July 6th, 2015 
AstroNerdBoy 境界のRINNE ep 13
Kyoukai no RINNE – 13
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Sakura is being pursued by a large number of ghost, but she soon discovers these are actually Damashigami in disguise. Sabato’s hot secretary arrives with a ¥1 million engagement ring for Sakura since she deems Sakura worthy. Sakura turns the ring down since she’s only Rinne’s classmate. With Rinne shocked and left with the bill for the ring, Ageha arrives to attack the Damashigami. To her shock, Sabato’s secretary is Ageha’s missing sister. Sabato shows up, allowing Ageha to finally put the pieces together that links her sister’s boyfriend to the head of the Damashigami and thus Sabato’s connection with Rinne. Sabato and his secretary flee, so Ageha gives pursuit, as does Rinne, Sakura, and Rokumon.
In the netherworld, Ageha is tricked and falls into a trap, so Rinne sends Sakura and Rokumon off to save her. She allows herself to get conned repeatedly, even going so far as to spend large sums of money, which frustrates Rinne. At the netherworld street market, the Damashigami continue to try to trick Sakura into taking an engagement ring, including a bunch of fake Rinne. Sakura doesn’t fall for the tricks, so Rokumon asks her feelings for Rinne. She has no feeling, which Rokumon says is natural, considering how poor he is. The two take off as Rinne saves Ageha from a giant, water oni-type creature with a ¥1 million bounty. Ageha is relieved to be saved and embraces Rinne from behind as Sakura and Rokumon come up, whereby she again gets the wrong idea.
Thoughts/Review:
I still dislike Sabato greatly, but now that his introduction is over, Brain’s Base is handling him fairly well.
This episode continued the “verbal” stares, which just come off so humorous for some reason.
There were a few funny moments like that, but the one that made me laugh out loud was the look on Sakura’s face when she found Ageha embracing Rinne from behind (and also doing the “verbal” stare).
It was also humorous, in a sad kind of way, how the events of the day affected them. Rinne couldn’t sleep because of Sakura getting the wrong idea.
Ageha couldn’t sleep because she’s falling for Rinne.
And Sakura COULD sleep, though she muttered “kudoi,” the Japanese word for someone who talks too much.
Which leads me to the choice of English words chosen in the adaptation. The term “naggy” never made sense in this episode because whenever Sakura said “kudoi,” there was no nagging going on. In Japanese, kudoi means “verbose; importunate; wordy; repetitious; long-winded.” Nagging means to be a source of constant complaining or scolding, leading to irritation on the part of the person receiving this. Sakura was never annoyed, and the others weren’t complaining. They were being very verbose in whatever they were trying to say. Indeed, this paragraph could be called “kudoi” for going on and on, but it wouldn’t be “naggy.” Unfortunately, I don’t know of a better word that would work, but naggy didn’t work for me.
Anyway, now that Ageha is firmly established for the complicated love-square (Rinne-Sakura-Tsubasa-Ageha), it will be interesting to see how this is treated by Brain’s Base.
Finally, I don’t remember if that water oni creature came from the manga or not. Having a ¥1 million bounty suddenly show up is very convenient, and normally, this would bother me. However, since I hate Sabato and I don’t want Rinne saddled with more debt, I let it ride in my mind.
In the end, a pretty humorous episode that establishes a further complication in Rinne’s love life.
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Thank you for the explanation of “naggy”.. I skipped around this episode a bit (first time), and was fairly annoyed by what looked like bad “localization” when I saw it, but I had no way to know for sure.
Probably just an incorrect wild hunch, but did you get a feeling when watching it that some brilliant soul decided to use WordFit (or any similar abomination) on it? There are a handful of good deprecatory synonyms for verbose in the thesaurus, but not all of them would match the mouth flaps.
You’re welcome. That word just bothered me every time it popped up because it made no sense.
I’ve been told by more than one official anime translator that the goal when it comes to subtitles is brevity. So sometimes, when they translate something, they look for a new way to say the same thing, only with less words (or less characters). So when you say “WordFit”, although I’m not familiar with that product, the translator/adapter is attempting to fit as few words into the subtitles as possible. That may be why “naggy” was chosen — five characters vs. more for other (and I dare say better) words.
Oh — when it comes to subtitles, mouth flaps don’t matter since folks read at their own pace. That’s why English dub scripts often vary with the English subtitles in anime because the dub script has to match mouth flaps.
That does make sense of some of the “Huh?” moments I’ve had where even I (and that takes a lot) can tell that they’re leaving things out or changing the meaning.
My apologies if I’ve told you this story, I don’t think so… The first of these moments, which perversely made me a bit happy, was in Outlaw Star. A big-mouthed bounty hunter introduced himself as “Death Rob”, which Gene creatively misheard as “Deaf Rob?” You could pretty clearly hear that it was “Shinigami Rob” and “Hanagami Rob?”, though.
Back to the point: But I wish it weren’t so, because personally, I’d much rather have a longer but more faithful-to-the-spirit translation. I realize I’m being a bit unfair, because I’m a speedreader and the official translators have to cater to a much wider audience… but sometimes it seems they overdo it. (To be fair, though, it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be. These days it seems that the most common problem is Japanese studios insisting on their own translations from people whose English skills are clunky.)
IIRC, WordFit was a Viz abomination for generating dubs (thus the reference to mouth flaps). It didn’t seem likely that this was the cause since it doesn’t look like they plan on a dub, but sometimes companies use the same script for both dub and sub. (My guess would be that it’s to keep people from realizing how different they are. Kinda irksome.)
I hadn’t heard it. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, that’s true.
Ah. Thanks for the info. ^_^
Yeah, the water oni was in the manga too. What the anime added were the fake Rinnes and Rokumon asking Sakura about her feelings for him.
Thanks for that info. 😀
Helloo I’m the new admin over on the Rinne wikia, do you mind if I can summarize the anime episodes with the help of your really nice synopses? ^^ I won’t copy paste but use it as a guide since I’m forgetful about the events of the episodes lol
(by the way I always wondered the meaning behind the naggy thing, I guess the manga was closer to the original translation then haha)
No problem. Just toss me a link. 😀
What was in the manga?
she said “How repetitive”, which sounded a little weird but it’s better than naggy xD
Ah. Thanks for the info. ^_^