Manga, Live-Action Drama, Anime: Jigoku Shoujo was adapted into a manga after it finished its original TV run, with art and story done by Miyuki Eto. It began running in Kodansha's Nakayoshi magazine in the October 2005 issue, is still running, and has, for the most part, had an original story line and plot changes, though some episodes from the anime do get their own manga chapters. Del Rey has licensed it Stateside, and the third volume is due on August 5th, while it stand at six collected volumes in Japan currently.
A live-action spinoff consisting of twelve half-hour episodes began running on TV on November 4th, 2006, and finished its run on January 27th, 2007. There's not a lot about it, so I don't know how similar or dissimilar it is to the original anime. It will also not be covered in this review.
Speaking of which, Jigoku Shoujo was originally a twenty-six episode anime, and ran on Japanese TV from October 4th, 2005 to April 4th, 2006. It was produced by Studio Deen (famous for their work on Fruits Basket and Fate/Stay Night) and directed by Takahiro Omori (famous for his work on Baccano! and Gakuen Alice). It has been licensed Stateside by Funimation, and the sixth and final volume was released on May 20th.
Story: There is a rumor that if there's someone giving you absolute hell and you want to get revenge on them, there's a website that you can access only at midnight, known as Hell Correspondence. Once the name is submitted, Ai Enma (aka Jigoku Shoujo/Hell Girl) will appear to the client and give them a straw doll with a red string wrapped around its neck. If the client wishes to take revenge, then all they have to do is pull the string and Ai and her helpers will ferry the person to hell. However, there is a small catch to all this: Once the compact is made with Ai, the person who took revenge will go to hell once they've died as well.
Jigoku Shoujo is, at it's heart, a Revenge of the Week episode. Once you've seen two or three episodes, you have the basic outline of every episode: Introduction to person being tormented and torment, tormented accesses Hell Correspondence, Ai and tormented meet up and she tells them the conditions and such, tormented ends up debating/angsting over whether or not the deal is worth it, things are escalated in some way, and the tormented pulls the string, sending the tormentor to hell. Rinse and repeat for twenty-three or so episodes.
I'm really kind of disappointed, because there's almost no background about Ai until the last three or so episodes of the show, and even that is minimal, not to mention that the background of her helpers doesn't even get mentioned.
The fact that the set up doesn't change one bit throughout the entire show, even when the show introduces two people who try and thwart Ai (the reporter Hajime and his daughter, Tsugumi, who has a psychic connection to Ai) does not help the show at all. Hajime and Tsugumi were only really vital to the plot of five episodes total; with the others, they could've not been around, and the same thing still would have happened, which makes their existence kind of useless. Also, the fact that Hajime has a tendency to come off as an incredible bastard at times, not to mention a bit of a hypocrite, doesn't help things. I understand what the creators might've been trying to do, here, but they missed the mark with these two.
The quality for the Revenge of the Week stories average out to about half and half; half are excellent and have incredible writing and twists, and the other half are kind of... eh. The characters are always memorable, though.
Admittedly, there is a second season, Jigoku Shoujo Futakomori, that can hopefully rectify these mistakes.
Art: The art that has to do with the world that Ai occupies when she's not working, the revenges that they take on the tormentors, and to do with her helpers' and her own character design are absolutely stunning. The colors for these are incredibly rich, and the designs in general are beautifully done.
As for the part that has to do with our world... eh. The backgrounds are done well, and the character designs for the people of the week start to blur together after a certain point and become incredibly generic, but they manage to remain slightly distinct.
There is some stock footage, but it isn't all that bad.
Music: The music for this is absolutely amazing, in my opinion, and one of the first things I really noticed about the series. There are several recurring themes throughout the show, and they are extremely memorable. The music is a mix of Western orchestration, rock numbers, and traditional Japanese instruments that always seems to catch my ear.
The OP's a pretty standard J-Pop female upbeat number, but is still pretty catchy, all things considered. The ED is absolutely amazing, though; a typical J-Pop female ballad that uses cello and traditional Japanese instruments for instrumentation, and has lyrics that very directly relate to the show.
Seiyuu: The seiyuu for this show did a good job, as always; no voices that seemed out of place or painful. Though I do kind of pity the seiyuu who had to play Ai, as her lines were mostly the same throughout all twenty-six episodes; hopefully, they'll vary up the dialogue for her next season.
Length: If they cut out the crappy half of the show, we have a show that could easily have fit within thirteen-ish episodes, and still been a pretty good show. That cut probably should have been made, as most of the good part of the show doesn't really start to happen until the halfway or so mark.
Overall: A really good concept that ended up lacking a bit in its execution, and in the long run, would've benefited from cutting the actual amount of episodes in half, so that the best parts of the show stayed intact, with beautiful art and music, and seiyuu that could have used more varied lines, really. But maybe its issues can be rectified in the second season, Futakomori.
Story: 7
Art: 9
Music: 9
Seiyuu: 8
Length: 7
Overall: 40/50; 80% (B )
