境界のRINNE/Kyōkai no RINNE
RIN-NE Volume 7 (manga)

–> BUY FROM RIGHTSTUF!
–> BUY FROM BARNES & NOBLE!
–> BUY FROM BUY.COM!

***SPOILERS***

In brief, this seventh volume of RIN-NE features a client named Natsumi who gets Rinne to take her on a date at the summer festival in order to fix a curse that surrounds her when she attends every year. Sakura goes to a beach with friends, which turns out to be a ghost beach, causing Tsubasa, Rinne, and Ageha to show up as well. When school starts back up, Sakura notes a high number of ghosts around, leading Rinne to discover that a spirit way stone had come to life, wanting to party. The seal on a mini shrine is broken, causing some bakeneko to run wild, whereupon Rinne breaks his scythe while trying to get the cat youkai resealed.

Sakura notes that ghosts are suddenly parading through her home, so she enlists Rinne to come over and resolve the problem. Tsubasa and Ageha get suspicious of his actions and discover the truth, inviting themselves over to Sakura’s house as well. Rinne has to repeatedly get rid of Tsubasa and Ageha, but eventually, he works out the problem, though keeping Ageha and Tsubasa at bay costs him dearly.  And finally, Rinne is tasked with finding out why the gardening club’s sweet potatoes are alive, leading him to uncover an accidental curse by a former member.

As usual, the stories here are just simple adventure stories with a tad of humor and a touch of romance.  However, there’s zero doubt in my mind that despite Rinne getting to go over to Sakura’s home, the series will never allow them to be a couple since that’s how Takahashi-sensei likes it.

That being said, the story of Rinne going to Sakura’s home to help her with her problem while at the same time, trying to get Ageha and Tsubasa out of his way was the funnest story of the lot.   The others were OK, but nothing really memorable.

I did notice that for a while in this volume, Tsubasa looked exactly like Miroku from Inuyasha.

On the Viz side of things, there’s nothing special there.  I am glad the Japanese honorifics are included, but translator notes would be nice (not that Viz would ever do them).

In the end, a safe, ‘by the numbers’ book from Takahashi-sensei.