Uknighted Manganime Life is too short to watch bad anime

Well i finally got around to watching the 21 unwatched episodes of Jigoku Shoujo. This took me about 9 hours, and though its not really the type of show i would recomend marathoning, it is easy just to lie back and watch the show - having someone to watch it with and share the grief would be nice.

The majority of Jigkou Shojo is episodic. We get introduced to some continuing characters about episode 6, and from there they start playing around with the different ways that the Jigoku Shoujou is involved. The plot doesnt change until about episode 24, where they tie up the end of the series, spanning 3 episodes.

If you expect JS to get happer as the show continues, or are hoping for a happy ending, i suggest you give up now. You won’t find much in that way, i’d only reccomend this show for the happy endings, if you’re a pessimist that’s used to “Kill ‘em All Tomino” anime. This series show cases various tragedies, evilness, stupidity and other unfortunate events, and i really think it’s best suited to thoses with morbid or ‘emo’ personalities.

In terms of artistic merit, the show is excellent. The art, character designs and background scenes are all detailed, realistic and satisfactory. The characters are mostly realistic and believeable, and the episodes are attention catching and enjoyable entertaining immersing. The music is very nice, and while the OP and ED aren’t something i’d want to listen to repeatedly, the rest of the background music is definately nice.

The problem is that situation after situation of depressing events, and then an innocent being sent to hell because they where unable to get help from anyother source, is rather depressing. Couple this in with the serveral episodes where the person sent to hell was also innocent, and it starts getting rather sad. I think the message that the show is trying to send is that revenge isn’t the ideal solution, and perhaps people should be more open minded to forgiveness. However when 23 episodes of the series deal with this situation, the entire show feels rather bitter sweet. IMO They could have told the same story in 12 episodes and kept it much more consise and less depressing.