Title: Rainbow Days Vol. 11
Author: Minami Mizuno
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 216
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: August 6, 2024
The Story
The Osaka trip is over and everyone has returned to school. It’s time to jump straight into the fallout of Anna/Mocchi/Hashiba and Tsutsui/Tomoya…….right after we get an arc with Keiichi! To be fair, with the main focus being on the aforementioned pairings, I kind of forgot about Keiichi… and Tsuyopon!
Here, it’s time to get athletic! Keiichi is participating in the 100-Meter Dash and Nozomi has taken notice! She goes there to check it out and even goes so far as to make him a custom towel. She goes to give it to him but she sees that she’s not the only one who has been paying attention to him. She gets discouraged and runs off but Keiichi chases after her. He teases her a little bit; however, he begins to realize that whenever he’s around her, he feels a bit strange! (We all know what that means!) He goes to Tsuyopon for advice but I wouldn’t say he gets anything concrete out of him. It looks as if he’s going to have to figure things out on his own even though he has a good idea what’s going on.
After that, we’re right back to our main couples. Tsutsui is mustering up the courage to tell Anna how she feels. Meanwhile, Hashiba is still in limbo. He’s not sure what to do because every time he tries to approach Anna, she distances herself from him. In fact, everyone has been keenly aware that she hasn’t been herself since coming back from the class trip. Despite this, everyone is growing tired of their wheels spinning but who will make the first move? Tomoya has a chat with Tsutsui who has made up her mind. She will be the one to get the ball rolling, figuring that the faster she gets rejected, the quicker everyone can move forward!
As the fateful moment nears, how will Anna take her confession?
Characters
While I was enjoying our two main couples for a while, we did kind of forget about Keiichi, didn’t we? Glad we got to focus on him because with there only being five volumes left in the series, he needed some love, too (both figuratively and literally.) With the way things played out in this chapter, it looks as if Nozomi is going to be the one to end up with him… unless they just string us along and he goes in a completely different direction. At this stage of the game, I don’t see that happening because there just isn’t enough time to develop things properly so it has to be Nozomi x Keiichi in the end. It will be interesting to see how this ends up.
Does anyone else feel that because Tusyopon already has a girlfriend he’s just been sent into the shadow realm and only pulled out on rare occasions?
Other than Keiichi, the only other big development this time around was Tsutsui and while not much has changed with her, she did finally steel herself and decide to confess her feelings to Anna. After that, that’s where her true development will take place because either she will become shattered and decide not to bother with anyone ever again thinking that it’s her past relapsing, or she’ll run to Tomoya and we’ll get our ship (hint, it’s most likely the latter here). Although, the former would be interesting and Tomoya could be the one to snap her out of it but… we’ve had enough drama with her. It’s time for her to go through this pain to find her flowers and be happy!
Final Thoughts
Only three actual chapters this time around. We did get two bonus Rainbow Weather chapters to round things out which were fun. Nice to see Keiichi brought back into the fold along with the main couples getting advanced, albeit just a little bit. The only issue that I have is that it tried to end on a cliffhanger but it’s not truly a cliffhanger. They wanted to make you believe that Anna’s decision / Tsutsui’s confession was this “hold your breath” moment but it’s already been well established that Anna and Hashiba are going to end up together. They are the MCs of this little romance so it would make zero sense to build an entire series around them only to throw a monkey wrench into those expectations this late into the game.
I think it would have been better for this volume to end with Anna rejecting Tsutsui, have her run away in tears, end up with Tomoya’s arms with Hashiba looking on with Tomoya saying “Looks like it’s up to you now.” That would be a cool way to set up the finale and lead us into, what I would perceive to be, a typical epilogue. But, I’m not the author of this story so who am I to say how it should go? It’s only my job to sit back and see how it goes, right?
And that’s what we all will do once Volume 12 drops!
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media.
