Check out my reviews of Hellgirl, Volumes One and Two before reading my review of Volume Three!
Volume Three of Hellgirl, continues to punish “evildoers”, but now the definition of “evil” is put to the test as Ai and her group accept almost all petitioners to Hell Link. Who’s evil now? The victim or the antagonist?
Plot Summary
It looks like things aren’t as black and white as they first were for Ai and her friends. The people logging onto Hell Link don’t always have righteous retribution in mind when they click on the website. Sometimes, the petitioners are as bad as the “antagonists” in terms of right and wrong.
Things have gotten even more complicated for Ai, as Hajime Shibata and his daughter, Tsugumi, are still hot on Ai’s trail, trying to put an end to her work. Hajime goes out of his way, risking his life and soul, to find the next petitioners of Ai’s. He then tries to dissuade them in their unholy quest.
Ai’s friends, Ren, Onna, and WanyÅ«dÅ have caught wind of Hajime’s meddling, and in turn watch him as he tries to track the quartet down. For now, they leave Hajime to his own devices, confident in their abilities to handle him if and when that time comes.
But Hajime and his daughter are getting pulled deeper and deeper into Ai’s world. The journalist now faces the horrific truth behind Hellgirl and must confront those in his life who have dealings with her.
review
I would say that this volume was as boring as the first two, but that’d be unfair. It is fair, however, to say this volume is more infuriating, annoying, and nonsensical than the previous volumes.
Apparently, as shown in Volume One, Ai can pick and choose which applicants to accept. If this is the case, I have a hard time understanding her motivations for taking undeserving souls. The second episode, “Spilled Bits” is a shallow glossing over of a girl with emotional problems who gets her hands on Hell Link. The victim isn’t a victim and the perpetrator isn’t a bad person in the least. This is one the dumbest episodes to date; this and “Beyond the Dead End“, that sucked hard too.
Character Development
I’m banging my head against the computer screen going, “Why, why, why is there zero character development that counts?” This series has such potential to be good! What the hell is wrong with the studio, mangaka, or whoever dreamed up the pacing for this story? There’s been nothing to indicate who Ai is or who she was, except for the episode “Purgatory Girl”. Even then all we get is a glance back in time about seventy years. But nothing in this brief glance explains anything!
For all we know, Ai is some demon emissary from Hell, bent on world domination. Her buddies are window dressing in the series but they’re tantalizing window dressing. They all fulfill interesting roles in Ai’s work, yet they get the shaft when it comes to explanations or development. Is everyone on Ai’s team a demon emissary from Hell bent on world domination? Your guess is as good as mine…
The Shibatas are intriguing and a good storytelling device. Even they’re not given any fleshing out, though. Hajime is a lowlife journalist who blackmails famous people with naughty pictures (man, anime gives journalists a bad name!) but that’s it. Development’s done. That’s unfair.
It’s unfair to make a viewer invest time and money in a series and not have the anime work to fill out the important bits. A good anime does this in pieces, all at once, or in its own time, but does it well nonetheless. A bad anime assumes the viewer doesn’t need things like “pacing” or “development”. Pffft. Who needs that when you got purty pictures?
And that’s what cheeses me off about Hell Girl; it wouldn’t need to work hard to be a good anime. It’s being counterproductive by slouching by with the development and pacing. Either that or the studio plans on a big “reveal” the next season, which would also blow. For shame if that’s the case!
I don’t like it when a potentially good anime gets lazy. I paid money and time and expect an anime to live up to my expectations of it as a series or movie. I expected Hell Girl to be excellent, but thus far, it’s been mediocre. Far worse than that, however, is how it refuses to progress. I keep threatening to toss this series on the “crap” pile of anime, but I have some hope (a tiny sliver) Hell Girl can be redeemed. For now, though, I consign this volume to Hell.
Rating
Hell Girl, Volume Three gets 1.5 outta 4 Hammies!
Retail Info
- Publisher: Funimation
- Release Date: January 15, 2008
- Retail Price: $26.99
- Number of discs: 1
- Episodes: 11-14
- Run Time: 100 minutes
- Rating: TV MA
- Language: English, Japanese
- Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
- Format: Animated, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Do note that this series has fifty-two episodes to work with. Don’t worry, both Ai and her dolls will get their bit of development. It’ll just take a lot of time to get there.
I just finished Vol 3 last night. I don’t think I’d disagree with anything you’ve written, but I’m still sticking with this.
I’m either watching too much anime or I think I’m finally getting use to slow plot development (didn’t it take almost 100 episodes to rescue Rukia in Bleach?), though Death Note almost restored my short American attention span – that’s a series that gets into it quickly.
Or maybe its because I just finished R.O.D the TV series. That was another one that seemed to take its time getting started, I was about halfway through the series run before it got its plot mojo running. So I’m ok letting Hell Girl take its time and build slowly. It just better build to somewhere. If it doesn’t, I might just have to visit a certain website…. around midnight…
PS The link to the review of Vol 2 is broken
@psgels, That’s kind of cheap that there’s no development till much, much later in the series. In fact, I think it’s highway robbery to string viewers along in order to make a few extra bucks.
@McE, There’s slow plot development and then there’s crappy plot development, and Hell Girl’s got crappy plot development. The stories are actually making less sense and the plot is still going NO WHERE. WTF was up with the teacher/ student story? That was beyond lame. Way way beyond.
ive prevoiusly watched jigoku shoujo i realy cant wait till i get it on dvd its my fave anime so far and im not the only one who thinks that i realy like the first sesson and the seccond sesson is better also i love the ending its so GREAT!!!! i hope emma ai is in the third sesson ive also just got the manga so dont be dissing hell girl or the jigoku shoujo will come and
“IPPEN SHINDEMIRU” you
@enma ai, don’t you think that a plot should be the first priority in the first season of an anime? Why should viewers wait to enjoy an anime? That doesn’t make any sense from my viewpoint, but I’m sure the folks in marketing think it’s a fantastic idea to tease audiences along for three seasons.
No thanks, I’ll pass. There’s other anime out there that actually work at being good. I believe I’ll invest my time and money in those.
My partner REALLY likes Jigoku Shoujo. He showed me a little bit of it and it was interesting. I’m a little apprehensive of moving forward now, because I’m usually really picky about anime too ^^;
I hope we finish watching Haibane Renmei first. That one is really cute!! He doesn’t seem to like it though. Why do we have opposite tastes in everything?!
@Roku, “Why do we have opposite tastes in everything?! because it makes for great conversation! (>< )b
I feel where your coming from, though, and it can be tough when two people have almost completely different tastes. It boils down to respecting the other person’s opinion, no matter that you believe what they like is utter crap and should be burned.
As for Hellgirl, I think it’s a bit too slow and too sneaky about the development. Can’t trust an anime like that, you know. They’ll turn around and get Evangelion on you at the end, if you know what I mean….