Plot: A girl is tormented by a horrible woman because her dogs bit her.
Breakdown: Warning – High levels of rant and anger. Reader discretion is advised.
I’m going to be completely candid here – I didn’t rewatch this episode. I won’t. I refuse. I’m sorry. I didn’t even rewatch only the hell torture. This episode pisses me off way too much for even that to be any consolation.
Remember the episode Silent Cries where I was wary of rewatching it because I despise animal abuse? But I was relieved that the episode didn’t have a huge amount of it?
I remember this episode extremely well from my first watching of the series because it’s 1000x worse than Silent Cries. Whereas in Silent Cries the animals are suffering because of a neglectful asshole vet, Bound Girl has one of the worst, most horrid cunts in all of anime – Meiko Shimono.
The main issue with her is that, holy shit, she, as a character, makes this episode so emotionally manipulative. I can not emphasize enough how ridiculously over the top evil Meiko is. She is, by far, the most hateable target this show has ever had. It’s, no pun intended, major overkill.
Writers: “Don’t hate her for her hatred of dogs? Here, hate her for being an emotionally and mentally abusing dickwhistle to a little girl.
Still not enough? Hm, well, those are some cute corgis that girl has. Here, she killed one of them.
Still? Okay, here. Now the second one’s been brutally murdered too.
Wow, really? Still not enough? Hmmm….Got it! She murdered her parents for the inheritance and buried them in the backyard!
Hatred yet?….No? Hoo boy. Alright, she murdered her infant child and buried it in the backyard so she’d never have to share her riches with it!
Need more? Ah, got it! Hey, the second dog just had an adorable litter of puppies before it died! Now they’re floating in the bathtub! Is that—oh wait. The hatred meter was stuck. Seems you hated her before we even got to the second dog. Oh dear…..Pbbbbt….That’s a lot of bodies….Uhhh….just go with it, I guess.”
She originally told the client, Miki Kamikawa, that her dogs supposedly bit her, so she essentially enslaves her to make up for it. Then she kills the dogs one after another to punish her even more. The real reason she blackmailed Miki was because she thought the dogs had dug up the remains of her child or her parents in the garden and that Miki had seen them. So, even though she never mentioned it, she kept a tight hold on Miki to keep her from talking about something she didn’t even know about to begin with.
Meiko gets plenty of comeuppance as, not only does she get arrested, but Miki pulls the string, sending that bitch to a level of hell I can only hope is filled with hell hounds and an endless loop of Kujo, but I still won’t bring myself to rewatch it….or even call it a good episode outside of all of these atrocities, to be honest.
Like I said, I didn’t even skip through everything to watch the hell torture because I don’t think anything they’re usually up for showing would be worth the horrible journey that is this episode.
Not to mention, it still has to be weighed with this poor girl being marked for hell too. I might be petty with this review. Like I said in Silent Cries, some people might not sympathize with this level of hatred towards animal abuse, but I don’t care.
Objectively, it’s just not a good episode by any stretch. This episode is a return to form, literally, because it’s the same Hell Girl shtick from start to finish, which isn’t bad, just a disappointing step back from the progress we’ve been making. There’s no intrigue, no mystery, nothing new to uncover, just a bunch of emotional manipulation and a horrible feeling deep in your gut.
Fuck this episode.
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The Anime Madhouse 