Plot: Yuzuki and Akie save pop idol and actress Jun Moriyama from a creepy pervert. As a reward, Jun invites them to dinner. Along the way, they meet Masako Momota, who hates Jun and is trying to blackmail her.
Breakdown: Pbbbtt both these two deserve each other if you ask me.
Jun is a big time pop idol and actress who has a dream of becoming a legendary singer who is remembered for generations. Masako used to attend the same talent agency as Jun, but Jun treated her like garbage. She’d order her around, threaten her, demean her and bully her all the time. Masako was so affected by Jun’s behavior that she quit her dreams of being an idol. However, seeing Jun become what she wanted so much to be, Masako decided to use old pictures of Jun in provocative poses to blackmail her.
Masako told Yuzuki and Akie that she just wanted an apology, but when Jun finally arrives and gives it to her, Masako says she also wants her to give up her career as well, otherwise go die…
Jun won’t do what she asks, so Masako then asks if she’ll at least push for her in the music world. A recommendation by Jun would be sure to put her at idol status soon enough. However, Masako also refuses that.
She demands to know why, and Jun lays down a harsh and…quite frankly cruel truth. Jun tells Masako that she’s not a good singer, she has no talent, and as someone who loves and appreciates singing, she can’t let an untalented singer debut….Yikes. I mean…she’s not really….entirely wrong. Masako sang for Yuzuki and Akie earlier, and she’s not good at all. Even if Jun pushed her as much as possible, the odds of her achieving idol status are very low.
However, acting like singing is this sacred thing and that she can’t dare let someone who’s not good at it find any success in is just a shitty thing to say. She should have just pointed out that wanting to get into the singing business just to become an idol isn’t right. It’s an abuse of the craft, and as a singer she can’t stand for it.
But that’s not even the shittiest thing she says to Masako.
Masako: “Even I worked hard!”
Jun: “Working hard is what untalented people reach to as their final hope.” Jesus, lady. What the hell is wrong with you? Plenty of ‘untalented’ people find success and greatness through hard work, you bitch. Talent is insanely overrated. So many people who could have reached greatness through hard work end up giving up because of assholes who just drive into them that they’re untalented. If you’re actually putting in hard work, studying and taking constructive criticism to fix your faults along the way, you can find success in anything. Of course, there are some harsh circumstances where, no matter how much you love something or work hard at it, it doesn’t work out, but it still drives me up a wall when people have this attitude like if you’re not immediately spectacular at something then you have no hope.
Now, in all honesty, I don’t think Masako is one of those people. Yes, she had it rough in the talent agency, but when she was singing I didn’t feel like she was actually putting that much effort into it, nor was it the singing of someone who truly cared about singing.
Jun is probably right in her assumptions of Masako, but the way she went about it was just terrible.
Jun tells her to do whatever she wants with the pictures since she did take them and she’ll accept responsibility for her past, but Masako is none too happy. That night, she contacts Hell Girl and gets her doll. The next night, at Jun’s concert, Yuzuki and Akie spot Masako in the audience. Jun, surprisingly, makes a public confession about what happened between her and Masako…but…it’s one of those ‘She’d have been better off saying nothing’ apologies.
She doesn’t explain what she did or to whom, she just says ‘I did something horrible to someone else. Even now, she still won’t forgive me. I used to be bad, but now singing has made me a better person.’ Then the crowd goes on cheering for her and supporting her, she tells them that they give her the strength to hang on and then she dedicates her song to the person she wronged. The song, what little we hear of it, isn’t a tender apology song or anything. It’s just a typical pop song.
So, basically, she didn’t make any better of an apology than she did earlier and played it up like she was the one who deserved sympathy and struggled to overcome something….Kay.
Masako, surprisingly, doesn’t accept this and pulls the string.
Before I get to the hell torture, Yuzuki has been doing nothing this whole episode but watch all of this. Even after she has the vision of Ai giving Masako the doll, she doesn’t say or do anything about it. All she does is say quietly to herself as she sees Masako grasp the string, “Don’t pull the string.” …*lip smack* Can we please reach a point where she has a purpose?
At least with Tsugumi and Hajime they always actively tried to reason with the client. They were always trying to do something. And with Takuma, things were always happening to him and he was involved. With Yuzuki, she’s been on the sidelines since we met her. She’s been doing nothing. It’s episode three, for god’s sake. Can we get something that justifies her existence as the main character?
The hell torture is the least goofy so far, but it’s still kinda goofy. Ai puts on a concert and everyone, including her, is dressed as a ‘60s gogo group. Ai never actually sings in such a genre. Instead, it shifts to hard rock instrumentals. For all the crap I give this series, I am really enjoying the soundtrack so far. The BG music during the hell torture is just awesome, and I’m loving the ED.
After everything’s said and done, her managers mourn her disappearance, and Jun somewhat gets her wish of becoming a legendary singer when crowds of people join together, hoping she’ll come back if they sing her songs. I mean, the news caster says they’re singing, but they’re clearly just chanting ‘Jun-chan’ over and over very robotically. Masako is seen walking away from the group of mourners quietly singing to herself ‘I loved you…I loved you.’ which is the same segment Jun was singing on her ferry ride….which…if that’s supposed to be poignant, it’s not. When was there ever a point where these two loved each other?
The end.
Well….That happened. I kinda feel bad for Jun because she does seem like she had turned herself around from the horrible ungrateful bitch she was before, but she’s still not that likable. She has a horrible view on talent and hard work. Likewise, you feel kinda bad for Masako, but I definitely feel like she’s in this for the stardom and not because she truly has a passion for singing.
No one questions how and why Jun vanished while she was on stage. Akie has nothing to say about how Yuzuki clearly must’ve doubled over in pain and passed out at the exact same time for several minutes, either.
Yuzuki and Akie continue to just be there when things are happening involving Hell Girl, somehow. I don’t know if Ai is orchestrating that, but I doubt it. Again, when it came to Tsugumi, she and Hajime always went to where the visions indicated, and Takuma had a shit storm centered on him. With Yuzuki, it’s just a series of coincidences. The only semi-interesting thing about her so far is that she seemingly doesn’t live with her parents, but that might be wrong because the Hell Team seemingly said her parents just work a lot, which is very common in anime so….yeah….Nothing. Pick it up, Hell Girl.
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The Anime Madhouse 