The idea, a shojo Death Note-ish theme with a catch, sounds pretty nifty. The story starts out with a schoolgirl that is set up by a fellow classmate. A CD is planted in this girl's bag at a music store, and she's busted by the store owner on the way out. This classmate helps her out of the bind, but then turns it around on her and uses blackmail to boss around her new personal slave. Slave girl finds that she has no free time, her schoolwork is suffering, and her money is gone, and this bully shows no signs of letting up. This girl can't tell anyone; she'll be called a thief and a liar. Of course, the only solution here is to send the blackmailing bitch to hell! 

Schoolgirl isn't too sure about this Hell Correspondence Web site she keeps hearing about, but decides to try it out anyway. She visits the Web site and enters the bully's name. And nothing happens until the bullying/blackmailing situation becomes too much to bear. Hell Girl suddenly appears, reminds schoolgirl that she too will eventually go to hell, and then goes to work on the damned. Bully girl gets caught in her own wierd shoplifting hell, is eventually locked up, and then disappears forever. Everyone lives somewhat happily ever after.

Unfortunately, the rest of the first volume is filled with very similar stories: girl starts happy, girl becomes tortured, girl gives in and uses Hell Correspondence, enemy goes to hell, girl goes to hell. The subsequent stories are so similar and repetitive that they begin to bore. They all start out different -- cake recipe theft, animal neglect, and even a Hell Girl actress role theft -- but end up the same. By the end, you hope that one of these girls would buck up and fix things for herself. But I guess that wouldn't be Hell Girl material, would it? 

The very fact that the tortured girls also end up going to hell takes away from any pleasure you'd normally get from seeing justice be done. Sure, they get to live the rest of their life problem free, but they're still headed for that fiery pit when they die. In the end, you're left with the feeling that "everyone lost," and that there is no real resolution. If you really think about it, the person originally causing the problem wins in the end. That sucks!

I also have a major problem with the look of Hell Girl in this context. For manga that is pitched as horror, the characters, as well as Ai Enma herself, are too sparkly and pretty and adorable. All the girls have huge, super shiny shojo eyes, and Ai looks lovely in her flowery death-bringing garb. Don't get me wrong, the art is very well done, and everything has a polished level of cuteness. But how is that supposed to work in a story where everyone eventually goes to hell? The scariest thing in the whole first volume is a scene where veterinarians with animal heads torture a heartless animal hater. Even then, the bunny-headed one was kind of cute.

After hearing the premise of Hell Girl, I really wanted to see "sweet revenge." But, in the end, all I got to see was sweet art. As I said before, the basis of the story is solid. Sadly, the execution here does it no justice. I really wanted to like Hell Girl, but instead it sent me to my own personal hell of bordeom. What the hell... girl?

Score: 5.0
Verdict: Pass. Don't kill me, Hell Girl.