境界のRINNE ep 12
Kyoukai no RINNE – 12

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

In the past, Ageha sees her shinigami sister off to defeat the leader of the Damashigami Company. In the present, Sakura discovers that a cursed mechanical pencil is leading her friend Rika and others to a Damashigami trap. Rinne pursues the students in the Reidou passage, but is stopped by Ageha, who’s now a Shinigami and thinks Rinne is a Damashigami. When the real Damashigami appears, Ageha is surprised when Rinne decides to go rescue the other victims. They find the Damashigami hideout, so when Rinne learns there’s money to be made, he captures all the Damashigami and saves the humans.

Sakura finds herself under surveillance by a weird video camera with arms and legs. Meanwhile, Ageha wants to learn more, so she visits Rinne’s home, where she tells the story of her sister and how her sister was seduced by an older guy. Rinne sees it is his father, Sabato, so he’s not keen on letting Ageha know his link to the man in the photo. However, when Sabato sends him a massive bill for the Damashigami Company’s down time, Rinne takes Ageha’s hand and vows to help her. Sakura walks in and sees this. Ageha leaves all embarrassed.

As Rinne attempts to explain things, the camera comes in, so Rinne captures it. The camera self destructs as Sabato and his personal assistant view the footage. Sabato explains that they will have to deal with Sakura. On Earth, Sakura goes home, but finds her path suddenly filled with ghosts. Back at Rinne’s place, Rokumon is worried about Sakura when their room becomes distorted. They find a Reidou gate outside their door, and so enter it to find Sakura. Ageha returns to talk to Rinne some more, but encounters the same distortion and gate, so she too goes through the Reidou gate.

Thoughts/Review:

Even if you haven’t read the manga, I think it is pretty obvious who Ageha’s sister is.

That aside, Ageha continues Takahashi-sensei’s long tradition of overlapping love triangles and more. We already see Sakura misunderstanding Rinne holding Ageha’s hand and Ageha getting all flushed as she remembers Rinne. So that will then overlap with the Rinne-Sakura-Tsubasa triangle.

As to Ageha’s character, I don’t remember being a whole lot more than she is in this episode. Should this anime series have another seasons/series, she’ll be a regular like Tsubasa.

Update: I’m told that the series gets another season (cour) and that it will likely be a 25 episode series. That makes sense, considering how this episode ended in a cliffhanger, but I figured there was one more episode and then that was it. Apparently not.

Humor-wise, the “youkai” camera (for lack of a better term) was pretty humorous to me. I can’t say I remember it being in the manga, but I’d guess it was.

Also, the Damashigami that Rinne took out made me chuckle for some reason. I think it was because of a combination of how they were drawn and how sneaky they attempted to be.

Sabato’s presence was kept fairly minimal, which is good since he’s so awful. We do get some of his non-funny stuff done for humor, that in the form of sending Rinne a bill, but that’s because Takahashi-sensei apparently thinks that stuff is a real hoot. And maybe it is in Japan or to little kids. It isn’t to me.

There’s probably other stuff I could right, but my eyes are not cooperating with me due to lack of sleep. So I’ll end things here by saying that this was a fun episode. I will be interested to see how Brain’s Base continues to adapt thing.