Grade to date: C+
This show could be SO cool. It's got an interesting plotline and it's beautifully animated. Unfortunately, as of episode 6 it isn't living up to its potential-- but it may yet redeem itself.
Apparently, if you live in Japan and access a certain website (http://jigoku.net) at midnight, you'll be offered a text box in which you can place a person's name. If you put the name of someone you want revenge on, the Jigoku Shoujo (literally "Hell Girl") will appear and offer you the deluxe revenge package: I'll humiliate them, kill them, and send them to hell on the double, in exchange for your soul when you die.
"But wait," I hear you cry. "Who on earth would get revenge on someone if it meant they'd spend eternity in hell?" Thus far, the point of this anime has been to explain the answer to this very question.
It gets off to a shaky start, too. In the first episode, a class president gets blackmailed by the school troublemaker and is forced to give her money, do her errands, and even be a paid escort (almost). Call me crazy, but I expect if she tried to actually explain the situation to her teacher, the faculty would take her word over the troublemaker's...but the fine folks at Studio DEEN (see ANN entry) and Aniplex (see ANN entry) elect to ignore this gaping plothole.
Episodes 2 through 6 offer up much better rationales-- or perhaps 'situations' is a better way to put it --but little else. Thus far, the show is pretty much a "here's this week's vengeance!" deal-- if you watch a few episodes you'll notice that the Jigoku Shoujo only has maybe 8-10 lines per episode and they tend to be the exact same ones. Personally, I'd rather find out how she came to be the Jigoku Shoujo (especially since she has a penchant for wearing a schoolgirl uniform when not taking vengeance-- that plus the website makes me think she's a fairly modern addition to Japan's cache of demons (or whatever)).
The Jigoku Shoujo-- whose name is Enma Ai, by the way --also has a mini-entourage, consisting of three followers: loose kimono-wearing hottie named Hone Onno, a bishounen named Ichimo Kuren, and an old dude named Wan Yudo (I'm guessing on where the names split, since the official site doesn't have any spaces in them). I'm also interested in knowing who (and why) they are. Oh yes, and Ai also has a grandmother, who is occasionally a spider, it seems.
The good news is that on one of the official sites, shots from future episodes plus the cast page seems to imply that there may be new recurring characters coming up in the near future, which would hopefully be part of a larger plot-- because frankly, at the moment, the show is entirely too formulaic.
It's a shame, because it's visually impressive. The show makes occasional use of the patterning similar to that used in Gankutsuou, except that in Jigoku Shoujo it's wielded with caution, which makes it MUCH more impressive. The voice acting would probably be excellent if the Hell characters were given more opportunity to really use them, and the depth of emotion in the mortal characters is great-- we're just lacking a solid thread to get us hooked, since every episode stands on its own.
I'll keep you all updated on future improvements (or the opposite, as the case may be).
I'll largely agree with gia here. It's very formulamatic at the moment. Now for me the formula is working, but it will get old fast unless they change things (such as adding an overall plot or recurring characters) since the regulars have no character as of yet.
But despite this I have enjoyed the first three eps and look forward to more, though hopefully with some alterations in what has gone on.
I will say the brief looks we get into human nature tend to be quite interesting. In at least two cases the victims of the abuse take on the characteristics of the people they've revenged themselves on or been avenged by another.
[EDIT]
After having seen this to the end I am left with the conclusion this was way too long. 13 episodes would have been enough to convey everything that needed to be done. The monster of the week format became tiring by the last ten episodes or so, with no real variation or just tiresome ones. The Hell Boy episode was underutilized, and the ghost one was a neat twist, but aside from that I can barely remember any of the others, except at the very end when we learn Ai's true tale. Really, how many times can a person almost walk away from it only to have something new terrible happen to them that they change their mind at the last moment and give their soul to Enma Ai?
Final number is a 6 out of 10, barely. Had it been only 13 eps, it might have gotten a 7, maybe even an 8. But we'll never know.