I’ll get right to the point. I liked Jigoku Shoujo. What I will attempt to express here is why exactly I like this show. There is plenty to not like here. Plainly, there is no ecchi aspect of the show, it is episodic in nature, and the whole of the plot could have been shown in the last six episodes. If it hadn’t been for the last six episodes I would be off on a rant right now about how much Jigoku Shoujo stunk. I just couldn’t stop watching it because of my stated “condition”. Luckily for us the show did end fairly well, but the creators seem to have had a second season in the works so it didn’t end with any try at finality.

I’m typing this while watching Terminator 2 Judgment Day on the SciFi channel. I’ve probably watched T2 about thirteen times over the years but whenever it’s on (and there is nothing else of interest), I will sit down and watch it again. There are shows that you can tell will be listed in the pantheon of classics. They become examples for there genre and are endlessly compared to all those who came before and after them. For action films T2 exist in that realm. For anime titles we have Neon Genesis, Cowboy Bebop, Akira, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Ghost in the Shell as well as many of others. There are some up and comers now as well Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu and Black Lagoon look very promising. My point being, most of time it doesn’t come as a complete surprise when ten or twenty years after a show airs that people are still talking about it. What many call the “classics” are classics because they were great when they were created and still entertaining or meaningfull when they are watched again.

I don’t feel that Jigoku Shoujo will ever be listed along with what many would consider great contemporary anime of its time. For that matter, I don’t think we (bloggers or readers) will mention this series very much in the future. I’m making the assumption that the second season of Jigoku Shoujo doesn’t pull-off a T2, in that the second season is vastly superior to the first. I probably will not watch Jigoku Shoujo again unless it gets picked up by one of the cable channels (Cartoon Network for instance). That’s no to say that the show doesn’t deserve an English dub. The American distributors have imported worse in the past. I don’t think that will happen any time soon, but I’ve seen stranger things.

Alright, I’ve been pretty hard on the show up until now. I admit that I would have rather liked it if they had added some killer lolis to the series. This is something I’ve mentioned here and in several other blogs. I’ve only recently began to forgive the show for not doing that. But, the purpose of this post was to talk about why I like Jigoku Shoujo. Basically, it all comes down to episodes 21 through 26 because that’s were the story really begins to take off and we finally learn something about the main characters.

I am an easy sell. All I want is a good story and character development. It’s icing on the cake if there are mecha, lolis, moe, explosions, emo facial contortions, blood, and all the other things that set off meme tsunami across the blogging world.

Jigoku Shoujo seems to want to explores a simple aspect of human psychology, that being the need for vengeance in all people. For the majority of the series there is a single plot formula. First, introduce the “bad” and “good” parties. One of which will attempt to send the other to hell using Hell Correspondence. Second, enter our main protagonist Hajime and Tsugumi who will attempt to thwart the plans of those who wish to send someone to hell for that episode. That person being the one to make contact with Emma Ai. It is actually Ai who shows Tsugumi where each contract will be made. Even so, Hajime and Tsugumi fail to stop people from completing the contracts a disturbingly large percentage of the time.

Ai does not actually become the antagonist characters until we enter the block of episodes near the end of the series. For the majority of the series Ai is actually a plot tool. She is there to take people to hell and there are precious few moments when we see her in any emotional light or experience any real character development. Of course, her dolls are totally tools and with the exception of a few comments about why they are her servants, during the final episodes, there is no development of their characters. Their behavior stays the same throughout the scope of the series.

This show gets major Kawaii points just for Tsugume, oh yeah, that’s Hajime and his wife.

Hajime and Tsugume, being our main protagonist, experience some level of character development through the series but not enough. I liked the fact that it is Hajime who is apposed to Emma Ai’s actions, and it is Tsugumi who has to learn along the way why sending people to hell is a bad thing. The fact that one of the two main characters has to actually make a logical decision about how they feel about an issue is interesting in and of itself. Too often, anime characters simply state their convictions and then run head long into a plot that conveniently doesn’t offer any opposition to their stated opinions. Tsugume spends the series largely in that mold. She cannot see the benefit of letting someone suffer while their torturers see no punishment.

It takes twenty two episodes to learn why Hajime is opposed to Ai. We are already aware that his wife has died and he lives alone with Tsugumi. It is only at this time that we learn that shortly before her death he had discovered that she was having an affair. It is his unwillingness to forgive her and her death during that time that shapes his perception of vengeance. He was unwilling to forgive her for her extramarital affair. To some reasonable extent he blames himself for her death. A moment of hatred mixed with pain and there is nothing left but suffering.

Tsugume not getting Hajime

Despite the fact that good and bad people of varying degree get sent to hell in almost every episode, the series is actually biased toward the view that it’s not a good thing for the average person to have the ability to send people to hell. It takes a shocking event to make Tsugume re-examine what Ai is doing and the fact that she will send anyone to hell as long as someone completes the contract. [There is prior evidence that she does make some decisions on who she fairies to hell, but for the most part that whole idea is up in the air for lack of evidence.] Tsugume is forced to evaluate her stance after what happens in the twenty third episode when a young nurse is sent to hell for unknown reasons, but by all indications she was a very good person. In that particular episode, there is no attempt made to indict the nurse as a evil person. She is very much a noble soul.

Tsugume confronted with reality

After the nurse is sent to hell Tsugume cannot live in the simple black and white world she was living in before, she must make a conscious decision about good and evil / right and wrong. Is being wronged or hurt a justifiable reason to hate? Does anyone have the right to send someone to hell? Are her previous convictions about the already numerous people she knows have gone to hell right? Tsugume is a child but she has been living alone with her father for quite some time. Naturally, she is a little more mature than her contemporaries because her father is a work-a-holic and also seems to rely on her more than she does on him. As much as possible, her actions and responses are believable given her age and situation.

Speeding along, we learn during the final episodes why Ai is tasked with sending people to hell, but not the specifics. We also learn of the connection between Hajime’s ancestor Sentarou and Emma Ai. It is a story of love and seemingly betrayal as far as Ai is concerned. Ai was selected to be a sacrifice to the gods who looked over her village. It is Sentarou who for six years hides her and protects her, but when the villagers finally find her they bury her alive with her parents. This is done in order to appease the gods. Ai has been consumed with a need for vengeance because of Sentarou’s betrayal. She has never expressed it thusfar because part of the agreement she had with–presumably the devil–was to close her heart and fairy people to hell. It may have been happenstance that Tsugume and she came into contact, but it seems purposeful that she let Tsugume see through her eyes and lead them to each encounter. I think the purpose of the visions was to condition Tsugume for the final episode. After Tsugume learns that her mother died after an argument with Hajime, she is given the option to send him to hell. This would be a “two birds with but one stone” action on Ai’s part because in the end she will see both of them to hell because of the contact.

Upon the last episode, Ai forces Tsugume to make a decision about whether to send her father to hell or not. The question to the viewer is, can love overcome hatred and vengeance? Tsugume learns that if Hajime had simply forgiven her mother she wouldn’t have died. She also learns that it was because Hajime was never around that her mother sought comfort from another man. The events of the night Tsugume’s mother died are played before them, re-living the event shows that Hajime had never forgiven himself for what had happened. So much is his grief that he asks Tsugume to send him to hell, but she refuses.

There is a strong correlation between what happened between Ai and Sentarou with the events of the night of Hagime’s wife’s death. Sentarou’s lack of resolve and his unwillingness to fallow his heart is cast along the same lines as Hagime’s unwillingness to forgive, despite his love for his wife. This is not lost on Emma Ai. I do believe.

The last episode made the show for me. We finally see some emotion from the title character, and many of the loose plot strings are tied up and overall the story is completed rather nicely. While I will admit that I’m a sucker for happy endings, this show really needed it. I don’t see Jigoku Shoujo ending in any other manner. Because of the nature of the story, there really needed to be some good after all the fairing to hell that had gone on for most of the series. There was a need, to show that the characters we had watched for so long had heart.

Quick Note: Why did Ai blow up the shrine? My thoughts are that she destroyed the shrine, that was build in her honor, because she was cutting the ties to her past. The shrine was build as an atonement by Sentarou to Ai (and the rest of the sacrificed children). She had existed the entire time since her sacrifice filled with a hurt and sorrow, melded with hatred. That was her way of moving on.

Updated: 6/29/2003 9:06; small changes and edited the timestamp