Manga Review: Rin-Ne Volumes 27 & 28 by Rumiko Takahashi
Quick recap: Rinne Rokudo is a part-human shinigami (death spirit) who works as a psychopomp, escorting lost spirits to the afterlife. Due to his deadbeat father sticking him with the responsibilities for that father’s debts, Rinne’s weak powers requiring him to use expensive tools to make up the difference, and bad luck, Rinne is constantly poor. He’s aided by his classmate Sakura Mamiya who can see spirits due to a near-death experience as a child, his black cat by contract Rokumon, and to a much lesser extent by his wacky friends and rivals.
Volume 27 starts off with a two-parter in which Matsugo (a childhood friend of Rinne’s who values their friendship to a creepy degree which is not reciprocated by Rinne) invites Rinne and Sakura to his shinigami school fair. The idea is to lure them into a haunted house that has an Orpheus rule. The boy walks ahead of the girl, and must not turn around or he fails. Meanwhile, the girls suffer traps. If the boy turns around to help the girl, he fails the test and loses the food prize. If the boy doesn’t turn around, the girl will hate him.
Matsugo’s plan has two flaws. First, Rinne and Sakura know each other better than most couples even though officially they’re not a couple, and second, Matsugo’s classmate Anju, who has a crush on him, is interfering. Hilarity ensues.
The last story in the volume concerns a supposedly haunted storage room in which a teacher accused of embezzlement allegedly committed suicide. The truth is a bit different, but there winds up being a haunting anyway.
In between, it’s the winter holidays, so there’s stories about nutcrackers, Christmas cakes, and New Years’ Eve bell-ringing. (It’s best not to think about how many Christmases have passed during the manga.)
Volume 28 begins with Ageha, a wealthy but rather foolish student shinigami, being assigned to catch a stray dog spirit by her upper-crust school. But instead she finds a human-faced dog who keeps escaping. Rinne must bail her out and find out the truth.
The final story is about a kindergarten-aged ghost that wants a school bag, but not the haunted one Jumonji (exorcist who’s a classmate of Rinne and Sakura) needs to unload. Our heroes need to re-examine their assumptions about how to resolve the issue.
In-between are stories about a sushi-delivering ghost, a cursed school uniform, and a ’90s schoolgirl ghost who has a personal animosity towards Sakura.
There’s no new recurring characters in these volumes, and no progress on the myth arc, so they can be skipped if you’re on a budget. But still, they’re pretty funny.
