From Publishers Weekly: As they announced at New York Comic-Con in March 2009, VIZ Media offered more details about their upcoming release of the latest manga series from Rumiko Takahashi, the creator of Inu-Yasha, Ranma 1/2 and Urusei Yatsura. Starting on Wednesday April 22, new chapters of Takahashi's Rin-Ne (a.k.a. Kyoukai no RINNE) will appear weekly at VIZ's new microsite for all things related to Takahashi-sensei, TheRumicWorld.com. This is especially noteworthy because this debut date coincides with the Japanese release date, giving U.S. fans their first taste of Rin-Ne the same time as Japanese readers of Shonen Sunday magazine.
Rin-Ne is Takahashi's first new series in over a decade, after the 12-year, 56 volume run of her last series, Inu-Yasha. As one of Japan's most popular manga artists, Takahashi has a huge fan following all over the world for almost everything she does. This makes the arrival of Rin-Ne is big news indeed.
With illegal fan scanlations cutting into manga publishers and anime studios' profits, many companies are now making aggressive moves toward cutting the usual lag time between a manga / anime series debut in Japan and its publication in the U.S.. VIZ has made several inroads in this effort by publishing Ultimo by Hiroyuki Takei and Stan Lee within months of its Japanese debut, and by accelerating their publication schedule for Naruto manga to catch up with the Japanese editions. But this is the first time that they'll be offering simultaneous, online publication of a weekly manga series straight from Japan.
So what is Rin-Ne about? According to the official release from VIZ,
Rin-Ne is the story of Sakura Mamiya, a child who disappears into the woods and returns to find she’s able to see ghosts. Then one way, a mysterious event changed her life…It's unclear if this will be a action/comedy like Ranma ½ or a horror/drama series like Mermaid Saga or something that's a little of both like Inu-Yasha. We'll just have to wait until April 22 to find out!
Image credit: © 2009 Rumiko Takahashi / Shogakukan
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