Hell Girl: Difference between revisions

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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 series as a whole is mainly a social commentary, using the Hell Correspondence as a tool to analyze and deconstruct the less appealing aspects of Japanese culture and society (there's even a [[School Days|Nice Boat]]-inspired episode in ''Mitsuganae''). While many themes are universal, [[Values Dissonance]] means some storylines (like ''Mitsuganae'''s [[Wham! Episode]]) are inevitably lost in translation.

There is also a manga adaptation, which [[Adaptation Distillation|shares the premise and core characters]] but follows its own storyline. The first series ran for 9 volumes, the second for a few more, ad the third currently ongoing.

** 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.

* [[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.

* [[Eldritch Location]]: Hell is one of these, and it's personally designed to [[Mind Rape|RAPE YOUR MIND]]

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

* [[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}}.

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

** Only if "nearly-teenaged" is code for "seven-years old".

* [[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.}}