Love them or not, these mini-chapter “trebisodes” of Kyoukai no Rinne are the new normal – there’s another coming next week and while I’m too Ageha lazy to go back and check, that feels like at least five or six in a row.  What we’re getting this season is essentially a weekly sampler platter of Rinne supporting characters.  And if you were to pick any contemporary anime comedy that could thrive under that format (I’d rank Minami-ke as the best ever at it) I think it might just be RIN-NE.

This week’s sampler starts out well enough for Rinne-kun, though the trend is in the wrong direction – he goes from winning 1000 Yen to losing 500 to a promised date with Matsugo.  Our first chapter is another classic Ageha screw-up, proving that she does indeed combine lazy and stupid at a professional level.  This time around she forgets about a homework assignment from elementary school and unleashes a curse doll that’s been nursing a grudge against Renge for the better part of a decade.  Ageha’s laziness is good for Rinne in the sense that she’s willing to pay him that thousand Yen to make this problem go away (which poses a problem for Renge, who feels every blow Rinne lands on the doll).

Next up it’s our shifty twins Mikazuki Raito and Refuto, who as usual arrive bearing “gifts”.  This time around it’s a “silver scythe” which they’re prepared to pay Rinne 500 Yen to “test” since only Shinigami can use a scythe as it was intended.  Since these two are almost as crooked as Sabato it’s a given that it’s a scheme, and of course it is – turns out this is a “silver-peeling scythe”, one of a limited edition that amounted to a Shinigami scratcher lottery ticket.  Naturally the Mikazukis’ involvement leads to disaster for all – their father created the scythe but carved too many zeroes into it, making it null and void.  I guess it it was too much to ask for Rinne to win two endings in a row, but he doesn’t even walk away with the original 500 Yen reward…

Finally, it’s this week’s funniest chapter, as Kyoukai no Rinne’s signature tragicomic theme makes a rare appearance this season.  A young girl has died at the hospital, but she can’t move on because Matsugo used her for Shinigami practice but failed to go “all the way”.  It never fails to amaze me how this series can take a theme like this and make it hilarious, but it does so time after time.  I mean here we have a girl who can’t move on to her next life because she never went on a date, and yet it’s played for comedy.  I think my favorite moment here is Matsugo making the girl chase him on a horse – I mean, it never occurs to him that this is a terrible thing to do, and yet we laugh.  Thank goodness Rumiko just doesn’t give a damn, because that’s never been put to better use than in Kyoukai no Rinne.