Yuri Anime: Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Volume 2 (English)

February 24th, 2010

To fully enjoy Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, it might be useful to prepare yourself with a few simple steps:

1) Spend a few moments speaking with someone under the age of 17. Preferably female and preferably Goth and very weary of the world.

2) Read something insanely trashy.

3) Watch a 10-hour marathon of any sitcom that pairs a slobby guy with an attractive wife.

Or, failing that,

Take your brain out of your head for safekeeping.

Once you’ve done this simple – but crucial – bit of preparation, you’re almost ready to watch this series.

Let me give you one warning before you start to watch Volume 2: Do Not Try To Make Sense Of This Story

Sure, you can make sense of it, but the story is *so* much better if you don’t try. Just go with it.

There, now you’re ready to watch Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne.

Where in Volume 1 time moved slowly, it fairly flies in the second volume. We’re no longer moving a year or a few at a time. Now we are taking decade-long leaps into a futuristic landscape which may seem silly on the face of it (Aquarium floors and ceilings? Really?) but makes a lot of sense if you pay the slightest attention to human nature. (Yes, because we *can*.)

Maeno Kouki has passed out of Rin and Mimi’s timestream, but his descendants are still in their care. Kouki’s son Teruki starts off as an ass, but turns out to be a dependable guy in the end. It’s his daughter, Mishio, who caps off the series and in doing so, changes everything. Rin and Mimi saved Kouki, and saved and protected Teruki, but Mishio is in fact the one who saves and protects Rin and Mimi, repeatedly. When Rin, who has lost her memory as a result of a rather extreme death, is attacked by Laura, it’s Mishio that provides a distraction. Mimi leans on Mishio when she cannot control herself when in the vicinity of Angels.

As the climax approaches (a word that is eminently suitable for this series, don’t you think?) Apos finally reveals all the pieces of the puzzle we were missing and we learn that the puzzle is pretty stupid. ^_^  But that’s okay, because we know this: Rin is the good guy and will win.

And she does, of course.

In the end, we see Rin, Mimi and Mishio as an alternate family of three women bound by thousands of years of fate and who all care deeply for one another.

Yuri in this volume is mostly on Mimi, which annoyed the Rin fans, but I thought it made more sense, really. We’ve known since the first episode that Rin had a man in her life, and we knew that she saw lesbian sex only as a form of payment. Mimi’s relationships with her informers appear a bit more ambiguous. For a moment or two, she even seemed like she may have liked one of them – although since Kugamiya Rie played the role, her reaction was typically passive-aggressive.

Which brings us to the extra on this volume. The four main female voice actors were gathered together to discuss this series and they were surprisingly frank about how working in such an “adult” horror worked for them. This interview took place at the end of Episode 2, I would have dearly loved to see them interviewed again after the final episode. I have a feeling that their opinions might have been a little different. Or not. :-)

I guess the question has to be – was it good?

The story is silly, it panders to a dozen fetishes, it’s violent and gross and sometimes plain old dumb. The art was alright, but was not stellar, even the music was overwrought. But. I think it was entertaining and had characters that exceeded their surroundings. Rin was admirable, Mimi was likeable, Apos was unbearable, Laura was…persistent. Kouki and his descendants didn’t suck.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 4
Characters – 9
Yuri – 8
Service – 23.8

Overall – 8

Yes, it was good.

It is once again my sincere pleasure to thank Okazu Superhero Eric P. for his sponsorship of today’s review (and the review of Volume 1, which I belatedly realize did not credit him. That has been corrected.)

If you would like to be added to the Okazu Hero’s Roll, just pop over to the Yuri Wish List and purchase something for review! The you too will be my Hero. :-)

2 Responses

  1. C. Banana says:

    Kind of interesting that this is one of those rare reviews where a series has gone down in the overall rating score upon reviewing the English release. Usually the tendency of Okazu’s rating is for a series to go slightly up for the English release.

  2. @C. Banana If I remember correctly, I only reviewed the first half or so of it the first time around. But, really pay no attention to apparent trends because I don’t often look at my previous ratings for a series and just rewrite them as I review. My ratings are mostly what I was thinking about that series at that moment.

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