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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, an
ice skater is competing to see where she will place in an upcoming
tournament. She falls on the ice and ends up coming in fifth place. This
causes her to be placed third in line to skate in the tournament. She
comes up with a plan to have the two girls in front of her end up
entering each other's names on the site to send them to Hell. In the
second story, a girl returns home from school for the weekend to find
that their widowed father has hired a housekeeper for his youngest
daughter. The younger sisters tells the older sister that the
housekeeper has been beating her. Even with the bruises, the older
sister does not believe her, until she catches the housekeeper in the
act. In the third story, a girl has been taking flowers to a male friend
who has been sick in the hospital for years. She has been receiving
strange text messages lately, and someone has broken into her room and
stolen her yearbooks. It seems that she has a stalker and no one will
believe her. In the fourth story, a teacher goes out for maternity leave
and the substitute hates kids. After locking a student in the closet and
forcing her to eat tuna eyeballs, one of the other students realizes
that something must be done. In the fifth and final story, a weak girl
is friends with a strong girl. The strong girl likes a boy, but the boy
likes the weak girl. The strong girl throws away years of friendship
over this boy, causing the weak girl to call for Hell Girl. But when the
weak girl decides that she no longer wants to curse her friend, is it
too late to stop it?
Hell Girl: Volume
2 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 chapters:
Chapter Six: Ice
Shadows
Chapter Seven:
Family
Chapter Eight:
Distorted Love
Chapter Nine: Lost
Cat
Chapter Ten:
Friends
There are also some
special extras in the following sections: 1) Honorifics Explained, 2) About the
Creator, 3) Translation Notes, and 4) Preview of Volume 3,
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.
Hell Girl:
Volume 2 has some descent stories, but ends with two really horrible
ones. I find it humorous that these kids are so vindictive that they
don't understand the value of life. If I believed in the eternal soul
and had a choice of Heaven and Hell, I would do everything in my power
to be a good person so I could go to Heaven. Life may sometimes seem
like Hell, but an eternal life of damnation does not sound very
appealing. Can't they see that using Hell Girl to send someone to Hell
is the same thing as murder? I could understand wanting to kill someone
that is abusing you little sister. Personally, I may want to, but I
wouldn't kill them because I have morals. Do any of the girls in the
stories have morals? And why is it only girls sending people to hell?
Why not any boys? Interesting... I must admit that having a stalker hunt
you down and threaten your life . . . well, that would be a major issue.
So, I did enjoy stories two and three. The first story was okay, but so
Tanya Harding-esk that I found it funny. Then came the fourth story. The
one about the teacher. As a former teacher and a current employee of a
school district, there is no way a teacher like that would ever get
hired. The story is just utterly ridiculous. I actually made me upset
that the story we as even created. Then there was the fifth story. Best
friends throwing away a friendship over a boy. It happens all the time
in the real world, but why? Never let someone come between your
friendship. I should know, it happened to me and I hated it. As for the
artwork, the characters eyes are just way too big. They are ridiculously
large. I guess with not liking many of the stories, finding the concept
of the manga flawed, and not really enjoying the artwork, there just
isn't really room for me to like this manga at all. So, if you are
looking for a story that has the same thing happen in every individual
story, then this is the book for you. If you like vindictive girls
murdering people because they cannot hand life, pick up a copy of this
book. Overall, I find
Hell Girl:
Volume 2 to be a substandard book in a series that needs a lot of
tuning before I would ever consider it to be good. Not great, just good.
Maybe things will get better in
Hell Girl:
Volume 3, but I doubt it since they made anime about this series. Why
would they do that?
I rated this book a 4½ out of 10. |
