境界のRINNE/Kyōkai no RINNE
RIN-NE Volume 8 (manga)

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***SPOILERS***

In brief, the events covered by this manga start with Sakura noticing Shinigami children collecting animal spirits. Rinne has one bratty boy named Shoma staying with him for training, but the boy is not patient and tries to do more than he can handle in order to graduate the homestay program immediately. Shoma’s attitude and poor performance come to the attention of the evil Masato, who tries to make things worse. Masato gains a lot of evil spirits as a result, forcing Rinne to intervene and Shoma to learn a valuable lesson.

Ageha buys an expensive kotatsu for Rinne in order to get closer to him. Sakura and Tsubasa end up showing up at Rinne’s place as well, leading the group to play a card game where the loser has to do what the winner says. Ageha dreams of winning, but is the only loser.

A ghost in the kitchen of the cooking class threatens to interfere with Rinne’s plans to make extravagant food like fried chicken and french fries.  Sakura witnesses a ghost scarf that strangles a boy who’d received a scarf from a girl, so Rinne gets on the case to purify the scarf, leading to Sakura making a scarf for Rinne.

As is custom for Takahashi-sensei, she feels the need to continue to introduce more and more characters to her series in order to have something to write about.  This time, it is brat Shoma (Shouma), who’s story takes up a large chunk of the manga. Considering how his story ended, I figure he’ll be back at some point.

I did enjoy Ageha’s attempt to get close to Rinne, only to keep losing the card games to the others, whereupon she’s forced to buy goodies for the others.

The final two stories where just “meh,” which is pretty typical for the series, and also pretty forgettable, though the phoenix-chicken showing up was humorous.

On the Viz side of things, we still get the Japanese honorifics, which I appreciate. Otherwise, it is devoid of meaningful extras (ads don’t count), so no translator notes like I’d prefer to see.

Whoa! I still have another volume sitting in front of me to blog. ^_^;  Let’s see if I can get that one out of the way soon.