Ranked #5386

Jigoku Shoujo (Manga)

Jigoku Shoujo was one of the first animes that I watched. I absolutely loved the anime and when I saw that it had been made into a manga I was ecstatic. However, I was a little disappointed with how it turned out.

The story was good. Very deserving of an eight. It followed the original arrangement of mini-stories quite well, but it still didn't quite capture the essence of Jigoku Shoujo. I was looking forward to the scenes in Ai's Eternal Twilight, but it hardly delved into that at all. Some of the stories began to sound the same over and over again, which was a slight downfall to the storyline.

The art, I have to say, was the strong point in the manga. I loved the way the characters, clothing and even backgrounds were drawn. They had great detail. My only complaint about the art would be that Eto-san didn't seem to quite capture Ai's expressions very well. She always seemed to have a mad look on her face while the face in the anime was more melancholy.

The characters all seemed to blend together. I even believe that the same names were used more than once. Most of the characters were female, middle-school students so there wasn't much of a variety. They all acted vaguely similar and didn't seem to add very well to the plot. Ai wasn't explained hardly at all. A random chapter explained her history, but it seemed out of place. Ai also seemed sort of cynical and a tad sarcastic when she spoke, or that could have been her expression. The followers weren't looked into as I hoped they would be, they hardly made any appearance which was a bit disappointing.

Enjoyment and Overall score is a solid eight, this is a good read, despite the slightly out of place art. Fans of Jigoku Shoujo will probably be disappointed like me but it is still good, not great, good.
read more