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It is said that those who hold a powerful grudge can access a particular website at midnight. By entering a name here, that person can be ferried straight to hell. This is the tale of Ai Enma, the Hell Girl that carries out those orders.
Episodic and atmospheric in nature, Hell Girl is a slow burn that is not quite as scary as you would expect from a horror anime, but powerful none-the-less. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Hell Girl, then give these anime series a try.
Hell Girl (地獄少女, Jigoku Shōjo?), also known as Jigoku Shōjo: Girl from Hell is an anime series, produced by Aniplex and Studio Deen.It premiered across Japan on numerous television stations, including Animax, Tokyo MX, MBS and others, between October 4, 2005 and April 4, 2006. Following the success of the first season, the series was followed soon after into a second, Jigoku Shōjo. Ai Enma from the anime Hell Girl. Ai Emma was originally a human girl that had became a ritual harvest sacrifice for her village over 400 years ago. As per tradition, she was to have been left out to.
For Fans of Supernatural Vengeance
Black Butler
In his darkest moments, the young Ciel Phantomhive formed a pact with a demon to exchange his soul for those who wronged him. Now this demon poses as his butler and Ciel strives for both success and vengeance in Victorian England.
Both are stories of vengeance through the supernatural. The key difference is that Hell Girl tells many stories of revenge while Black Butler tells the story of just one boy’s revenge via the demon butler that has his soul. Unfortunately, Black Butler can drift off into less interesting plot lines while every story in Hell Girl feels nicely unique.
xxxHolic
Watanuki can see spirits and supernatural creatures, an ability he finds annoying. However, one day after being bothered by some spirits, he feels compelled to enter a strange house. Within, he meets Yuuko, a woman that claims to be able to remove his ability for a price. The price being that he works in her store where she grants wishes.
Both series are about women that grant the wishes of others. However, while Hell Girl is solely revenged based, the wishes in xxxHolic can be varying in nature. Furthermore, while Hell Girl has some beautiful animation, xxxHolic suffers from poorly animated lanky CLAMP character design.
Magical Girl Site
Aya Asagiri lives a miserable life. At school she is bullied. At home she is beaten. Her only bright light is a cat, but one day even that is taken away from her. However, while browsing the internet, she finds a person that takes pity on her and gives her the powers of a magical girl. So starts her vengeance.
Like Hell Girl, Magical Girl Site is about a person who finds their tools for revenge on the internet. However, instead of it being carried out by a supernatural being, the victimized girl in question gets the power. Through Hell Girl’s many tales of wounded souls willing to give their own soul to send another to hell, you can imagine the carnage that results in Magical Girl Site.
For Fans of Emotionless Main Characters
Another
Ever since 1972, class 3-3 in Yomiyama North Middle School has had a strange tradition of pretending that one of their students did not exist. When Kouichi Sakakubara transfers into the class, he finds himself drawn to a girl that no one seems to notice. Not paying heed to the warnings of his classmates, all hell is about to break loose.
When first introduced, you get strong Ai-esque vibes from Mei when she is first introduced. Throughout the first half of the series, they build her up as somewhat supernatural, and then ruin all that work. However, that doesn’t change the face that both of the female leads in these shows strongly resemble each other in not just looks, but personality as well. Furthermore, as they are both horror series, they share a certain amount of darkness.
Serial Experiments Lain
Introverted Lain Iwakura finds herself one of many girls to receive an e-mail from classmate Chisa Yomoda, even though Chisa Yomoda recently committed suicide. Averse to technology, Lain soon finds herself able to enter the Wired, a network system similar to the internet. From there, her life gets turned upside down as she finds herself the target of mysterious men and mixed up in a series of cryptic mysteries.
While Serial Experiments Lain differs vastly from Hell Girl in setting and its mystery-based story, there is a certain similarity between the emotionless main characters and the overall dismal tone presented in both series. If you aren’t married to the supernatural nature of Hell Girl and want to explore more melancholic and intricate stories, then Serial Experiments Lain can be an awesome follow up.
Mushishi
In this world, there exist Mushi, spirits that often exist with no purpose. However, these Mushi can affect the physical world in countless forms from diseases to more pleasant phenomenon. Why do these Mushi exist? That is the question that Ginko the Mushi-shi, a researcher on the phenomenon, asks himself as he travels the land investigating Mushi-related incidents.
Hell Girl is often about how certain people affect the lives of others. Mushishi is all about how Mushi affects the lives of others. Both tell the stories of other people through emotionally muted, yet not completely flat main characters as a mouth piece. However, while Hell Girl’s stories run mostly on the dark side due to the nature of its own plot, the stories in Mushishi run the gamut of light and dark. It is also worth noting that these are both episodic series, so each episode is a new story.
For Fans of the Afterlife
Shinigami no Ballad
Momo is a girl in white, who, together with her winged black cat, carries the souls of humans to the afterlife.
If Hell Girl is dark, then Shinigami no Ballad is light. They have a very, very similar premise where a melancholic girl watches over humans and takes away their souls. However, while Ai doesn’t judge, Momo is very introspective on her part. Regardless, both of these episodic series tells the tale of a new human every episode and why they should die or live.
Death Parade
After death there is no afterlife, just reincarnation and oblivion. To decide your fate, you are sent to a bar where the bartender will challenge you to a game in which you wager your soul’s fate.
Think of Death Parade as Hell Girl if there was no hell. What happens to souls after they die? In Hell Girl it doesn’t always discuss such things, but Death Parade makes a literal game of it. Both shows are about dying and tells the stories of others in self-contained episodes that end in neatly wrapped up stories at the end of each episode.
Shigofumi
When someone dies, their last words – words that couldn’t be said while alive – are sent in letters called shigofumi. Fumika is a mail carrier for these letters. A mail carrier is supposed to be a deceased human that looks the same as they did when they died, but despite this, Fumika is still aging.
Like Ai in Hell Girl, Shigofumi is about a supernatural messenger. However, instead of sending souls to hell, Fumika simply delivers last words. Some of them are touching, some of them are hateful. However, unlike Hell Girl, Shigofumi focuses a bit more on the messenger as well as those stories the people around her are telling.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Hell Girl? Let us know in the comments section below.
4.5
StoryJigoku Shoujo is the latest in a long and celebrated tradition of 'horror/suspense' titles that don't really have either horror or suspense. The anime tend to go for sheer style over things like character development or logic and generally end with gruesome deaths tinged in irony. In the case of some of the shorter works, the formula tends to work: Vampire Princess Miyu, Pet Shop of Horrors, and even the more recent and slightly longer Requiem from the Darkness are all fairly worthwhile titles despite having basically zero character development or coherent storyline.Unfortunately, this is where Jigoku Shoujo falls short: length. With so many episodes to fill, the show quickly dead-ends into the same exact formula. Just as a magic trick gets less impressive the more times you see it, Jigoku Shoujo's excellent premise is bound to lose appeal by the 17th iteration of the same basic episode.People might think I'm exaggerating, but not only is the plot basically identical for each episode, there are in fact entire stretches of dialogue that only change by one or two words. Feeble efforts are occasionally made to mix the show up a little, but adding different-colored sprinkles to the same goddamn cup cake does not make a new experience.This wouldn't be so frustrating if the first episode hadn't been so entertaining. The show's actual premise is delightfully creepy, a true example of a modern Japanese ghost story. If the creators had actually continued to come up with original ideas, the storyline could have really shaped up into something special. As is, we're left with a disappointing narrative some people might like but almost no one will love.AnimationThe show has a good stylistic feel to the entire thing, but falls short in a lot of areas when you compare it to other contemporary works. The designs of the one-episode characters all begin to blend together after a few episodes, and movement is generally choppy and minimal. There's a bunch of reused (albeit admittedly cool) animation from episode to episode, and the entire visual experience is tainted by an action scene at the end that looks like absolute ass.SoundOMG GOGOGOGOGO Noto Mamiko!!!!!!!1111!!!1...at least, that's what I'd usually be saying, as I love her work in just about every anime I've heard her in. In this case, however, all the director has her do with her character (Enma Ai) is speak the same handful of lines over and over again in a sleep-inducing monotone. The experience is somewhat comparable to hearing a master musician play one note continuously over the course of two hours - a freaking waste of talent.The rest of the voice acting is unmemorable either way, and the music does an ok job at setting the mood, but does suffer a little from overuse. I didn't particularly enjoy the OP, either.CharactersIn every episode, the anime focuses on a new set of characters, which translates to minimal development or depth. These characters generally fall into one of two archetypes: victim and villain. From there, it's a slow agonizing process of watching them sink into the dull abyss of inevitability. This works for a while, but after a few episodes the total lack of characterization makes caring for them extremely difficult.There is a small set of recurring characters, but most of these are even less developed than the ones that go away at the end of every episode. Enma Ai, the title character, remains an emotionless enigma until the final few episodes, at which point her back-story feels decidedly underwhelming.The sole beacons of light in an otherwise tedious cast are the 'mortal' recurring characters, Shibata and his daughter. Their past actually ends up being somewhat touching, and is definitely the high point of Jigoku Shoujo's development. Unfortunately, this isn't enough to save the show.OverallThe old cliché is that variety is the spice of life, and it certainly applies here, where literally every portion of the anime is reused somehow. Even though the show starts strongly, this becomes irrelevant when the writers refuse to expand on their initial ideas.Imagine your favorite episode of your favorite TV series. Would the series have been half as good if every episode was merely a slight variation of your favorite one?
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