Hell Girl

Synopsis:

If you have a grudge against someone it's said that at midnight a direct link to hell appears on the internet. If you enter someones name you will summon the Hell Girl to exact your revenge, however, if she banishes your foe to Hell at your request you will enter a covenant with her. She will take the person you have a grievance with to Hell immediately and then come for you later after you've led your life as normal and you will also go straight to hell without standing trial before hand.


Reviewer: Endosanity
Number of episodes watched: 26


Review:

Hell girl is a psychological thriller that isn't so much a of an ongoing story as it is a bunch of self contained episodes in the vein of Tales from the Darkside or Tales from the Crypt. At the beginning of each episode there is someone that is having thier life go to shambles as the result of one person and they then hear the rumor of Hell Girl and give it a try and she appears and explains what will happen if she takes revenge for him or her. This is a great idea but the only thing is that it makes the pacing of the show excruciatingly slow as it becomes repetitive and listening to Hell Girl explain the consequences every time and also watching her get ready to travel out of Hell you're only left with maybe 17 minutes of any real content in each episode. Since the show presents itself fairly well this isn't a bad thing but you're going to want some variety aside from watching people take revenge, someone going to Hell, and someone being condemned to Hell, like maybe one who changes thier mind or some sort of holy intervention... it doesn't happen. It's not until episode 8 that re-occurring characters appear but thier involvement doesn't really come into fruition until the last 4 episodes.

This anime is presented with above average animation and drawn in a soft dream-like quality which does add an aura of creepiness to it even with FUNimation's typical horrid video quality. The downsides though are the lack of variety and there is no character depth to back up Hell Girl, nothing is explained on *how* she was chosen as an avatar for revenge, nor is any of her assistants explained (Demons? Spirits? Who knows?), or her eerie grandmother that you never see is a mystery. I'd hate to say it but Hell Girl can almost be considered horror-lite as it's not filled with demons or fields of souls being tormented for eternity, and there's no buckets of blood here... what you have is Hell Girl being represented as Charon ferrying souls across the river Styx and the rest is up to your imagination. I do recommend Hell Girl but it's just too bad it's filled with so many plot holes that you'll be left thinking "That's it?" Watch it but... don't expect much in return.

Hell Girl (opening)

Recommendation: |Average|


*Note - Avoid the dub soundtrack at all costs as it sounded so uninspired and lackluster that it simply kills the atmospheric tension. Go with the subtitles as it fits the mood of the dialog and oddly enough it didn't have the usual FUNimation spelling error here and there. And yes, they used that ridiculous 'angle' option of the DVD player again so if you see that icon on your screen... it's not your player but the DVD. Seriously, most of us really don't really care if the opening and closing credits are in English or in Kanji (Japanese text).