境界のRINNE ep 04
Kyoukai no RINNE – 04

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Rinne is attempting to help a ghost in need when new transfer student attacks it and Rinne, who’s wearing his special haori. Rokumon finds a picture the transfer student, Tsubasa, dropped, which contains a photo with ghosts and a younger Sakura. In class, Tsubasa immediately goes to Sakura, who doesn’t remember him, but feigns that she does. He likes her because she, like he, can see supernatural things. He asks her out as Rinne arrives. Tsubasa attacks him thinking he’s a spirit, but he’s corrected in his thinking. He and Rinne argue over how to send spirits to the afterlife. After school, Tsubasa asks Sakura to walk home with him. She goes after Rinne, but when he gives her the cold shoulder, Sakura walks home with Tsubasa.

Rinne sets up a date with the ghost, Usui, and the girl he liked, Sakura’s friend Miho. Miho gets Sakura to come for a double date since she doesn’t know Usui well (and doesn’t know he’s a ghost), so Tsubasa invites himself as Sakura’s date. Sakura’s other good friend, Rika, attaches herself to this party, then asks the depressed Rinne to be her date. On the day of the date to the amusement park, Rinne finds he has to not only pay for Usui, but Miho and Rika as well. Sakura is confused by how Rinne is treating her, but when he gets her a dolphin plushie, she’s very happy. At the end of the date, Usui passes on fulfilled, causing Tsubasa to start to understand how Rinne exorcises spirits. That night, Sakura happily sleeps with her dolphin plushie.

Thoughts/Review:

This was a pretty funny episode and marked how different Kyoukai no RINNE is when it comes to the heroine as opposed to Takahashi-sensei’s other titles like Inuyasha or Ranma 1/2.

The conflict between Tsubasa and Rinne is pretty funny. That humor starts from the aspect that up until this episode, Rinne had not looked at Sakura as a girl. She was just someone who could see the supernatural, and thus could be a help to him. However, with Tsubasa on the scene, now Rinne sees Sakura as a girl for the first time and doesn’t know how to deal with that.

As a character, Rinne follows the paths of other Takahashi-sensei characters like Inuyasha (Inuyasha), Ranma (Ranma 1/2), or Godai (Maison Ikkoku) in that he doesn’t know how to express his romantic feelings for Sakura. So even though this initial foray into the Sakura x Rinne ship is funny, having read enough of the original manga, combined with Takahashi-sensei’s other works, I couldn’t help but be a little annoyed with Rinne. For me, Rinne’s coldness to Sakura because he doesn’t know what to do is just way too much “been there, done that” for me. It would be nice to have a lead male character actually date the lead heroine character from the start, and then have things go from there in terms of conflict or the like.

As for Sakura, she is a breath of fresh air. I remember this aspect from the manga and liking it a lot. By “breath of fresh air,” what I mean is that in Inuyasha, Urusei Yatsura, and Ranma 1/2, the female lead would often get very violent, especially when jealous. (Though Lum’s violence against Ataru in Urusei Yatsura was usually pretty funny because Ataru was a letch and got what he deserved.)  Sakura doesn’t get violent or loud when dealing with Rinne, even if she doesn’t understand how he’s feeling because of his stupidity.

Anyway, with Tsubasa’s arrival and Rinne discovering he has feelings for Sakura, we now officially start the complicated romance system that Takahashi-sensei is notorious for. Right now, it is a love triangle between Sakura, Tsubasa, and Rinne. Later, it will be a tangled web.

As to the ghost in the story, while a convenient plot device, it still makes for a fairly sweet story since he got to have the date with Miho.

I’ll keep watching and blogging the series as I do find it more entertaining to me than the original manga had been.