I so very much want to inflict grievous bodily harm on the production staff of Rio Rainbow Gate! right now.  As I said at the end of Ep07's recap, "...I have this sinking feeling that Rina is going to have a heel turn in Ep08..."  Now, I am many things, but one that I am not is a plot prognosticator.  Usually when I take a guess about how a show is going to go, I'm about as far off as chalk and cheese.  Because of that, trying to figure out plotlines ahead of time is usually an exercise in futility, one that I avoid doing whenever possible.  Yet this stupid brainless pile of drek called RRG! has gotten me so involved that I not only made predictions, but I put them in print to boot.  It's one thing to get hooked on something good; having it happen watching a series that has all the depth of a playing card is just embarrassing.  So, grievous bodily harm it is!  There's quite a wide range of injuries one can inflict with just a playing card, you know.  Anything from a simple papercut, preferably with an application of lemon juice afterwards,  to ocular exenteration, preferably with an application of lemon juice afterward... the sky's the limit. 

And speaking of the sky:

We pick up right where we left off in Episode 07, with Rina bolted down to a roulette table and Rio about to go into her third Gate Battle of the day.  This one will be against evil Cartia's "King Strong Arm".  And what, might I ask, will be the game to be played this time?  I mean, considering some of the matches we've had in the past, I expect it to be something like a wrestling match between Rio and a remote-controlled bear in a swimming pool full of tapioca pudding and deadly holographic space cuttlefish.

Or a coin flip followed by a guess of which which hand the coin is in.  The stipulations are simple: King will flip it, grab it between his hands, then separate them.  At that point, Rio will make her choice.  Of course, it wouldn't be RRG! without there being something stupid involved, and that's certainly the case here.  Y'see, King Strong Arm isn't called King Strong Arm for nothing; he's got a strong arm.  In fact, he's so strong that he can crush a coin to powder in his clenched fist, which he does.  Voila, no coin (which looks like a euro, for you budding numismaticists out there) and no chance for Rio to win!


Of course, she wins.  As a skilled dealer, she's able to spot a cheat from a mile away... so she points at his right hand and says "that hand has no coin in it."  The rules didn't say that she had to choose the hand with the coin, after all.  Rina is hers!  Yay!  Her victory is short-lived though, as she suddenly feels very dizzy.  When she recovers moments later, Cartia, King and Rina are gone... and nobody saw where they went or how.  I think I want to visit Sky Resort and see how much I can steal.  I suspect I could probably walk off with two pockets full of gold, three ficus plants and a bargirl.

Rio wants to immediately start searching for her lost... friend *ahem*, but in her weakened state, she wouldn't find the floor if she fell over.  She's ordered to rest in her room... her lonely, empty room.  Heartbroken to find the pillow next to her unoccupied, she gets up.

When Anya brings dinner up to Rio's room, she finds both Rio and her Gates to be missing.  For a brief instant, I had hopes that the Laser Weasel had killed and eaten Rio, but no such luck.  I then had a few pleasant moments imaging the carnage a Laser Weasel set loose on a room full of the RRG! production staff would cause.  Alas, even such cheerful thoughts had to come to an end and the show had to continue.

Seeing brief glimpses of Rina in the hallways of Sky Resort, Rio stumbles her way into the resort's chapel, where she finds the evil Cartia.  Accused of lying, the evil Cartia says that she never agreed to give Rina to Rio, just to "release her."  Rio doesn't take the hint.

Yowza!  FINALLY, RRG! abandons all pretense of being anything more than a fanservice show and goes straight to hentai!  Play to your strengths is what I've always said, yes indeedily.  Where's my wallet, I know I've got a few singles in there...

Dammit!  Vivisection via playing card is too good for the production staff now, I'm moving right on to total trepanation using a rusty spoon, two nail files and a yak.  "You can have the Gates, just give me back my Rina." 

*bing* Ladies and gentlemen, we have a heel turn and I just blew a sphygmomanometer off my arm.  Rina's been working with evil Cartia all this time, for the sake of revenge.  Wait, what?  It turns out that Rio and Rina are even closer than we thought.  We already know that the two of them grew up togther, but what we didn't know is that Rio's mother, Risa Rollins, the only person to ever hold all 13 Gates, dated Rina's father before he married her mother.  Even after the wedding, Risa and Rina's dad continued their affair, and if you can't see where this is going you must have blood in your eyes much like I did at this point.

That's right, Rio and Rina aren't just... friends *ahem*, but sisters as well, which puts a completely different spin on what was going on in Ep04.  RRG! has suddenly become a taboo fanservice show.  Strangely, I'm okay with that.  But wait, it all gets worse!  It turns out that, when Rina's mom got sick, Daddy just up and left, leaving nobody to care for the ill wife... and evil Cartia saw Dad and Risa driving away together.  B-b-b-but, what was evil Cartia doing there?  She's the sister of Rina's mom, making her Rina's aunt... and coincidentally, Rio's half-aunt.  When evil Cartia told Rina the truth of what went down, our bi-colored-tressed beauty vowed revenge against Risa.  When she mysteriously disappeared, she set her sights on the only other Rollins available: Rio.  After all, Henry Rollins Rainbow Gate! would be too epic for this small world to handle.  The best way for her to accomplish this task?  A knife in the back?  A bullet in the gut?  An ice axe to the cranium?  Nope, she would be the second to accumulate all 13 Gates; indeed, she's proven to be quite capable of this task, as the Gates held by Jack, Queen, King and (presumably) Linda were all hers to begin with... and she still holds five others.  Go ahead, guess what's coming next?

Yup, our fourth Gate Battle in one day.  Not only that, but one of the infinite monkeys writing this series randomly typed the word "poker" into the script!  Finally, a Gate Battle that actually involves a game you can actually play in a casino.  It doesn't help the blood squirting out of my pores, but it does show a brief flash of sanity by the production staff.  Rio is sluggish, lethargic, and slow to pick up her cards... a handful of garbage. 

Soon enough, the reason for her lethargy becomes apparent: she isn't the only Roll Ruler in the room, and Rina's power seems to be a heckuvalot stronger than Rio's.  A flash of power, and...

...she's out in the woods?  After a moment of confusion, she realizes she's actually "in Rina's heart; what a cold, lonely place it is." And not a ventricle or tricuspid valve to be seen.  I think it would be quite inefficient at moving blood around Rina's body, but who am I to judge?  Shortly after she makes this statement, a black tower of liquid from the pool in front of her climbs into the sky, then swallows her whole.

"Down goes Frazier!  Down goes Frazier!  Down goes Frazier!" 

Rio's out, face down on the floor, her cards face-up on the table.

And Rina, knowing she has her revenge in hand, throws her cards down.

"I win."  Fade to black, roll credits.

I shouldn't let Rina's heel turn annoy me so much, but be darned if it didn't.  The pair of Rina and Rio actually worked well together as characters, something not-so-common in anime, and anything working well in RRG! is a miracle akin to talking donkeys, catching 153 fish, or multiplying bottles of oil.  Bah.  Now suddenly, Rina's the Big Bad, Rio's got no Gates, and has no way to get one that we know of.  Welp, that's about it then, show's over.  And no silly clothing choices in the last episode either... not even a shrimp costume sighting.  That's quite the downer ending, actually.

What?  It's not over?  DAMMIT!

^{next episode: we learn that The Owner can dislocate his jaw, much like a snake, as he attempts to swallow Rio whole for losing.  I'm probably making that up, but I'm no longer sure.}

Posted by: Wonderduck at 01:30 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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