Plot: Takuma continues to be targeted by people in the neighborhood with glares and rumors, and they’re getting worse every day. Now, he’s being directly blamed for disappearances caused by Hell Girl clientele from the clients themselves. As people get increasingly paranoid of Takuma, more people are demanding he be arrested, even though there’s not enough evidence to arrest him for anything.
No one will believe his story about Hell Link, and those that do believe it also believe Takuma is using Hell Link over and over to make random people disappear whenever he pleases. A new detective and his little sister investigate the disappearances and Takuma’s possible connection. Will they be the only ones to believe him? Or will Takuma continue to suffer alone?
Breakdown: Previously on “This Kid Can’t Catch a Fucking Break” Takuma, unjustifiably labeled as a murderer and ‘The Devil’s Child’ around town, finally found a friend. After drowning in loneliness without his parents and being shunned by everyone else, finding someone who neither knew nor cared about his sordid past and was willing to befriend him was more than welcome. Things looked up for about 12 hours until his new friend not only left town but was sent to hell soon after.
And now….
I warned you before that things for Takuma were only going to get worse. Well, welcome to worse.
While Takuma didn’t get blamed for Seri’s disappearance, he is getting blamed for another Hell Girl victim – and this time it’s entirely on purpose. Some asshat who sent a guy to hell because he made fun of his singing ability (I’m not kidding…) claimed that Takuma ‘ambushed’ them while walking home (Because a ten-year-old can totally ambush two grown men) and the guy who was hellbound walked off with him, never to be seen again.
You know how I frequently find Hell Girl stories bittersweet because I feel bad for the clients since they’re also booking a ticket on the cruise line down the river Styx? I don’t feel that for this guy. How ridiculously villain-esque is this dude to not only send a guy to hell for making fun of his singing but also to frame a CHILD for it?
It’s not even just that. All of the recent Hell Girl related disappearances seem to be getting blamed on Takuma either through simple rumors or the clients blaming them on him. Of course, there’s no evidence to pin anything on Takuma, but the rumors are getting so out of control that the men in the neighborhood, including the asshat who framed him, have started monitoring Takuma’s house at night, even implying that they might be rearing up to kill him if these activities continue.
It’s not only Takuma, either. It seems like no relatively good person can catch a single break.
Yoshizaki returns. She’s the woman who sent Kakinuma to hell – the man who started this whole ‘Devil’s Child’ thing and murdered Takuma’s mother as well as assaulted his father and sent him into a coma. She felt bad that Takuma was being blamed for what was partially her actions, so she decided to go into the police department to explain that Kakinuma had purposely vanished and Takuma had nothing to do with it. This testimony does help clear Takuma of those suspicions, but the main thing was accusing Takuma of the assault on his father and the murder of his mother, so this doesn’t really mean much of anything. I guess it’s the thought that counts. At this point, I’ll settle for anyone trying to help this poor kid.
Thing is….she dies immediately after going to the police station. Yup, dies in a car crash on her way home.
I can’t make this stuff up. The world of Hell Girl is, for lack of a better term, cursed.
But hey, let’s keep this hell train going. We’re introduced to two new characters – Detective Seiichi Meshiai and his little sister, Hotaru. Meshiai has been tasked with solving the string of disappearances in the area lately that are all connected to Hell Girl. Like I mentioned, Takuma is being heavily blamed, either indirectly or directly, for the disappearances. Even though Meshiai is suspicious of Hell Link, he doesn’t put enough stock in the idea since it just seems like an internet rumor to him.
Hotaru actually seems like a better detective than her big brother and figures out certain aspects of Takuma’s story that he couldn’t, but she’s still barking up the wrong tree because, like her brother, she doesn’t believe in Hell Link. She believes Takuma is entirely innocent, but he’s hiding something about the circumstances of his father’s assault and Kakinuma’s disappearance that is entirely non-supernatural.
Surprisingly, the Hell Team is watching over Takuma this entire time, and it seems like this time they’re not there for the sake of another client. They’re there because they appear to be legitimately concerned about Takuma. They want him to tell anyone who will even feign to listen about what happened to Kakinuma just to reach for the chance that someone may believe him and clear his name.
This is pretty big because rarely do they ever actively intervene in anyone’s lives, especially someone who is not a client.
But even this act of kindness goes horribly wrong and Takuma has to pay the price for it.
Hotaru meets with Takuma at his house to interview him about what happened during his father’s assault. Upset that Hotaru doesn’t believe for a second that Hell Link is real, Takuma goes off to his bedroom without another word. While the Hell Team tries to talk to him about it, Kikuri kidnaps Hotaru and takes her to the Realm of Eternal Twilight.
Let me repeat that – Hotaru goes missing after several witnesses see her enter Takuma’s house.
Have I mentioned I hate Kikuri?
Aforementioned asshat practically tortures poor Takuma into confessing that he used Hell Link to send Hotaru to hell, but Meshiai is actually the more reasonable one here and starts pulling the asshat off of him.
As terrible luck would continue to have it (or…maybe good luck in a way?) at that very moment, the wife of the guy who was sent to hell by said asshat reveals that she’s a client of Hell Girl. And, for some reason, she decided to pull the string just now, at the worst possible moment.
I say this because the guy disappeared while he was hurting Takuma, which obviously makes it seem like Takuma has the power to make people disappear. Another guy who was with the asshat crawled away from the scene, surely to spread the word on what he witnessed, so the rumors are sure to get out of control now. On the other hand, Meshiai now realizes that the power of Hell Link is real and may possibly be open to believing Takuma’s innocence.
At the end of the episode, Takuma isn’t arrested or anything and Meshiai is left with a tangled mess to sort out as he tries to get his sister back. Meanwhile, Hotaru wanders through the Realm of Eternal Twilight and starts making her way towards the familiar house.
All in all, this is a good episode, but it’s also horribly depressing because every nice person keeps falling into terrible circumstances. Even though the asshat did get sent to hell in the end, I didn’t feel much in a way of catharsis because poor Takuma is going to be getting heat 100x worse now, Hotaru’s been kidnapped, Yoshizaki is dead (and in hell) and Meshiai lost his sister.
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The Anime Madhouse 
Takuma rhymes with “akuma”, the Japanese word for “devil”. So, he was the Devil Child from the very beginning.
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