| | |  | SHONEN JUMP | Home » » » RIN-NE, Vol. 1 | | | | | | | Description: | | Reads R to L (Japanese Style). As a child Sakura Mamiya mysteriously disappeared in the woods behind her grandma's home. She returned whole and healthy, but since then she has had the power to see ghosts. Now a teenager, she just wishes the ghosts would leave her alone! At school, the desk next to Sakura's has been empty since the start of the school year, then one day her always-absent classmate Rinne Rokudo shows up, and he's far more than what he seems!After school one day, Rinne helps Sakura deal with the ghost of a boy who has a crush on her. Rinne it seems, knows just how to handle such ghosts, and has the skills and tools to properly dispatch them to the afterife (for a small fee of course). Sakura starts to learn more about her mysterious classmate, and her curiosity about Rinne draws her deeper into the amazing world between life and death. | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9781421534855
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Rumiko Takahashi | | Paperback:
| 200 pages | | Publisher:
| VIZ Media LLC | | Publication Date:
| October 20, 2009 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1421534851 | | Package Length:
| 7.4 inches | | Package Width:
| 4.9 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.35 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 1 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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On the wheelOct 20, 2009
Imagine a series like Tite Kubo's "Bleach," but sort of flipped around -- some of the same elements are there, but done in a very different style.
In a nutshell, that's "Rin-Ne," and it's a pretty massive departure from Rumiko Takahashi's prior fantasy works (gender-flipping boy/girls, dog demons, mermaids and so on). Fortunately "Rin-ne Volume 1" is a smooth introduction to the story of two kids who find themselves suspended between this world and the world of the dead, and displays a brand of comedy that is much subtler than what we've seen from Takahashi before.
Ever since she was "spirited away" as a child, Sakura has seen ghosts. But one day in class, she also sees Rinne Rukudo -- a scarlet-haired, robed boy who's invisible to everyone but her, wrestling with a giant chihuahua ghost. Yeah, it gets weirder after that.
It turns out that Rinne is a "sort of" shinigami with a magical Haori of the Underworld, who ushers the souls of the dead onto a giant red wheel of reincarnation... for a fee ("You now owe me five hundred yen!"). And after a failed attempt to hypnotize Sakura into forgetting all she's seen, Rinne finds himself sitting next to her in class, and reluctantly working with her on supernatural matters.
And there are a remarkably large number of them -- a cell phone that keeps receiving ghostly calls from long ago, and a ghost that is stuck in a cycle; a strange black kitten who really wants to work for Rinne; and a girl haunted by a fallen samurai's ghost. And when Sakura encounters Rinne's strangely youthful (and strangely familiar) grandmother, she's accidentally swept off into the world of the dead -- and unless he can rescue her, she might end up reincarnating way too early.
"Rin-ne Volume 1" is a smooth introduction to Takahashi's new imaginary world. And while at first it feels a bit like a quieter, less action packed "Bleach," it's redolent of Takahashi's previous works (the tiny animal-footed troublemaker, the high kicks). At the same time, it's also a very different kind of manga from her previous two series -- not much action, a mellower hero, and a focus on dealing with ghosts and supernatural critters rather than on fighting.
So Takahashi deftly juggles both the weird ghostly cases (which are more perplexing than scary) that Rinne and Sakura have to solve, and mellow humorous moments ("Booo, I'm going to get yoooooou, woooooh!"). At the same time, she gradually drops little bits of info that answer some overhanging questions -- Rinne's true nature, how he ended up becoming a shinigami, and the reason he's crashing in an abandoned building with only the clothes on his back (which we never see getting washed... weird).
Rinne and Sakura are also quite different from Takahashi's previous protagonists -- she's a very earnest, sweet girl who seems more puzzled by her sixth sense than frightened by what she sees, and gradually we find out just what happened in her childhood. He's a very professional and mature guy, albeit an excessively frugal one ("If I spent money on such a luxury... I'd be sent to hell"), and has a cute if dumb little black cat, Rokudo, that is determined to help him whether he likes it or not.
"Rin-Ne Volume 1" is a nice start to a promising manga -- the reverse flip of "Bleach," with a likable hero and heroine and lots of supernatural weirdness. It will be interesting to see where it goes next.
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