RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne
(Reviewed on 01/28/2009)
The Drinky ROSSMAN
RIN: Daughters of Mnemosyne harkens back to the golden days of the OVA market in the 90s. It tells a mature story over a fairly long run time (6 episodes, each around 45 minutes long), it's got a large scope and some really disturbing visuals that not even late-night programming on TV could show, and, most importantly, it's pretty damn fun. But bloody. And sexy. (And yes, I know it was not strictly straight-to-DVD, but straight-to-pay-per-view-satellite series... I count them both as OVA anime and not TV anime or movie anime... you fucking know-it-all.)
Things start off with an extremely brutal shotgun butchering of a cute, green-haired, naked (except for an open trench coat), glasses-wearing girl on the roof of a high rise in Tokyo. This green-haired chick is hunted down, shot multiple times, and falls (very much dismembered) to her doom many floors below with sickening thuds. Then we seem to flashback to before the horrible mutilation (we're then told it's 1990 in Shinjuku), and find that while alive greeny really liked to toss back the bottle (like a goddamn pro!... Actually, like an alky, but same diff), and dress up like a preppier version of Yomiko Readman while on the job. Her job being what EVERY cool protagonist does in hard-boiled shows like this: Jack-of-all-trades private eye who takes on any employment (like the cliche insists), like looking for lost kitties to breaking and entering secure science labs in order to find out information for her clients. She's warm and friendly to her friends (what few she has), and a cold and calculating bitch when it gets her what she wants. She's also willing to go hard core ballistic on somebody at a moment's notice. In the end of the first episode there was a "Holy SHIT! She did NOT just do that to the bad guy, did she?" moment that had me laughing out loud it was so awesome... But I digress. I just love when terrible things are done to bad guys by good guys. I loathe goody-goody two-shoes good guys most of the time.
Anyway, Rin (the green-haired protagonist), as it turns out, is actually an immortal. I don't think this is supposed to be a big surprise when you're eventually told, but knowing this ahead of time really allows episode one to make a lot more sense the first time you see it. When you watch it thinking that what you're witnessing is just a build-up to the opening shotgun attack you're not paying attention to the right things. But knowing that Rin and her over-sexed, jailbait, nympho, lesbian partner are immortals (well, immortal up to a point) allows you to just focus on the story... Which ain't half bad.
The basic plot of the whole series is all about immortal women and angelic men who've each been blessed and cursed by the spores of a giant, spirit-like tree that only they can see (Yggdrasil the World Tree, of course). Apparently Yggdrasil constantly shits out millions of these spores (that look like little, glowy bubbles to those who can see them) that cover the world, and every so often there's one seed that, if it comes in contact with somebody, it makes that person immortal... Well, if the contactee is a female. If it's a male who touches the seed then they become a nymphomaniac, demonic, angel-like, fucked-up creature who's only desire in their then shortened lives is to fuck and EAT immortal women (who become all horny to the point of inability to think and do anything but say "Oh yes, fuck me! DEVOUR me!" as they're getting humped and torn into meaty bits... Which is really creepy to see in action, especially when it happens to people like Rin's 12 year-old-looking assistant).
Okay, that's actually just the background plot, the REAL plot of Mnemosyne is about the Maeno clan as we follow them throughout several generations, and each Maeno's interactions with Rin and Mimi (the young, over-sexed other immortal who helps Rin). I was very impressed with the way they tied everything and all those generations together in the end like they did, and I really liked how the story kept jumping decades ahead with the start of each episode. I'm telling you, as trashy as this thing looks (and how sleazy it'll be marketed if it's ever released in the States), this was some quality action-tits animation here. Yes, it is perverse, it is hyperly violent at times, and really kinky for a good chunk of it, but it's well told and very entertaining. Honestly, unless you're a total prude who blushes whenever somebody says "Darn it!", and faints if somebody says "Fucking goddamn faggot ass-pirates!!!!" you'll realize that this is pretty much just a hard rated "R" movie (really, really hard) in the same vein as Robocop or Total Recall. Get over it, and stop being such a fucking pussy! "Oh noes! You got titties and exploding heads in my anime!!! Goku would never do that!!!!!11111!1" He would if he was cool in the least.
Okay, so Mnemosyne takes place between the years 1990 and 2055, it's about immortal chicks and immortal-arousing winged demons just trying to make their ways in the world, and it's also about the bloodline of the Maeno clan (that started out with a mentally messed up clone, and ended with cloney's kind of a dumbass granddaughter) and their really fucked up interactions with Rin and Mimi over the years. Throw into that mix Eipos, a kind of weird.... being who constantly torments Rin and keeps creating other strange fucks who try to put the final kibosh on our plucky heroine, and you have a glorious tale of depravity some of you pervs have only dreamed about. Some of those strange fucks that Eipos throws at our leading gal are the mentally fucked up cloning expert who wants to be immortal herself, and the psycho bitch who constantly follows Rin through time who I thought was an immortal too, but who turned out to just be infuckingsane... And eventually a cyborg. And... well, just watch it for yourself.
What really made me like this series though was the way that each episode may have appeared to be just your average adventure-of-the-week show at first, but later on you realize that every chapter was really just a part of one big plotline following the non-immortal family-line of the cloned dude, Koki Maeno... It's like The Highlander meets Jo-Jo's Bizarre Adventure.
And before I go I must comment on the rules of immortality that the women of the Mnemosyne universe are contracted to. Usually you have immortals who can be felled for good by decapitation or by way of a special weapon (like something made of silver), but here they seem to follow the Kenji Murasame statutes: Shoot 'em, cut 'em, slice 'em, dice 'em, burn 'em, chop 'em up into little itty bitty pieces... Doesn't matter, they'll come back (though it might take some time... like if they're pureed into millions of tiny bits and spread to the four winds they might need a few years to regenerate). But, if you were to remove their Fruit-of-Time spore from Yggdrasil from their bodies (something it seems that only those who've been infused with it themselves can do) and destroy it/devour it, then they'd be dead for good. So there is some pretty heavy tension despite the fact that our leads are almost unkillable — the ones who KNOW how to kill them are the ones who are trying to do so the hardest.
The Immortal MALCOLM Z
What the FUCK is up with those slant-eyed mothafuckas takin' the religions of the West and fuckin' with them all the time? Come on, you Japanese whores! You crazy fuckas got so much nutty religion in the Far East to go messin' with, why's you gots to keep jumpin' on Christianity, and in this case Christianity and Norse Mythology. How in the holy fuckin' fuck Hell do you mix those two ideas up?
Other than that shit, this Mnemosyne crap really ain't got nothin' much goin' fo' it. Blood? Yea.... But so does half the other shitty anime out there that's ever been made. Sex? You bet, but not enough to get any sucka' aroused; you'd be better off getting Do You Know the MILFing Man for some real freaky freak-on. A stupid story that is mainly based around sex and blood between races of immortals and horny angelmen? Oh yeah. And if that's yo thing, then by all means check it. Honestly though, this really ain't yo thing. It ain't nobody's thing.
The MEGA-MEGAPLAYBOY
I am just one happy motherfucker right now, G. It's like them crazy Japanese horndogs read into my mind and then produced the most perfect series to have ever been animated by somebody other than Jesus himself! Oooooh, homies, this show had it ALL! Lots of sex, lots of violence, and more sex than you could shake a stick at! Well, that last part's not true (I can shake my stick at quite a lot of this stuff), but this Menomysyne show really t'weren't that bad!
In fact, this show made me remember that time that I got that one really hot ho for a major steal that one night. She told me she was good to go with just a stick of butter and the remaining Jackie D in my bottle as payment for a ride. Well, it turns out that she was really underaged, and when I found out I immediately stopped after about 15 more minutes of shocked thrusting... Anyway, long story short she accidentally got dead, and I turned her body over to Dr. Dave for some kind of experiment that I wanted no knowledge of what-so-ever for implicative reasons... So, that's kind of like this show: Young, chick goes body bangin', gets dead, and then comes back to life.... Only my chickie really only became a portion of the genetic, primordial soup in one of the good doctor's experimentations on the origin of life and prostitution on the planet.
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