Rio – Rainbow Gate !

What’s it about ?

Follows the adventures of the star dealer of a high-class Casino, which seems to involve high stakes duels against nasty customers. “Adapted” from a series of pachinko gambling machines.

Characters

Rio, the *BOOBIES* title character. From what little personality *PANTIES* she displays, she’s a bit dim, and easygoing enough to let *BOUNCE* her pervy manager trick her into dodgy *KNOCKERS* costumes and situations. She has the superpower of *UPSKIRT SHOT* magically calming down a crowd around her, as well as *RANDOM WEDDING DRESS* making the odds favour whichever casino customers *CLOTHING DAMAGE* she wishes (to the point that clients crowd around her to benefit from her mojo).

Mint, the young granddaughter of a VIP client visiting the casino ; as the naive newcomer viewpoint character, she wanders around the setting while everyone else delivers exposition. After a while Rio is specially assigned to escort her around. Slightly brattish, but at tolerable levels.

Orlin Dunhill, our asshole villain of the week. After various unsuccessful assault attempts with his goons, he eventually challenges Rio to a poker duel… for reasons that, in a storytelling masterstroke, aren’t properly explained until its end (he’s after Mint’s teddy bear). He’s your usual charisma-deficient lech, and a moron to boot.

Rosa Canyon, a Hollywood actress and regular patron of the casino. Cue the “obaa-san” jokes. For some reason, she’s the one dealing the duel, instead of the dozens of random dealers running around.

There are various other side characters, such as a couple of bunny waitresses that have so little personality they even complete each other’s lines. Their main purpose is exposition and duel commentary.

Production values

This actually looks quite decent, with some nice animation for action scenes, and above all a wonderfully psychedelic sequence during the duel. But don’t even try watching it if you’re allergic to fanservice.

There’s no OP. The ED is an annoyingly peppy JPop number that has even more fanservice than the actual show.

Overall Impression

This… is actually a bit better than I imagined (but then I had very low expectations). The fanservice is less obnoxious than I expected, and mainly concentrated on Rio herself (it steers mercifully free of Mint). The plot is obviously just an excuse, but it’s all in good fun. There’s even a couple of good jokes.

Is it any good ? Well, no. But if you turn your brain off, it’s a semi-decent fanservice series that steers clear of harem clichés (at least so far). I could see myself trying out another episode or two.

via [In which I review] New anime, Winter 2010-2011 – Page 4.

Published by

Jhiday

I've been kinda blogging about anime for years... but mostly on forums (such as RPG.net's Tangency) and other sites. This site is an archive for all that stuff, just in case.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.