When she was a small child, Sakura Mamiya encountered a strange rabbit that drew her into an unusual world. Once there and older woman helped guide her home, though not after giving her a piece of candy. Years later, Sakura would discover that she had ventured into the afterlife, and thanks to the candy she gained the ability to see spirits.

Years later as a high school student, Sakura meets a red-headed transfer student name Rinne Rokudo. She soon learns that Rinne is a shinigami, a god of death responsible for ferrying lost spirits into the afterlife should they linger in the realm of the living.

Rinne has inherited a massive debt and lives in absolute poverty, actually finding an abandoned building on the campus of the high school to move into with his black cat assistant, Rokumon. Her curiosity about her new classmate piqued, Sakura begins to accompany him on his jobs and learns more about the afterlife and her own childhood.



She comes to learn that the woman she met was Tamako, Rinne's grandmother, and she soon becomes swept up in Rinne's daily exorcisms around the school and together they journey into the afterlife, visit hell, and help lost spirits find their peace.



As their relationship continues, Rinne falls in love with Sakura and she becomes even more involved in the world of the afterlife, meeting other shinigami, their black cat companions and numerous spirits both good and evil.