The devil’s in the details.
What They Say:
Episode #2: “HELL MINION FOR A DAY / THE LINE BETWEEN WORKAHOLIC AND ARTIST”
Hozuki takes Maki and Miki around as hell minions for the day to capture special tortures that have never been shot on film! To be shared on their homepage, of course.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This episode of Hozuki is all about what it takes to work in the circles of hell. Hozuki wants only the most devoted civil servants to work as minions in his departments. To drive interest he decides to enlist the help of the idols Maki and Miki to show off what minions do as a recruitment campaign.
The two young women are lead through some of the many torture departments and the audience is buried in information about the various punishments for sins. You’ll be happy to learn what the delightful punishments are for groping and taking bribes, among other sins which send people to hell. The joyful staff of hell will delight in meeting out those punishments to the unwilling. After witnessing the fourth… or fifth vat of boiling metal my interest starts to stray. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of this sort of thing in the first season. The rather old-fashioned tortures of hell often resort to boiling. Although the giant Cuisinart dicing up the doomed was a novel idea.
After Maki and Miki finish their promotional photo shoot Hozuki takes his two underlings to the department which records all of a person’s deeds in life so they can be judged later. The scribes still transcribe all events by hand, by brush and scroll. (There’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment where one of the deceased’s death date is given as being in the future. That’s the only moment of this episode that made me blink.) Hozuki and his underlings become increasingly concerned that the workload and tedium are having a negative effect on the emotional well being of the employees of that department. I don’t know about you guys, but that seems like the real eternal torment to me.
In Summary:
Hozuki continues to be quirky and delightful, although this episode is almost entirely devoted to giving the viewer an extensive look at some of the departments of hell. Buried in minutia it turns a tour from whimsy into the mundane. Most of this episode is rapid-fire information which goes beyond an info dump and descends into a level of detail which borders on fanatical. It still strikes me as funny that Hozuki is concerned for the well being of overworked employees. It turns out that there’s a fine line between torture and bureaucracy.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed by: HIDIVE
