【Jigoku Sensei Nube】Comedy-Horror x Dark-Fantasy! Over 24 million copies in circulation!!

Jigoku Sensei Nube is a Japanese comedy-horror franchise written by Sho Makura and illustrated by Takeshi Okano.

It was serialized in Shueisha’s weekly Shounen Jump, and its chapters are compiled and published into 31 separate volumes. As of December 2021, the manga series has over 24 million copies in circulation, worldwide.

An anime adaptation of the manga was also released in 1996, with the fourty-nine-episode anime series adapted by Toei Animation.

The story follows a teacher, Nube, who always finds himself in the middle of some weird phenomenon which usually targets one of Nube’s own students. Nube uses the power of the demon hand to find the solution of these problems. By the end of it all, things seem to get back to normal, and everyone involved in the incident learns something from it. The series retains and follows an episodic formula.

We open up with a new student coming in to the school. He is quite the problem child according to the principal. While they go towards his class, we see a crowd of students cheering on for someone who is performing an exorcism.

While trying to exorcise a portrait of Beethoven, it catches on fire. Nube touches up the portrait after two holes get burned through it.

Nube introduces the new kid to the class as Tateno Hiroshi. Hiroshi comes to know that Nube is the only teacher with spiritual abilities in Japan. Kyouko, a student, tells Hiroshi that Nube belongs to a spiritually powered family. And that he bets his life fighting evil spirits, so that he can protect the children.

Kyouko tells Hiroshi that the reason Nube always wears a glove on his left hand is because it turned into the “Oni no Te” while he was battling an Oni. Hiroshi doesn’t believe this and the other kids except Kyouko also don’t believe in this.

Hiroshi impresses everyone with his soccer skills while Nube feels dejected by his own class. Everyone wants Hiroshi to join the soccer club.

When the class goes out to play dodge ball, the 6th graders come up and start bullying them. In a fit, Hiroshi punches all of the older students, resulting in them getting seriously injured.

While at the hospital, Nube performs an exorcism on a baby and extracts a Youkai. He says that the Youkai are responsible for irritation and hysteria in many people. Nube advises Hiroshi to not be so pessimistic and face his challenges head on.

Hiroshi has a nightmare where he is being consumed by some weird entity.

The next day, Nube pleads the soccer teacher to let Hiroshi in to the club as he believes Hiroshi is a good kid at heart.

The soccer teacher accepts and lets Hiroshi play. The other teammates don’t like the fact that Hiroshi is better than them at soccer and play unfairly against him, even going as far as using violence. Consumed by rage, Hiroshi beats everyone up again.

Nube convinces Hiroshi to let him perform an exorcism on him. Although Hiroshi is skeptical at first, he has no choice but to believe him when Nube shows him his Demon Hand. In the next scene we see the evil spirit come out of Hiroshi and reveal it’s true form.

Nube confronts the Youkai and commands it to leave Hiroshi’s body. The Youkai attacks, but Nube manages to get away with just a scratch. The Youkai then releases all the stored up emotional energy, which it absorbed while manifesting Hiroshi’s body.

Nube uses his trump card, Oni no Te. To protect the children, Nube uses ‘Oni’, and slashes the Yokai in two.

After the battle, to convince the Soccer teacher that Hiroshi was actually possessed, Nube brings all the students that Hiroshi previously beat up and tells them that Hiroshi won’t get angry no matter what they do to him.

What chronicles await Nube and his students?