Jigoku Shoujo: Yoi no Togi (Hell Girl: Fourth Twilight)

If you have a grudge against someone, you can access the Hell Correspondence website at the stroke of midnight, type in your grudge's name, and the Hell Girl, Ai Enma, will appear to grant your wish. However, the price for ridding yourself of such a burden is a steep one: in return for condemning the soul of your tormentor to Hell, your soul will also face eternal damnation. In her long vigil as the Hell Girl, Ai has met many willing to pay such a cost.

In Jigoku Shoujo: Yoi no Togi, Ai and her enigmatic companions continue to carry out their work, ferrying soul after suffering soul into the depths of Hell. However, as of late, a mysterious girl has been following them. This strange child, unable to even remember her own identity, questions Ai about her duty as the Hell Girl. Who is this girl, and what connection does she have to Ai?

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Prequel:

Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae

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Characters & Voice Actors

Enma, Ai

Main

Noto, Mamiko
Japanese

Ichimoku, Ren

Main

Matsukaze, Masaya
Japanese

Hone Onna

Main

Honda, Takako
Japanese

Wanyuudou

Main

Sugou, Takayuki
Japanese

Kikuri

Main

Sakai, Kanako
Japanese

Yamawaro

Main

Shiina, Hekiru
Japanese

Michiru

Main

Watada, Misaki
Japanese

Shibata, Tsugumi

Supporting

Mizuki, Nana
Japanese

Hanagasa, Mamoru

Supporting

Sugiyama, Noriaki
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Oomori, Takahiro

Director

Hatakeyama, Mamoru

Storyboard

Nishimoto, Yukio

Storyboard

Noto, Mamiko

Theme Song Performance

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Opening Theme

"Noise (ノイズ)" by Mio Yamazaki (ミオヤマザキ)

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Ending Theme

"Irogami (いろがみ)" by Mamiko Noto

Reviews

Sep 30, 2017

DrMondaiNashi

Recommended

This anime is the fourth and most likely final season of the Hell Girl animated series which began airing in 2005.

For those who haven't watched the previous installments, I highly recommend you take the time to watch the first season at the very least, even if I don't think it makes a difference to know Ai's backstory, it gives a nice perspective when you compare the humble beginnings to what it has became today, I mean, it's been over a decade, almost 14% of an adult male's mean life expectancy nowadays. (just let that sink in)

The Hell Girl (Jigoku Shoujo) series can be considered a ... collection of short stories that never span for longer than one episode, with one exception in which it is divided in two parts, where different characters are involved in a number of events linked to the Hell Correspondence (Jigoku Tsuushin) a group of supernatural entities that have been tasked with providing humans with a "service" of sorts that allows them to send people to hell, provided that they have accepted the conditions of the contract that is formed between them and Enma Ai, who is a mysterious, emotionless girl playing the role of the protagonist in every season.

The premise remains unchanged but there's always a deuteragonist, a character whose story takes place in a different context which develops independently or even tangentially from each of the stories, yet they invariably find themselves sharing a unique kind of relationship with Enma Ai.

In Yoi no Togi, we are presented with one of those new characters, a nameless girl wearing a green dress, whose existence appears to be similar to that of Enma Ai and as such is infered to be that of a supernatural entity in the human world.

In all seasons, the different short stories deal with an assorted variety of dark themes such as dysfunctional families, abusive relationships, physical and psychological torture, deep resentment and sentimental conflicts which cause major distress to those who are subject to them, but always with a focus on the pain that builds up and festers a desperate need for an individual to accept the eradication of another person as the solution to an inescapable conflict even on the face of the prospect of spending an eternity in 'Hell', which is then accepted as a more desirable fate than enduring the present state of affairs. In that sense, the only common underlying theme to all of the stories appears to be that tragic fate which awaits both the victim and the aggresor and the internalization of the concept of 'Hell' as a state of endless damnation and suffering of the soul, and with little to no mention of a 'Heaven' throughout the series it becomes evident that there's an interest on the part of the Hell Correspondence (and Ai herself especially) for these people to actively choose hell as the only alternative instead of finding a different (if any) solution to the conflict, as there are only exceptional cases where sending someone to hell was not the ultimate and decisive goal set by either the victim or Enma Ai's team even when the option existed for them to solve the conflict without sending anyone to hell.

Now if you'd ask me, I'd say the stories themselves might be the best part of the entire show, they are like urban legends, things that may or may not have happened, but such as all urban legends, you just know it has that bit of truth somewhere in there, and makes you wonder what would have actually happened without the added supernatural aspect of the Hell Correspondence as the cop-out method to reach that much needed "closure" and solve the problems that its clients face, those times you feel the need to take a side, and decide for yourself which one is in the right, it gives you that sense of foreboding that resembles the expectations of a human drama as you follow it closely to the end, and even when you know that the only possible conclusion is the obvious one (i.e someone will go to hell), it's often never as simple as agreeing that what the victim did was the right thing, simply for the fact that he/she was being victimized or made to endure a living hell, there's the anticipation and realization that the outcome isn't going to be exactly what you were expecting, and the theoretical contrast between the concept of hell and whether life can be worse or the same.

But at the same time, there are those episodes where stories are just barely realistic, and or, loosely based on existing stories that are commonplace in the horror and mystery lore even when they are not carbon copies, episode 13 and 17 from season one come to mind, and don't seem to serve much purpouse other than filling a time slot, this might be a problem for some but as I see it, the only people that would enjoy Hell Girl would be those willing to sit through a slow paced development, the dark themes alone demand of the viewer a certain measure of contemplation and deep thought and there's barely any room for entertainment sometimes even when the third season tried to be a bit less serious on the punishment sequences and gave Ai a bit of a (sick) humor sense mixed with some strange "fanservice" bits, you can forget about that in Yoi no Togi though, this one went back to the first season in that department.

Incidentally, I feel that the themes pertaining the nature of hell itself versus life in the living world once again becomes a central theme in Yoi no Togi, which I believe fell somewhat short on its execution compared to the other seasons, maybe has something to do with the time they actually dedicated to developing the character of Michiru, who went from nameless amnesiac girl, to what she would become in what? 3-4 episodes? now this is probably not a bad thing, but taking half a cour to build up the character and their motives and then following with an abrupt conclusion wasn't probably the best way to come back after 3 seasons with almost 25 episodes each, though in all honesty I'm biased for Hajime's story so I could be setting the bar too high here.

Animation on the other hand, has never been exceptionally great, but for this type of work the visuals are not the main attraction, so I can forgive that much, even then in Yoi no Togi, there has been a significant improvement from the type of animation we are used to, looking back to the first season, you can see how the animation team in studio Deen has moved up from the early 2000 digital animation techniques to the current animation programs with the typical crisp lineart you see in 2012 and up anime, and yet the character designs remain consistent with the previous seasons which is already a lot considering it's been well over 10 years.

All things considered, I don't feel disappointed revisiting this series in what will probably be the last season, I'm glad to be met with the same lovely Hell Girl I remember from a while back, but nostalgia aside, I feel this type of work being preserved as it was with little to no changes is probably for the best, a rare hybrid between a slice of life and a horror supernatural drama that never gets old, a timeless anthology of misery and tragedy.

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Jul 25, 2022

Eincaster

Mixed Feelings

This is what milking the cash cow looks like. No, not milking. Draining. I have no words to describe my disappointment.

The series had a decent first season – the first episode plunges you right in the middle of the story without needless info dumping. In each episode, you are only given the information necessary to understand the current situation, and as time passes new elements of the puzzle are discovered that serve to unravel the mystery surrounding Enma Ai. The story isn’t without its flaws, with repetitiveness and bad pacing being the worst offenders. Many of the cases could have been merged as they were ... of similar character, and most of the overarching plot development came in the later part of the series.

All in all, the first season was nothing to write home about but it wasn't bad to the point of unwatchable either. It was just decent. Had the story ended with the first season, it still would have been a fitting ending but I wouldn't have cared for any of the characters. I have to admit I'm not into episodic shows, especially ones where the overarching plot takes a long time to develop but I still liked Jigoku Shoujo. I'd say I realized I like it once it was over.

Then I watched the second season and I fell in love with the characters. One can say the characters grew on me through repetition. Yes, repetition. I've seen many single cour shows and wondered how the characters would have developed were there more episodes. By the end of S2 Jigoku Shoujo had 52 episodes and that's an awful lot for the small cast of recurring characters. This naturally gave each of these characters enough screen time for development and let me get to know them. The last arc of the season somehow reminded me of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, which happens to be one of my favorite shows and that made me like Jigoku Shoujo even more. The final episode of S2 was in my opinion the best possible conclusion to the series.

From there on, everything went downhill. S3 was where the first signs of milking appeared. I went into S3 with no idea what to expect as the end of S2 left nothing more to be solved. Yet the showrunners somehow decided to shrug off the explanation to the one simple question that bothered me throughout the entire S3 - why and how did Ai come back? It appears handwaving that question was how S3 was able to come into fruition, all be it with a large plot hole at its core. Anyway, by the end of S3 the story had acquired some semblance of sense of its own right so as to give it yet another meaningful conclusion. Still not better than S2 but at least it didn't do any major harm to the existing story.

And then I saw S4 and that abomination was the reason I wrote this wall of text. The showrunners completely outdid themselves with that one - retconning the events of S3 as if they never happened. I don't want to give away any spoilers but you'll know it when you see it. S4 aired 9 years after S3 and who knows, maybe the showrunners believed fans had already forgotten the events of S3 or that they haven't seen S3 at all. Or maybe the showrunners themselves forgot S3 existed, which would be the worst case scenario. Me? I binged all seasons in a week’s time so everything was pretty fresh in my memory.

S4 was full with inconsistencies and plot holes but that wasn't its only downfall. Its greatest transgression were the characters. Not Ai-chan and her comrades - no, they were already well developed in the previous seasons so I bear no grudges against them. My peeve was with the other characters, you know, the ones who appear only in their respective episode. The problem with those characters was that they were profound idiots. Each one of them. Bad guys were bad for the sake of being bad, good guys were framed by bad guys due to miscommunication (ahh, my favorite trope) and lack of proper investigation by authorities, and nothing anyone did made any sense.

Episode 1 was about yet another student being bullied at school and that’s about it. I didn't quite get what was going on in episode 2 – it was a mess from beginning to end. And episode 3 felt like a bad joke. Seriously, this was the worst episode of Jigoku Shoujo in the history of the anime. Watch it and you'll see what I mean. I couldn’t help but laugh at the ending – that’s how bad it was. Episode 4 was similar though a bit more subdued. It still didn't make much sense. The last two episodes were about the new recurring character of the show - Michiru. I'm not gonna spoil anything but suffice to say two episodes and a couple of cameos are not enough to develop a new character. Compare Michiru to Yuzuki of S3 and you’ll see what I mean. I didn’t bother watching the recap episodes as I had watched the original episodes some days earlier, so I won’t be commenting about them.

As a whole, Jigoku Shoujo S4 was like watching an orgy of everything that had made the previous seasons good but written by someone with no sense of human psychology and taken to the extreme for the sake of… what? Attention? Maybe the writers believed fans would like the show more if there was more gratuitous violence. You know, the hackneyed trope of always making sequels bigger instead of deeper. First season had dragons. Well, let’s add more dragons in S2. Or first season had mechas. Can you guess what’s going to make S2 an even bigger success than S1? But of course - MORE MECHAS!!!!

Unfortunately, Jigoku Shoujo S4 suffers from the same “shallow sequel syndrome”. Previous seasons had violence. So let’s add even more violence in S4 even though it’s done in a very poor taste and makes the bad guys look like props used to give the other characters an incentive to summon Ai. Previous seasons had Hell Girl. Well, in this season let’s add an— … well, just go watch the show. Or don’t. You won’t be missing out on much by skipping this season entirely.

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Oct 3, 2017

ShadowJackal35

Not Recommended

First things first, I write this review out of mere spite and am thoroughly disappointed with this season, so I'm going to be brief. Six episodes of the fourth season of Hell Girl are completely new and in every way a "Hell Girl" worthy episode. The last six on the other hand, are RECAPS from seasons 1, 2, and 3. Except for short 2-3 minute skits in the beginning of each episode, the episodes that follow that are copy and pasted from early seasons and are not worth watching. I have a very good memory and I can say with confidence that these episodes are ...

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Poll: Jigoku Shoujo: Yoi no Togi Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Aug 4, 2017	67 replies	by patkarunungan »» Nov 20, 2023 11:24 PM
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