| Cover Art |
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| Credits |
| Creator: Hiroshi Watanabe |
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What is it about the Japanese and spooky little girls? Ringu, Dark Water etc… those scary little girls are everywhere. In fact, I am getting so creeped out by them, I don't even like to drive past schools anymore!!!
But seriously…
The Japanese were really onto something when the idea of the 'creepy little girl' first emerged; the combination of evil in a pre-pubescent female form seems to be something that, upon initial viewing, is an excellent way to activate the 'chill-o-meter' that makes the little hairs on the back of our neck stand on end. The problem for Hell Girl is that it really only works in a live action scenario, and not in the form of a cute, wide-eyed anime girl, and no matter how red you make her eyes, it just isn't the same.
Hell Girl aka Jigoku Shoujo is similar to the live action TV show Freddy's Nightmares - basically an anthology series with the evil creature being the only recurring character, the difference is that even though Freddy's Nightmares was pretty stupid, Robert Englund was charismatic enough to carry the show through its silliness. Hell Girl unfortunately doesn't have this luxury, and quickly becomes tiresome and repetitive.
The premise is thus: on the stroke of midnight, one can gain access to a mysterious website known as hellcorrespondence.com, and once there, a person can enter the name of their torturer who will be taken to Hell by the enigmatic being known as Ai Enma, who mans the boat that crosses the river that takes ones soul there. The conditions of this deal though are that when the person asking Hell Girl to destroy their tormenter dies, their soul will be taken to Hell as well.
This disc is disc one of the series, and features 5 tales of Hell Girl and her website, all of which are basically the same story but with different set ups.
Essentially, it's Hellraiser, but animated. Now while that might sound like a good idea, I'll just add that all the sadomasochistic designs are dumped for traditional cute characters. You could even describe Hell Girl as the bizarre love-child of a three-way involving Hideshi Hino, Ringu and kids cartoon Ruby Gloom, which sounds like a good idea… and is a good idea that seems to me to be executed badly. The animation and character design aren't the greatest; in actual fact on several occasions the characters were so similar that I mixed characters up, and wondered what the hell was going on! |
