wrex's anime whirls: Jigoku Shoujo Ep. 16

Episode title: 旅芸人の夜 (Tabigeinin no Yoru: Evening of the Traveling Performers)

This week's main character is a girl named Yumi who is part of a traveling circus. It seems that when she's not performing, she's locked up in a unlit compartment and frequently lashed with a whip by the circus owner. Tsugumi gets a vision of Ai making the contract with Yumi, and Hajime and Tsugumi look for the circus so that he can stop someone else being sent to Hell.

Pics (click to enlarge) and spoilers ahead:

Ai and Yumi

Hone Onna and Ichimoku Ren, working undercover as circus help, are dismayed to see Hajime again

Hone Onna goes over to talk to Tsugumi; is put off a bit when she calls her an "old lady." Later, Tsugumi asks if she can do a trick since she's a part of the circus. Hajime and Tsugumi leave suddenly, and when Ichimoku Ren reaches that scene shortly after, he finds a small box that's shaking. "Let me out!" a voice shouts. "Hone Onna, is that you?" he asks. ^_^

Hajime tries to run off with Yumi, but she doesn't want to

The circus owner gets ready to punish Yumi again

Spoilers:
Here's a brief version: Big developments: Ichimoku Ren speaks directly to Hajime and Hone Onna speaks directly to Tsugumi (of course, both don't know their real identities). Ichimoku Ren actually feeds info to Hajime to mislead him.

Hajime tries to run off with "Yumi" so that she can stop this revenge nonsense and maybe he can help her with her problems, but she says doesn't know what he's talking about and fights him off. Hajime and Tsugumi leave the circus, but later he has a revelation: there are twin girls and the "Yumi" he visited is not the one that made the contract with the Jigoku Shoujo. He figures out that there are twins. They return to the circus site and head for the trailer that the real Yumi is in. Unfortunately, he sees the red thread already on the ground. He runs off to try to save the cirucs owner. Tsugumi, meanwhile, stays with Yumi, who is singing a sad song of loneliness. Suddenly, the Jigoku Shoujo appears and she looks at Yumi. With compassion we haven't seen before, she kneels down in front of Yumi and caresses her face. This brings us flashbacks of Yumi and her twin sister's childhood; it shows how her sister got all the attention and it shows how her sister also boobytrapped her equipment to make her get into accidents while performing. When she tried to tell the circus owner, he locked her up and began punishing her.

Hajime runs to the trailer where the owner and Yumi's sister is. He tries to run off with the owner, saying he was in danger. As they struggle, however, Yumi's sister gets pulled into a mirror... it's actually Yumi's sister who is the target. She gets punished by the circus of Hell and to the end she refuses to apologize to her sister or admit she was wrong. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to be in the spotlight all by yourself! It'd be better if she wasn't alive" she yells. Even as she's being ferried to hell, she shouts out, "Stop this! I told you to stop! I don't want to go! Stop!!!" The circus owner now lavishes attention on Yumi and she smiles for the first time.

A nice twist to this story and we get to see someone being punished again after a long absence. The preview for next week's episode was interesting too. Apparently the next contractee may be at an asylum of some sort. "Help me" a girl is saying. However, we hear Enma Ai saying, "Don't go." Is this some kind of warning for Hajime and Tsugumi's safety? "I hear a music box," Tsugumi says... sounds ominous for some reason. I wonder what kind of horror awaits Hajime and Tsugumi.