Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube

Episodes 14-15

We've all had those days when we're forced to wake up at some ungodly hour, to trudge to some workplace or educational establishment, where our heart just isn't into whatever our assigned mandatory drudgery of the day happens to be. Days when we think to ourselves, “This wasn't what I dreamt of doing when I was a kid.” I don't know about you folks reading this, but I'm certainly not a time-travelling astronaut who fights dinosaurs with laser cannons. I'm not living the dream. And that's why adult life sucks.

Last time she checked, poor Kyoko was an eleven-year-old elementary school student. Now she wakes up to learn she's twenty-six, still living with her mother, no longer wears her hair in pigtails, works in a supremely sucky telesales job, and the imperiously demanding Dr. Tamamo is her boss! It doesn't help that all of her old schoolfriends seem to have fulfilled their dreams. Previously, miniature Makoto is now a towering, handsome lawyer and playboy, while Miki is married to Kyoko's beloved Hiroshi, and they have triplets together! No wonder it seems like this adult Kyoko's in the middle of some kind of psychotic break. The last time she felt she truly lived was in fifth grade. That's not even peaking in high school levels of sad; it's several levels below.

Of course, this being Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube, Kyoko realizes there's got to be a supernatural explanation for her feelings of disconnection; it's not a sudden attack of existential zillennial angst. Why won't anyone tell her where Nube is, though? (Admittedly, it's perhaps a little odd for a woman in her mid-twenties to suddenly become obsessed with the whereabouts of her elementary school teacher, but Nube's a special case.) It turns out Nube was horribly maimed by the Byakko white tiger spirit while protecting his students many years back, and Kyoko is horrified to learn from Ritsuko (who now seems to be caring for her former colleague full-time) that he uses a wheelchair and can no longer move or speak. The hopelessness in Kyoko's heart reaches a crescendo, and as she cries for the umpteenth time this episode (adulthood is hard, kids, everybody cries sometimes), her tears magically revive Nube's demonic hand and somehow his ability to speak. He tells her what she wants to hear – she doesn't belong in this world, she's been sent here as a prank by a shitty little yokai who gets kicks from confusing innocent sleepers, sending them to parallel worlds by flipping over their pillows.

This broken version of Nube musters enough demonic energy to send a grateful Kyoko back where she came from, where she's overjoyed to be back in the prime of her young life, surrounded by friends, and glomping onto her confused teacher, who's surely worried about suspicious onlookers reporting him for inappropriate touching. (As a sad indictment of our modern world, Nube doesn't feel able to hug Kyoko back; he can only accept her one-sided natural affection.)

It's a little bit of an odd choice to start a new cour on this particular story, as most of the episode is laser-focused on Kyoko, with only adult versions of most other characters cameoing during the future/parallel world scenes. I had to look at a wiki to remind myself who some of them were. Still, it's an effectively emotional story, lacking in subtlety, but that's not what I come to Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube for. I expect fun, supernatural, humorous stories with a slightly gory twist, and this episode delivers.

I really enjoyed the series' first cour, and episode fourteen is absolutely not the right place for new viewers to start. Hopefully, distributor REMOW keeps the episodes up on YouTube for longer than a week this time. However, I've recently learned the show now also streams on Amazon Prime in the U.S., plus Samsung TV Plus and VIZIO WatchFree+, as apparently those are real streaming services that exist, not ones I just made up, honest. Any interested reader should check out the first 13 episodes before proceeding.

Episode fifteen continues with the timey-wimey theme, this time with a trip into Nube's past. Although each of the supporting cast members has received the spotlight in their own episodes, that's not really been the case for Nube himself. We know that he's a powerfully gifted psychic teacher who fights evil while protecting his students, but until now, his past was a mystery. Why does he have a demonic hand in the first place? We don't yet learn the details of that aspect of his backstory, but we learn something just as important: the origin of his drive to protect others.

Once again, the temporal shenanigans are caused by the random appearance of a yokai, this time the “Chabukuro”, whose name means “tea bag”. It looks like a drawstring purse that dangles from the clouds on a long string. Only people with a pure heart may interact with it safely – anyone it deems unworthy has their souls sucked from their bodies. For those whose hearts are free from the taint of evil, the Chabukuro offers a single chance to change an aspect of their past. As Miki reads out the Yokai encyclopedia about this obscure creature, her classmates all come up with inane things they'd like to change about their pasts. Initially, Nube denies having any regrets.

This changes when he stumbles across a Chabukuro in real life. (I wonder if Miki perhaps has a disturbing power to subconsciously summon dangerous yokai when she reads about them? I'm not sure how else to explain the bizarre coincidence that Nube meets one shortly after discussing it with the class.) Nube realises there is something he regrets after all, and it dates back to his tragic childhood.

As a boy, Nube was bullied and excluded by the other boys in his school for attracting curses. A couple of scenes suggest his father abandoned him after his mother died, but no concrete details are given. The only light in child Nube's life was his pretty young teacher, Minako, who used her inherited psychic powers to heal Nube from the possession by evil spirits he was prone to attracting.

Minako was a fun teacher – boisterous, energetic, even a little tomboyish, while also stealing young Nube's heart with her beauty and caring nature. It's no wonder then that Nube deeply desires to use this chance to change her fate, after she died saving him from possession by a powerful snake spirit. Nube's desperation to stop her sacrifice is tragic because no matter what he does, nothing changes. He completely fails to save her, even when he, in his past self's child body, attempts to summon his demon hand from the future. He's thrown back to the present day, bereft and shaken. He says something interesting afterwards: “Minako and the Demon Hand can't exist at the same time.” I'm pretty sure that's a heavy hint at some major backstory this version of the anime hasn't revealed yet.

For all that it's primarily a simple supernatural shonen adventure show, Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube sure can pack a mean emotional punch at times. We barely get to know Minako, but the few minutes we see of her are powerful, and I felt a little teary when it became clear that Nube had no way to save her, despite the powers at his command. Given Minako's prominence in both opening and ending credits, I expect this won't be the last we see or hear of her.

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Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube is currently streaming on YouTube.