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Ever just wanted someone who wronged you to just disappear?  Well Hell Girl will “exact your revenge” with only one cost, the string puller and the victim of your straw doll, shall go to hell.

Hell Girl is a young girl who will come to you if you enter someones name into the Hotline to Hell website.  Except, the only time that the Hotline to Hell is accessible is at midnight every night, and only those with true hatred can access it, otherwise the site just times out.  The Hotline to Hell and Hell Girl idea is considered just an urban legend, and no one believes it is real until they use it for themselves.

Hell Girl
4 Stars

Ai Enma and her band of three take you on a series of straw doll deaths, allowing you to see what she does, and also to and show you more cases of when Hotline to Hell has been used.  These cases finally lead up to the following of one character.  The “Devil Child,” also known as Takuma Kurebayashi, is followed for the rest of the series. Takuma is first is visited by Kikuri, a purple eyed girl who is with Hell Girl, in episode fourteen.  Throughout the series you hardly know anything of Hell Girl or the other four, but towards the end it flashes back to their pasts and how they met.  Wanyuudou was originally an aid to a princess, and he died along side her in a stage coach accident.  After he died he continued to haunt the road where the accident occurred as a flaming wheel.  Hone-Onna was once a geisha who was betrayed by her friend Kiyo.  Ren Ichimoku is known to be an artifact spirit, meaning he was once a katana.  Slowly you find out who Ai Enma was, and Kikuri stays a secret until the very last episode.

Ai Enma, once an ordinary girl, is to wander the world doing the bidding of others.  She is forced to carry on the sins of others by taking people to Hell.

Takuma and Ai Enma have lived similar lives.  Everyone in Takuma’s town are blaming him for the murders and disappearances.  Which coincidentally are caused by Ai Enma and everyone accessing the Hotline to Hell.  Ai Enma is forced to carry out each request unless the person declines the contract, eventually she disobeys her ‘master’ which leads to her death by yet another angry mob.

Ai Enma always explains with each customer that, “If you truly wish to eliminate your antagonist you must until that red string.  If you remove the string, you shall officially enter into a contract with me.  The one you see revenge upon shall be taken immediately to Hell.  However, if I deliver your revenge, I must have you make restitution to me.  When one person is cursed, two graves are dug.  If you accept the contract, thy soul shall fall into the pit of Hell.  But that is only after you die.”

This series was pretty decent, but it was not exactly as much of a horror as I heard it was.  In the beginning the series started out a little strange, with no real characters, but once you started to identify with Takuma it was easier to get into.  I enjoyed the idea of the series, having a Hotline to Hell is neat, but anyone could send literally anyone to Hell in an instant.  To me, a world like that would be a little scary, it would be hard to trust anyone.  Especially when you see family sending other family members off to Hell, or supposed best friends sending the other to Hell.  It seems like a rather frightening dog-eat-dog situation.

Asatte No Houkou starts out with a young lady in her twenties named Shōko Nogami returning to Japan from America. She first runs into Karada and Hiro Iokawa near a wishing shrine, where Shōko bends down next to Karada and makes a wish on a stone. Karada, a young girl about twelve years old, invites Shōko, a stranger to her, to join her brother and her to the beach. While at the beach Shōko unknowingly insults Karada by saying, she looked childish in the barrettes her brother bought. Karada, thinking she was a burden, wished to become an adult faster to release Hiro from having to take care of a little kid. When Shōko met back up with Karada at the wishing shrine, they both look at each other, wide eyed and realize that they have both changed ages.

Asatte No Houkou
3 & 1/2 Stars

Join some interesting characters in a story of friendship, love and supernatural happenings.

Asatte No Houkou starts out with a young lady in her twenties named Shōko Nogami returning to Japan from America. She first runs into Karada and Hiro Iokawa near a wishing shrine, where Shōko bends down next to Karada and makes a wish on a stone. Karada, a young girl about twelve years old, invites Shōko, a stranger to her, to join her brother and her to the beach.  While at the beach Shōko unknowingly insults Karada by saying, she looked childish in the barrettes her brother bought. Karada, thinking she was a burden, wished to become an adult faster to release Hiro from having to take care of a little kid. When Shōko met back up with Karada at the wishing shrine, they both look at each other, wide eyed and realize that they have both changed ages.

Shōko once a twenty something adult is now a twelve-year-old girl. Karada went from a childish twelve year old to a young adult. Realizing what had happened Karada and Shōko decide to try to get things straightened out before they told anyone, leading Hiro to search all day and night for his little sister, who now has become an adult. What he does not know is that Shōko and Karada are right under his nose. The stone that the two wished on disappears and there is no way to change them back to their original states.

Jumping back to understand more of the story, Hiro was studying abroad when his parents passed away. He told his lover, Shōko, that he had to come back to Japan to attend their funeral and would return shortly. Unfortunately, for Shōko, Hiro stayed in Japan to watch over his little sister. When he did not return Shōko was distraught, she began to hate him for everything, mainly his cowardly nature. Naturally, anyone would get that way if someone were to disappear like that. Shōko never understood why Hiro had left, but she finally decided to pick up her life and get a new start. Coincidentally she moves to a small town in Japan the place where Hiro and Karada call home.

Hiro and Karada invite Shōko, the now young girl, to come live with them and as the story progresses you see the relationship between the three altering. Hiro tells Shōko that Karada is not his real sister, but explaining they are still siblings. Before Karada brought Shōko into their lives with her young careless nature, Shōko and Hiro were an ocean apart. Although, Karada realized she brought the couple closer together too late and runs away in hopes of relieving them of the burden of taking care of her.

It seems Tetsumasa Amino, Karada’s friend, goes on a series long search to find her. He drives himself crazy before running away with his friend Kotomi Shionzaki in search of her, vowing that he would never give up. They find Karada, only she is going by the name Satou, and do not recognize her. Karada struggles with herself still not wanting to tell anyone who she really is, but finally breaks down to Tetsumasa. Tetsumasa does not believe her initially and the news only aggravates him.

Without leaving much for an ending, the entire gang goes home. Shōko goes to the train station to see Kotomi safely onto the train as she heads back to her parents and just before she leaves, she slips the wishing stone into Shōko’s pocket. At last, the girls can finally go back to their original states!

I was looking around on the Internet for new content when I stumbled on a year old post on Anime News Network. Granted these are 2006’s animes but they are different from the current ones on AdultSwim. In the post, they listed off 25 of the year’s animes, so I picked at random and ended up with this one.

This anime is only half of the others I have reviewed lately, and by half I do not mean it is not as good as the others. It seems like every anime includes love and certainly despair, along side the usual fight for your life drama or quest for something. Asatte No Houkou may lack the battles with monsters, robots and villains, but it does not lack in story.  The plot is plain, but each episode shows a little more of the past, making it random and hard to follow if you have not seen the beginning. When you first start out the series, you have no prior knowledge of the characters, which is why I jumped back with a history update. For me I usually like to know what the characters are about prior to getting into the story, it makes the story a little easier to explain. With that aside, I would have to say that this anime is enjoyable still. This is the first series I have watched that is the romance/drama only. The ending was a little bit of a drop off, but you do get to see Hiro and Shōko are finally back together like before, even though Karada is there!

Legend has it that only wolves have knowledge of how to enter Paradise allowing them to escape destruction of the world. Enter a pre-apocalyptic world where the entire population of wolves appears to be extinct. Signs of the apocalypse appear and people begin to regret destroying the wolf population.

Wolf’s Rain
3 Stars

The story line is set in a desolate world torn apart by a war of the Nobles. The people eagerly wait for the legendary Paradise to take over. However, they do not realize that the near extinct species, wolves, are the ones that will show the way. Wolves still exist in the world, but they can disguise themselves as humans and live normal lives. Many of them are spread thinly throughout the world and live in secrecy in fear of their lives.

The show starts with a wolf disguised as a human named Tsume and this rag-tag group of bandits stealing food from the Nobles supply lines. At the beginning, Tsume seems to be a normal human. However, he has some mysterious superhuman powers. His team stumbles upon a nearly dead wolf inside a tree and they are shocked. They are stunned because wolves are said to be extinct. The nearly dead wolf is named Kiba, the one that will open the gates to Paradise. Kiba needs to find a flower girl that was hidden deep within the city. Tsume and Kiba get separated when the city’s Pet Control captures Kiba and sticks him in a cage to run experiments. Another wolf in disguise named Hige seeks out Kiba after smelling him with his superior nose. Hige rescues Kiba and they go on a search for the Flower Girl that is hidden in the city.

Meanwhile, Tsume runs into a younger wolf named Hoboe and saves him from an old wolf hunter. Hoboe follows him around like a little kid, which gets on Tsume’s nerves. Finally Tsume gets fed up with him and his childish ways, and chases him off.

Kiba and Hige locate the hidden Flower Girl deep within the city’s castle, but they were too late. They came in the middle of her being kidnapped by a unknown villain with a golden eye. Hige and Kiba try to save the Flower Girl named Cheza from his clutches, but they fail and are forced to retreat and try to find where he took her. uring their retreat they run into Hoboe and Tsume and they join them in the search for Paradise and the Flower girl Cheza They travel from town to town searching for where Cheva’s kidnapper, Lord Darcia the Third. They go to great lengths to obtain Cheza and protect her from Lord Darcia’s troops as she leads them on the path to Paradise.

The plot was really confusing. I had a hard time following the story line and the subplots that some of the characters had. The story line was great if you sat down and tried to figure it out. Reminded me of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

The main characters of this anime are cleverly named after different wolf parts in Japanese. Each of them have a short background story that is revealed at the very end of the series, making it a little useless. The main wolves breakdown as such:

Hoboe seemed like a girl. He was a little too caring towards Tsume and annoyingly followed him around.

Tsume was too over dramatic and tried to be a badass lone wolf (lawl pun). His past was explained in the very last episode that was an (go die) “ah hah!” moment. Tsume’s past should of been explained prior to the end of the series. It really explains why he tried to distance himself from the make-shift pack.

Hige was actually semi-normal. He had a nonchalant attitude towards everything, except for his feelings for Blue towards the end.

Kiba was just flat out dead set on getting to Paradise. He was the selected one to open the door to Paradise.

This series was a show that you really have to get into to enjoy it. Paying attention to minuet details is the key to watching this show. The show starts out really slow and gets rather confusing, and it doesn’t really explain anyone’s past or any history. They throw you head first in to the storyline and take you along. Overall, this show was very emotionally straining with very heart breaking events that will leave a hole in your heart for this series.