Review: Jigoku Shoujo (地獄少女) & Jigoku Shoujo Futakomori (地獄少女 二籠)

Posted by ranpha on 20th May 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment


The pimp of the Hell Hotline service.

Just like my School Rumble review, today we will have a review of the the two seasons of Jigoku Shoujo. Unlike the School Rumble review though, there will be only one combined review for this series.

Story:-
This watered down horror series revolves around Enma “Jigoku Shoujo” Ai, who is the mastermind of the Hell Hotline website. The ‘service’ she provided mainly involves sending people to hell, inclusive of her customers too at a later date. As she mechanically works hard at sending people to hell, we got to see the POV of her customers and also of their victims. And this is mainly what made the series up.

The first season suffers from the syndrome of being slow starters before arriving to the main plotline. I somewhat very thankful that I persevered to watch this anime up to episode 9 or 10 where the plotline started to take place, because I have been considering stopping watching this series the way I did with Eureka 7 because of its repetitiveness. However when the plotline start rolling in (where the journalist and his daughter tried to stop Enma Ai) this series is simply awesome to watch. Episode 18 for example is one of the best episodes I have ever seen in an anime series. I still thinks of that episode today, such is the high impact that episode has to me. The ending though, are not exactly good though because it left the viewer hanging for more of Enma Ai and the journalist’s family.

This lead me to high expectation when I started to watch the second season. Here Enma Ai has altered her modus operandi somewhat, with her alternating the job of being a straw doll between her 3 lieutenants instead of just using one, and becoming more and more proactive at scouting potential ‘customers’ and ‘victims’. But the biggest mistake of the second season is that the series spend the first 20 episodes being plotless and repetitive, just like the first 9-10 episodes of season one. Only in the last 4 or 5 episodes did the plotline started to make shape, with an ending better than the first season presented. Plus, the journalist and his daughter in season one very barely made their appearance. The second season can lost half of its 26 episode runs and you won’t even notice.


A customer of hers.

Character Design:-
One word can desribe the character design of Enma Ai, and that word would be AWESOME. It really caters to the loli/pedo inside of me. This series has great character designs, especially for recurring characters. For episode-specific characters, there are times where I find the characters designs to be repetitive. If you looks at Enma Ai ‘customers’ most of them usually are females (usually school-going ones) and I can’t help but feel that some characters are ‘recycled’, if you know what I mean.

Voice acting:-
Enma Ai suffers the same syndrome just like what Harima Kenji does in School Rumble. Her voice is great and terrifying in the first season but decreased in quality in the second season. You fail here Mamiko Noto, but to be fair, Harima Kenji fared worse than Enma. The rest of the characters generally has great voice acting, with lots of good and easily recoginizable voice actors/actresses such as Ayako Kawasumi, Fumiko Orikasa and Rie Tanaka taking part at voicing Enma Ai’s ‘customers’ or ‘victims’.


Even a pimp from Hell need to eat too.

Music:-
Only the second season ED theme are good enough to go into my iPod. The OST and other themes should be left uncommented.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation here is great for both seasons, and the directing is simply awesome, especially for the aforementioned episode 18 of the first season. The director really are good (most of the time) at showing how cruel humans (whether the victims or the customers) can be. I still remember screaming ‘just pull the f**king thread already’ as I watched how the school girl (Enma’s customer) in episode 18 slowly being driven to insanity by her tormentor. Not all episodes has great directing like ep18, but many of them are pretty good.

Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. If not for the repetitiveness of the story especially in second season and also for the average music, this series would have gotten more. (note added in the moving process: there will be a 3rd season! YAY!)


A customer looking at a straw doll made by Mattel.

Review: Tonagura! (となグラ！)

Posted by ranpha on 9th May 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


The heroine of the series.

Finished watching Tonagura quite some time ago but only now I have time to put some kind of review here.

Story:-
This is basically your common romantic-comedy staple where a boy and a girl reunited after spending 10 years apart from each other. During the entire run of the series, their relationship faces a lot of ups and downs with a typical happy ending in the last episode. And that’s about it.

The story is quite simple, but the execution was very well done. This anime mainly depends on good presentation instead of a strong storyline. This is one of those series that have high replay value. Watching this series over and over again never bore me in the slightest.

If there are any weakness of this series that I can comment on, maybe it will be the fact that the storyline is not exactly a masterpiece that will talked about long in the future.

Character design:-
Compared to the manga, the character design in the anime is so much better, especially for the main protagonist. After reading the manga after watching the anime, I just realized how bland the character design in the manga version are. This is truly a rarity, because most of the time anime reproductions of any given manga series are usually very similar when it comes to character design.

Voice acting:-
Not exactly outstanding, the voice acting here generally is average.

Music:-
Good ED theme, but disappointing OP and OST.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation is generally good, but lacking in quality when it comes to some fast-paced scenes. But there are not many of these in this romantic-comedy series anyway, so not exactly a problem. Meanwhile, the direction is superb, bringing the best it can from a simple story this series have. Although the director could do something about the over-exaggeration of some of the dialogues.

Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. 2 points docked for average voice acting and not-so-stellar music.

Review: School Rumble (スクールランブル) + Ni Gakki (スクールランブル二学期) + OVA (スクールランブルOVA一学期補習)

Posted by ranpha on 6th April 2007
Posted in: anime review - reposted. Tagged: , , , . 1 comment


Not the main character of School Rumble, but voiced by one of my favourite anime seiyuu.

Basically I have stopped playing flyff now, or maybe taking a break, and now I started watching more anime again plus playing some video games. Thus the review of the School Rumble series for your perusal here. It should be noted that I followed the manga way before I decided to watch the anime version, but rest assured, the review will still be unbiased although comparisons will not be avoidable.

School Rumble S1 + OVA.

Story:-
Story revolves around two dumbasses a.k.a. series protagonists named Tsukamoto Tenma and Harima Kenji who has problems to confess their love to the ones they love. Tenma has her sights set on a classmate, the mysterious Karasuma Ooji while Harima (the school badass) has his lustful eyes onto Tenma. This anime take the word ‘misunderstanding’ to the next level, as this series is full of them.

The story does not seem to have complicated storyline, but actually it is. The keyword here is ‘misunderstanding’. With this, the author managed to enrich the potentially thin storyline by creating alternative bonds of love amongst the characters in the series, especially for the male protagonist Harima. Also, following with the misunderstanding theme, a lot of funny scenes can be told to the readers (or audiences in the case of anime) which fits the series’s love-comedy genre.

The anime covered about the first 8 volumes of the manga, with some arcs being differently told in a different way compared to the anime. I think some chapters has been omitted too, but anyway I do not think it detracts from the manga too much. The best thing about the anime is that the b. chapters of the manga (usually printed at the end of the tankouban) has been automatically mixed with the main storyline, notably like the first encounter between Harima and Tenma younger sister Yakumo. Those pesky b.chapters can be annoying sometimes but the anime largely (but not fully) takes care of that.

One of the main weaknesses of the anime is that while it mainly follows the manga storyline, some of the manga’s finer nuances and details are lost in transition. The gist is still there but the little touches are gone. This weakness was then compounded by the anime’s other weakness, which is a very rushed ending, probably to cram as many storylines inside the 26 episodes as possible. This caused the storyline at the end of the first season, which covers the Harima-Yakumo arc to not only lost a lot of details, but also alter the arc storyline significantly. The OVA tried to save the arc but failed miserably.

These 2 weaknesses mentioned above are usually not very harmful to an anime series, especially the first one about loss of detail, but when combined they turned out to be a grave mistake. See more below.

Character design:-
Faithful replication of the manga characters. Generally I have no problems with that. And being able to see them in color is really a great thing.

Voice acting:-
This is a mixed bag. While Tenma has a voice that matches her personality, Harima does not seem to be so. Even counting the fact that he is in love, his voice are way too normal for a delinquent-turned-goodboy character. Genzo in Tenshi na Konamaiki whose role is similiar, was brilliantly voiced but not Harima. Why this is important? This is because after Harima mistakenly confessed to Sawachika Eri, Tenma with her superior voice acting are relegated to become secondary characters while Harima (with normal quality voice acting at best) becomes the series main protagonist from there on. Up to the end of the second season!

Music:-
Another letdown of the series. Uninspiring OP/ED themes and so are the OST. Some of the insert songs are decent though.

Animation/Direction:-
The animation are decent but not spectacular. Meanwhile, the action scenes in the anime are very well made. Whether the Matrix-style arrow-dodging movements or just plain full-fisted fight between Harima and Hanai, they are almost always excellent.

Conclusion:-
I will summarize both seasons and give them combined rating. See my conclusion at the bottom of this post.

School Rumble ni Gakki.

Story:-
Story basically continues from the first season, where Harima is now the sole main protagonist with Tenma sidelined as a secondary character. He has to juggle between his new job as mangaka while chasing Tenma for her attention. Meanwhile Tenma’s younger sister Yakumo and Tenma’s best friend Sawachika started to develop feelings for him, as Tenma and Karasuma progressively build their relationship. Basically, these are the essence of the second season of School Rumble.

The weaknesses of the first season evidently shows up in the very first episode, as the directors/producers suddenly have a change of heart and follows the manga in a much more faithful way when implementing that particular story arc. That should be good you may ask, but as the end of the first season deals with the Harima-Yakumo arc that was significantly altered compared to the manga version, suddenly following the manga properly in the second season caused the transition between first and second season to be unbelievably rocky. This failed transition really harmed the anime series. My mood is already soured by the end of the first episode.

In the second season, the storyline also deviates more from the manga, unlike the first season. It was not done in a significant way like Full Metal Alchemist or Samurai Deeper Kyo, and I actually likes those alterations. This is because the alterations helps to eliminate the first weakness that plagues the first season, which is loss of details.

The anime also does not have a rushed ending, and the production company has the time to put some original fillers into it. Which when I look from my perspective, they cancels each other out.

Character design:-
Same comment as season 1.

Voice acting:-
Harima’s voice has become worse. Made a check at AnimeNewsNetwork and it doesn’t seem that the seiyuu have changed. With the excellent Tenma still a secondary character and the fact that Yakumo’s seiyuu is not that good either, this weakness fortunately was offset by Sawachika’s pretty good (not as good as Tenma though) voice acting.

Music:-
A little improvement with the first ED theme being actually pleasing to listen to. Others remain the same.

Animation/Direction:-
I think the animation quality has dropped slightly compared to the first season. Meanwhile, the directing has improved.

Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Weakness of the firs
t season directly affects the start of second season, causing the transition to fail. Music that are not memorable. Voice actors that did not match their characters like Harima and Yakumo.


Mika Kanai can do a better job at voicing Yakumo. But she has to do this giraffe instead.

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