境界のRINNE ep 09
Kyoukai no RINNE – 09

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

It is time for the school festival, where Sakura’s class is doing a maid cafe. She gets Rinne to help her take out the trash, so Tsubasa tags along with them. There, they discover a tsukumogami wig that has been harassing the drama club. Using a Tsukumogami Sticker, they discover the blond, long haired wig is angry about its part having been cut. The girls in the drama club want nothing to do with it, so Sakura agrees to wear it for Cinderella. During the course of the play, the wig gets angry that things aren’t going as they are supposed to. Consulting the old script, they discover that the wig was actually supposed to be a horse’s tail, which the wig then remembers. Getting to play its proper role, the drama club is saved.

Rinne still senses trouble and discovers a spirit with a jack-o’-lantern head.  In class, a girl named Mari is chatting with her senpai, but only she and Sakura can see the senpai. Tsubasa bombs the place with holy ash, so the spirit leaves a not for Mari to meet her on the roof. There, she’s being lead to her death until Rinne stops her.  The “senpai” is a Damashigami who swapped his jack-o’-lantern head with the real Kimura-senpai. The Damashigami uses Kimura’s popularity to entice a lot of the girls at school to a trap. Rinne lures the Damashigami back with a love letter and dresses in drag. Rinne, Sakura, Tsubasa, and Rokumon are taken to where the girls are. Rinne is not able to defeat the Damashigami, but gets Kimura’s face back to him. Kimura tells the girls he’s only attracted to older women, crushing them and defeating the Damashigami. Rinne then wins the school’s contest for wearing drag.

Thoughts/Review:

I remembered the senpai story from volume 3 of the manga. The wig story I remember from volume 9, which is when I was weary of the manga. However, the anime writers do an excellent job of melding the two stories.

As usual, things are much funnier in the anime than they were in the manga. The wig comes off very funny in this episode, not only because of it using Sakura to kick people, but in its rants. That’s because it is voiced by HIYAMA Nobuyuki, who voiced Uzu in KILL la KILL. He knows how to do that over the top, manic voice acting, and it works well here.

The story about the popular Kimura-senpai was the funniest story I remember in the manga. The anime manages to keep all that, and in my opinion, go a step beyond. There was the effective use of slapstick humor when Rinne beans Mari in the head by using the spirit jack-o’-lantern.

Rinne in drag was very funny in the manga, but now that Rinne has voice in the anime, it became even funnier because Rinne doesn’t even try to sound like a girl when he’s baiting the Damashigami.

Of course, Kimura telling his flock of adoring middle school girls that he’s only into much older women was funny, as well as its effect on the Damashigami.

Brain’s Base, the production company for RINNE, has done a fantastic job with it comes to crafting the RINNE stories. I’ve mentioned this before that I got put off when it came to the manga as Takahashi-sensei mostly wrote random stories. The wig story is a great example of this. It was pretty forgettable in the manga. However, Brain’s Base takes that random wig story, merges it with the random senpai story, and creates something quite wonderful.

Further, I really like how Brain’s Base has been effectively building the Damashigami up over time. In the manga, they were pretty much just randomly introduced to create conflict for Rinne, and then randomly used here and there to stir that pot for Rinne. Here, the Damashigami are being properly set up for the showdown when Rinne clashes with their leader, which I think happens next episode. So kudos to Brain’s Base for effective writing.

In the end, a very fun, funny, and enjoyable episode.