Ai continues to tantalize audiences with her personal tale, but still fails to deliver.

plot summary

Hajime Shibata and his daughter, Tsugumi, have become obsessed with finding Hell Girl, and will go to any lengths to travel to the places she’s been sighted. Tsugumi has an uncanny ability to see what Ai Enma, Hell Girl, sees and can then tell her father where Ai will strike next.

Father and daughter journey to a tiny island, one which Tsugumi saw in her visions, in order to stop another unholy bargaining of souls. The duo next travel to a circus and a mental ward, but are unable to catch up to Ai and her henchmen.

With the copious amount of souls being bartered away, will Hell have room for them all?

review

Hell Girl, the anime, must have realized it was boring me to tears with its repetitious, disconnected episodes, since it started making more comprehensive ones in this volume. The stories have swung back from ludicrous and laughable to scary and pitiable. I prefer the latter over the former, but the series still remains about individual stories rather than the whole of Ai Enma, her role as Hell Girl, her henchmen and how those same henchmen came to serve Ai.

Character Development

Ai is beginning to appear more human with each new episode. There’s emotion starting to show in the cracks of her cool visage. She also appears to know about her connection with Tsugumi, either because she herself is the one responsible or because she’s aware of the connection but unconcerned over it, even welcoming it. In one of the episodes, Ai actually extends her protection to Tsugumi and her father; two people who are determined to put an end to Ai and her work.

Aside from a bit more humanity coming from Hell Girl, there’s no other development. The three henchmen, Ren, Onna, and WanyÅ«dō while interesting as tools of damnation, are just that: tools. Apparently tools need no fleshing out or explanation, they just are, end of discussion.

Conclusion

While the lack of forward momentum in this series is frustrating, this volume at least was entertaining. The stories in this volume made more sense than in previous volumes, and I agreed wholeheartedly with most of the candidates up for damnation. I would have even pulled the string on a few of the nominees. Yet, I still consider the lack of pacing and focus to be a distraction. How will Hell Girl end? When will it start picking up loose ends and tie them up in some fashion?

If one were to grade the series thus far on its merits as a quasi-random horror series, similar to the Twilight Zone, it would be given high marks. But if it were graded as a comprehensive series, one that’s filled with progressive story, pacing and a definitive point, then it receives a failing grade. Thankfully, Hell Girl has two more semesters, I mean volumes, to straighten up and do better.

Rating

Hell Girl, Volume Four gets 2.5 outta 4 Hammies!

Retail Info

• Publisher: Funimation
• Release Date:February 26, 2008
• Retail Price: $26.99
• Number of discs:1
• Episodes:15-18
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Rating: TV-MA
• Language: English, Japanese
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Format: Animated, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen

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«dō 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