 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | FUNIMATION ENTERTAINMENT | | | ▪ | ASPECT RATIO: | | 16:9 ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN | | | ▪ | AUDIO: | | ENGLISH DD 5.1 / 2.0 & JAPANESE DD 2.0 | | | ▪ | RUNNING TIME: | | 125 MIN | | | ▪ | RATING: | | TV MA | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 10/23/2007 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 11/13/2007 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | DAVEY C. JONES |
At the stroke of midnight, the Hellcorrespondence.com website appears. If you type in a name, that person will be sent to Hell and retribution will be yours. But before you press send, beware, because vengeance comes with a price!
Unholy spooky coolness horror fans! Tired of horror shows that are only about gore and no finesse? Bored with horror shows that have a high body count but no real story? Want some of the horror back into your hellacious frightful fun? Look no further – Hell Girl has it all! It has chilling stories that will haunt you, circumstances that will rock and shock you, and there are some seriously creepy cats going around doing this infernal girl’s bidding. Finally, a horror you can take seriously! Every story rides on its own merits. Each is a one shot where someone has hardships they can no longer endure. Then they find the website (or it finds them) and they have to make a choice: vengeance or keep taking the Hell on earth they’ve been dealt. Hell Girl always gives her applicants a small taste of what their payment will entail, and it’s stuff that you’d need stern resolve to face. But one by one, the choices are made, fates are sealed, and Hellish vengeance gets meted out. It’s cool stuff. It’s also harsh. This stuff isn’t for the meek, the easily depressed, or the timid. You’ll meet one person after another getting the wrong end of the stick, sure they get their righteous retribution but the price is high. And I mean eternal. Is the price of vengeance worth eternal damnation? Take a look at these lives and you decide. It starts off with a young earnest girl who works hard at school but starts to get bullied. The girls doing the bullying are even willing to pimp her out so that they can get cash! Then it’s a girl being stalked by some serial criminal and she’s on the brink. After that, an honest baseball player finds out his friend got murdered and he’s been framed for it! Next, a sweet girl loses her only friend, her pet dog, to a vile vet. And last on this packed volume of ethereal horrors, a corrupt and murdering exec will stop at nothing to get her way up the corporate ladder, even if she has to slave a high school girl to get ahead. Each case is almost more vile than the last, the one with the vet really got to me. I have pets. The thing is, this anime is harsh, because the cost of the righteous justice is steep. So these innocent victims have to pay a price pretty much on par with their victimizers. Not exactly fair. But then again, maybe that’s the point. Life isn’t fair. And if you basically make a call to take a life, all the way to Hell in fact, shouldn’t you have to pay with your soul? As the anime keeps going, you get more and more of a window view into Hell Girl’s life, but who is she? What is she? And how did she get this gig? She has some strange helpers: a seemingly helpless older man who’s also her black and flaming carriage, a hot babe who happens to really be a skeleton, and a young guy who’s got a heck of an eye for detail. None of them are human. Hopefully the show will tell us more about Hell Girl as it progresses. The animation is produced by Aniplex with Studio DEEN. Whether separate or together, these two companies have worked on some of the biggest anime hits like Cowboy Bebop the movie, Rurouni Kenshin the TV and OVA, Read or Diet, R.O.D. TV, Blood+, FLAG, Fullmetal Alchemist, and more. So does Hell Girl look awesome? You bet the animation is top notch and then some. It’s got this dark ominous feel to it. The style has that Asian horror sensibility, with slashes of crimson, ghostly apparitions, and creepy spectres. Hell Girl has this beautiful but freaky kimono that’s done 3D so even though she moves, the pattern stays the same as if it’s a window into another dimension. Now and again the kimono seems to come alive and that’s when you know it’s all over for the fool in that ferry boat. The animation is spooky and stylish, everything you could hope for in a decent horror animation with a serious story. EXTRAS:
DVD extras include trailers, textless songs, 2 large art cards that are so pretty you could frame them, reversible cover art done in this mystical, Asian occult style, promo video that’s basically a music video with the lead Japanese voice actress Mamiko Noto (Ai Enma/Hell Girl), a making of the promo video, and a main character profile done video style. The starter set has an exclusive art card and a stylish art box to collect the entire 6 volume series. The box is really something. Its blood red with Hell Girl only on the back, the title is done with a gold foil stamp in this elegant style that’s ever so tasteful and really stands out. The same can be said of the cover art of the DVD case too, it’s black with Hell Girl on the cover and also has the title foil stamped. It’s really stylish. IN SUMMARY:
This anime puts the horror back into Hell! It will haunt you! It’s serious horror that makes you think and makes you shiver.
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