© Shou Makura・Takeshi Okano/SHUEISHA・Domori Elementary School Alumni
Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube may be shaping up as the exact kind of light-hearted supernatural insanity I need weekly, as episode 4 is easily as enjoyably loopy as last week’s possessed anatomy doll tale. This time, the featured schoolkid is hairband-wearing Miki. She’s in the running for my favorite character so far, reminding me of a slightly-less-mercenary version of Ranma 1/2‘s Nabiki Tendo. Envious of teacher Nube’s psychic powers, instead of studying for her looming math test, she follows the advice of a dodgy TV pundit and attempts to develop clairvoyance. Incredibly, she somehow succeeds, not that she realises at first!
If you’ve seen Keiichi Hara‘s celebrated 2015 movie Miss Hokusai, then you’ll recognise the concept of the “Rokurokubi,” a phenomenon where the spiritual aspect of a sleeping person’s neck elongates, with a copy of their head floating on the end as it wanders through the sky like a creepy, wriggly, flesh-toned snake. Sent to the nurse’s office for falling asleep in class, Miki is initially delighted that her head can now apparently phase through walls and sneak a peek at the math test answers. She doesn’t realize she’s not merely dreaming, and everyone can see her clumsy attempts at clandestine espionage.
It’s truly a weird image: Miki’s cute little bob-cut schoolgirl head winding through corridors on an increasingly lengthening neck, terrifying poor Ms. Ritsuko, and then each of her fellow pupils in turn. Miki’s also a bit of a night-time voyeur, spying on her friends both in the bath and on the toilet! No wonder they’re terrified of the charmingly dense girl when she turns up at school the next day, convinced she’d been remote viewing, not being actively viewed herself!
Everything culminates in a showdown in the school’s gym hall, with Nube threatening to “end things painlessly” with his demon hand, which understandably freaks Miki out, now that everyone thinks she’s a yokai. Nube needs to work on his communication skills – earlier in the episode, he almost succeeded in asking Ms. Ritsuko out on a date, only to completely spoil everything by talking about graveyards and zombies. He can’t seem to take the hint that Ms. Ritsuko doesn’t like supernatural stuff. So both Miki and Nube are as dumb as a box of rocks in this episode, though it would be a lot less funny if they weren’t.
Deranged imagery and a bonkers premise combine to make this one of the daftest episodes of anime I’ve watched in a while. Thankfully, the show doesn’t take itself all that seriously, and everything resolves (fairly) cleanly by the end. Whether Miki’s experiences make her any more likely to study honestly for tests in the future seems unlikely, considering her continued attempts to cheat… Sometimes it’s better to put in the effort than lose your head, girl.
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Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube is currently streaming on
YouTube.