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Media Blasters Licenses Rio - Rainbow Gate! Anime
posted on by Egan Loo
North American video distributor Media Blasters announced on Friday that its AnimeWorks label has acquired the Rio - Rainbow Gate! television anime series. 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. Media Blasters' live-action label Tokyo Shock also acquired all three volumes of the Lust for the Dead (Rape Zombie) film series.
In Rio - Rainbow Gate!, 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 Victory" Rio first appeared in 2003 in the Super Black Jack game franchise from the pachi-slo company Net. She was the brainchild of Net's collaboration with Tecmo (Dead or Alive) to create female characters. Rio's popularity led to several more games, including 2005's Rio Carnival, 2007's Rio Paradise, and 2009's Rio 2 -Cruising Vanadis-.
The anime premiered in January of 2011, and Crunchyroll streamed the anime into several countries as it aired in Japan.
Image © Tecmo KOEI Wave Co., Ltd./Howard Resort Development Group
