Rin-ne (2010)

[境界のRINNE]

Volume 5

Author/Artist: Rumiko Takahashi
Publisher: Shounen Sunday Comics

Synopsis:
Ageha faces off against the secretary of the Damashigami Company.

Story/Characters:
Ageha and the "beautiful secretary" have a brief scrap and it doesn't take long for that Sailor V mask to break, revealing the latter to be Ageha's missing sister. Sabato shows up and exposes Rinne's connection to him, crushing the little crush Ageha had been developing for Rinne. For his part, Rinne stridently denies her romantic fantasies to Sakura. It's amusing how hard he tries to maintain his image around Sakura and just how little she seems to care. While pursuing Sabato, the clueless Ageha gets fooled by damashigami left and right, spending money like water on one scam after the other, and getting saved by Rinne time and time again, such that her feelings for him light up even stronger. It doesn't help that Sakura catches up just as Ageha is clinging to her savior.

The following day, Rinne is trying to clear things up with Sakura, but she doesn't have a mind to listen. Meanwhile, Ageha comes to the school with a huge bentou to give him, when she crosses paths with Tsubasa. The two quickly realize their purposes align, so they form an alliance. We get a bit of a wrinkle when it's revealed that the lunch box Ageha gave Rinne was cursed with the evil spirit of a giant wish granting tako-san wiener. Once that gets resolved, Ageha tries to stake her claim, but actually ends up folding in the face of Sakura's apparent indifference, much to Tsubasa's disappointment.

We next have an incident with a cursed bookcase in the library guarded by the spirit of a Tosa hellhound. Rinne needs to find the owner to solve the case. Said owner happens to be the spirit of a girl who died before she could confess her feelings to a classmate (who was dating someone else). Ageha sees some similarity in their situations (as she thinks Rinne is dating Sakura) and when Rinne follows the dog's leash to the owner, she invokes the shinigami rule that the first one to find a spirit is charged with it as a pretext to get closer to him. We learn more about the girl Fumika's situation and as the gang investigates the matter further, we learn that the dog Tosainishiki is actually a living spirit, astrally projected to seek out the book Fumika was trying to get to when she died. Only dogs can't read. However, Rinne uses his haori so Fumika can take physical form long enough to do what she needs to do. It's not quite what you expect, as per usual.

Our next case is the short-distance ace of the Track and Field Club (Hayata) cursed by a ghostly hand that keeps tripping him up as he's running. The team captain Kazami, who's out of action because of a sprained ankle, made the request to Rinne to help Hayata, only the latter is a skeptic and refuses Rinne's help or that there's anything supernatural to his recent string of misfortunes. Rinne reveals the spirit tripping up Hayato and it's Kazami. At first it looks like a simple case of a grudge between Kazami and Hayato, but that isn't the case. There are some twists and turns and both effort and money wasted until we reach the usual ironic conclusion. The twist was pretty funny, I'll admit.

Next we have Tsubasa use a power stone he buried at their old elementary school as a pretext to ask Sakura out. When they arrive, they find the tree damaged and are attacked by the vengeful spirit of a classmate wielding a giant bladed yoyo. It takes the intervention of Rinne (who totally wasn't following Sakura) to unveil the truth behind it all, and we go for a sweet rather than ironic ending for a change.

Art:
The art is solid as ever. The first damashigami Ageha meets looks a lot like Principal Kunou, for whatever that's worth (albeit less tanned and without the palm tree growing out of his head). Takahashi's love of derpy-looking animals shines with Tosainishiki and there's this rather striking panel of Fumika when Ageha reaches for the book she's after. The fight with Youta (the yoyo kid) is pretty good and the elementary era yoyo skirmishes between Kid!Sakura and Youta were amusing.

Conclusion:
I'm liking Ageha as a character and it's interesting seeing her and Tsubasa work together toward their mutual desired endgame. While the bookcase and track stories were amusing, I appreciated the more poignant ending of the yoyo one. All told, it's a solid read that's worth checking out.

Rating:
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