What do you do, if you live forever, to stave off the inevitable boredom? For Rin Asogi and Mimi the answer lays in running a private investigation agency, but recently their cases have become more dangerous, often having the touches of dark adversaries from her past. Unbeknownst to Rin a new game has begun a game which will challenge her own immortality...

RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne is a six part original anime series. There is a dearth of anime titles which could be considered adult in nature and I don’t mean Hentai. Much of the content is aimed at specific groups, usually teen males and females. The few which are able to straddle the generations, like Death Note are worth highlighting. RIN certain comes into this category.

Created to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Japan’s AT-X anime TV Network, the show was directed by Shigeru Ueda (Fullmetal Alchemist, Fate Stay Night), written by Hiroshi Onogi and produced by Xebec and Genco. Prior to the transmission of the first episode a light novel was released, written by Onogi and illustrated by Chuo Higashiguchi. The project also spawned a manga.

The six episodes are spread over two DVDs, each episode running at just under forty-five minutes.

The story opens in 1990 and when we first meet Rin she is being chased by an unknown assailant who chases her off a rooftop, finally blowing her arm off so that she seemingly falls to her death. The next morning she awakes in her own bed.

The background premise of the show has a tree of life, which is invisible to mortals. The tree sheds seeds which occasionally enter human beings. If they enter a female they become immortal, but if they enter a male they become an angel, a winged creature with extraordinary strength but a short life span. If the immortal women come anywhere close to an angel they are sexually overcome and the angels devour them, literally.

Rim and Mimi have been alive for more than a thousand years and although they look for adventure to stave off boredom and to remind themselves that they are still alive, they have fallen into repetitive patterns without being conscious of them. Many of the episodes have scenes with Rin calling for water and Mimi producing vodka instead, which the show uses to reinforce the often repetitive nature of immortality.

In the first episode, following her roof top fall, Rin returns to work looking for a missing cat. However, what she finds is Koki Maeno, a very confused young man who does not feel connected to his own memories. Worse still there appears to be people out to kill him. Rin helps the young man uncover the secret of his present position, uncovering the truth that Maeno is a clone, but not before Rin falls into the hands of the sexually sadistic Yamanobe, a very mad female scientist. At the end of the episode, with all the pieces of the story in place, Maeno joins the detective agency.

To go through each episode blow by blow would spoil much of the story, suffice it to say that in the episodes which follow Maeno gets a wife and finally a son, a son who will play a crucial part in the end of the story. The second episode jumps a year, with the third jumping twenty years. The story finally ends up over fifty years later when the barrier between the virtual world and the real world has completely broken down, and in this future Rin has her final showdown with her nemesis Apos.

There are many elements which would make this title unsuitable for a very young audience including the partial nudity, the implied lesbianism, but mostly the graphic violence and, usually a censor’s nightmare, the connection between eroticism and violence. That said these elements are in perfect balance for the show and hardly ever gratuitous in nature. The show has a strong, engaging and well written plot, with characters in which you’ll really invest some emotional time.

The graphics are good, but strangely not great, though this will be a personal preference of style. The disc is presented with pin sharp visuals and options for either an English 5.1 or Japanese 2.0 audio track. Disc two has some extras in the form of an image gallery and a group interview (13 min, 43 sec) with four of the show's Japanese female cast. It’s not very deep, but the girls are so hyper that it’s funny to watch anyway. Episode two has a full length commentary with the English dub creators, which is just as manic.

It’s a great, well thought out, immersive story that’s well worth adding to your collection.

9

Charles Packer