Hell Girl Vol 2
Jun. 16th, 2008 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreThis is still just the manga. I haven’t watched any of the anime yet.
Even more than volume 1, volume 2 of Hell Girl focuses almost exclusively on the people who make contracts with Enma Ai, and not on Enma Ai and her servants, which is what I’d like to see. There are some interesting twists, though. A person who wants to get rid of both of her competitors tries to get them to enter each other’s names on Enma Ai’s website, only to get caught in her own trap. Another enters the wrong name, only to have someone else enter the right one before she can condemn herself, and another actually becomes a stronger person because of the contract. Just as I was about to get fed up with the fact that every contractor was a girl (though their motives are mostly different) a boy becomes a contractor. There’s also a new stage introduced into the contract, where the contractor has to pull a string off of a straw doll before the contract is complete, giving the contractor a chance to back out. I wish someone would back out, actually, and decide there’s a better alternative.
I’m enjoying the series, but I wish the regular cast wasn’t limited to just cameos, and that we could get a better idea of why they do what they do, how they get along, etc. Also, this may still just be my Judeo-Christian concept of Hell speaking, but I wish that the characters seemed to think more before they made the contracts. I can understand the ones who are trying to save someone they love, or responding to an attack on their life, or someone else they care about making the choice. However, the ones who do it because of bullying and/or someone tricking them tend to throw me out of their stories. The super-shoujo art still seems an odd match for the story content, but I think it helps emphasize the darker stories.
Even more than volume 1, volume 2 of Hell Girl focuses almost exclusively on the people who make contracts with Enma Ai, and not on Enma Ai and her servants, which is what I’d like to see. There are some interesting twists, though. A person who wants to get rid of both of her competitors tries to get them to enter each other’s names on Enma Ai’s website, only to get caught in her own trap. Another enters the wrong name, only to have someone else enter the right one before she can condemn herself, and another actually becomes a stronger person because of the contract. Just as I was about to get fed up with the fact that every contractor was a girl (though their motives are mostly different) a boy becomes a contractor. There’s also a new stage introduced into the contract, where the contractor has to pull a string off of a straw doll before the contract is complete, giving the contractor a chance to back out. I wish someone would back out, actually, and decide there’s a better alternative.
I’m enjoying the series, but I wish the regular cast wasn’t limited to just cameos, and that we could get a better idea of why they do what they do, how they get along, etc. Also, this may still just be my Judeo-Christian concept of Hell speaking, but I wish that the characters seemed to think more before they made the contracts. I can understand the ones who are trying to save someone they love, or responding to an attack on their life, or someone else they care about making the choice. However, the ones who do it because of bullying and/or someone tricking them tend to throw me out of their stories. The super-shoujo art still seems an odd match for the story content, but I think it helps emphasize the darker stories.