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Now in Japan
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Wednesday, 11 April 2007 17:00 |
 Two anime series and a live-action series - Jigoku Shoujo must be doing something right. Very little transfers easily between animated and filmed forms, though, so can the adventures of Ai Enma catch as much attention in this version as her animated original has..?
1 - Scars of Time
Yu has just heard that she's passed her university entrance exams - something both she and her mother are very happy about, but while there's good news about her future, in the present Yu's school life is anything but happy - she's being bullied by other girls in her year, and she's just about at the end of her tether. She's heard the legend of the 'Hell Girl' and even gone to her website, ready to enter the name of her chief tormentor, but as yet she hasn't had the nerve to click to Submit button. But when the bullying is stepped up a gear, Yu's patience finally snaps...
This episode is essentially the first episode of the anime, just with a few variations - as then, it's the 'subsidised dating' element that marks Yu's low point (although in this case she's already called in Ai by then). The problem is that this doesn't really work as well in live-action as it does in animated form - there's some fairly obvious use made of CG effects, for example to recreate the cherryblossom effect when Ai begins the trip to hell, or the strange surroundings for the boatride through hell's gate, and a few other scenes besides. In the anime, this is seamless - here, because it's fairly obvious CG, it jars.
The dialog and acting also seems more stilted or wooden that the animation. That's something I've noticed in a lot of Japanese live-action shows - the actors don't seem to be as able to let themselves go as much as the anime's VAs, and that has an effect on how easy it is to enjoy the show.
The end result, is that as much as I love Jigoku Shoujo, I'm going to be giving this one a pass. The animated version just carries the premise off that little bit better, and with it looking like the two incarnations will be using basically the same stories, there's no real reason to keep up with this version. |
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