Hell Girl is back in a new twelve episode fourth season, Ai Enema & the Hell Girl crew returns for more depressing horror stories of revenge, suffering, and misunderstandings. For those returning or new to the series, it’s highly recommend that you play catch up prior to giving season four a proper watch.

Hell Girl is a 2005 seinen anime franchise, it is produced by Studio Deen, and licensed by Aniplex. It is currently available for streaming in English subs on Crunchyroll & Anime Strike.

The Hell Girl character cast both old and new.

Hell Girl is a rather obscure anime franchise that still has somewhat of a following within the anime community, mainly due to its harsh single self-contained stories at the center of each episode. Given how many seasons and episodes were released prior to it’s fourth season, it’s a wonder why it’s not bigger than it is in the seinen fandom. Despite this Hell Girl has become a bit of a success in later years, with several manga spin-offs and even a live-action TV adaptation.

Hell Girl returns to damn souls to the fiery pits.

THE GOOD: Hell Girl is back in typical fashion, with single self-contained stories to fill out time for each episode. These stories usually involve someone looking to get revenge on a torturous person in their lives, and the method used to pay back the torture is usually related once the curse has been activated. In this case a young girl is being tormented by her entire class, and believes someone to be the center of it all. The twist is, the culprit is indeed correct, however she felt bad and wanted to befriend the tortured girl. Despite this the tortured student curses the trouble starter after believing that their private online conversations had been leaked by her to the rest of their classmates, when that wasn’t exactly correct.

A friendship doomed to fail.

THE BAD: Might not be for everyone who’s squeamish. Newcomers and old fans might have to play catch up to know the newer Hell Girl cast.

An unfortunate truth.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Hell Girl is back in business with an entertaining first episode, unfortunately only six of these will be new canon material with another six providing flashbacks from previous seasons. The first episode acts as a precursor to introducing a new character (apparently?), so let’s see where the limited run goes. Otaku Dome gives Hell Girl: Fourth Twilight Episode 1 a 87 out of 100.