wrex's anime whirls: Jigoku Shoujo Ep. 12

Episode Title: 零れたカケラ達 (Koboreta Kakeratachi: difficult to translate this one... Literal translation: Spilled people who talk to each other: Liberal translation: "Fallen Confidants")

Basically, there's a girl named Akane Sawai who has withdrawn into her room and won't go to school. Her young homeroom teacher, Yoshiki Fujisawa, comes to her house every day, banging on her door, pleading for her to come to school, but to no avail. Akane feels the only person that understands her is her email friend, who shares her feelings. She's sick of the persistency of Fujisawa, and with the agreement of her mail friend, enters his name into the Jigoku Shoujo site.

After Fujisawa is once more pressured by his superior, he goes to Akane's house and talks to her. He tries to convince her to come to school, saying that she may get to understand her feelings better if she interacts with others; and to this she blurts out that he can't understand her feelings, and asks if he isn't just doing this because if she doesn't go to school, he'll just look bad. It's touched off a nerve and he yells out, "If you know how I'm feeling, then don't ask! Don't think you're so special in your situation! But apologizes immediately after. After an awkward silence between the two, he says that she's right and that he was only thinking of himself. He gets ready to leave, but gently says that he'll come again, and she shouldn't worry her mom too much and should try to go to school. This moment of honesty seems to have touched Akane and she follows him out of the house and watches him leave.

After, she contacts her mail friend, saying her feelings are mixed and now doesn't know what to do. Her mail friend shares similar feelings, by coincidence. The next day, Fujisawa is surprised to see her come to class. They talk to each other during a break. Someone calls him and he goes out for a moment. She takes the opportunity to send a message to her email friend and see's his keitai (cell phone) buzz. She sends another message and it buzzes again. She picks up his phone and sees the messages are from her. He returns and asks what she's doing. She in turn asks if he knew all along that she was "Anemone," but he says he didn't. Eventually, they sort things out; this was his only way he could talk about his feelings; she says that his words saved her. She says she's sorry, but she'd entered his name into the Jigoku Shoujo site. He seems excited and asks if she's seen the Hell Girl. She says "yes," and he asks what she was like. She says that Ai looked kind of forlorn. He asks if she could send him to hell; that he was tired of it all and wanted some relief. She seems to understand the pain he was going through, and though she thinks about herself going to hell, decides to pull the string.

Fujisawa finds himself lying on the boat to hell (no torments). He asks Ai if he's going to hell this way. Ai says, "do you know what you did?" She makes him look at an image of Akane sad in the upper world. She says that by sending him to hell, she'll also fall to hell, wandering for all eternity. She hears Akane saying, "I'll see you later in hell, my teacher."

Later, Hajime (he had been to that school as a guest speaker and had met Fujisawa) learns that the teacher was reported missing. As he's sitting in the car with Tsugumi, he says, "what a shame... he seemed like such a fine, upstanding, serious teacher." But Tsugumi goes into a trance again, and says, "is it okay like this, that hell becomes heaven?" In Ai's garden, the grandma replies, "it's okay, if they regard it that way. You don't have to think any further than that."

Thoughts: this episode was concentrated greatly on the main character and the target; there was no appearance of Ai's helpers. Ai seems to be disturbed by feelings of injustice and sadness, but her grandma doesn't want her to think about things like that... just do her job like a robot. The artwork on this episode was pretty good too; the scenery of their secret spot and the facial expressions, especially the eyes, were well done, I thought.

Next week's episode look interesting... Tsugumi has a vision, but it's not of the present, it's about the past... something that happened 50 years ago.

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