This includes Ai, which brings a perplexing question on how, considering she's free from Hell's contract and is now dead.

During the Lovely Hills arc in Futakomori the character Takuma (basically the 2nd season's Tsugumi) got sent to hell after a series of unfortunate events that started in ep 14. While she was ferrying Takuma to hell, she decides she isn't happy with the way things turned out as she likens his situation to her own one which her village killed her in her original life. As such she turned the ferryboat around and brought Takuma back to life.

However the Lord of Hell didn't take too kindly to this turn of events and decided to punish Ai by sending her and her parents to hell, but at the request of her helpers he ends up deciding against it and instead cancels Ai's contract which essentially returns her back to life only, the effects of living for over 400 years is still there and is being to catch up on Ai's body. As a result she's completely weak and frail. But still manages to chase her way back to Takuma and prevent him from walking the same path she did in her past by stopping him from burning his town.

At the same time though, the heads of the town that have been abusing the Hotline to Hell were terrified at the prospect of Ai's presence thinking that if she is there she'll send them to hell, unaware that Ai is no longer the Hell Girl. So in their fear, they proceed to mercilessly beat the weakened Ai to death until Takuma tries stop them making them realise that they are physically murdering someone (where as before then they had used the Hell Girl so their hands were somewhat 'clean'). In the end though, Ai feels satisfied and fulfilled that she has finally redeemed herself for her past misgivings and passes on, supposedly her soul and her parents soul ascend into heaven.

So the 3rd season kicks off with a story involving a girl who hates her teacher because he bullies her. Now the thing is, the teacher is completely in the right but the student doesn't like him because he supposedly writes down all the bad things the students do saying he'll put them in their permanent record. The student had also heard rumours that it's because of this, 3 students had failed to pass on to high school in the past, so she fears that she will get failed by him.

My thoughts on the scenario, if you're worried about failing, maybe you should, I don't know, pay attention in class and start behaving like a proper student and NOT listen to your iPod during class while the teacher is talking and then beautiful and wonderful person about it when he confiscates your iPod saying he has no right to when he really does. Did it not occur to you that those 3 students probably really sucked and didn't do well at all which is why they failed and that maybe, just maybe, the teacher is picking on you because you're being an immature brat in the middle of class.

In any case, Ai seems to have entered some sort of cycle of rebirth and is now in dwelling within the body of junior high school girl Yuzuki Mikage, who happened to be a friend of the girl that hated the teacher (her method of possession appeared to be through a rather yuri scene of her appearing before her in the bath and kissing her.... I could have gone without something that seemed so fanservicey). Yuzuki essentially seems to have taken up the role of Tsugumi from the first season in that she can see what Ai can see when Ai is taking over her body, although it seems like a dream to her. So when she sees her friend pull the string to send the teacher to hell (because she's scared that he might fail her, seriously, giving up your soul so that you can pass INTO high school. That doesn't sound worth it) she tries to stop her vividly remembering the whole "your soul will go to hell" part of the contract but then turns into Ai and does the whole sending people into hell thing.

If there was any good thing about the protagonist of the episode, it was she almost instantly regretted killing the teacher..... this is because seconds later it was revealed to her that he did not throw away her iPod and in fact handed it to one of her friends to hand it back to her and that he never wrote down the names and actions of the troublemakers of the clas and that it was all a scare tactic to keep students in line. So she came to the realisation that she just KILLED AN INNOCENT PERSON for completely unfounded reasons, and she also condemned her soul to hell at the same time, boy she must feel stupid.

It would seem that the 3rd season is going to try hammer in the fact that good people can be sent to hell for stupid reasons and misconceptions. However the main plot I want to be addressed is why is Ai back, why did she get reborn back into her old job which she freed herself from in the last season and why did she choose Yuzuki as a host body? But knowing JUgoku Shoujo, this will not be addressed until the end of the season.

Ep 2: This was pretty much your typical run-in-the-mill Jigoku Shoujo scenario. Abusive husband punishing his wife for 'seducing' the kid who frequently visits the store and checks up on her every so often by calling her, punishing her if she doesn't pick up the phone immediately. The guy basically had it coming and it was quite deserved by Hell Girl standards.

His punishment amused me a lot with the implied rape through giant plugs the Hell Girl crew seemed to give him. I liked this episode, it also had that nice bittersweet feeling at the end when the kid realised that the wife actually did still love the guy despite how abusive he was.

Ep 3: This was just vindictive. The person getting sent to hell this time round was actually a decent person, just when she was a kid she was a not a nice a person, and abused the lady who would later send her to hell. And despite apologising for everything and even making a big effort to redeem herself, the hatred was so deep that it just the lady basically went "No, I'm not giving you the satisfaction of redemption I want you to suffer like I did."

I was not really a fan of the message they were trying to portray in this episode which was basically, 'no matter what you do or how much you try to redeem yourself, you'll never wash away the sin and can never be forgiven.' Although it's not the first time they've done this in the series. Twice in season 1 there was a story in which one of the character's motivations of pulling the string was despite the fact that the other person might be doing a good thing or that the reasons they hate the other person is wrong, it's in human nature to continue hating a person until the other is dead.

I have a feeling though that maybe everything would have turned out better if the idol's manager didn't try to pay off the lady to shut her up.

Ep 4: Now this was just plain horrible. Seriously the reason for pulling the string in this episode felt worse than the "You spilled coffee on me" reason. The guy admired the kendo guy for being a defender of justice and everything but then felt betrayed because when it came to stepping up to the plate and actually risking his life to protect another he chickened out. Yes that's a reason to feel a bit bitter to someone, but to KILL him? That's like me saying 'Crispin Freeman is such an awesome voice actor, but he screwed up one line of one of my favourite characters so now he deserves to die for disappointing me.' I mean what the hell?!

On the plus side though, they did a good job at making the school nurse in this episode look very important and suspicious. Some fans actually managed to pick out some very small details in her to reach the conclusion that she is probably Tsugumi from season 1 due to the same voice and the same earrings that her mother wore. If that is the case, it's been a really long time between the 2 seasons, although when we saw Tsugumi in season 2 she was clearly older than she was in the first season.

Still no mention on the subject of two questions that loom over the series. The main one being what's Ai still doing as the Hell Girl (and alive for that matter, however it was mentioned that she's possessing Yuzuki because she requires a body as her actual one no longer exists) and what is Yamawaro's purpose? Why is he there and where did he come from? Although I'm pleasantly surprised to notice that he's a lot more emotive than I thought he would be.