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Information
Title (English) Please Ask Dr. Rin!
Title (Japanese) Dr. Rin ni Kittemitte
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book cover

Fantasy Novel

Notes For more information on the anime, check out the TV Tokyo page at:
http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/dr_rin/
and for info on the manga, check out the Ciao manga page at:
http://www.ciao.shogakukan.co.jp/dr_rin/index.html
Classification shoujo
Synopsis Kanzaki Meirin is not just your usual bright and genki middle school shoujo heroine, she also runs a very popular web site called "Dr. Rin's" where people go to have their fortunes told. Meirin is able to be quite successful at this role because she actually tells fortunes through the use of a Chinese fortune telling board. As we find out as the series goes on, Meirin also has additional spiritual powers that come out when she really needs some help in a tight situation.
Meirin runs the "Dr. Rin" web site anonymously, but a few people do know her secret, including her older brother, her next door neighbor, classmate and favorite guy Yuuki Asaka, and Asaka's sometimes friend and sometimes rival, Tokiwa Takashi. (Tokiwa also has some spiritual powers himself and lives in a temple.) The key person who Meirin keeps the "secret" of the Dr. Rin web site from is her father, who happens to make his living as a TV talk show host who tells fortunes and gives advice as part of his show. Meirin's father sees Dr. Rin as a competitor and goes ballistic at the sound of the name.
Review This mahou shoujo series is unashamedly going after the same pre-teen audience that Sailor Moon went after 10 years ago, and its doing a very entertaining job of it. A middle school girl moonlights as a web-based fortune telling service, but as the show evolves the girl and we learn that she is more than she seems to be. The show is very up-to-date, with all the kids using wireless portables to keep in touch with their web sites, but it still has the old fashioned mix of comedy, romance and melodrama that works so well when it is handled in a light manner. Rating Lots of fun and should (probably will?) be brought to North America.
The show is different from SM or CCS so far in that there hasnt been any major underlying menace for Meirin to overcome, although Tokiwa's possession by an evil spirit did cause problems in the initial arc of the series. Instead, many of the episodes have had to do with everyday problems for the kids, such as Asaka becoming obsessed with winning at soccer or "boy/girl" problems amongst their classmates. There have also been, surprisingly, a couple of episodes dealing with Meirin's parents. In one recent episode, for instance, Meirin's parents got into a fight and the mother moved out for a bit. Meirin, Asaka and Tokiwa schemed to get Meirin's parents back together by maneuvering them into meeting at the place where the two originally met. During this episode we found out that when Meirin's parents met, Meirin's mom was a lady wrestler! So while Meirin's parents form the typical nuclear family, they certainly don't have the usual backgrounds.
So what we have here is the traditional anime family setting wherein Meirin can go off and solve problems by using her magic while still having a family to provide support and care for her. All-in-all, this makes for a very cheerful and entertaining show, which while aimed at a pre-teen girl crowd, still has enough twists on the plot and characters to be enjoyable for all ages and genders. BTW - the ending SD-CG of multiple copies of Meirin and her monkey dancing is one of the cutest pieces of fill-in in anime today.
Dave Baranyi
Credits Creator:Kiyoko Arai (manga)
Director:Misawa Shin
Design:Ichikawa Takahisa
Episodes 51
Release
TV Showing See the whole series for free? This series may be syndicated to regional cable, satellite or terrestial TV stations. For Europe click here.
Date 2001 March 5 - 2002 February 25
Production Nippon Animation Studio
Broadcaster TV Tokyo
Animation
References & Help Look up the latest data on this title at:
Richard Llewellyn's Animated Divots, or
Anime News Network (see Encyclopedia section) ,
or in "The Anime Encyclopedia" (Clements & McCarthy, Stone Bridge Press, 2001).
Help & further information.

 

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