Jigoku Shoujo Futakomori ep.10

December 10, 2006 | 22 Comments

I really believe that the writers have finally lost their sanity. Otherwise, how else do they come up with a crack-ilicious episodes like last week's and this week's? They certainly were not this good back in the first season. If they were sniffing something while writing this then I want to know what was it that they were sniffing. Kidding aside, if you think last week's episode was ridiculous, this one is even more so. No one will seriously send someone to Hell just because of what the character in this episode did. The whole episode also has disjointed plot, character-insertion that does not make any sense, and a highly stylistic ending. I get the impression that the entire thing is supposed to be a homage to Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space, which happened to be one of the deliciously bad stories ever captured on celluloid. Or maybe Ferris Bueller's Day Off since the title of this episode is Sone Anna's Wet Day Off.

The episode begins with Ai giving out a drill to someone whose face is yet to be revealed. Near a vending machine, a guy is holding a cup of coffee when he notices an insect on top of his hand. Because he's startled, he accidentally pours the hot coffee on top of the other person's body. Before the other person can pummel the first guy, however, he has run away from the area. Not far from him, Hone-Onna, Wanyuudou, and Ai notice him. Hone-Onna is surprised to see the guy because she actually knows him. It all started one year ago when Ai and the others have just completed a job for a client. When they're about to return to their world, Ai realised that Hone-Onna was not with them but she didn't mind since her associates are allowed to have breaks. As it turns out, Hone-Onna was inside a train while someone is taking an imaginary pictures of her using his hands. The man claimed to be a film director called Negoro Tetsurou.

In the present time, Tetsurou looks relieved when he sees the guy who got the coffee bath leaving the area without noticing his presence. In the flashback, Tetsurou was convincing Hone-Onna to star in his film and even gave her a stage name "Sone Anna". Cue in posters featuring Sone Anna in imaginary flicks such as "Machine Gun Woman", "Desire", "Tomorrow's Stranger". Hone-Onna liked the idea and accepted the offer. She asked the guy when principal photography will begin but Tetsurou wanted to wait until he can meet his acquintance producer. After reading the script, however, Hone-Onna realised that there are many nude scenes in the film. In fact, she felt as if they are never ending. XD It's a porn! Anyway, she tried to change her mind but ended up feeling sorry for the guy when he flashed her his puppy eyes. When he tried to stop her from leaving, the two end up falling into bed and Tetsurou gets a flash of Hone-Onna's bone.

It was then that the two were interrupted by Tetsurou's wife who wanted to know what her husband was doing. Later on, the wife explained to Hone-Onna that she was the one who had to pay 5 million Yen so her husband could send his exhibit to the Berlin Film Festival. Because of this, she ended up working as a hostess. Upon finding out about this, Hone-Onna excused herself for intruding on the couple. Half a year later, Hone-Onna encountered Tetsurou holding hands with a new woman. When they got into the woman's house, Tetsurou explained that he met the woman on a train. Hone-Onna wondered if he saved her but he unabashedly admitted that it was the reverse. That night Hone-Onna and the girlfriend bonded over their inability to resist Tetsurou's puppy eyes. Because of this, the girlfriend invited Hone-Onna to come again. After this, whenever Hone-Onna had free time, she'd came to the house and had drinking party with the two.

One day, Tetsurou's wife came to the girlfriend's house. Tetsurou, being the coward that he is, decided to flee from the house by jumping off the balcony. As it turns out, however, he didn't have to do this since his wife didn't come to give him the beating. She just wanted to give him some change clothes. The next time Hone-Onna visited the girlfriend, she found out that Tetsurou had moved to a Film School for girls. Hone-Onna wonders if the girlfriend is just going to give up on him. Because of this, Hone-Onna, the wife, and the girlfriend went to confront the new girlfriend. They tried to tell her that she can do better than being with him. Unfortunately, the girl thought that the ones who caused Tetsurou to fail were the three of them. She accussed them of not having enough faith in him. She believed that paying debt, doing nudity scenes, and studying more films are worth it if it means her man can succeed. If he wants her to jump off a cliff, would she do it?

In order to prove that she believes in her man, the new girlfriend encouraged Tetsurou to write the new movie and gave him access to her bank account which has 3 million Yen stored. Unfortunately, when the movie producer told him that he has to do many things to make his film happen, Tetsurou decided to give up and threw his script into a lake. He then gambled the money that his new girlfriend gave him at a horse race. Not surprisingly, the new girlfriend is pissed off about this and kicked him out of the house. Meanwhile, Hone-Onna, the wife, and the girlfriend were in the middle of having drinking party while Tetsu looked on from outside. Kikuri suddenly appeared wearing frog raincoat and told the guy that he's going to get cold if he continues to stand outside. When Kikuri heard Tetsurou saying that he doesn't mind since he's a fool, she splahed him with the water from her umbrella before flying away using said umbrella.

A white cloth then fell from the sky and covered Tetsurou's face, causing him to run around like an idiot before he hit a telephone pole. The noise was heard by his First Wives Club™ and for God knows why reason, they decided to take him back. That was yesterday. And today, the four of them went together on a trip to Onsen. When Tetsurou tried to park his car in a convenient store's parking spot, however, he scraped a white car by accident. Instead of apologising to the owner and taking some responsibility, Tetsurou decided to run away instead. The group eventually stopped at another convenient store so the girls and Tetsurou can go to toilet. Hone-Onna decided to stay in the car and was surprised when Wanyuudou showed his face in the window. He explained that they have their next target and as it turns out, the target is none other than Tetsurou, who had just spilled his coffee on that guy seen earlier in the story.

In the end, Hone-Onna has no choice but to drag Tetsurou to be judged by Ai and her two colleagues. She enters the male toilet and shows him a film that reveals the grudge wisher as the owner of the scrapped white car. He's also the guy that got splashed by the hot coffee. This was what put him over the edge and pulled the string. As a side note, Ichimoku Ren also got splashed by coffee when he was being a straw doll, thus explaining why he looked wet as well earlier. As a punishment, Tetsurou gets to act in in several lame movies which look similar to The Towering Inferno, Titanic, and something which looks like Chicago. Ai then appears in a black and white silent film saying her "Ippen Shinde Miru" through text before sending Tetsurou to Hell. In the aftermath, Tetsurou's wife and girlfriend can't find Tetsurou and can't remember that they used to have Hone-Onna as their friend.

Impression:

That was one Hell of a fun episode. I don't think Tetsurou deserves to go to Hell for what he did but he ended up being sent there because the plot wouldn't be as much fun without the punishment scene. It was hilarious seeing Tetsurou starring in those disaster films as a punishment. Actually, a much worse punishment would be him being forced to watch Titanic over and over again. Imagine having to watch Leonardo DiCaprio's awful acting while listening to My Heart Will Go On for the umpteenth time. That would be Hell for me. Although I have to admit that there's a certain gratification in seeing Leonardo DiCaprio drowned in the cold ice sea. Bwahahahaha. Hmm, anyway, I thought it was funny when Tetsurou got hit by the large hammer over and over again. It reminds me of Warner Bros animation like Animaniacs. He kind of deserved it for being an unmotivated lazy bum who for some reason attracts the attention of so many women.

The best thing about this, however, is the friendship that developed between the three 'First Wives Club, so to speak. I would have thought that there'll be some catfights between them so it was nice to see them getting along with each other very well. In fact, it was kind of sad to see Hone-Onna having to leave the group like that. It seems she can indeed have a life outside Hell but when the life starts to interfere with her job, then her existence must be erased from the group. As for the revenge wisher, he's one of the most unrealistic characters I've ever seen in this series. Wouldn't a person usually yell at a person who splashed coffee at them right away? If this had been a serious episode, I would have think that the guy is out of his mind for sending himself to Hell over a coffee. However, since this episode is clearly meant to be seen as a comedy, I think that's just one of the ridiculous things about the episode that I have to accept.

Epilogue: A man has just taken the last roll of your favourite toilet paper from the supermarket aisle. Your reaction:

a) Aww, shucks....now I have to buy another brand.
b) Go to another supermarket and find the same brand.
c) I'll be using public toilet for a week. T_T
d) I'll kidnap him and object him to never-ending screening of Titanic
e) Someone's going to be floating on the Nile any river tonight.
f) Ippen, Shinde Miru?! *cue Ai*

© memento 2003