Phew! Ok, spleen has been vented (quite cathartic this whole blogging thing) and normal service can be resumed.
Thought I’d wander through my archives (fancy word for shelf) again and have a look at three series that have a vaguely common thread running through them, although they do tell vastly different stories. It’s time to meet… the Dead Girls.
Shinigami no Ballad (しにがみのバラツド) Ballad of a Death God
We’ll kick off with the gentlest of the three stories. ‘Shinigami no Ballad’ revolves around a young shinigami (essentially the Japanese equivalent to our Grim Reaper) called Momo. She appears as a young girl, dressed in white and carrying a large black scythe. The latter might be a blurring of the lines between Eastern and Western concepts of the Grim Reaper, but who am I to tell. In another neat anime twist, she also carries a business card, just in case you don’t believe that the girl floating in front of you, carrying a large, sharp scythe, is indeed of a supernatural bent.
I started off by calling this the gentlest of the three stories being blathered about on this page and it really is. Based on a series of light novels by K-Ske Hasegawa and a subsequent shoujo manga, the 6 stories in the series are more about hope than horror. Besides having to cart the souls of the recently departed to the other side, Momo also can’t help herself from becoming involved in the lives of those left behind, trying to ease the suffering of the living and dead. Although not mentioned in the anime, it would appear as if Momo herself committed suicide and now takes on this duty to partly atone for the suffering she caused.
There is a prevailing melancholy and sentimentality throughout each episode (not helped by Momo, who normally manages to have a good cry at the end too – not a good quality for a death god, as her familiar points out), as we see the characters coming to terms with the loss of a loved one and Momo’s efforts to comfort them, either by conveying a last message, granting a final meeting or even baby-sitting a young child (to ease the worries of a recently deceased mother). The last episode is probably the most powerful, as Momo confronts a girl who attempted suicide herself. Given the subject matter and its shoujo roots, the series could easily become a schmaltzy tear-fest, but thanks to the guiding hand of director Mochizuki Tomomi (who has directed other gems such as Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and Porfy no Nagai Tabi) it doesn’t descend to these depths. Overall, it’s a fairly decent character study on dealing with loss, even though it doesn’t really wade more than ankle deep into the subject matter.
So, we’ll say ‘Hail fellow, well met” to the first of our dead girls, the sad, sentimental and not-really-a-horror-story-at-all Momo. Long may she wield her scythe. Of course, knowing my luck, when my time comes, I’m getting him.
Shigofumi (シゴフミ) Letters from the Departed
Things take a slightly darker turn with the second of our dead girls, both in subject matter and the girl in question. Another adaptation of a series of light novels by Amamiya Ryo, a shigofumi (literally ‘after-death letter’) is a letter written by the recently departed, intended to be delivered to somebody left behind on Earth. These are delivered courtesy of mail carriers and our focus now falls on one of these – Fumika.
The purpose of a shigofumi is for the recently departed to convey a message or feelings that they couldn’t pass on while still alive, or even to provide the name of their killer (which would make police work a helluva lot easier when you think about it). Under the auspices of the Gospel Department, mail carriers are dispatched to deliver these. One such carrier is the young, quiet, sad and withdrawn Fumika and the series revolves her and the people to whom she delivers the letters. Although parallels can be drawn with Shinigami no Ballad, the stories and characters are deeper and darker in Shigofumi.
The series also isn’t afraid to delve into subjects such as abuse, bullying and teen suicide which has led to several episodes having to be changed before broadcast and couple being preempted by various stations. It turns out that Fumika herself has a pretty heavy past and finds herself in this situation after years of abuse by her psychotic father. This goes a long way towards explaining her character – we soon learn she suffers from Multiple Personality Syndrome – as well as her determination (to the extent of carrying a rather large pistol) in making sure her letters are delivered. What sets this further apart from SnB is the fact that she takes no active part in the lives of the recipients, but rather developments unfold based on their reaction to the letter… sometimes with shocking results. The knobs also get turned up when she has to deliver a letter to her own father, with interesting and unpredictable results.
Although director Sato Tatsuo doesn’t have many directing credits against his name, the experience gained from working on shows such as Gunslinger Girl, Paranoia Agent and even Azumanga Daioh comes through in the balance of the series. It’s not all doom and gloom (hey, we’ve even had the ubiquitous trip to the hot springs), but when it does take a step towards the darkside, it can deliver a swift kick to your shins as it does so, whilst never quite losing the same subtle melancholy we found in SnB.
Although not strictly a dead girl (for reasons I can’t reveal because of spoilers) Fumika’s earned her place in this list. The series is darker, more graphic and very much geared at an older audience than SnB. It still remains to be seen if Fumika will know happiness again. We wish her well.
Jigoku Shoujo (地獄少女) Hell Girl
Jigoku Shoujo is probably the creepiest of the three series and certainly the one that touches on full-blown horror. Here we meet Enma Ai, who literally is the Hell Girl. Cursed due to an act of vengeance she carried out in her past, Ai has the job of condemning the victims of other people’s grudges to an eternity in hell, as atonement for her own sins. She’s been doing this for an awfully long time, although luckily the netherworld keeps track of modern technology and now you can pass on the name of your nemesis to her via the internet.
Whilst each self-contained episode of the series gives us an insight into the protagonists, as well as gradually revealing the history behind Ai and her cohorts, it differs significantly from the previous two tales in that she plays no role at all in the others’ lives – apart from finally dragging the doomed victim off to hell. The remainder of the story is about the interplay between the characters. An interesting touch (maybe a bit moralistic) is that sending somebody to hell isn’t the end of your troubles – as she puts it “When one person is cursed, two graves are dug.” In other words, by condemning someone immediately to hell, you yourself will wind up there once you die. At bit of tit-for-tat I guess and there’s sometimes a nasty sting in the tale… sorry, tail too.
Enma Ai is certainly the dead girl that comes closest to being evil. Not just in looks, but in her emotionless actions, she is genuinely creepy. Even on the odd occasion when she does show emotion, it doesn’t help – to use the example of her finding out that somebody is a descendant of the person who condemned her to her fate… ‘flying off the rag’ is a bit of an understatement. The anime also manages to use the element of “young people doing terrible things” to convey the prevailing sense of ‘wrongness.’ Hearing her childish voice say “Do you want to see what death is?” just screams wrong.
The anime itself does meander along and the plot device gets repetitive after a while – basically becoming 52 episodes of “Curse-of-the-Week” (it could easily have been 26 episodes in total, and I see a third season is in the offing), but it doesn’t detract from Ai’s cold execution of her duties. Both in terms of her current portrayal and her past, when it’s revealed, little Enma Ai deserves her place not only amongst horror anime, but also as one of the more tragic Dead Girls.
