In this supernatural anime, revenge comes with a permanent, soul-binding price for the seeker.

Entertainment · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: The Hell Correspondence website offers a simple, dark promise: submit the name of someone you hate at midnight, and they will be dragged to Hell. But the contract is absolute. Once the target is gone, the person who made the request is doomed to join them in the afterlife.

The Japanese anime series Hell Girl, or Jigoku Shōjo, centers on a supernatural system that facilitates vengeance. When a person suffers enough torment to reach the Hell Correspondence website—or, in earlier times, used an ema or a hidden newspaper advertisement—they can summon Ai Enma. She presents the client with a straw doll featuring a red string. If the client pulls the string, Enma and her assistants ferry the target to Hell, but the client receives a permanent black mark on their chest, signaling that they, too, will be sent to Hell upon their death.

Across four seasons broadcast between 2005 and 2017, the series explores themes of injustice, hatred, and the complexity of human emotion. The narrative often follows self-contained stories, though recurring characters like the journalist Hajime Shibata and his daughter Tsugumi, or the mysterious Kikuri, add layers of moral conflict. The series has expanded significantly beyond its original television format, spawning manga adaptations, a live-action drama, a film, and video games for platforms like the Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2.

The franchise's reach has occasionally sparked controversy. In June 2022, authorities in Saint Petersburg, Russia, banned the series, alleging that it contained materials intended to encourage destructive or illegal behavior among minors, specifically regarding the use of violence. Despite such external pressures, the series remains a notable example of dark fantasy storytelling, with its intricate soundtracks and evolving mediums of communication reflecting the timeless nature of the human desire for retribution.

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