Welcome to the most dangerous suburb in Japan.

I don’t know where Mamiya Sakura lives, but I would strongly advise Japanese parents not to move there with their children – it’s a minefield.  Seriously – freak accidents, curses, fatal illnesses…  The place must have been built on an ancient burial ground or something.  I suppose the upside is that it keeps Rinne-kun employed, though still comfortably on the wrong side of the poverty line.

I won’t argue that Kyoukai no Rinne is any sort of masterpiece, but it continues to be one of the most enjoyable shows of the season for me in all its simplicity.  It is a kind of masterpiece of deadpan humor, actually – the well-placed pause is rarely displayed with this much artfulness in anime.  Rinne is a kind of celebration of lowbrow comedy, but it manages to be that while still giving the episodic stories enough heft to feel like more than an excuse for the jokes.

We get our first multi-part plotline this time, the story of the unfortunate Todoroki Reiji (Newcomer Enoki Junya, one of the stars of the upcoming Digimon Adventures Tri).  He has a “bike accident” on the way to meet his girlfriend Minami Suzu (no less than Kayano Ai) and winds up in a coma.  Even this is a great little comic touch – turns out the “accident” was actually Reiji tripping and falling after running out of gas – but what really sells it is Sakura Mamiya’s straight-faced “Would you really call that a bike accident?”  In any event, quick to jump on this opportunity is Masato (Kakihara Tetsuya), a little devil – well, demon – who seizes upon Reiji’s misfortune to curse him.  He convinces the bewitched Reiji that Suzu is cheating on him with classmate Tadano Tomoya (Yanagita Junichi) and Reiji launches upon a spiritual terror campaign against the two of them.

The endgame here is for Masato to get Reiji’s soul dragged down to Hell, but what really matters is the backstory and the dry hilarity along the way.  The former is that Masato is an old enemy of Rinne, who – starting when Masato was in demon 4th grade – has foiled every attempt Masato has made to fulfill his homework assignment and drag a living soul (rabbits, goldfish, even cicadas about to die anyway) down to hell.  It may just be me, but it seemed as if Rinne-chan was taking an uncharacteristic sadistic pleasure in foiling Masato so deviously…

The latter is peppered throughout the episode – stuff like Masato’s demon ATM card with the “4-4-4-4-” PIN written on the back (4 is the unluckiest number in Japan) which is “about 80-20” split between being stupidity and a trap.  There’s also comedy gold like Rinne trying to suck Reiji’s soul back into his body via a vacuum cleaner, Masato’s horrible Kanji (it’s so bad he can’t even write “Masato” correctly), and the horribly Photoshopped picture he uses to convince Reiji Suzu is cheating with Tomoya-kun.  I also love the fact that Suzu is a complete “S”, a Wrestling Club member who subjected Reiji to signature moves – which are actually pro wrestling moves, as Rinne points out – which cause her to bliss out about how happy the relationship was.  I’d love to see this arc conclude with Reiji being saved, then deciding he didn’t want to date her after all…