http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Jigokushojo.jpg

->''Pitiful shadow clothed in darkness. Thy actions cause men pain and suffering. Thy hollow soul drowns in thy sins. How would you like to see what death is like? — Enma Ai''

Schoolrooms all over Japan are abuzz with the rumor of the ''Jigoku Tsushin'', a mysterious Web site which can be accessed only at midnight. If someone should visit that Web site and submit the name of an enemy, the ''Jigoku Shojo'' (Hell Girl) appears and gives that person a black hex doll with a red string tied around its neck. The Hell Girl also delivers a stern message: Pulling that red string will send the submitter's hated enemy straight to Hell, but in exchange for this "service," the submitter's ''own'' soul will be sent to Hell after his or her natural life has ended.

Japanese horror at its cheesy best, this 26-episode anime series (and its 26-episode second season: ''Jigoku Shoujo: Futakomori'' [And third season Jigoku Shoujo:Mitsuganae) are a collection of short stories, with each episode revolving around a tortured protagonist who has felt compelled to contact the ''Hell Correspondence Website'' on account of some person who is making their lives miserable. Each episode hero must, at some point in the story, make a decision whether or not to take the ''Hell Girl'' (formal name: "''Enma Ai''") up on her offer. The rest of the episode deals with the fallout and consequences of that decision--and the punishment of the hated enemy if the string has been pulled.

At some point in the first series, an over-arcing storyline starts to occur which involves a washed-up journalist and his cute precocious daughter Tsugumi, who seems to have a mysterious psychic link to Enma Ai. Upon learning of the activities of the Hell Correspondence Website, they try to do everything in their power to persuade those who have contacted it to turn from their doom-laden paths of revenge, but by doing so, they may be eventually putting their ''own'' souls at risk....

This anime also has the distinction of airing on American teleivison- IFC holds the broadcast rights to the first season of HellGirl and shows episodes of it in varying timeslots. Check their website for more details.

A LiveActionAdaptation also exists, in series form; set within the timeline of the first anime season, retaining the anthology format while notably averting the anime storyline. [[AdaptationDecay At a mere 12 episodes, there wasn't much room for them anyway.]]

No connection to ''{{Hellboy}}''.
----

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: This show provides examples of: ]]


*AssholeVictim: Most of the time, if the string is pulled, the target was one of these.
*LittleMissBadass: Enma Ai herself, who takes on the form of a vulnerable young girl clad in either a kimono or a black and red fuku. When angered, she has the power to take out an entire village.
*BadassGrandpa: Wanyuudo. Super strength, martial arts skills, and fire-manipulating/creating powers, if you can look past the fact that he's [[spoiler:A sentient, shapeshifted wheel-demon]]
*BrandX: Everybody uses the [[strike: Google]] ''Deegle'' search engine.
*BreakTheHaughty: Several of the people who are vengeance targets go through this.
*BrotherSisterIncest: [[spoiler:One {{Squick}}y episode from the second season revolves around a pair of siblings, one of whom contacts the Hell Correspondence Website to take revenge on her brother whom she feels is deliberately sabotaging her relationships out of spite. However, it is eventually revealed that the real reason he is doing it is because he lusts after her sexually and wants to have her all to himself. He still gets sent to Hell.]]
*BumblingDad: Although he's something of a pathetic loser and a rogue, Hajime Shibata, the journalist, is actually a doting and loving father.
*ButterflyOfDeathAndRebirth: [[spoiler: Enma Ai's soul, in ''Mitsuganae'', takes the form of a blue butterfly]]
*CatchPhrase: No doubt Enma Ai's "Ippen shinde miru?"
** Also her "Kono urami, jigoku e nagashimasu."
*ClosedCircle: One episode of the first season has Hajime and Tsugumi trapped in an old asylum by [[spoiler:a doll that believes she's her owner]].
*CreepyChild: Again, Enma Ai. Her gigantic, [[RedEyesTakeWarning unnaturally red eyes]] and white, expressionless face only add to her eeriness. Kikuri, an otherworldly child introduced in the second season, is -- thanks to her purple-sclera eyes and her childish sadism -- perhaps the only character in the series even ''more'' creepy than Enma Ai. [[spoiler:This is understandable, seeing as how she's actually the Lord of Hell, Enma Ai's boss.]]
**This Troper actually found Kikuri and Ai to be quite cute and amusing. Although it's limited to when they're interacting with each other, for example [[spoiler: one instance where Ai and Kikuri get into a typical "Yes!-No!-Yes!-No!-etc" argument, so Ai reverse-winds Kikuri's spring (she's possessed a wind-up toy right now) so she can't move]]. When they're on the job though, man do they ever revert back to the CreepyChild trope.
*DarkMagicalGirl: Enma Ai.
*DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler: Yuzuki.]]
*DealWithTheDevil: The driving premise behind the series.
*DemonHead: One of Enma Ai's minions has the ability to turn into a flaming carriage with one of these on the side. He serves as her primary form of transportation.
* DisappearedDad: A LonelyRichKid named Nina thinks her father abandoned her...
* DisproportionateRetribution: Seriously, do I have to explain it?
*EmotionlessGirl: Enma Ai. She shows very little emotions, but on the rare occasion she does, you're ''really'' screwed.
*EnjoKosai: In the first episode, Hashimoto Mayumi is blackmailed into this.
*EvenTheGirlsWantHer: Ai's companion Honne-Onna. LesYay with Enma Ai aside, she's ''so'' admired and wanted by a bunch of girls of a school where she works at during the ''Mitsuganae'' season that one of them tried to send another of Ai's employés, Ichimoku Ren, to Hell out of jealousy, after mistaking them for a couple.
*FamilyUnfriendlyAesop :Plenty of them, including the lesson Enma Ai herself learns: [[spoiler:Don't ever stick out your neck for ''anyone''. You'll just wind up being condemned.]]
*FaustianRebellion: Ai and Giles de L'Enfer, alias Hell Boy, who claims to have dragged himself out of Hell through use of his psychic powers.
*FridgeLogic: The climax of Futakomori and much of Mitsuganae.
*GrowingTheBeard: Each series starts off with the OnceAnEpisode someone going to hell thing, until the main story picks up midway through the series.
*HereWeGoAgain: All three seasons end with someone accessing the Jigoku Tsushin, even though it looked like Ai was finished being Hell Girl.
*HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Enma Ai herself, when she refuses to transport the soul of a boy whose life situation somewhat mirrored her own. As a punishment she becomes mortal and later dies while trying to defend the boy from violent townspeople.]]
** [[spoiler:She does it again in Mitsuganae to save Yuzuki from being condemned to hell after she oversteps her authority as the new Hell Girl.]]
* HeyItsThatGuy (the LiveActionAdaptation features several actors from tokusatsu series in both regular and one-time roles. KazukiKato ([[KamenRiderKabuto Daisuke Kazama aka Kamen Rider Drake]]), AyaSugimoto ([[PrettyGuardianSailorMoon Queen Beryl]]), KanjiTsuda ([[KamenRiderRyuki Daisuke Okubo, the boss of ORE Journal]]), MasayaMatsukaze ([[DenjiSentaiMegaranger Shun Namiki aka Mega Blue]]), KazuhikoNishimura ([[ChoujuuSentaiLiveman Jo Ohara aka Yellow Lion]])... the list goes on.
*HeyItsThatVoice (Other than Ai's voice below, a lot of seiyuus make guest appearances occasionally as either Ai's client, or those who got sent to Hell. Including HoukoKuwashima, KaoriShimizu, RieTanaka, to name a few. Also, a certain one-shot character voiced by JunFukuyama proved to be rather unique that he got brought back on the third season. Lastly, MagicKnightRayearth fans will take note that Hikaru's seiyuu Hekiru Shiina, after a VERY LONG hiatus, makes a frequent voice work in the third season)
*HookerWithAHeartOfGold: Hone-Onna. [[spoiler: No. Really. She was once a human girl named Tsuyu who was sold to work at a brothel.]]
*{{Hikikomori}}: A female one in the anime, a male one in the live action
* IntrepidReporter: Hajime Shibata
*IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: One episode features a character who is [[spoiler: so in love with the idea of playing the "victim" of this trope, that she actually becomes distressed when the object of her affection rejects the "other woman" and decides to fall in love with her instead. Tragedy soon ensues.]]
*KickTheDog: A girl named Miki has two Welsh Corgis and their puppies... [[spoiler: The evil, greedy, abusive rich woman the girl keeps house for, Meiko, first kills one of the dogs, then drowns the rest in her bath tub. Miki, who had made the contract with Enma Ai but was hesitant to fulfill it, sends the bitch to Hell immediately as she finds out.]]
** A girl named Hatsumi owns a chihuahua and lives in a building with a woman named Shimatani. [[spoiler: Shimatani attempts to get Hatsumi's dog kicked out of the apartment, and finally ends up poisoning the dog and causing Hatsumi to fall off a balcony. Yes, she gets it.]]
** Let's not forget the veterinary Yoshiyuki Honjou, who [[spoiler: doesn't care about treating the animals in his clinic, and eventually allows young Junko's dog to die. Yup, another one who gets sent to Hell for being mean to puppies.]]
*KnifeNut: Honne-Onna is a skilled knife thrower.
*MamikoNoto: Ai's voice.
*MindControlEyes: [[spoiler: Tsugumi Shibata, when she "synchronizes" with Enma Ai]]
*MinorInjuryOverreaction: One episode features a playboy movie director. In the end, he's sent to hell by [[spoiler:a guy that he accidentally dumped coffee on early in the episode.]]
*MoralEventHorizon: Ai Enma burned down her home village and killed everyone inside it. And no, that is not the MoralEventHorizon I'm talking about, at least when you compare it to everything else that goes on in the series.
*MusicalNod: ''Sakasama no Chou'', the opening theme from the first season is used as a ringtone, bowling alley music and on a billboard for the single in both Futakomori and Mitsuganae. ''[=NightmaRe=]'', from Futakomori, gets used in Mitsuganae as well.
*{{Nakama}}: Ichimoku Ren spent an episode considering how their group is like a family. And in season 3, Ai Enma reiterates their group as such to Yuzuki.
*{{Narm}}: Some of the third season's getting sent to hell process falls into this territory.
*{{Nightmare Fuel}}: Third season, [[spoiler:when Yamawaro gets fungus-juice applied to his back, which then grows a patches of mushrooms on his back. May also be counted as {{Squick}}.]]
*ParentalAbandonment: Tsugumi Shibata, the journalist's daughter who has a psychic link to Enma Ai, lost her mother Ayumi in an accident, although notably, the circumstances surrounding this death have a large role to play in the first series' denoument. Enma Ai herself suffered through the deaths of ''both'' of her parents. [[spoiler:And their tragic murder was explored in a flashback episode. It was revealed at the beginning of the second season, that the parent's souls were being held hostage by the forces of Hell in exchange for Enma Ai's cooperation as one of Hell's agents of vengance.]]
* OffingTheOffspring ''and'' SelfMadeOrphan: [[spoiler: Meiko Shimono killed her parents to inherit her fortune. Later, she killed her ''son'' so she wouldn't have to share her money. She ended up sent to Hell by Miki, a schoolgirl whom she forces to work as her maid, [[KickTheDog whose dogs she drowned]].]]
** Also, at the end of the first season, [[spoiler: Enma Ai tries to convince Tsugumi to send ''Hajime'', her father, to Hell, by using the memories of her mother Ayumi's death. She fails, though: Tsugumi rejects the deal and Ai leaves her and Hajime alone.]]
*OnceAnEpisode: Someone goes to Hell. Most of the time.
*OnsenEpisode: Episode 19 of Futakomori. Also gives some detail into Wanyuudou's past.
* {{Paparazzi}}: Hajime Shibata used to work with one, Inagaki, who frames an innocent guy and his father. Predictably, Inagaki ends up sent to Hell by his victim.
*PyrrhicVillainy: Literally. No matter how much better your life becomes after you send someone to Hell, you will be joining them soon enough. And you get a cheerful mark on your chest to always remind you of this.
*ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Enma Ai who is over 400 years.
*{{Reincarnation}}: It is implied that Hajime is a [[spoiler:reincarnation or distant descendant of Sentarou, a boy Ai cared about during her life]], forming part of the driving force for the climax of the first season.
*RetGone: [[spoiler: Records of the past few years of Yuzuki's life begin disappearing. Turns out ''she's been dead all this time'', and this life is a complete illusion.]]
*[[{{Ptitleaxpbm66x}} Screw The Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!]]: [[spoiler:After Yuzuki becomes the new Hell Girl, she immediately attempts to use her powers to take revenge on a woman who had unjustly sent her best friend to hell, not even bothering to listen when Ai's former helpers try to warn her against it. If she had waited one more second she might've learned that this was exactly the one thing she was NOT supposed to do. Would it have stopped her anyway? Debatable.]]
*SoulJar: [[spoiler: In the third season, a girl named Yuzuki Mikage becomes one for Enma Ai through DemonicPossession. Eventually she becomes Ai's successor.]]
*StringyHairedGhostGirl: Ai sometimes verges on this trope.
*TheUnfavorite: With a really creepy twist. See the main article.
*TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Mitsuganae takes place in the year 2024.
*{{Wangst}}: Yuzuki Mikage does some internal wangsting midway through the series. She's justified in this because [[spoiler:she's being used as a SoulJar by Ai Enma and she's unable to do anything about it. Oh, and she's going to be taking Ai's place soon.]]
*WhyDoYouKeepChangingJobs: To keep up with their next client.
*WorldHalfEmpty: You can go to Hell for pissing someone off. Even if they are overeacting or are crazy.
*XanatosSpeedChess: [[spoiler: This is essentially the entirety of the third season, and a good amount of the first and second seasons.]]
* YouCantFightFate

----
<<|NoteworthyAnime|>>[[anime]]