Plot: Kaede Inao was a girl everyone overlooked until she took up the art of fortune-telling, claiming she was guided by a mystical fox called Gon-san. One day, she’s approached by a girl who wants Kaede to curse someone else for her. When the curse seemingly works, Kaede becomes quite popular in class since everyone has people they want to curse. However, some people want more malicious curses to be laid on their enemies….
Breakdown: This was quite the screwed up little episode, especially the ending.
I do feel a little bad for Kaede, but she’s kinda bringing all of this upon herself. It does suck to be overlooked and alone, but she believes she’s doing terrible things all to gain attention and she’s perfectly fine with it.
She does struggle a little bit more when someone straight up asks her to kill someone, but, honestly, she doesn’t have too much of an internal debate about this. She becomes so determined to kill her target that, when her cursing fails, she calls on Hell Girl to do the job for her. And she’s, surprisingly, one of the few who actually pulls the string immediately without even bothering to listen to Ai’s instructions or warning. She doesn’t even have a vendetta against this dude, which should make her exempt from Hell Girl’s services to begin with, but whatever.
What is her grand plan after this? She has to assume that once word gets out that she can curse people to death that at least a few others will want this too. Remember, this is the world of Hell Girl where you can guarantee one out of about three people wants someone dead. Hell Girl only works once. You’re on your own after that. Is she going to become a serial killer now?
The real reason this episode is messed up is the absolute ending. The girl who asked Kaede to kill someone claimed that the target was a stalker who was harassing her all the time. However, at the end, she reveals that this wasn’t true.
She just wanted him dead because, and I quote, he was ‘disgusting.’ We never knew anything about this guy besides his name and what he looked like. He looked like a rather normal college kid. This psycho bitch was so, so, SO vehement that Kaede kill this innocent guy for absolutely no reason that she blackmailed Kaede by saying she’d spread the word all over school of her being a fake if she didn’t do it. What. A. Bitch.
And she’s tickled pink that the dude was killed. No remorse whatsoever. She’s proud of what she caused. She’s even introducing Kaede to more people who want others killed, which I predicted. What a horrible person. I hope there’s a future episode where this bitch ends up being a target, but I doubt it.
It’s also interesting to note that this girl contacted Hell Girl about the guy before she went to Kaede, but she didn’t submit the request. Meaning she was able to access the site……She was able to access Hell Correspondence because she thought this guy was so disgusting for some reason that it made her hate him enough to allow her to see it….Wow…just…wow. Also, what a wuss. Do your own dirty work if you’re that evil. Geez.
All in all, this was a good episode with some glaring flaws, but I do agree with Hone Onna. Kaede was a bit too stupid for my tastes. Agreeing to cursing was bad enough, but agreeing to kill was another ballgame entirely. Sure, some people would like her for it, but 1) they’d only like her because of what she could do for them, 2) She’d never be able to do it again, unless she did just murder with her own two hands, and 3) a vast majority of people would be afraid of her, not like her. This is actually depicted when Akie suffers from a minor accident and she’s paralyzed with fear that Kaede cursed her. Lest we forget the power that those kinds of rumors have. Look what it did to poor Takuma – and he didn’t even do anything to deserve it.
….Oh yeah, Yuzuki’s in this episode too, but again she does nothing. We don’t even get the magical girl transformation today because Kaede pulled the string so quickly and there was no hell torture, thank god. It did make me question why Hell Girl is allowed to show up in the flesh when she’s giving the doll over, but when she’s executing the hell torture she needs to use Yuzuki’s body. It’s weird.
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