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Ai Enma has a job. Even
though she is a third year student in middle school, when someone logs
onto her website, Hell Correspondence, at midnight and types in the name
of a person that they hate, then she, Hell Girl, will come and help
them. But it is a double-edged sword. Not only will she take the person
that is hated to Hell, but when the person who contacted her dies, their
soul will go to Hell and live in eternal damnation.
In the first story, Mari
Shimizu is caught shoplifting. She is saved by fellow student Satsuki
Hayase. For saving her, Satsuki begins by asking small favors which soon
leads to big favors. It all becomes to much for Mari who writes to Hell
Girl and Satsuki is soon dead and living in Hell. In the second story,
Hiromi Kasuga is an honored culinary arts student. She is opening a
small pastry shop and her old boss, Morisaki, who owns another pastry
shop, shows up to check it out. He tells her that a reporter wants to do
a story on her and would like some of her recipes. Hiromi hands them
over and Morisaki claims them as his own in the story, which turns out
to be about him. He then goes on to spread nasty rumors about Hiromi and
her new shop. After Hiromi ends up in the hospital for stress -related
problems, her best friend Yuki writes to Hell Girl and Morisaki soon
disappears. In the third story, Sakura lands the roll of a lifetime. She
will be playing Hell Girl in a new drama. Her best friend, Kaoru, is
happy for her friend's good fortune. But when rumors are spread that the
make-up artist is a stalker, he gets fired. Soon after, some lighting
falls onto Sakura and paralyzes her so that she will never walk again.
Kaoru shows up in Sakura's hospital room looking like Sakura and informs
her that she now has the part of Hell Girl. Sakura figures out that it
was Kaoru who did all these things to her and asks the real Hell Girl to
help her out. Very soon, Kaoru is living in her own personal Hell. As
for the fourth and fifths stories, one is about a veterinarian who kills
the animals that are brought in rather than save them and the other is
about a teacher who tries to molest one of his middle school students.
Hell Girl - Volume
1 is a manga book written and drawn by Miyuki Eto and was
originally created by The Jigoku Shoujo Project. This
collection was Translated and Adapted by Gemma Collinge and Lettered by
North Market Street Graphics. This book
contains the following periods:
Chapter One: From
Within the Darkness
Chapter Two: Sweet
Trap
Chapter Three:
Fallen Angel
Chapter Four: The
inaudible Scream
Chapter Five:
Dangerous Extracurricular Activities
There are also some
special extras in the following sections: 1) Honorifics Explained, 2) About the
Creator, 3) Translation Notes, and a Preview of Volume 2,
although the preview is in Japanese. The book reads from
right to left and back to front, just like a book from Japan. This manga
book is intended for readers ages 16 and up.
I was very excited when I saw the cover
of Hell
Girl - Volume
1 and read the back of the book to see what it was about.
After all, the cover is pretty cool-looking. But when I started reading,
the first story was jumbled and confusing. Maybe the translation and
adaptation wasn't very good, or it was poorly written. I'm not really
sure where the problem was. I really enjoyed the character
Ai Enma and think that
she is totally awesome. But we really don't get to know her at all. How
did she get these powers? Is she a demon spawn? Does she work for the
devil? Is she from Hell itself? None of these questions were answered in
this book. The other problem I had with this collection of stories is
that all five stories are stand-alone tales. There really do seem to be
a lot of angry third year middle school students at that one school. It
is basically the same story told five different times with different
characters. I always knew what was going to happen, so it became kind of
tedious. On the other hand, the artwork is great and the stories are
interesting, but repetitious. I find it hard to believe that just
because some bad person is picking on some of these characters that they
are willing to have this person killed and then when they die, they will
live in eternal damnation for the rest of time. Wouldn't they just
confront the nasty person and get them out of their lives rather than
having an eternity of torture thrust upon them? That certainly isn't a
choice I would make, nor would most people, I believe. Overall,
Hell Girl - Volume
1 is readable, but the concept is flawed and the book wasn't
very well executed. There are too many questions that were not answered
and the reader is left confused and bewildered. Maybe things will be
better in Hell
Girl - Volume
2. I can
only hope so.
I rated this book a 5 out of 10. |
