Hell Girl, Volume Six -With Complete Series Review

The slow pace is stepped up at last, but the storytelling in still a step below average is Volume Six of Hell Girl.

plot summary

Tsugumi begins to doubt the moral value of Hell Girl’s trade when an innocent is condemned to Hell on a whim. Even though Tsugumi no longer wishes to be linked to Ai Enma, her ties to Hell Girl grow stronger each day as she sees what Ai sees in the present and the past. Ai wants something from Tsugumi and her father, Hajima, but even the powerful Hell Girl is unsure of what that something is.

But when the father and daughter investigate Hell Girl’s past, they unearth a startling secret which could damn them to Hell if they’re not careful. As Tsugumi and Hajime struggle to overcome a vengeful spirit, they must learn to grow closer or all will be lost.

review

The pacing for this series was horrid. For twenty three slow, drawn out episodes, not much was revealed of Ai and her connection to Tsugumi and Hajime. The retributions of Hell Link featured in each episode were like living the same experience, with slight differences, over and over and over and over. Then in the last three episodes, the flood gates of back story were opened and drowned out what little reason the series had.

The last three episodes felt like a schoolgirl racing to beat the bell, when in fact she had hours upon hours to get to her homeroom. I have no sympathy for a series that has that kind of time and still doesn’t deliver on schedule.

Character Development

The anime had twenty six episodes to develop Ai and make her a character to empathize with, but the studio decided to develop her at the end…in the last three episodes. It was a bad move to save something this big for the finale, especially as how there wasn’t any solid foreshadowing involved. Frankly, however, I just didn’t care.

Viewers should care about characters or at least feel something, be it disgust, compassion or hate. There was no focal point in the series to empathize with, nor was there an attempt at one till the end, when it’s revealed who we really should have been connecting with.

The finale was supposed to be a built-up scenario, one in which we’re pulled in and sitting on the edge of our seats, but a series needs momentum to do that. A series needs a running start to convincingly pull off the leaps in story and logic Hell Girl tried at the end. This anime had no momentum however, and plodded along, oblivious to the gaping hole it needed to cross in order to end. Instead of getting the point across, the series shot head first into the abyss of crappy storytelling. This is unfortunate since the idea for Hell Girl was a good one.

Animation

Hell Girl was a beautiful series filled with lush colors and striking backdrops. The gorgeous scenery featured showcasing the seasons was a treat and managed to salvage some watch-ability for the series.

Production

Each DVD in the Hell Girl series features two full-color postcards. They’re a lovely reflection of the high quality animation in the anime. The DVD covers and DVD themselves are as rich and lushly designed as the animation and are embellished with gold.

Volume Conclusion

Hell Girl, Volume Six would have been disappointing if the series as a whole had been better. Since the series wasn’t what it set out to be, the quality of storytelling in the final volume fit in with the rest of the series- poor.

Volume Rating

Hell Girl, Volume Six gets 2 outta 5 Hammies!

Series Conclusion

Hell Girl is a series which was given a large amount of time to tell a small amount of story. Too many episodes were filler-repetitious and gratuitous- telling no story and furthering nothing. The vengeance angle grew old after the first volume and I was expecting to find out more about Ai and her crew in the following volumes. That wasn’t meant to be, however, and the series’ refusal to give up episode after episode of the same thing and actually develop a plot helped damn it. The point of Hell Link and Ai Enma could have been conveyed in two or three “cases” instead of twenty three. That’s a matter of pacing and not necessarily the quality of the idea.

The anime relied too heavily on its good looks and paid little mind to the rest of what makes great anime- storytelling, pacing and character development. It’s always a shame when a good concept falls prey to the easy seduction of style-over-substance.

Series Rating

Hell Girl, Complete Series gets 2 outta 5 Hammies!

Retail Info

• Publisher: Funimation
• Release Date:May 20, 2008
• Retail Price: $29.98
• Number of discs:1
• Episodes:23-26
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Language: English, Japanese
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Format: Animated, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen