complich8’s journal

So, I’ve been randomly entertaining episodes of Jigoku Shoujo for a while, and just watched a couple. I’ve also been entertaining the book The Paradox of Choice for a while, and recently read another couple dozen pages.

Round about page 111, Schwartz summmarizes a bit of Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty, explaining that in any situation in which you are unhappy, you have two choices: you can either walk away from the table or you can voice your problem. Schwartz points out that dealing with people in any way other than giving voice to the problem is pretty disagreeable.

Well, I’m thinking about Jigoku Shoujo. For those that don’t know (which I suspect is about everyone reading this :p), Jigoku Shoujo (”Hell Girl”) is an anime built around the premise that a young girl, Enma Ai (presumably the daughter of Enma, the judge of the dead and king of the underworld). She sets up a website, at which people can submit names (but only at midnight) and enter into contracts for revenge. The deal is, Enma Ai takes the victim’s soul to Hell right out, but in exchange the person who makes the contract forfeits their soul’s chances at anything but an eternity in Hell as well.

So far, most episodes have followed the same pattern: someone does something cruel to someone else (usually repeatedly), the victim asks Ai for revenge, Ai gives them a token (a straw doll of the person) and lets them enter into a contract if they pull the string around the doll’s neck. The person then thinks about it, gives “voice” a try, and when that doesn’t work and they get backed into a corner, they pull the string, the other person gets a taste of fitting revenge and shuffles off to hell.

Now, the biggest, most interesting thing I’ve noticed about this pattern is that almost the victim’s very first impulse is to go for the “exit” approach. Sort of like King Henry’s famous line, “who will rid me of this meddlesome … person”. Then when they find out that their soul will be taken for going through with the deal, they reconsider and try the “voice” route again.

I’m not really going anywhere with this, I just think it’s an interesting thing, how the route there is sort of messed up. I guess if there has to be anything to say abot it, maybe … “quitting another person shouldn’t be anything other than your very last choice among the list of possible choices you can make”. Something like that.

Anyway, the series is interesting, but a little slow and definitely not for everyone. It’s pretty though… very high quality artwork throughout. I’m hoping to see a little more storyline variation in upcoming episodes…

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, anime/tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.