Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 16 · 8:26pm Sep 7th, 2021
Too much going on today, so I saved my write up yesterday. As a plus, it means I can publish it at a reasonable time. Who knew being proactive could prove beneficial? Featured items after the break are Hell Girl and Mushishi.
Often, I'll lump a related group of series together, but I'll deal with Hell Girl one at a time, because there are a number of differences.
Hell Girl is mostly an anthology series, where there's little to no continuity from one episode to the next. I liked it best when it stuck to that formula, but they tried to give the overarching season a plot toward the ends of the first three seasons, and that resulted in a bit of a miss to me, at least for the first two.
The premise is that there's an urban legend going around: if you go to a website called Hell Correspondence at the stroke of midnight (I guess in Japan only, since that's where all of it takes place) and enter the name of someone you have a grudge against, you can send them to hell. It turns out this actually exists, but the truth is a little more complicated. Entering the name doesn't automatically send the person to hell; it just gets you a visit from Ai, the titular girl, who offers you a straw doll with a thread around its neck. Pull the thread, and you affirm the contract, which will then immediately send the target to hell, but it also comes at a price: whenever your own death happens, you are doomed to hell. At least this extra step gives you a chance to reconsider (and some people do). Don't believe hell actually exists? Or think it can't be worse than your current situation? What do you have to lose?
Some of the episodes are straightforward, where it's obvious who's in the wrong and they get their comeuppance. My favorites are the ones where there's more of a twist to it. The aggrieved party may not know who's responsible for their situation, or they may have incorrectly concluded who it is. There's a nice, creepy vibe to it all, with a bit of a caveat. I'll get to that in a moment. Ai lives in some kind of other dimension, in a small wooden house standing in a field of flowers near a stream, and there's an old woman who... I'm not really sure what she is. Ai calls her grandma, but you only ever see her in silhouette through a paper door. Though in a later season, a human does peek in there and reacts in horror to what she sees. Ai has three other helpers who assist her in scouting out potential missions to see if they're warranted—just because you put the name in on her site doesn't mean she's obligated to respond. She only does when she feels it's justified. Her helpers are a young man, a middle-aged lady, and an old man.
That caveat: the old man is a wheel demon, which is a thing from Japanese folklore, so a Japanese audience would know what they were looking at when he appears. He becomes part of the wagon that takes Ai to damn a soul, but to me, it looked kind of funny and undercut the tension.
So what kind of plot did they try to introduce near the end of this season? There's a journalist who suspects Hell Correspondence is real, and he's trying to amass evidence about it. Ai wouldn't care to have him make that all public (people who've contracted with her tend not to talk about it, due to the shame of being branded as damned with an actual mark on their chest). She tries to intimidate him, and even finds out he has a connection to her past, which is also revealed. She's forced to be Hell Girl because of the murderous rage she had over her death, not even focusing on the few perpetrators, but on the whole village. This will come into play in later series.
Nicely creepy and ironic at times, this series was a cool change of pace from the more fantasy, adventure, comedy, or slice of life things I normally watch. It has a bit of a Twilight Zone feel to it, and I rather enjoyed it, though the attempt to have a plot near the end got a mixed reaction from me. Music is pretty good, and the art was excellent. Only this season has a dub.
Rating: very good.
Jigoku Shojo, 26 episodes, relevant genres: thriller, horror, drama.
The theme to titling each successive series is to put the number in there, so the first sequel is Hell Girl: Two Mirrors. It starts off returning to the anthology formula to good effect, so there's not a lot to say different about it. There are two main changes. One, another companion gets added, a little girl, and to me, this was the series' biggest misstep. She's rarely played for anything but annoyance, and once in a while comic relief. She does serve a purpose once or twice, but it wasn't necessary to make her someone I constantly disliked seeing in order to fulfill that purpose.
The other difference is the plot that gets introduced near the end. Suspicion for a death falls on an innocent boy, and everything just snowballs from there as vigilantes start trying to control the town and influence the investigation. Before long, the entire town is taking out hell contracts on each other in a war of attrition, and anyone not already marked with Hell's seal is greatly feared, since they can still send someone to hell. And one last thing: a little more of Ai's history is explored, including what sort of term she's expected to serve and whether she can ever find a successor and be allowed to die. The journalist from season 1 had a daughter, who turned up in several episodes, and this season, she's grown up. Ai starts to pressure her to become the new Hell Girl. Though there's an interesting fate that awaits Ai at the end.
Rating: very good.
Jigoku Shojo: Futakomori, 26 episodes, relevant genres: thriller, horror, drama.
Season three, then, Hell Girl: Three Vessels. Again, it starts out with an anthology feel, but Ai must work by possessing a high school girl, Yuzuki. Yet another companion is introduced, a young boy this time, whose main purpose is just to babysit the annoying girl from the previous season, Kikuri. A lot of Kikuri's appearances lean toward comedy, and it was just a poor choice, imo.
While possessed, Yuzuki understands that she isn't the one sending people to hell, but she can perceive what's happening, and it troubles her greatly, especially because she doesn't want the aggrieved parties committing themselves to hell, and she also knows in some cases that the intended targets are innocent. This season is the one where I thought the inclusion of an overall plot late in the run actually improved things. And it could stand some improvement. The death scenes took a more over-the-top mood in this season, making them appear more humorous than horrible, and fan service, which had been all but absent in previous seasons, suddenly happened a lot. Yuzuki, in a nicely handled twist, has a secret past, secret even to her, and that journalist's daughter from previous seasons just happens to work at her school. Ai is now pressuring Yuzuki to become her successor, and Yuzuki has learned enough about Hell Girl's history to know who the daughter is. An interesting dynamic develops between them about whether it's possible and advisable to resist that destiny. It leads to a really good finale, the first season for which I can say that.
Rating: very good.
Jigoku Shojo: Mitsuganae, 26 episodes, relevant genres: thriller, horror, drama.
Finally, we have Hell Girl: The Fourth Twilight. This one was a disappointment. Not that it gets a terrible rating, but that it's a noticeable step down from previous seasons. It starts out well enough, back to the old anthology formula, but it reined the fan service back in and was less ridiculous about death scenes. However... well, I have to get into spoilers to explain. There's a young girl who observes a lot of what's going on, and through the first 5 episodes, it's business as usual. But in episode 6, it's revealed this girl has a past similar to Yuzuki's from season 3, so she's also considered as a suitable successor to Ai. And it comes out of nowhere. It's just kind of all wedged into this one episode, and despite season 3's resolution stating that Ai can never be allowed a successor due to a deal she made. Yet that just gets ignored, and in an instant, the new girl takes over for her. Add to that that zero exploration is given to what the aftermath of that looks like for Ai, and it feels like the series stops more than ends.
Ah, but there are still 6 episodes left in the season, right? No. They're just repeats of 6 episodes from seasons 2 and 3, with a dumb comical frame story introducing each. Only the first half of the season is worth watching, and I might even recommend skipping the 6th episode, if blatant disregard of continuity bothers you at all. The best thing I can say about this season is that its opening theme was my favorite of the franchise by far. The melody and the words were both great.
Rating: decent.
Jigoku Shojo: Yoi no Togi, 12 episodes, relevant genres: thriller, horror, drama.
Hey, look! Another anthology series! The great thing about such things is you can watch them very much at your leisure and don't risk forgetting plot elements or characters.
Mushishi is about a wandering man named Ginko who is a master of dealing with supernatural creatures called mushi. There are a vast number of such things, and they aren't exactly intelligent. They mostly interact with humans passively and by circumstance, but they almost always have a deleterious effect on people.
On his travels, Ginko basically acts as a problem solver. One or more people in a village will be having some type of problem, or there's some legend that people think is coming true. The episodes are structured kind of like mysteries but also medical dramas, so... something like House, I guess, minus the snark and humor. Ginko has to reason through what kind of mushi are causing the effect and how to counter them. And in a nice environmental touch, he respects the mushi and doesn't want to harm them. They aren't acting malevolently, and if at all possible, he uses his knowledge to encourage those mushi to move along, so that they're not causing the bad effects anymore.
The art is beautiful, and the voice acting is superb—one of the few series generally regarded as the dub being better than the sub. Music is fine, mostly low-key mood stuff. I will say that the first episode gives a bit of a misleading picture of how the series in general will go. There's much more of a conscious communication between Ginko and the mushi, and the resolution is closer to an exorcism than any subsequent one. It didn't dampen my enthusiasm for the show, however. This is just an all-around great series.
The sequel, Mushishi: The Next Passage, is just more of the same, and it absolutely keeps up the quality. A lot of these tales are pretty haunting, and some are tragic. There was no dub made of this season.
And finally, there was a special made, Mushishi: The Shadow That Devours the Sun. If the series was already great, this turns it up a notch. It's simply an additional extended episode, but it's among the best of the run in how touching the situation is: twin sisters, one of whom cannot go into the sunlight and must live in total darkness broken only by artificial light.
Rating: excellent.
Mushishi (26 episodes), Mushishi: Zoku Sho (20 episodes + 2 OVAs), Mushishi: Hi Hamu Kage (short movie), relevant genres: fantasy, supernatural, slice of life.
Well, the first two items I hit on my list were both featured items, and another is coming up soon, so I'll have to cast ahead a bit to have a few to talk about here.
Naruto (220 episodes)—no need to summarize, as everyone should already have some exposure to this. Just like the flu. Naruto is a little more enjoyable than the flu. Nah, I kid. It's your standard clan-based fighting show, and it's okay. I have seen only a handful of Shippuden and Boruto episodes, as it didn't grab me enough to continue with it. There are some pretty epic fights, but the plot is rather standard fare. Really the only thing that held my interest was the nuances of what everyone's powers could and couldn't do, which makes for some cool strategizing. Rating: decent, relevant genres: action, comedy, adventure.
Nomad of Nowhere (12 episodes)—this was recommended by a friend as something to check out if I was already on Rooster Teeth's site watching RWBY. There's kind of an interesting setup in the first episode of them trying to track down some mythical figure to help resist a tyrant in a sci-fi/western setting, but it just fell flat after that. There's not much character exploration, the humor was weak, and the fights weren't very memorable. Rating: meh, relevant genres: supernatural, fantasy, sci-fi, western.
Noragami (12 episodes + 2 OVAs), Noragami Aragoto (13 episodes + 2 OVAs)—a high school girl named Hiyori witnesses a boy jump out into traffic to save a dog, but nobody else can see him, and when she tries to save him in turn, she's badly injured. It turns out the boy is a minor god, and her near death experience leaves Hiyori such that she seems to her friends to have narcolepsy—she just drops out suddenly, but her soul leaves her body. The god, Yato, of course can still interact with her in that form, and now she can also see the creatures living in the spirit realm. He'll occasionally fight the monsters to protect souls, but mostly, he's trying to run a business. As a minor god, there are no shrines to him, and that lack of belief limits his power, so he starts a problem solving venture. He has no business acumen, as he'll do very tough or unpleasant tasks for the kind of fee you'd normally see tossed in the offering box of a shrine. You'd think after doing such a good job for such a low cost, word of mouth would spread a lot, but it never does. Each god can take on souls into their household that transform into useful articles for them: weapons, armor, devices, etc. Yato does get one (well, he has to replace the one he lost in the opener), and that boy's character arc is cool. Some of these weapons are freelancers, and they're looked down upon. Yato has a history with one, and I loved her character design. The plot mostly covers some sort of conspiracy going on, plus a long-standing beef the goddess of war has with him. The latter gets resolved, but the former never does, and I'm guessing it's one of those series that was expected to continue but never did. My only complaint is that in spirit form, Hiyori has significantly elevated strength and stamina, except she's never allowed to use them, since a living soul on that plane instantly becomes a target to monsters, and Yato wants to keep her safe. So it's a big old Chekhov's Gun. Also, there's a plot point where she figures out Yato's real name, and maybe it makes sense in the sub, but in the dub, she basically guesses it out of thin air. Art was good, and I liked all the major characters. Rating: good, relevant genres: action, supernatural, fantasy.
Now and Then, Here and There (Ima, Soko ni Iru Boku, 13 episodes)—a boy named Shu randomly sees a girl being threatened by dragon-shaped mechs while walking home from school, and he tries to defend her, but he only gets captured and drawn through a portal to the world she's from, which is mostly desert. She has a special pendant that allows her access to vast amounts of water, and the warlord in this world wants to control that, since it's the most precious resource. The girl, Lala-Ru, had been pursued for some time, and while imprisoned, Shu meets another girl who'd been initially mistaken for Lala-Ru then discarded. She's from America, and I don't remember how these portals open and why the warlord doesn't use them for access to Earth's water. This is a very bleak series. It's not surprising to learn that it turns out relatively well, but the journey there is pretty brutal, if toned down. This American girl is kept there for the purpose of breeding soldiers, so her trauma reasonably keeps her from being willing to engage Shu at all. Shu eventually does get out of prison, but only as a forced soldier for the warlord, in a unit that sweeps the countryside for villages to take women for breeding and young males to use as child soldiers. The one blessing is that the warlord's empire is unsustainable, and his bid to control water was a last ditch effort to prevent it from crumbling out from under him. But crumble it does, and most of his staff abandon him to join the opposition. It's pretty good overall, and while it never shies away from showing the brutality of war, that makes it both difficult and beneficial to watch. Rating: good, relevant genres: sci-fi, drama.
Seen any of these? Did I convince you to try any of them? I'd like to hear about it in the comments.
Last 10:
vol. 6 here
vol. 7 here
vol. 8 here
vol. 9 here
vol. 10 here
vol. 11 here
vol. 12 here
vol. 13 here
vol. 14 here
vol. 15 here
I think the only one of those I've seen was Naruto. XD Like the first ten episodes when it was on actual TV, that dub, oh my god.
We got about three episodes into Mushishi and never finished. I can’t give you a particular reason, as the art itself was fantastic.
5579134
That show is one of my all time favorites. I even went to a con as Ginko once.
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With such recommendations, we shall have to give it another look then.
Naruto is something I'm kinda glad to have finished in a weird way. There is some good in it, I'd say. Off the top of my head, I've built up quite a dislike for children/teenagers being put up against better-trained adults and somehow emerging victorious, and Naruto, I thought, handled that trope much better than most, with that first Zabuza encounter. I thought that was a really cool instance of having the villain be quite powerful, but in a limited kind of way that made their defeat fairly plausible, which is something I think a lot of series out there have struggled with. So naturally, Naruto, like everything else it does well, fucks it up amazingly later on, because some of the later villains are so disgustingly overpowered the hand of god itself needs to reach down and give the protagonists cool new superpowers so they can win. And the contrast is kind of fun and interesting to me to think about.
But the good that's there is sporadic enough that I don't think the series nearly justifies its extreme length, so skipping out on Shippuden is a very smart move in my book.
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It's a very slow-paced show, and some people will just be bored by it. Especially since there aren't any plot details you need to remember from one episode to the next, I did find it hard at times to concentrate on it. If I tried to watch more than 2 episodes at a time, it just made me sleepy. So I stuck to only watching one or two every couple days, and that ended up being a good way to enjoy it.
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Y'know... there's an upcoming series called Uzumaki based on work by Junji Ito, and I'm very much looking forward to it, but every time I see that title, I think at first it's some Naruto sequel.
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The only reason I even stuck it out through all of the original series was the same reason I kept watching all that Gundam stuff: Toonami repeatedly aired it in between other things I wanted to watch, so I just sat through it and halfway paid attention. But they thankfully put Shippuden and Boruto on at the end of the programming block, so I can just go to bed before they come on.
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I've heard that name before, and this is my first time hearing that it isn't Naruto-related. XD
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It just means "spirals," which probably got chosen for Naruto's name because of the spiral seal mark on him and the spiral in the village crest.
Wow, I remember Noragami! Firstly, because it's the only time I ever bought a DVD on the recommendation of a complete stranger who was in the shop that very day.
I was actually looking for a Ghibli film (I think), and while I was browsing she just fell into conversation - well, technically mostly a monologue - with me. I'd already overheard her going on about various anime in the background to someone else, so I guess she was just a really avid anime fan.
It was weird, and kind of intimidating, but since the DVD was cheap, I figured it wouldn't hurt as an experiment. (She also recommended a Durarara!!! box set, if I remember right, only that was more expensive, so I quietly dropped it back on the shelf when she wasn't looking and hurried off!).
Secondly, because I actually quite enjoyed it. I liked getting into the detailed divine-demon worldbuilding - all the business about the "Regalia" was especially interesting and tragic - and it felt like every episode threw some new cool twist. Like, if I remember right, only three episodes in and there was a segment about Yato seeking a demon that influenced people to commit suicide at a particular train crossing. It also had a glimpse of Yato's larger arc, wherein he initially comes off as a callous, ruthless jerk towards other (in this case, depressed) people, only to later leap right in and deal with the demon anyway.
I've always had a fascination for morally mixed protagonists (like heroes who do great deeds for selfish reasons), and Yato fit the bill. Same with some of the other characters, like that cheerful bad luck goddess who shows up as a contact with a much older male Regalia. They were pretty cool.
Thirdly... because some of the less family-friendly humour kinda reminded me why I don't usually watch anime above a PG rating. Gore and violence I don't mind, but some of the skeevier moments... not so much.
And lastly, because I've always debated whether or not to get the followup season. Very good as it was, the first season seemed a bit of a tough act to follow in some ways. I'd get the second if I thought it was basically "the first season, but with a more consistent arc". You mentioned the war goddess, who I remember being far more interesting than the actual arc villain fought at the end of the first season, and if there is closure for that storyline, then I am more inclined to go and get the second season.
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Yes, the sequel does go into why Bishamon hates Yato so much, and while they do bury the hatchet, as it were, she still looks down on him a bit. Then it goes into two separate arcs related to conspiracies, one within Bishamon's household and one involving all of the gods. The one about Bishamon gets resolved, and while the larger one gets stopped, the person who's revealed to be the perpetrator is never discovered, though he is revealed to the audience. It's not even clear who he is, though if you're familiar with the manga, apparently he's someone you'd recognize. He is at least defined in the show in terms of what his relationship to Yato is, but only superficially. More to the point, remember the emphasis the show places on gods needing to be remembered or they could fade away—Hiyori's arc singled that out as why she wants to keep helping him. That secret baddie is the only other human alive who knows Yato, and in fact knows absolutely every bit of his history. As such, he holds significant power over Yato, since his memory is basically what's keeping Yato alive, unless he can gain some other kind of public awareness in the meantime. None of that is discussed in the anime.
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Oh, and good call on putting Durarara!! back. The first season is great, but it goes downhill after that. By season 4, I was pushing through just to satisfy my OCD against leaving it incomplete.
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Sometimes, I do get lucky.
Hm, sounds like the sequel is well worth getting, then. Even if the one conspiracy plotline isn't resolved, I'm intrigued enough to want to see the arcs play out.
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I think it holds up the quality of the first season well. I liked them both the same.