The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube

Nube is a grade-school teacher with a demon hand which he uses to protect his students from all sorts of evil creatures. Nube fights everything from urban legends and aliens to mythological creatures, all whilst trying to catch the eye of his crush and fellow teacher.

Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube is a remake of the 1996 anime adaptation of Shō Makura and Takeshi Okano's manga series. The anime series is streaming on YouTube on Wednesdays.

Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

Despite decades of watching anime, I've never really gained a taste for those centered around Japanese spiritualism. Shows based around yokai, oni, or kami rarely pique my attention. I can think of only two off the top of my head that have, Noragami and DAN DA DAN. Sadly, Hell Teacher doesn't look like it will be getting added to that short list.

While the first episode of this series was character-based—i.e., its purpose was to introduce us to Hiroshi, Kyoko, and Nube—this episode is action-focused. For the most part, it's one extended chase/fight scene as Nube attempts to save the kidnapped Hiroshi before the yokai can rip out his skull and wear it as his own.

This will apparently enable him to become closer to human (which he wants for some reason despite already being able to take a human form and living as one for months at a time) and the ritual requires him to mirror the big dipper by marking places across the city (though, what this has to do with anything is conveniently left unexplained). Perhaps this is all connected to real-world yokai lore that I am ignorant of, but it might as well be gibberish as far as I am concerned.

This leaves the action itself to carry the episode. It's animated well, and the fights are creative with all the illusions and clones moving about. I also liked how the kids interfered in the fight. Turning on a giant magnet to disarm the metal staff-wielding monster felt like something 10-year-olds would think of.

That said, I was also constantly taken out of the fight by what was happening within it. I don't know how Nube can survive falling off buildings or being impaled from behind. I assume it has something to do with the demon hand, but this leads to another issue. Because we have no idea what Nube's limits are, it's hard to know whether he is actually in danger or not throughout the fight. Without danger, there is no tension, and without tension, there is no drama.

While I wouldn't call this episode bad in any objective way, it did solidify in my mind that this isn't a show for me. If you like action anime centering around fighting yokai, I suspect you'll enjoy this one. If not, there are plenty of other shows to watch this season.

Rating:

Hell Teacher is one of those shows I've learned through cultural osmosis, even though I've never seen an episode of the '90s anime or read the original manga. That said, my sum total of knowledge before watching this episode was that it is about a teacher with a demon hand who fights the monsters attacking his students. And to be fair, that's exactly what this first episode delivers.

Right away, we learn the setup—something is wrong with this town, and it's become a lightning rod for the supernatural. Nube is brought in because he's the only teacher/exorcist in the country and is tasked with keeping the students safe. From there, we see that Nube is a bit of an odd duck. He is both skittish and a bit of a klutz. He's also a bit of an overly innocent pushover—he doesn't realize when he's being mocked and responds earnestly instead.

Of course, the fact of the matter is that the more dangerous a supernatural situation is, the more competent he becomes. This first episode is simply a vehicle to show that. We have a normal pre-teen kid lashing out and physically hurting those around him. However, rather than being due to all those crazy hormones that come with puberty, his mood swings are instead caused by a powerful yokai.

That said, the show does a good job of showing how the kid is struggling with his emotions, trying to do what he knows is right, even though he's constantly on the edge of exploding. Even if it's being caused by something supernatural, it's a universal feeling that I'm sure all of us have encountered at some point in our lives.

Everything caps off with an action sequence as Nube fights the yokai within his student. It's a surprisingly well-animated scene and feels like something truly modern despite the 90s aesthetic of the anime overall. In the end, this first episode is a fun enough watch. I'm not sure it will hook me for any extended period, but I don't feel like I wasted my time either.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

If it wasn't for the last few minutes of this episode, I would seriously question whether Hiroshi is going to be okay. Not only was the poor child subjected to supernatural rage due to a very scary predator, but he also watched that same predator stab himself in the face and pull out his own skull. It's a good thing Hiroshi's dad seems like an attentive, loving parent, because that kid is going to need serious therapy.

Still, Hiroshi's trauma makes for a second exciting episode of Hell Teacher Nube. I can't be the only person who immediately suspected that Dr. Tamamo was a villain based solely off his character design, but he even surpassed my expectations. I've seen a lot of evil foxes in anime over the years, but Tamamo may be one of the worst – his wish to become human, or, in the show's parlance, undergo “humanification,” isn't because he harbors any great love for humanity, but because he seems to think it will be easier to cause havoc if he looks and acts more human. (Which, honestly, may be the most human a yokai has ever sounded.) He's got a few flaws in his plan, not the least of which is his need for the Goldilocks of skulls. What's most striking, though, is that he explicitly says that he infected Hiroshi with the tantrum worms to clean out all of his anger, but it doesn't appear to have occurred to him that monologuing at his victim is a pretty good way to make said victim angry.

Is this lack of forethought what makes him vulnerable to Nube? That's up for debate, but I continue to be impressed by the balance of horror and other elements in this show. Kyoko showing up with a lead pipe is a beautiful moment of both relief and lightness, and having the kids help Nube to defeat the fox makes them full characters in their own right. They're not just there to be cute or quirky; these are their lives, and they're taking as much charge as they can. They're also damn smart – Hiroshi realizing that the magnet could help him to disarm Tamamo and help Nube is a great move.

I may be seeing that skull-pulling trick in my nightmares (I have very little tolerance for gore and violence), but I don't think that's going to stop me from continuing to watch this show. It may feel a bit like it's skipping through its source material, but it isn't skimping on plot or details. It's shaping up to be a very good action/horror hybrid. Count me in.

Rating:

My favorite kind of horror is the sort that operates just on the edge of our reality. That makes me wonder how I never found Hell Teacher Nube before now, although it's possible that the 1996 anime leaned into an entirely different aspect of the story. But this first episode of the new series hits a lot of good notes, with its most effective elements being a combination of silly humor and some genuinely scary bits.

It's that last that I find most impressive. While Nube himself is kind of a self-consciously goofy man, the situation he finds in his new classroom is frightening. Before we even really get into the meat of the plot, it's clear that fifth grader Hiroshi is having some sort of problem. His friends remark that he's been hard to get along with, and at first it looks like he's got trauma around exorcists and spiritual matters. That's basically true, but not in the way I was expecting: Hiroshi's been experiencing bursts of uncontrolled anger, and his father was trying to help him, and he was on the right track – Hiroshi is possessed. But that's hardly the scariest part. What makes Hiroshi's story so effective is that it's incredibly close to real experiences people have. Anger and lashing out can have any number of reasons, from reacting to abuse to hormonal changes to mental illness.

The only thing more frightening than it happening is not knowing why it's happening, and that's something this episode does an excellent job of demonstrating. Hiroshi's scared and confused because he can't control himself, and that leads him to lash out for other reasons. He's a bundle of insecurities and fears bound together by a yokai, and not really understanding any of it only makes it worse for him. His experience with the other exorcist means that he's not willing to just trust Nube even if class mom Kyoko says that he's the real deal. Hiroshi feels like he has no stability and nowhere to turn, and showing that's where this episode succeeds.

There are also some excellent, upsetting visuals, mostly involving too many eyeballs in a single socket, and from a historical perspective, it's interesting to note that Nube calls upon his power by saying it resides in his left hand – could this be the source of that favorite chuuni delusion? He even looks like he has a glove on that hand that turns out to be a demonic appendage, although the episode otherwise looks very much like it's based on a manga from 1993. In any event, this captures both a sense of 90s nostalgia and engaging horror, and I'm looking forward to seeing more.

James Beckett
Rating:

I loved the first episode of this new Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube reboot, but the one concern I expressed was whether or not the original story (which spanned nearly 50 episodes back in the 90s) would hold up in these here modern times when anime series tend to be much shorter and leaner. Now, I'm not familiar with the source material at all, but I would bet money that there was originally a lot more material that the story originally covered before getting to “Hiroshi is suddenly kidnapped by an evil sorcerer who turns out to be a kitsune that wants to rip out his own skull and replace it with a child's.”

Now, given how experiences with anime like The Promised Neverland and Go! Go! Loser Ranger! have understandably made people incredibly wary of productions that speedrun through the stories they are adapting, I feel like I should make it clear that this was still an enjoyable episode of Hell Teacher. The tone of this episode definitely feels a lot bigger and more high-stakes than the first - more like an adventure that would come at the end of an entire multi-episode arc, if not an entire season - but the story still makes sense. While I highly doubt that this is the most satisfying way that this showdown between the Kitsune-Guy and Nube could have been depicted, I was able to follow along and have a good time. Both Hiroshi and Kyoko also get plenty to do as they help out their teacher, which still gets the point of their growing bond with Nube across.

One thing that really stood out about this episode was how gory it was. The first episode went for a moodier vibe, but some cuts here felt like they were ripped straight out of a turn-of-the-century OVA with a title like “Demon Night Hunter Police” or “XVIOS: The Devil's Secretary.” The moment where the (thankfully) fake Hiroshi got straight-up decapitated by the hands of a giant clock genuinely shocked me, and I was out of my seat and clapping with glee by the time Kitsune-Guy tore his own goddamned skull out.

So, despite some pacing issues that may indeed get worse before they get better, Hell Teacher is channeling the spirit of 90s action-horror anime in a way that is just viscerally satisfying. It's worth checking out, so long as (I suspect) you aren't too precious about accuracy to the manga.

Rating:

Damn, this season keeps on delivering shows that feel like they were made specifically for me. Even though I'm not especially familiar with either the manga or the original adaptation of Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube, I was drawn into the premiere almost immediately. A part of this is maybe just because I am both a school teacher and a nerd forged in the flames of the anime boom of the late 90s and early 2000s, but I also need to give the show credit for simply having a kickass foundation to build on. I love it when action-adventure anime use their horror-themed elements not just as set dressing,but to try and tell legitimately spooky stories on top of all of the magic powers and punch-em-ups. It would be one thing if our hero Nube simply moonlighted as an exorcist outside of his office hours, but the way that the supernatural investigation elements are tied directly to his new school and class of students is much more appealing to me.

Plus, I always have to give kudos to an anime where the school and students actually evoke the feeling of such a setting. Our younger characters, such as Hiroshi and Kyoko, come across as real kids, rather than precocious adults trapped in prepubescent bodies. Hiroshi, especially, gets the lion's share of the drama in this premiere, on account of being possessed by a mutated tantrum worm, but the show treats his anger and confusion seriously when it could have easily gone down the route of camp. The scene where he nearly kills Kyoko by shoving her down and cracking her head on a sharp corner is the kind of situation that is every teacher's worst nightmare. Kyoko might be cool enough to brush it off, but the audience understands just how serious the problem is, which is where Nube has to work his magic.

What surprised me the most about Hell Teacher is how hard it went in the action department. The show doesn't look terrible by any means, but it is going for a throwback aesthetic that evokes the humbler production values of years gone by (even if the setting has clearly been modernized to fit the times, going by the fact that every kid in Nube's class has an iPad, God help them). All of this is to say that I was not expecting Nube's demon-mulching gut-punch attack to be such an epic climax to Hiroshi's story. If the show can continue to deliver bursts of awesome spectacle like this, then that's just all the better.

Really, my only concern going into future episodes of Hell Teacher is a purely hypothetical one. I don't know how many episodes this series is set to release, but current trends would indicate that we're far from guaranteed to get the full fifty-episode run that the original anime got. If this is a story that needs that much time to breathe and get through its plot, I can only hope that Hell Teacher 2025 doesn't get screwed over by the one-cour curse that has been afflicting so many anime lately.