Plot: Deceived out of her company’s money by a malicious man named Osamu, the plain and bashful Ran holds onto Hone Onna in her doll form as she tries to muster up the courage to get her revenge on him. An older woman named Matsu, who also has it out for Osamu, presents her with an alternative plan – after getting a makeover, she tricks the man into thinking she’s someone else and seduces him so she can take his phone and get the money back and then some.
Their plan actually works, but Ran is shocked to find that things won’t work out as easily as Matsu promised.
Breakdown: Today’s episode is a little interesting and slightly unpredictable. We have a very plain and easily swayed woman in Ran who somehow got the confidence to call Hell Girl on a man who screwed her out of giving away company money that devastated her boss.
She only wanted that specific amount back and nothing more. She’s very obviously being deceived by the older woman, Matsu, who, for some reason, seems to maybe know that she’s about to use a Hell Girl doll and stops her from using it so she can try her plan instead.
Admittedly, Ran is pretty flighty. She has such poor self-confidence that she goes wherever the wind blows. She was supposedly easily tricked by Osamu, she became almost cocky when she got that makeover from Matsu, but she agreed with Kikuri when she said she was overdone. The one time she had self-confidence completely due to her own resolve is when Matsu revealed her deception, and that results in her untimely death.
While this episode is fairly predictable, it did still get me that no one in this situation survived. There have been MUCH worse cases where even some of the terrible parties involved still lived to see another day. Yet this mostly benign story about a jackass who stole some money from a woman ends up with three dead.
I felt much worse for Ran than I thought I would. She was a perfectly nice, kind, selfless and caring individual. She just makes bad decisions because terrible people take advantage of her lack of self-esteem.
When she finally gets some confidence and fights for what’s right, she gets murdered. That also means that, unlike many other clients who get to live out their lives as they wish until their natural deaths, Ran is almost immediately sent to hell after she carries out her vengeance on Matsu. It was so depressing to see Ran’s flame be instantly snuffed out on her candle in the end.
I did like how much Hone Onna was invested in her. Even though she couldn’t talk to her most of the time, she saw bits of herself in Ran and talked to her as if she could hear her. That made it even more sad when Ran died.
We also get bits and pieces of Hone Onna’s backstory as a geisha girl who was supposedly deceived, betrayed and murdered, but it’s very spotty and they don’t go into really any detail. Better than nothing, though.
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The Anime Madhouse 