Kyoukai no Rinne had looked like a fun show when I saw it in the preview, so I was kinda excited for it. But sadly there’s one word I can describe for this show: underwhelming.
Well, at least for the first episode. We got thrown into things so quickly, that we barely focused on the characters. There were a lot of weird things happening, and yet what astonished me was the lack of reactions from the characters. It goes from being able to see ghosts, to Roukudo’s identity, to Sakura just being dragged around everywhere with a straight face. I’ll get to that in a bit, but let me get into the story first. Sakura is in high school and when taking roll in class, the seat next to her is empty. Our red-haired protag comes in with a weird cloak on, and it’s only Sakura that can see him. A giant chihuahua spirit appears and eats Rokudou, and leaves. Sakura’s friend, Rika, has a new phone but complains about a certain call she gets everyday at the same time, and the next day, Rokudou arrives, but this time everyone can see him, and he suggests to Rika to put an offering in a thermometer box in the back of the school, to help with her problem. The girls go, and Rokudou has the robes on again and takes the offering.
To make things short, he’s a shinigami of sorts, but also human? He wears the Robes of the Underworld, when put on, turns him into a spirit and makes him invisible to the human eye. Except Sakura can see him. Though he doesn’t make a big deal out of that. He helps spirits tied down to their world to pass on to the afterlife, to the Wheel of Reincarnation, which we see in the beginning with Sakura as a little girl. They help one ghost, which was attached to a tracksuit of their homeroom teacher, who has creepy eyes. The other spirit was weird, but we know that if spirits stay in their world for too long, they’ll turn evil, like the chihuahua/unrequited love guy. The first episode was pretty simple, helping spirits pass on. But there are problems.
Firstly, characters. We see Sakura as a child in the “spirit world”(?) looking up at the Wheel of Reincarnation, which she doesn’t remember when being in that world again with Rokudou, though has a sense of deja vu. I don’t know if she’s totally human because she can see ghosts, and she acts like it’s normal. So far she’s pretty bland, and she has the same expression the entire time. Rokudou is oddly accepting of Sakura and doesn’t question her too much, and even drags her along with everything, when I would imagine that he wouldn’t want to involve other humans in his “job”. But that’s another major problem with this show: the character’s reactions. Sakura can see spirits, doesn’t question it too much. When Rokudou first appears, she knows the others in the class can’t see him. A giant chihuahua spirit appears and runs off, yet no expression change. For some reason, she helps Rokudou with the ghosts, gets sent into the Spirit Way, flies in the “spirit world”, gets attacked…..nothing. No change in expression. She questions a few things at times, but she’s pretty nonchalant about everything.
Same with Rokudou. Doesn’t he think it’s weird that a random girl in his class can see him with his robes on, and ghosts? Why does he drag her along, like she’s always been his teammate? AND THE TEACHER. OH MAN. Sakura suddenly throws the robes on the ghost, the ghost appears before the teacher, and he barely reacts. He’s like “Oh, Suzuki?” Gives the tracksuit back, Suzuki disappears, and the teacher accepts he passed on. Aaaand…why didn’t he scream when the ghost of his past classmate appeared in front of him, and then disappeared. Like, he accepted everything like it was the most normal thing ever. EVERYONE REACTED NORMALLY TO EVERYTHING, WHICH IN THIS CASE, IS NOT NORMAL. And that bothered me a lot. It’s like a day in the park.
I
guess it just didn’t feel like a first episode. It honestly felt like an episode in the middle of the series, because it felt like the characters have done this before (Rokudou and Sakura pairing up), and I didn’t feel like it was a proper introduction. It felt really off. Also, the classmate ghost and the teacher. I don’t know if we were supposed to feel emotions during that scene (except confusion), but a ghost passing on should be a really emotional scene. But it wasn’t. It happened so quickly, also with the weird guy that had a thing for Sakura, but I guess they were trying to be funny with that part. Eh. I’m actually kinda disappointed, but I’m actually going to stick around because I’m curious about Sakura. How did she get into that world, who was that woman she was talking to, why can she see ghosts, etc. I want to know more about Rokudou too. Also, the opening had cool looking characters in it that interested me as well. Things are simple to understand, but we got into the action a little too fast, and the characters just didn’t feel right to me. But I won’t give up just yet. We’ll see where this goes.
Watching: Moderate
Blogging: Moderate
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Oki’s Impression
You know, I’m right beside Berry on this one. Given that she summarized it it’s hard for me to do more than go ^ same. As usual I tend to have a little more hope for first episodes, I’m pretty sure that every first episode of every anime could be sent through me for judgement and only the genuinely bad ones would be given a no. Still I found a lot of this episode really failed to connect with me or make me feel much more than ‘alright Kagome and Inuyasha whats the new adventure today’.
Still, I’ve always liked Rumiko Takahashi’s works. I genuinely want to like this, and I’m always for Rumiko’s heroines and being able to do things. I can’t say much more about this show than I am actually interested in it and I’ll be trying to cover it with Berry. I can add something else though, man I am attracted to the aesthetics in this show. I mean damn, the red hair is just my thing. I do not have a problem. Ignoring some of the weaker moments, this show could be beautiful and definitely promoted the down right hotness that was what the main couple could be.
Let’s hope for better pacing and a more interesting introduction to the character’s with episode 2. Can I get through this? Well, let’s hope that the show can rise a bit above this episode.
Oki
Yeah, I got the same feeling from this episode. It was kinda disappointing. But I couldn’t really focus on it that much, because I made the mistake of watching it when it was first uploaded on the anime site with some of the worst subs I’ve ever seen. There was incomplete translations, misspellings, lack of punctuation, periods didn’t exist, run-on sentences, the capitalization was usually on like the second word but never the first. It felt like spell check was a foreign concept to them and they used google translate to sub it or something. So that distracted me. A lot.
Whatever, I guess we’ll see how this goes. I’m hoping Kyoukai no Rinne turns out to be good.
Yeah, I watched those terrible subs too. I mean I got the gist of it, since it wasn’t too hard to understand, but it was still confusing, especially when they completely left out the subs for when they described the spirit items. I was about to post this after that, but I waited until the official subs came out, and everything made a lot more sense to me. I suggest you watch the better subs that came out, it’ll help out. But honestly, yeah, those subs were really horrible.
I’m hoping this turns out to be good too. I’m gonna take a chance on it.
I definitely enjoyed this and am looking forward to more. It’s like a serious counterpart to Re-Kan as far as the idea!
However, a lot of the characters’ reactions weren’t as serious as they should be, giving it a more comedic and cute feeling overall. That’s more Re-Kan’s approach since the MC is a teenage girl who openly accepts the ghosts and thus far it’s had more depth to its ghosts’ problems, along with the feelings involved. Hopefully they’ll at least tie for depth eventually, but this will be the more serious of the two given the Shinigami aspect.
Anyway, thanks for starting up the coverage for this, Berry. Hopefully episode 2 will see as much, if not more of an improvement than Re-Kan did between its first two episodes.