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Sentai Filmworks Licenses RIN-NE 2 Sequel Anime

North American anime distributor Sentai Filmworks announced on Monday that it has licensed the second anime series based on Rumiko Takahashi's RIN-NE (Kyōkai no Rinne) manga. The company plans to release the series digitally and on home video as RIN-NE 2.

The second series will premiere on April 9, and will run on NHK's E-tele channel every Saturday at 5:30 p.m. (3:30 a.m. EST).

Viz, the publisher of most of Takahashi's manga in North America including RIN-NE, describes the manga's story:

As a child Sakura Mamiya mysteriously disappeared in the woods behind her grandma's home. She returned whole and healthy, but since then she has had the power to see ghosts. Now a teenager, she just wishes the ghosts would leave her alone! At school, the desk next to Sakura's has been empty since the start of the school year. Then one day her always-absent classmate Rinne Rokudo shows up, and he's far more than what he seems!

NHK described the second series' continuing story:

The shinigami (god of death) Rinne Rokudō, and Sakura Mamiya, the girl who can see ghosts, attend the same school. The two spend their days solving the worries of spirits. Rinne is so poor that he is forced to borrow money from Sakura to buy shinigami tools to solve their cases. Rinne and Sakura care for each other, but their relationship is not progressing. However, with the appearance of a new contracted black cat, a beautiful damashigami (cheating god), and a person with whom Rinne shares a special circumstance, the situation becomes even more chaotic! Rinne and Sakura's after-school time wrapped up in the world of spirits continues!

The first television anime series premiered in April 2015 on the public broadcaster NHK's E-Tele channel. Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired in Japan. Sentai Filmworks licensed the series for release in North America.

Takahashi created such manga as Ranma 1/2, Maison Ikkoku, and Urusei Yatsura before she began serializing RIN-NE in Weekly Shonen Sunday in 2009. Shogakukan will publish the 29th compiled book volume in Japan on March 18, while Viz Media published the 20th compiled volume in English earlier this month.