This page is to supply you all with a basic outline of what happens with the adventures of Manji and Rin in the manga that Dark Horse hasn't released yet.  This is meant to be a vague, precursory summary as I haven't got around to translating this manga on any large scale at this point-
This will updated from time to time, check the "last modified" date on the top- when I change something, I'll tell you exactly what I changed and how...

UPDATE:
4.11.Bunny - New Summary

By the way, these summaries contain a lot of what I guess may be called "spoilers".  If you want to know what happens to the characters, it's all here.  If you want to wait 5 years just to find out that no, Makie does NOT make another appearance in MnJ, then patiently sit on your thumb and wait for the Dark Horse comics.  The story is phenomenal, but even knowing it ahead of time doesn't take anything away from reading Hiroaki Samura's magnum opus frame by frame.  The art and encounters are just that good.

This mangabon is all about Manji and Rin's encounter with the bizarre Araya Kawakami.
The first bit is about Rin and Manji at a local festival.  Rin buys a cute little gold charm thing for her hair.  "Hey, hey, Manji-san... look! look!", she says, gesturing to her hair.  For two panels he just kind of stares at her.  Without much interest.
"Say SOMETHING!"
"It's not you".
later...
"Well, isn't Manji-san going to buy anything?"
"Sake." (alcohol)
Essentially Rin's going nuts because she's a kid in essentially a Japanese carnival.  Manji's looking for a place to sit and drink.  Anyway, Rin's pretty much put the encounter with Anotsu out of her mind, until she sees a couple with a child passing by.  She thinks about her own family, and then about Anotsu.  She snaps out of it as someone bumps into her, though.  She decides to pick up some yaki-mochi (imagine a Fried Chewy Tasteless Paste-Lump on a Stick).  Right as she says, "excuse me, can I have two..." a boy jumps in front of her (maybe ten or twelve) and says "give me 5", and gets served first.  She starts to chew him out all big-sister like.  As she's giving him a lecture on politeness, a toy-seller's cart pulls in front of the yaki-mochi stand.  She asks (without looking, since she's being all high and mighty in front of the boy), "I'd like two, please".  She gets handed two pinwheels, the toy guy takes her money and wheels his cart off.  So basically she's standing there like a dumbass holding these two, rather expensive, pinwheels.  Kind of a cool scene.
So Manji's drinking and wandering around the festival.  He comes to this guy selling masks- traditional wooden masks with vaguely human-vaguely animal shapes.  The mask dealer is talking to a little boy and girl (about 4 or 5 years old).  They both want the "tengu" mask, but there's only one left.  The boy points to the girl, so the mask-maker gives it to the girl and she takes off.  The boy starts to cry, so the mask maker's like "There now, there now", and gives him a mask for free.  But as he is giving the kid a slightly fox-like mask, he says, "this one's kind of plain, isn't it?"  He turns to Manji, and says, "Danna.  Sorry to bother you, but could I borrow your sword for a minute?"  That "Danna" kind of means "sir", but it's a word that usually only Yakuza-types use.  Manji's just kind of looks at him (it's a rather unusual request), so the mask-maker says, "Tanomimasu yo" (kind of like "I beg you").  So he takes the sword and cuts longer, slanted holes for the eyes, and puts an interesting mark in the mask's forehead.
And THEN he takes the sword, cuts his finger, and starts painting the thing with his own blood.  It's really pretty and all, but man... someone else's blood?  He gives it to the kid and turns back to Manji.  He talks about the sword.
"This thing, it's tasted blood, right?"
"What, did you count the stains?"
later...
"Man, you're friggin' great... You've probably faced about, what, a hundred guys?... So... since this year... I've heard it's up to 10."
Pause.  Manji squints at the mask-maker.  The mask maker grins sardonically back at Manji.  Manji starts to laugh.  "What, do you fuckin' Ittoryu guys follow me on a string or something?"... "It's not like that at all.  We don't have the time to keep up with you, or to keep following you around, and we certainly don't have the time to keep cleaning off the mud puddles on our pants if we followed you through the rain...  Naw, we were only told one thing.  'If we see him, kill him'.  And that's all."  The next scene is Manji and the mask-maker gearing up to bring each other down (see this picture in the Postcard section).  Right as they're charging at each other, a kid screams, "DAD!", and they stop.  It's the kid who was with Rin, and he's talking to the Mask-maker.  They stop themselves, the mask-maker gives back the sword and apologizes.  He takes his kid and walks off, asking manji to take a mask if he wants one.  "They're original Kawakami Araya masks."  Manji turns around and starts talking to Rin.  She isn't listening, though.
"I found him", she says.
After that, Manji is trying to sleep.  He sees that Rin isn't around, and finds her outside on a hill by a stream.  "The mosquitoes are gonna get you" he says, but she topples over.  She's been crying.  They start talking, and she tells Manji a little about her encounter with Anotsu, and what he said about her.  "You can think whatever you want to", he says, "but never listen to your enemies".  Rin reflects on what Makie said before she took off, something about revenge feeling special to you, but to others it's just another murder.  "But," she says, "I can't... I can't let it go".
The next day, Rin is walking by a construction site when he sees the young Kawakami kid (Renzoo) in some sort of a fight with a samurai.  The samurai pulls out a sword and after the kid starts sassing back at him (I guess he bumped into the samurai or got in his way or something).  Rin runs over and apologizes for him.  The samurai's shoe is broken, but she humbly bows down and fixes his shoe for him (totally humiliating herself to stop the conflict).  All the while Renzoo is screaming and kicking (she sits on his hands to keep him still).  After the samurai leaves, Renzoo says, "wanna come to my house?"  The next scene is Manji staring at the wall to the cabin they were at- Rin left her sword but etched something in the wall (basically saying that she's going after Kawakami).  So he heads out to find her.
The next bit is a flashback to when Rin was a kid (or, I should say, even MORE SO a kid), at a festival with her grandfather (her parents were off at a shrine).  The grandfather (who seems like a pretty cool guy, old but sharp, and not at all absolutely fucking psycho like Anotsu's gramps) bought her some candy and started to talk to her.  He was reflecting on the shit that went down at the old Mutenryu school with him and his master and Anotsu's gramps.  He told Rin that he felt responsible for what happened, and that because of what he did someone might come after her or her father.  He also tells her that she should not hold a grudge against them, because their actions were a result of his own actions in the past.  Of course, she's a little kid and doesn't understand.  He says that that's ok, and that she probably won't remember nor need to remember that conversation anyway.  Rin's mother and father come back from making wishes at the shrine.  "What did you wish for?" her mother asks. "That no one will hurt us," Rin answers.  "What did you wish for?"  Her mother says, "Me? Well, I wished for..."
"What DID she wish for, anyway?" Rin tries to remember as the flashback fades to the present.  She's sitting in a waiting room.  A waiting room full of masks.
Eventually, Renzoo brings "dad" in to see Rin.  He's shocked to see her, and sends Renzoo off.  He and Rin have a long talk.
Meanwhile, Manji asks the construction guys where they saw Rin go.  They won't talk without being offered some sort of payment, so he offers them the payment of letting them clean up the mess he's going to make, and in one stroke of his sword completely decimates the shed that they were halfway building... They begin to talk...
Another flashback.  Right after her father was killed- her father and mother were surrounded by the Ittoryu gang.  Anotsu is satisfied by the father's death, so he wheels around and walks off, not really caring what happens.  Rin's mother is hysterical.  One of the Itto-ryu guys pulls her off her husband and starts to talk dirty to her.  Magatsu keeps things under control, though.  There's a knife in front of the mother, so it looks like she has a chance to kill herself.  Magatsu tells her, "Woman.  Kill yourself.  Either path you take your body's gonna be in shitty shape.  But dead girls don't get raped."  She reaches for the knife, but Kawakami steps on her hand (breaking it, most likely), and tells Magatsu to get lost.  Magutsu tells him if he wants to play, go to the Tatsumi (a brothel for the Itto-ryu boys).  But Kawakami thinks that she's be more "fiery" this way.  Magatsu punches Kawakami, but he catches his fist.  "I'm outta here", Magutsu says.  "This place makes me sick".  He splits, and the guys pounce on Rin's mom.  Kawakami starts painting on her body with the blood of Rin's dead father, whose body is right beside her.  Rin's curled up in a ball in the corner, but guess who goes over to comfort her?  Her old sweet pal Kuroi "Three heads" Sabato (btw Kuro is "Dark", "Saba" is a cheap, sometimes nasty fish that you can buy at sushi shops, and 'to' means 'person'). He holds her close and tells her to shut her eyes and block out the sounds.  But she keeps screaming and screaming.  Now THAT'S fucked up.

OK, this summary is a lot longer than I thought it was going to be.  I think it's probably because I like this book the most.  It's almost a complete story in itself.  Anyway, back to the story...

I guess Rin was telling Kawakami that story.  She starts crying.  Renzoo happens by with some tea and thinks that it was something his father said.  "No, that's not it... it's just that he looks like my own father, and I got caught up in my memories".  Araya tells his son that the tea isn't dark enough, and sends him essentially to another town just to buy a little tea.  He and Rin have a long, LONG talk.  Finally, Kawakami starts to apologize to her.  Rin starts to grab at a concealed knife.  Araya leaps at her and kicks her against a wall as she stabs him in the arm.  He's pretty much in a rage now, and as he has her pinned against the wall he runs the blood off his knife and across her face.  "I can't let this colorless 'mask' go as is...".
Next 'chapter'.  Rin's passed out on the ground, Araya is kneeling over her with a brush, painting her face and arms.  He starts to strangle her while she's passed out, but someone calls him from the other room- "Danna", a voice says.  He hurries downstairs expecting Manji, but instead sees the three construction guys.  He says that he's busy, and asks them what they want.  One of them says, "Hey asshole, sorry, but you've been had."  Araya realizes what they mean and runs back up to Rin, only to find her in Manji's arms.  He turns to Araya: "This is quite pretty... I like your sense of taste".  They talk back and forth for awhile, and Araya starts picking up furniture like dressers and stuff and starts moving it around the room.  Araya asks Manji to help him... make a suitable battlefield.  Manji picthes in, and soon there are two large dressers with long posts sticking out of them in the middle of the room, making it like a mini gladiator's arena.  Araya then tells Manji that he doesn't have a single weapon in the house, because they are dangerous and he wants to keep his son away from those kinds of things.  All he has is a knife.  "But I predict... that with this one little knife I'm going to carve you into little pieces."
Rin has a little dream about Anotsu and Kuroi.  Next thing we see is Manji and Araya beginning to fight.  Manji soon realizes that his current weapons are too big for the small space, and goes to the veranda to toss them over.  All of them- shortswords, swords, knives, sickles, barbed spears, they all go over.  There is soon a huge pile of weapons on the ground, and Manji's left with a dagger.  Then they continue to fight.
And fight.
And fight.
And fight.
And fight.  Right up to the point where Kawakami's on top of Manji and, indeed, carving him into little bits.  Then, Something Happens (ok, THIS PART I won't spoil), and Kawakami gets off of Manji.  Rin wakes back up, and Kawakami goes after her.  Right when he has her by the throat, Manji pops up-crow style- with this look of "you're gonna die" written in his eyes, and he goes after Kawakami.  Araya stabs him in the chest and backs him into the veranda (Manji didn't have his knife at this point).  Manji pulls out another knife from some hidden place- the wicked, forked, curved, can-opener looking knife that makes up one of the more interesting bits of his arsenal- and stabs Araya in the the side.  Araya falls back against the wall.  Manji walks over to him and sticks him again in the chest, finishing the dirty deed.

Unfortunately, that was right when Renzoo came back from the tea shop.  He sees the whole thing.  He's watching Manji with shock and hatred.  Manji looks over to him with kind of a shit-eating grin, and says "Hey...".

That's the end of book 4.  Book four is my favorite, which is why I wrote so much about it.