good and deserves more popularity.

Overall I enjoyed Hell Girl but the first about 10 episodes are really, really repetitive and... yes... become even kinda boring at some point.

After that rough start the series turns out to be more and more enjoyable though, the animation is beautiful and the grand themes of this Anime were quite interesting:

How far are you willing to go for vengeance? Is vengeance ever the right answer? Do some people rightfully deserve to go to hell for what they have done?

6/10, solid but not a must see in my opinion. I would recommend it half-heartedly to people really interested in the story but as I said don't expect to be blown away right from the beginning.

If you have seen the ads and trailers of this show that makes you think of it as a Ringu or Ju-On rip-off, I guarantee that you are at least 80% deceived. Jigoku Shoujo is a show that takes a cliché subject (where a person or thing with some power offers in sending people you hate off to hell and taking your soul as payment for it) and treats it in such a way that you actually think about it, trust me. You think about the whole of this selfish human race that thinks nothing but of its own pleasures and comforts, you think about how valuable present circumstances - pleasure or pain is that much important in our lives. So what if you go to Hell hereafter? That is in the "distant" future, right? That is what the people in this show are thinking. So they call upon poor Ai Enma to do the dirty work, and it is what she was forced to do, whether she enjoyed it or not. She punishes the guilty. She ferries them directly off to Hell, but for making her do that (which becomes a mortal sin), the person who made the request is also doomed at the end of his or her natural life.

The animation is quite good, the music matches the mood, whether it is sadness or anxiety, and you have an unique show out of a very popular, dismal subject.

I'm a latecomer to anime in general, but after thoroughly enjoying titles like Dororo, The Promised Neverland, Boku dake ga inai machi, and Kino's Journey I was off to a really good start. I found Hell Girl on a list of supposedly cerebral anime with dark themes. Unfortunately it's not particularly dark or cerebral, more repetitive and sappy. I lost interest around episode 17. I feel like the whole series is an exercise in waiting for something that never materializes. 5/10.

So Jigoku shojo or 'Hell Girl' as it's known in English, I found to be an enjoyable series. I'll admit that the first 10/15 episodes -so most of series 1- follow a shortly recognisable narrative. Someone is clearly being mistreated or hurt by another, so through the "hell communication" they write on the website the name of their tormentor, and the Hell Girl will take revenge for them. There are 2 series after this and they delve into the back story much more and we finally learn more about the Hell Girl -how she came to be- and her assistants.

Overall give it a chance it's worth a watch, the character of Hell Girl is one of my favourites out of all the anime series I've watched. I'd stick to watching it subbed- the dub isn't great. The animation is very lovely too.