Plot: Junko is heartbroken when her beloved dog and only family, Candy, dies on the operating table at the vet. She believes her vet, Dr. Hanjo, did everything in his power to save her, but finds out that he neglected Candy’s care, causing her to die unnecessarily.
Breakdown: I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it – I cannot stand stories about animal abuse or animal deaths or whatnot. It is my one weakness in my watchings. I will fast forward through episodes that focus on it or have it in there, and I have straight out skipped over episodes entirely because of it.
I can proudly say I only fast forwarded through about two or three minutes of the episode. Go me.
I realize some people don’t put as much stock in the importance of pets as I do, but I truly do find animal abusers to be some of the lowest, most evil scum the world has ever shat out, and they don’t deserve any better treatment than they give to those animals.
Oh right, I’m watching Hell Girl, so I’ll get my wish. Yay!
There’s no denying that this doctor deserves to go to hell, but he’s almost comical in how evil he is. He’s not just neglectful, he will purposely give crappy treatment to animals and report that he’s doing everything he’s supposed to be doing in his paperwork. He’s not lazy either, because he obviously does good work for the famous and rich clients that he has. He just doesn’t care about the animals with owners who can’t pay as much or don’t have any power.
This is another story with a rather silly reason for committing the crime. He failed to properly treat Candy while she was on the table because he was too busy chatting on the phone to some congressman or something about going golfing. Even in spite of his assistant trying to get his attention, he ignored her, canceled appointments and let Candy die just to talk on the phone about golf.
Junko is rightfully pissed when the assistant tells her what happened and explains what kind of doctor Hanjo really is. This situation is even worse for Junko because Candy was literally her only family. Her parents died some time ago and all she had left in the world was her dog. Now, Junko is all alone.
I will also slightly disagree with Junko being the client here. Hasn’t the poor kid been through enough? She’s an orphan who just lost her beloved dog who also happened to be her only family. Now she’s damned to hell once she dies, meaning she’d never be able to reunite with her parents or her dog.
I don’t want to be mean here, but I almost wish the client had been the assistant. She was partially responsible for Candy’s death – she openly admits it. If she had been more stubborn in getting Dr. Hanjo off the phone or if she had tried to do something for the dog, Candy might not be dead. I understand that, as an assistant, she only has so much training, but surely there had to have been something she could’ve done. She literally just stood there and said ‘Doctor….’ over and over while he chatted away.
She’s also known that Hanjo has been doing shady crap like this for years and hasn’t done anything about it. I get that she was in a terrible situation – she didn’t want to lose her job or have Hanjo tarnish her rep – but this is one circumstance where the client would’ve somewhat kinda-ish deserved to go to hell, at least over Junko.
It would’ve been clever if the show kept us in the dark as to who the client was and tricked us into thinking it was Junko then revealed it was the assistant. Then maybe Junko could strive to be a vet to help animals and make up for the damage Hanjo did while simultaneously making Candy, her parents and the assistant proud? Maybe the assistant could’ve helped her with her studies to also make amends for her ‘sins’?
As for the torture segment, it was alright, but the more sadistic side of me would’ve liked to have seen more physical torment. One of the dogs he was treating was in a car accident and hurt its leg. He put off giving the dog a much-needed surgery because he had more influential clients to provide house calls to. Because he didn’t get the surgery right away, his healing process was slower and the leg wasn’t healing as well as it should have.
In his torture segment, he is forced off the road by Hone Onna and breaks his leg. Hone Onna, Wanyuudou and Ren treat him with just as much roughness and neglect that he treats his patients, even putting him in a cage and ignoring his pleas for help, much like the dog I mentioned before.
One of the more irksome aspects of these torture segments is that, even in the face of such torture, they don’t beg for their lives, apologize or say they were wrong for what they did. They defend their actions to the bitter end. Oh well, he’s consumed by hell puppies on the river Styx boat ride, so cool beans.
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The Anime Madhouse 
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