What if a person with a suicidal level of self-loathing and self-esteem wrote their own name on the website?
The manga touches this subject. A girl who gets bullied in school visits Hell Correspondence with the intention of sending her tormentors to Hell, but is discouraged when she learns she can only choose one person. During the episode, she comes to the conclusion that maybe she is just not strong enough to live if she can not even deal with school bullying, and enters her own name. Ai Enma then shows her the usual pre-death visions, which make the girl realize that Hell is definitely not the better alternative in her situation. She does not end up getting dragged to Hell though; but awakes in her normal life with Ai Enma stating that suicide is 'not the purpose' of the Hell Correspondence. Which, interestingly, leaves this as one of the very few episodes in both Manga and Anime where in the end, no one ends up getting carried to Hell.
Remembering that teacher who asked that his student pull the string and the episode where one member of routine sends their suicidal friend to Hell, it'd mostly work if they got someone else to send them there.
When one of Enma's assistants gets inserted into some workplace to do their investigation, how does that work? What happens to the human who originally held the job? Do they get replaced for the duration, and then come back with time missing from their memories? Or they come back with fake memories of what was going on? Or maybe no-one is replaced, but the assistant is added as new face to the workplace, and the minds of all the human co-workers are screwed with so they don't notice?
No one is replaced and yes, they are new faces. And the minds were not screwed with except when it comes to erasing memories. In one episode, it was shown that Hone-Onna could erase memories of the humans she made friends with. Very simple. Not a headscratcher at all.
There is a scene in which Enma bounces a beachball she inflated by her own mouth shortly before. The ball falls really slowly. Does Enma exhale helium or what?
In the third season, if they needed a new Hell Girl, why not hold hostage the souls of the family of some other girl, like happen with Ai?
Yuzuki was already dead to begin with and she accepted her destiny as the new Jigoku Shoujo and the fact that her friend was sent to Jigoku by that certain woman and she had nothing to lose anyway but she couldn't hold back her emotions so Enma Ai took back the role as Jigoku Shoujo. Not a headscratcher at all.
It just bugs me that anyone would pull the string at all after finding out that doing so damns themselves to hell as well. How can they possibly justify condemning themselves to an eternity in hell?
Everyone literally only live once. But not the victims. Not them. Especially the young ones. Some of them sacrifice their potential chances to be in Heaven to send their tormentors to Hell so no one else will suffer the same pain. A little too selfless there. Plus, it's usually the heat of the moment and something must be done fast or they are already broken and have nothing else to lose. Better yet, here are examples. You took over your father's company. Some support you and some people glare at you, here and there. One day, your best friend shows up and applies a position. Things go well and he/she sabotages it one day, you losing everything that financially supports you and you got nothing else to fall back on and have little to no money and said best friend walked away laughing and the motive being simply because he/she is bored and did it just because he/she felt like it. Oh, and you have no other friends and relatives who can help you and you can't pay the bills and so on, resulting in you living on the streets. How would you feel? Betrayed, definitely. Usually, your sense of right and wrong are completely gone by then but if you refuse to give up, good for you then. It's complicated, really.
Also most of the times, in the first season at least, it goes like this. Person A is tormented by person B. Person A writes in the name of Person B and receives the wara ningyo. Person A keeps it on their person and waits a bit to see if they can do something because they were cowed by the whole going to hell bit. Person B undoubtedly proves themselves to be an unrepentant and complete bastard. Person A, in the belief that there is nothing else they can do, pulls the string, causing Person B to be banished on the spot and Person A to have to follow them after they eventually die.
What happens to the bodies of people who were banished to hell? Do they disappear? Obviously, afterwards others are aware that the person has died, not missing? But how are their deaths explained?
If memory serves, the few times we see a banishment from the outside it appears as though the person just disappears, but that does not explain why everyone who was banished is treated as dead by media and their environment instead of as missing.
In episode 8 of Season 1, Hajime sees the Asshole Victim of the week being swallowed up by some kind of mirror world. In some early episodes of the same season, the more known victims (like Hanagusa and Tokada) are said to be missing.
In most cases they are, in fact, declared missing. For a notable example, see Season 4 Episode 3, where the family of the person dragged to Hell discusses informing the police.
In Purgatory Girl (Episode 13), Okuchi is mentioned to have died mysteriously (according to the English dub) after Fukumoto used the Hell Correspondence, so maybe they make it look like they died and, other times, they just disappear.
Is there a vetting process for who gets to see Hell Correspondence and who doesn't, or does the Twilight gang just respond to any and all sincere requests from people who feel sufficiently victimized? If there was, tragedies like episode 23 with the nurse banished by some random spiteful bum obviously wouldn't have happened.
According to couple of episodes, no, not really. A grievance is a grievance and, if that episode was something to go by, it doesn't matter if it's a petty one, either.
