Stupid Awesome - Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne

By now, it should be no surprise that I'm a fan of anime. Like many my age, I first got exposed to it in the 80s, when I didn't even know what the hell I was watching. Seriously, it never occurred to my nine year old brain that Voltron was this dubbed import. All I knew was that he was going to form blazing sword and kick some ro-beast balls. Before I continue, my definition of anime is very simple: Animation intently produced for Japanese audiences. That's it. As our worlds become more and more closer, with the digital age and the internet, that definition is eventually going to become defunct. But, there's still enough of a stylistic difference in storytelling that there's still a distinction. For now. Now, I've talked about my favorites animations before... This one isn't on the list and for good reasons. It's not great. But I'll be damned if it isn't interesting.

The very first time I ever heard of Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne came from a commission request about a year ago. Someone had asked me to draw a picture of the main character from the Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Rin Agosi. (I always assumed it was due to the physical similarities between her and Charon McKay of Shadowgirls.) The thing is, I never even heard of this anime. Granted my knowledge and keeping up on these silly cartoons is really behind, but that's another point all together. My opinion of the box art was "pretentious mopey bullshit". You know, like the other 90% of the imported anime out there. I ended up passing on it, because I was unfamiliar with the show and didn't feel like watching it. Flash forward about half a year, and the first episode of the cartoon came on Xfinity.

It's fucking stupid. Lordy Lord Almighty, this was dumb as fuck. But... It's damned interesting to watch. It's like a modern day fantasy series. (Some horror elements, some action elements.) The story's about a woman named Rin Agosi, who has this time spore inserted into her, from the tree of Yggdrasil, essentially making her immortal. The interesting thing about these immortals is that the condition you're in when you're turned immortal is how you'll be for the rest of eternity. How the rules of immortality works in this universe is really the hook to the story here. First, the time spores only work on women. If inserted into men, they become mindless and savage 'angels' that hunt out the immortal women to devour them. Um... In the literal sense. However, even though they're trying to eat the women, the immortals are sexually drawn to the angels, which usually lead to an unpretty mess. (Hey, I told you this was stupid! But you've read this far, so you might as well keep going.)

The Time Spores aren't perfect either. Rin was near-sighted and needed glasses to correct her vision. That won't heal. If you have a broken leg when you're turned immortal, you'll have a broken leg forever. If you're half-rotted, you'll be half-rotted forever. You get the idea. She's working as a private investigator, who does odd jobs to pay the bills, with her partner Mimi and their pet dog, Genta, who are also immortal. (Yes, the immortality spores work on animals too.) She's hunted through the ages by an asshat named Apos and a woman named Laura who usually manages to shoot Rin. Or blow her up. Or something excessive. (One time, she even tried to kill her dressed as Santa Claus.) But Rin is immortal and she'll regenerate. And that's really what the show's about. Through the various cases that Rin ends up in, there's a fair share of action, sex and violence. And it is all gratuitous. Overly blown gratuitous. In fact, it's the last two what the show is best known for. Let's talk about them.

A lot of the criticism of Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne comes mainly from how kinda 'lowest common denominator' the show can be. I've heard people compare it to watching one of those late night Cinemax movies, and I'd say that's a good analogy. If there's a major female character, odds are really good you're going to see her naked. (Seriously, I think there's one female character in the entire series that doesn't have a  sex scene. But there's a manga I never read, so maybe it's in there.) If you're the type that likes to see cartoon women have soft core bisexual sex... Well, then you'll be good. Though there's a lot of sex, it's never overly explicit. It's a lot like watching a Zalman King series... But with explosions. There's a lot of nudity, but nothing that would make this outright pornographic. But there's the contrast of the violence.

Subtle sexual subtexts. Say that five times fast.

Like I mentioned, there's a lot of violence here. But let me address it right now, and I'm going to be very honest about it. Some people will talk about this show like it's the animated version of the Human Centipede. It's not. It's not even close. It's not even the same game. While there's a few cringe worthy moments in it (the biggest involves is in the first episode and it involves some body piercings), if you've watched the Saw movies on SyFy, even with how they'll censor them for content, then this will be no problem for you at all. It's like Marvel's Wolverine... It's really hard to get squeamish about the fact he just got his entrails slashed out, when you know that it'll heal up in a few seconds. Yes, you do see Rin get sliced up and all that nonsense, but like I mentioned, it's so damned ridiculous and over the top, it's hard to take it seriously. (I mean, one episode she falls through the fan of a jet engine and get's diced up. She regenerates and lives. Seriously.) Some people like to talk up the gore in this show, but I'm telling you if you've sat through half the crap I've recommended to you... There's nothing in here that'll be too much for you.

There's some decent action scenes in here, and some pretty cool gunfights. There's a few moments where it tries to be a touch political, but it never goes into the “preachy” scale, which right away helps me place it on a higher level than most anime. Some of the technological concepts, like the Virtual Reality Network 2.0 is actually kinda interesting, and I would have liked to see it developed some more. Some of the notions seem to be comfortably right out of Masamune Shirow's imagination. (Umm... the futurist Masamune Shirow that he used to be, not the 'Galgrease' Masamune Shirow that he is now.) The character designs are decent. Nothing to write home about, but serviceable.

"He goes off for weeks praising Captain America comics
and now he's talking about cartoon boobs? I wish this
moron would get back to drawing comics."

And when it all comes down to it... The thing about Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne. It's so fucking stupid, and it takes itself so damn seriously. And at first you're thinking “what a load of pretentiousness.” You're thinking it's a case of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga, where the creators take themselves so damn seriously, that it's unwatchable. (And if not for the sex and violence, it would be.) But then they bring in clones, cyborgs, powered exo-skeletons, bondage gear, androids, a convent of lesbian Buddhist fighting nuns (complete with orgy scene), hermaphrodite gods/goddesses, naked kung-fu, naked gun-fu, naked car-fu, and then it hits you... Either this show is so pretentious that it's actually circled the compass and is creeping up on the other side to awesome parody, or it's a brilliant straight faced satire. And the fact it doesn't pretend to be more than it is, makes me believe it's the latter.

I believe the show's on Netflix now. If you're into stupid anime cartoons with silly amounts of violence and boobs... I would recommend it. I would say it's like watching professional wrestling. It's stupid as hell, but it's kinda fun to watch, as long as you don't have a stick up your butt.

Stooge Rating:
SHEMP