天下制覇

Thankfully, she shows that she actually does have a second voice.

Impressions:

Mnemosyne is Xebec’s six episode thriller OVA featuring the adventures of detective/secret agent/quasi immortal/fanservice machine Asogi Rin. For better or worse, the show is going to live or die based around Rin as she’s in basically every single scene of the episode so get used to seeing her and hearing her. Thankfully, Mamiko Noto puts out probably the act of her career for this one and is almost totally unrecognizable. She could have very easily ruined this one entirely by defaulting to her usual demure "quiet girl, preferably in glasses" voice which comprises a good 99.9% of her roles. Noto actually shows that she does surprisingly have some depth though and puts out a pretty decent performance.

The first episode was still mostly just eyecandy though. The show looks good enough, with the production values that you’d expect from an OVA, but there are a number of strange facial expressions at the oddest of times that just looked terrible. There’s also a serious problem with the tone as it can’t seem to decide what exactly it’s trying to be. For example, while sneaking around, Rin’s giant ass sets off an alarm system. Ha ha, Rin has a big butt. That segues directly into a very cringeworthy torture scene. They also opt for a sex joke while Rin has a knife at her throat and is being strangled in the hotel. Things need to either be serious or be more lighthearted. I don’t mind wisecracking superspies, but "hee hee butt jokes" do not lead in well to "now we are going to mutilate you."

For the most part though, it was pretty solid. The plot was pretty flimsy and I’ve honestly already forgotten most of the first half, aside from Rin garotting some guy. The action portions were also not stellar. Don’t get me wrong, they were good, but shows like Baccano did a lot better in direction and choreography in a lot less time. What action there is tends to be over in a few seconds. They at least don’t stretch it out or abuse speedlines/slow motion/I’m-totally-taking-shots-at-Il-Teatrino-here. There was quite a bit of blood and various bones popping/fleshy noises, but very little of it actually got shown, so it wasn’t nearly as gory as I was expecting. That very well could have just been because of TV broadcast censorship, but I wouldn’t be too terribly shocked if the DVD release in a couple weeks was more or less the same. Maybe they’ll be more explicit with the fanservice. I don’t think they wasted a single chance to strip Rin down or show her in a shower or get a shot of her pressing her chest against someone or something.

My verdict of the first episode is that it’s worth checking out, but I’m not sure it’s got anywhere to go unless it shores up the plot a bit in the next episode or starts getting creative. I’ve seen people comparing it to Read or Die’s OVA, but I don’t get that at all. Yomiko was a superhero… Rin might be able to pass as one of the more competent Bond girls. Noto did a great job with her, but the writing of the show just isn’t there in this episode and makes me think that the next one will be more of the exact same. I guess we’ll find out in a month.

Mnemosyne OP