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"Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne" is not unlike most Japanese animation (Anime') out there: it has a weird and confusing plot, beautiful women, lots of female nudity, grotesque violence, and just plain weirdness. The good thing about it all is: it's done in a uniquely original fashion that does a good job of thoroughly keeping you on the edge of your seat, either in utter awe at all the exposed flesh or the general confusion of the overall plot, or in utter repulsion at everything you're seeing.
The show itself is also a delightful hybrid of different genres, including horror, fantasy, detective-noir, and stylish eroticism. The influences of the Anime' classic "Wicked City" (1987) and the classic American fantasy film "Highlander" (1986) are also apparent in the story.
"Rin" is only six episodes long, with each episode only about 43 minutes in length. That's more than enough to thoroughly engross you in the on-screen events. The series takes place over the course of a 65-year period between 1990 and 2055, and focuses mainly on the voluptuous, green-eyed, large-chested lead heroine Rin Asougi, an immortal private detective who takes cases along with her fellow immortal sidekick Mimi that range from the simple and mundane (like trying to find a rare stamp or locate a lost cat) to the just plain weird (like helping an amnesiac young college student to discover his true identity or helping a young man evade mysterious hired hit-men).
Rin is beautiful and sexy, in addition to being one tough little cookie; she'll kill you twice before you know what hit you, I mean, with her throwing knives and throwing chain that she has concealed on her person. She has the appearance of a young woman in her 20s, but the series tells us that she's at least a thousand years-old. She can also take a beating, a few dozen gunshot wounds, rape and even being sucked into a jet engine, and will still come out just as hot and sexy as she was before. That's the price, apparently, that she pays for being immortal and a tough female a**-kicker.
All of these cases do eventually tie into the over-arching plot in some fashion later on in the series, but the show delights in keeping you in utter confusion at the seeming randomness of certain events and things that just don't seem to connect with one another. As one previous reviewer noted, part of what makes "Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne" so intriguing as a series is that it actually causes you to think about everything that goes on and draw your own conclusions about them. Not a whole lot of explaining is done in this series (at least with regards to the exposition - why everything is the way that it is on this show, what's going on, etc., and you have to take everything as is), and the few explanations that are given do help to sort out many of the more bewildering details of the characters and their motivations.
"Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne" does contain a lot of female nudity (both rear and full-frontal), which may draw in male viewers and drive away females, which unfortunately does not help the cause of doing away with the stereotypes that Anime' is full of sex and explicit violence. But "Rin" seems unconcerned about any mass appeal nor does it seem like it needs it; the show thrives in its own general weirdness and those accustomed to such material will have no problem watching it. Much of the sex and nudity in this series ranges from bondage-torture to rape to hot girl-on-girl action to general titillation like in a seemingly pointless shower sequence to finally, procreation (again, even the explicit sexuality ties into the overall plot of the series and does have some meaning here).
Even with the outstanding blend of different storytelling genres, explicit sexuality and violence, "Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne" is one of the more unique and original Anime' series I've ever seen. The story is confusing and deliberately so, yet everything that goes on does eventually tie into the bigger picture later on. Despite the many red flags going up here, you won't be able to take your eyes off it.
I know I couldn't.
10/10
score 10/10
dee.reid 2 December 2010
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2347360/ |
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6-1-2021 22:32:05