The Shrine

After getting burned on Inuyasha (boring, perfectly average, and almost nothing to mock at), I decided to give Rumiko Takahashi's latest work a shot. Rin-ne of the Boundary is about Rinne, a human/Death hybrid who needs to exorcise ghosts and spirits to make the ends meet, and there's some girl named Sakura who can see ghosts who may or may not have any significance to the story. As with most of Takahashi's work, the story/plot is some kind of accident/excuse for the action. There's really no hint of progression of a story or even character development. It seems like after Inuyasha, Takahashi decided to play super safe. There's nothing truly impressive about Rin-ne but it also doesn't screw up on anything, and since it doesn't even pretend to have a story it doesn't feel like it drags on as much as Inuyasha.

If you've never seen anything from Takahashi, I recommend Ranma 1/2 first, but Rin-ne is pretty good too. If you liked Inuyasha, you should definitely check this out, though there is virtually no action here. It has more in common with Dilbert or Doraemon than any mainstream stuff out there. It's pretty much your weekly canned comedy but it does its job pretty well in that regard.

I can't deal with another Rumiko Takahashi manga, nothing ever happens ever that's interesting and isn't resolved in the most simplistic manga formula.

Rin-ne takes the formula thing to an extreme and makes no attempt to pretend there might be a story (Inuyasha) or character development (Ranma 1/2). I view it as the Japanese version of Dilbert, and it comes out on Tuesday when most of the major manga are still unavailable so it fills in a gap.