Kyoukai no RINNE – 04 (Waking up and seeing a cute girl.)

境界のRINNE ep 04
Kyoukai no RINNE – 04

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04Rinne 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.

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04Rinne 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.

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04

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.

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04

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.

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04

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.

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04

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.

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04

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.

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04

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

Kyoukai no RINNE - 04

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6 Responses to “Kyoukai no RINNE – 04 (Waking up and seeing a cute girl.)”

  1. El Goopo says:

    >even if she doesn’t understand how he’s feeling because of his stupidity.

    What I like is that she’s just as stupid, so he has the same trouble reading her that she has reading him. It’s a nice dynamic to have the two leads act so similarly without it feeling boring.

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      That is a good point. Neither one could figure out the other’s feelings and I think presume the other couldn’t possibly be interested in them.

  2. D-Omen says:

    The end of this episode was so cute. In the manga, it just ends with Sakura noticing the dolphin plush is not that cute, while here, she picks it back up and cuddles it.

    If you’ll let me spoil you a couple things from much later on in the manga, [spoiler]they even introduce a guy who is obviously in love with Rinne with him trying to justify it as “wanting a deep friendship”,[/spoiler] it’s pretty hilarious. I also agree with what El Goopo said. [spoiler]It takes Sakura until the twentieth volume to realize she’s in love with Rinne, and so far they’re both keeping to themselves because they haven’t figured out they like each other.[/spoiler]

    BTW, did you notice all the Ranma characters plushies in the UFO Catchers?
    http://i.imgur.com/WWm4MMa.jpg – Ranma, Akane and panda Genma
    http://i.imgur.com/cqi2EmX.jpg – P-chan
    http://i.imgur.com/jSEi7al.jpg – Shampoo

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      The end of this episode was so cute. In the manga, it just ends with Sakura noticing the dolphin plush is not that cute, while here, she picks it back up and cuddles it.

      Yeah, I liked that moment as well. ^_^

      BTW, did you notice all the Ranma characters plushies in the UFO Catchers?

      I noticed panda Genma because it was won. However, I totally missed those other plushies. Thanks for showing them. ^_^

  3. Riva says:

    The romantic tension between Rinne and Sakura reminds me a bit of the one between the two main characters in one of Rumiko Takahashi’s work “Maison Ikkoku” from the 1980s. Although I have never read the actual manga series by Rumiko Takahashi myself but read about it on the website Rumic World there is some similarities in the romantic atmosphere. Both of the male protagonists in both series are put into awkward positions which leads the female protagonists to a misunderstanding.

    • AstroNerdBoy says:

      Yeah, there is a bit of the elements between Godai and Kyouko. I think the difference there is that Kyouko had feelings for Yuusaku early on. Sakura is not aware of her feelings for Rinne. (Or rather, Sakura was not aware as of when I stopped reading the manga.)

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