. Based on game maker Tecmo`s franchise of pachinko slot machines Super Black Jack.The Howard Resort, a resort hotel, draws customers from around the world with the lure of potentially winning a fortune.In the resort there is also a casino. One of its dealers, the beautiful Rio Rollins, is following in the footsteps of her famous mother. To achieve her goal, she is working to gather the. A series of pachinko games, Rio was adapted into an anime by Xebec titled Rio -Rainbow Gate!-, which aired in the winter 2011 season.The anime can be viewed legally at Crunchyroll. Not to be confused with Blue Sky Studios' Rio. Rio Rollins Tachibana (リオ・ロリンズ・タチバナ Rio Rorinzu Tachibana) is the main protagonist of of Rio: Rainbow Gate! She is the most popular dealer in the Howard Resort casino who abides by the motto, 'As the customer wishes' (お客様がお望みなら, Ogeki-sama ga ozomi nara). Beautiful and well-endowed, she has a mysterious energy that gives good luck to her customers. Rio of Rio -Rainbow Gate!-was added to Dead or Alive Paradise as both a dealer in the casino and a unlockable character. She originated as the mascot of the Super Blackjack series of Pachi-slo games (a slot machine designed to bypass Japanese laws against gambling). . Based on game maker Tecmo`s franchise of pachinko slot machines Super Black Jack.The Howard Resort, a resort hotel, draws customers from around the world with the lure of potentially winning a fortune.In the resort there is also a casino. One of its dealers, the beautiful Rio Rollins, is following in the footsteps of her famous mother. To achieve her goal, she is working to gather the. 賭博運氣偏差經常在角子機（slot machine）前苦惱著。偶而會代替其他發牌者來擔任判定理歐與其他賭客的賭局勝負。對於Gate Battle的賭局非常感興趣。 蒂凡尼・阿波特 （ ティファニー・アボット ，聲：中島沙樹） 霍華德度假村最受歡迎的兔女郎。.
Japan's fixation on gambling, particularly pachinkowhich developed from the American version of 'Corinthian Bagatelle', has a pretty large overlap with its anime and manga industry. If a series does well (Lupan the 3rd, Hokuto no Ken) or produces characters that people go bonkers over (Lucky Star, Evangelion), you can guarantee that there is a pachinko machine that has taken advantage of its popularity. Heck, you don't even need those tiny metal balls; 'pachislo', a similar game with the central slot machine dissected from the banging metal sounds, has been a booming diversion as well.While 'moe-slo' has managed to do well with the use of moe characters in these slot machines, it usually borrows the characters for the machine, not the other way around. Very rarely will you have a pachinko or pachislo machine series so popular that it spawns its own animated show, and such examples haven't necessarily translated into successes (such examples are Umi Monogatari and Kaitô Tenshi Twin Angel..wait, it's coming back?!)
Okay, maybe the industry is just big enough for another venture into animation. Rio: Rainbow Gate! is an odd attempt at glamorizing the gambling industry through the conversion of a pachislo game series to anime. Realistically in Japan, pachinko and pachislo are about as close to diversionary gambling as you might get, but the gambling racket is mostly dominated by horse racing circuits. Casinos, in the Vegas sense of the word, are a relative unknown and are almost nonexistent in Japan.
Perhaps this mystique about the casino has drawn people to the popular pachislo game and the title character Rio Rollins Tachibana, the game's buxom dealer. To some, she may be vaguely familiar, as she made cameos on the gaming disaster Dead or Alive Paradise, but Rio: Rainbow Gate! is her big debut on the anime scene. On the fictional island casino known as Howard Resort, Rio is known as the 'Goddess of Victory' to its gambling patrons, as she is able to bring good luck to gamblers with her very presence. She's become such a big name at the resort that she's constantly being used as an advertisement by her employer, the nutcracker-like Tom Howard.
Mint following Rio's pet ferret Chip into the rabbit hole (ferret hole?)
Rio Rainbow Gate Slot Machine Machines
It is Rio's popularity that has brought a variety of people to her inner circle of friends. One of Rio's sudden admirers in the show, the cherubic Mint, is left in Rio's care for the most part, developing a 'big-sister' crush on her new guardian. In the first episode, we meet the rest of Howard Resort's main employees through Mint's wandering flight of fancy through the casino—the Hollywood starlet Rosa Canyon, buoyant bunny-girl waitress Tiffany, and twin sisters Elle and Ille.
Of course, Rio's charm and success rate as a 'Gate Holder'—a dealer who possesses one of 13 special 'Gate' cards—also brings a variety of ruffians to the casino. While her matches with the sparkly-eyed gambler Orlin and a ghost known only as 'Misery' are for other wagers, Rio must accept gambling duels from other Gate Holders. The arrival of Elvis, a ladykiller of a dealer with an uncanny knack of mathematics and probability, puts Rio on the hotseat in a bizarre game of roulette bowling for her Gate, even though she never won her own card in the first place. Each opponent challenges Rio in a display of gallant hallucinations, where the game is animated in something bigger than it actually is (and with Rio in a multitude of costume changes).
Rio Rainbow Gate Slot Machine Jackpots
This is NOT a commercial for Segram's 7 whiskey.
If you were to watch Rio: Rainbow Gate! with the presupposition of seeing a sincere story unfold, Lady Luck isn't on your side. There is very little coherence in the show's actual plot, as dull one-on-one card games and roulette spins turn into nonsensical scenes of mazes composed of playing cards and volleyball games with oversized numbers. The epic Orlin-Rio poker game is over Mint's teddy bear, of all things. While the stakes for the match between Rio and the ghoulish Misery are much higher (Misery wants the casino for herself), the scene of Rio fending off flying ghost chicken wings while trying to keep Mr. Howard from being sliced in half by Elle and Ille is so amazingly ridiculous that..
..it's actually fun to watch.
Yes, this is how we first meet Rio. (Eyes up here, pal!)
Seriously. In the same way that Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was hilarious to the MST3K crew, Rio: Rainbow Gate! is such a bizarre mishmash of unrelated imagery and inept characters (you'll love to hate the klutz Anya) that the unintentional comedy is off the scale. Fan service is sold at high premiums that rival gold, as revealing outfits are the norm and skin is buffed to such a shine that you'd be able to see Rio's breasts from orbit. The absurd characterization of Mr. Howard, in comparison to the other characters, is so over-the-top that the chain-smoking owner (voiced by the thunderous Kôji Ishii, Garterbelt from Panty & Stocking) rescues the show's cast from being bland.
Considering the expectations of Rio: Rainbow Gate! were basically in negative-number territory, the show's shipwreck of a plot unbelievably keeps it from submerging. Granted, the introduction of a particular character in Episode 3 does establish some sense of plot in the upcoming chapters, so the story may still be taking up water and sinking a slow death, but so far the show has a reason to exist, if only to make us wonder just how absurd it could end up getting. Perhaps Rio loses her top in a game of human Plinko?
No, Rio darling, dealer is showing 17.
Perhaps the best thing Rio: Rainbow Gate! has going for it is its self-awareness. Those who know Rio already will probably be her biggest fans, and much of them are have probably already lost ten thousand yen to a pachislo machine since the beginning of this review. Those who are left have to be snagged in the only way the show knows how—through the theater of the absurd.
Yes, Rio: Rainbow Gate! may be a slug compared to a shiny gold coin, but even a whole barrel of slugs has got to be worth something.
(Rio: Rainbow Gate!is simulcast on Crunchyroll every Tuesday at 10:30 AM EST.)
Anime based on slot machine character to premiere worldwide on Tuesday
The media distribution website Crunchyroll has confirmed on Monday that it will begin streaming the Rio - Rainbow Gate! television anime series 'worldwide outside of Japan' this month. The anime features a casino dealer named Rio Rollins (Marina Inoue) who has starred in several pachi-slo (pachinko parlor slot machine) games from Net and Temco. The anime will premiere in Japan on Tuesday.
In the story, Rio is a popular casino dealer at the Howard Resort, an entertainment resort hotel where people from all over the world gather. She competes for the greatest honor among dealers — 'Most Valuable Casino Dealer' (MVCD) — by collecting 13 legendary cards known as 'Gates.' 'The Goddess of Winning' first appeared in 2003 in the Super Black Jack game franchise from the pachi-slo company Net, thanks to Net's collaboration with Tecmo (Dead or Alive) to create female characters. Gone with the wind slot machine online. Rio's popularity led to several more games, including 2005's Rio Carnival, 2007's Rio Paradise, and 2009's Rio 2 -Cruising Vanadis-.
Paid Crunchyroll subscribers can watch the first episode beginning on Tuesday, while other user can begin watching next Tuesday. Crunchyroll lists the series as ending on March 22.
Update: More background information and promotional video added.
Umi Monogatari and Kaitô Tenshi Twin Angel..wait, it's coming back?!)