Hell Girl: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"O pitiful shadow, lost in the darkness,''

''Bringing torment and pain to others.''

''O damned soul, wallowing in your sin.''

 

Schoolrooms all over Japan are abuzz with the rumor of the "Hell Correspondence" (''Jigoku Tsushin''), a mysterious website which can only be accessed at midnight. If you submit the name of someone you hold a grudge against, that person will summarily be sent to hell. This service is not without a price: by sending someone to hell, you enter into a contract with Ai Enma, the Hell Girl (''Jigoku Shoujo''), condemning your soul for all eternity. Well, that's only after you die.

 

 

The first season introduces Ai Enma, the Hell Correspondence and the series' episodic format. Each episode introduces a victim and an antagonist, and the circumstances surrounding them. As each story unfolds, the antagonists' actions push their victim further into despair, and it's only through the use of the Hell Correspondence that their victim can overcome their circumstances and send their tormentor to hell. After the formula has been established, the series introduces a complication into the mix: single father and reporter Hajime Shibata notices the increase in the site's popularity and starts a personal investigation. Aided by his young daughter, Tsugumi, who has a mysterious connection to Ai, he tries to convince users of the Hell Correspondence not to complete the contract, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|generally making bad situations worse]] through [[Executive Meddling|his meddling]].

The third (and possibly final, [[Series Fauxnale|again]]) season switches up the formula a [[Arc Number|third]] time, introducing a new [[Arc Number|third]] angle to the standard format, this time in the form of Yuzuki Mikage, who, through interactions with the victims and Ai's associates, is [[Blessed with Suck|given the rare opportunity]] to watch her hometown and her entire life crumble around her courtesy of the Hell Correspondence. Amazingly enough, [[It Got Worse|it goes further downhill from there]].

 

 

 

 

A [[Live Action Adaptation]] also exists, in series form; set within the timeline of the first anime season, retaining the anthology format while notably averting the anime storyline. [[Compressed Adaptation|At a mere 12 episodes, there wasn't much room for them anyway.]]

 

No connection to ''[[Hellboy (comics)|Hellboy]]''.

{{tropelist}}

* [[Seventh-Episode Twist]]

* [[Asshole Victim]]: Most of the time, if the string is pulled, the target was one of these. First subverted in episode 12, where the target is actually Yoshiki Fukasawa, a depressed man who ultimately asks to be killed, and is sad that his student, Akane, the one who killed him has to go to hell as well. It was first inverted in episode 7, where Ayaka seeks revenge on her (strict) adopted mother for not casting her in her show and later for refusing to finalize the adoption. {{spoiler|She ends up sent to hell by her rival, who she had sabotaged.}} Later goes both ways (subverted and inverted) during episode 23.

* [[Badass Grandpa]]: Wanyuudo. Super strength, martial arts skills, and fire-manipulating/creating powers, if you can look past the fact that he's {{spoiler|A sentient, shapeshifted wheel-demon}}

* [[Brand X]]: Everybody uses the <s> Google</s> ''Deegle'' search engine.

** This troper remembers seeing Mahoo in there a couple of times.

* [[Break the Haughty]]: Several of the people who are vengeance targets go through this.

* [[Bumbling Dad]]: Although he's something of a pathetic loser and a rogue, Hajime Shibata, the journalist, is actually a doting and loving father.

* [[Buried Alive]]: {{spoiler|How Ai and her parents died.}}

* [[Crapsack World/Anime and Manga|Crapsack World]]: You can be the nicest guy in the world and someone will still find reason to send you to Hell. You can go to Hell for pissing someone off. Even if they are overreacting or are crazy. You can be sent to Hell for the slightest reasons, or no reason at all. Someone just has to hate you enough. As Mitsuganae shows, you can be sent to hell before even BEING BORN!

** That and the general depiction of the world being a filthy, sinful and ''extremely'' hateful place.

** Kikuri and Ai can be quite cute and amusing when they're interacting with each other, {{spoiler|one instance where Ai and Kikuri get into a typical "Yes!-No!-Yes!-No!-etc" argument, so Ai reverse-winds Kikuri's spring (she's possessed a wind-up toy right now) so she can't move}}. When they're on the job though, man do they ever revert back to the [[Creepy Child]] trope.

* [[Dark Magical Girl]]: Enma Ai.

** Season 2 episode 10. The victim of the week is a bum, but he isn't malicious or knowingly evil. What does he get sent to hell for? {{spoiler|For scratching a guys car. Accidentally spilling coffee on him was just an additional.}}

* [[The Doll Episode]]

* [[Downer Ending]]: Expect one.

** Averted in one Futakomori episode, where a truck driver's little brother {{spoiler|was killed when he accidentally drove off a cliff, due to design faults in a highway, which were only there because a lonely old man didn't want to move out of his house. The truck driver is about to pull the string when Ai's assistants show up and tell him that the old man has died of natural causes. Truck driver eventually finds out that the old man wasn't as selfish as he thought at the end of the episode and in fact was quite thoughtful.}} Probably one of the few, if only, episodes where NOBODY went to hell.

* [[Emotionless Girl]]: Enma Ai. She shows very little emotions, but on the rare occasion she does, you're ''really'' screwed.

** She'a more of a subversion; she actually has feelings, but after so much time doing her job, she just can't seem to express them anymore. Wanyuudo says he can "hear her heart breaking" in one episode, where an innocent was sent to hell, and although she herself isn't shown crying, her face painted in a wall by one of the persons that made a contract with her starts to shed tears when he is about to die, indicating that she was probably crying at that moment too.

* [[Even the Girls Want Her]]: Ai's companion Honne-Onna. [[Les Yay]] with Enma Ai aside, she's ''so'' admired and wanted by a bunch of girls of a school where she works at during the ''Mitsuganae'' season that one of these girls named Yuna tried to send another of Ai's employés, Ichimoku Ren, to Hell out of jealousy, after mistaking them for a couple.

* [[Everybody Hates Hades]]: {{spoiler|The spider is the lord of hell, making Ai similar to [[Classical Mythology|Charon]] in her duties}}

* [[Evil Is Not a Toy]]

* [[Evil Matriarch]]: The villain of [[The Doll Episode]] is an ancient dollmaker who attempts to mold Inori, her son's young bride into a perfectly compliant living doll. In the end, {{spoiler|her son picks up where she left off, for an even worse [[Downer Ending]] than normal}}.

* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: {{spoiler|Enma Ai herself, when she refuses to transport the soul of Takuma Kurebayashi, whose life situation somewhat mirrored her own. As a punishment she becomes mortal and later dies while trying to defend the boy from violent townspeople.}}

** {{spoiler|She does it again in Mitsuganae to save Yuzuki from being condemned to hell after she oversteps her authority as the new Hell Girl.}}

* [[Hooker with a Heart of Gold]]: Hone-Onna. {{spoiler|No. Really. She was once a human girl named Tsuyu who was sold to work at a brothel.}}

* [[Hime Cut]]: Ai Enma.

** There's a male one in the anime too.

* [[Hot Dad]]: Hajime looks awfully young for someone with a nearly-teenaged kid.

* [[Intrepid Reporter]]: Hajime Shibata

* [[Idiot Ball]]: As the series starts to move in a more grey morality, some of the people who summon Hell Girl carry this. And lets not forget that this series is all about people trying to improve their lives by sentencing themselves to eternal suffering. Which might not be the most logical of plans.

** The sender is also {{spoiler|the guy who's car he scraped up a little deeper into the episode (although the flash-backy nature of the episode can excuse the oversight).}}

* [[Musical Nod]]: ''Sakasama no Chou'', the opening theme from the first season is used as a ringtone, bowling alley music and on a billboard for the single (in which [[Medium Blending|the music video is shown]]) in both Futakomori and Mitsuganae. ''NightmaRe'', from Futakomori, gets used in Mitsuganae as well.

* [[No Ontological Inertia]]: Often the villain getting sent to Hell also makes whatever trouble they caused their victim to be mostly fixed. This gets less and less common as the series goes more into a [[Grey and Grey Morality]].

* [[Parental Abandonment]]: Tsugumi Shibata, the journalist's daughter who has a psychic link to Enma Ai, lost her mother Ayumi in an accident, although notably, the circumstances surrounding this death have a large role to play in the first series' denoument. Enma Ai herself suffered through the deaths of ''both'' of her parents. {{spoiler|And their tragic murder was explored in a flashback episode. It was revealed at the beginning of the second season, that the parent's souls were being held hostage by the forces of Hell in exchange for Enma Ai's cooperation as one of Hell's agents of vengance.}}

** Also, at the end of the first season, {{spoiler|Enma Ai tries to convince Tsugumi to send ''Hajime'', her father, to Hell, by using the memories of her mother Ayumi's death. She fails, though: Tsugumi rejects the deal and Ai leaves her and Hajime alone.}}

* [[Once an Episode]]: Someone goes to Hell. Most of the time.

* [[Paparazzi]]: Hajime Shibata used to work with one, Inagaki, who frames an innocent guy and his father. Predictably, Inagaki ends up sent to Hell by his victim.

* [[Perma-Stubble]]: Hajime Shibata.

* [[Precision F-Strike]]: Ayaka Kurenai. It's apparently pretty early on that she's not a very good person. The dub translates this by having her swear a mile a minute.

* [[Punch Clock Villain]]: Ai hangs around the hut and her minions work their day jobs when they're not dragging some poor soul into Hell.

** Although there are a few cases where it's done for the sake of someone else. A girl named Haruka did it to the person who was ruining her mother. And for her sake the mother seems nice to the child of the victim... whether that will hold or not is left unseen.

* [[Reality Warper]]: Ai seems to be able to do this, as seen when she's sending people to hell and {{spoiler|during the season one finale, when she's bullying Tsugumi to make her send her father to hell. Although maybe she was just [[Mind Rape|mind raping]] her, it's not very clear.}}

* [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]]: Enma Ai who is over 400 years.

* [[Red String of Fate]]: Fits mostly to the title of the trope than anything else really. There IS a Red String and it DOES work in binding their Fate, but with no connotations to romance at all. If someone could redirect me to a trope that's more suitable than this, please do so.

* [[Reincarnation]]: It is implied that Hajime is a {{spoiler|reincarnation or distant descendant of Sentarou, a boy Ai cared about during her life}}, forming part of the driving force for the climax of the first season.

* [[Spoiler Opening]]: Subverted. Mitsuganae's opening credits set it up as the same stand-alone episodic fare of the first two seasons, but {{spoiler|this is only to avoid drawing attention to Yuzuki before she's established as an important character, after which}} it changes to reflect the series's new direction.

* [[Soul Jar]]: {{spoiler|In the third season, a girl named Yuzuki Mikage becomes one for Enma Ai through [[Demonic Possession]]. Eventually she becomes Ai's successor.}}

* [[Stupid Sacrifice]]: A particularly tragic example in episode 19, when Inori sends her fiance's mother, who wants her to act like a living doll to Hell. In the end it turns out that [[Downer Ending|her fiance is not so different from his mother]].

* [[The Unfavorite]]: With a really creepy twist. See the main article.

* [[True Companions]]: Ichimoku Ren spent an episode considering how their group is like a family. And in season 3, Ai Enma reiterates their group as such to Yuzuki.

* [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]: Mitsuganae takes place in the year 2024.

* [[Victim of the Week]]: Every episode has a different client, and many of them have been abused in a certain way.

* [[Wham! Episode]]: Episode 24 of Mitsuganae: {{spoiler|By the way, Yuzuki, you're really just a ghost, and ''this entire season was a '''lie'''''.}}

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Anime]]