Title: Rainbow Days Vol. 15
Author: Minami Mizuno
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: April 1, 2025
The Story
Tsuyupon made his decision as to what he’s going to do about college and his relationship with Yukiko. He drops the news on everyone, and then they go to the cafeteria to eat lunch. Keiichi ends up leaving early and heads to the nurse’s office to get some life counseling. While he’s in there, Nozomi shows up and has a bit of a talk with him, but something seems off. She goes to visit Keiichi’s brother, and now it’s his turn to stumble in to get the “life counseling” excuse. They end up walking out of school together, ending up in a bit of an argument. She senses that something is off about Keiichi, but he refuses to open up. When she reminds him about her love confession and how he completely blew her off, he acts like he doesn’t care, and it sends her home in tears.
Of course, Mattsun is going to hear all about it, so he confronts Keiichi, and they go at it verbally. Everyone realizes that something needs to be done, so they go to see Taizou for advice. He mentions that something like this has happened before, back when they were in junior high school. He mentions how he snapped out of it after talking to a tutor, entering high school, and meeting everyone. They decide to hold a bit of an intervention for him.
Some words get said; however, they end up getting through to Keiichi. Despite getting him to open up about the way he’s been feeling, it’s up to him whether or not he’s going to follow through and try to change. This brings us to our final story arc. The gang is getting ready to go through graduation and leave their high school lives behind!
Characters
While things started off with Tsuyopon, this volume heavily focused on Keiichi.
The big theme here centers around Keiichi still being a “child.” In short, he’s afraid of being left behind, which is why he talked about wanting time to stop back at the cabin. He makes a few references to time passing by more quickly the closer they get to graduation, when he’s talking to the nurse. In short, he doesn’t want all of the fun times to end and is scared that once everyone goes off to college, they will take different paths and they’ll leave him behind.
It’s natural to be scared once your friends drift away… especially since the majority of high school friendships don’t last. People move on with their lives, and that means going to different colleges, starting careers, raising families, moving to other parts of the country, etc. Life happens, and things don’t always stay the same, and that is exactly what Keiichi fears. In a way, he’s a bit selfish here because he’s not taking anyone else’s viewpoints into account. He’s only thinking about himself and his happiness, and how everything is going to affect him and him alone. He’s scared to face the future alone and doesn’t want that. It’s almost as if he wants everyone around him to drop everything they are doing in life just to make sure he has access to that same level of friendship and fun 24/7. That’s just an impossibility, and he can’t handle the thought of that.
This is why they called him a child, because that is exactly how a child would think. Growing up, a child’s parents are like their security net. No matter what happens, they know that they will have their parents to fall back on… to get them out of tough situations… that they won’t ever let them be alone to fend for themselves. That’s how Keiichi sees his friends, but what puzzles me is that Taizou said he went through this before in junior high, but he eventually got over it and found new friends. So, he knows that the loneliness isn’t going to last forever, but it’s as if he cannot process that.
The important part is that he realized what was happening (even if everyone practically had to beat some sense into him), and is willing to look forward to the future and embrace the change, albeit with a little less reluctance than before. We’ll see how he ends up in what should be the epilogue in our final volume.
Final Thoughts
The only issue I have with this volume is that the series is waiting until the very end to focus on Tsuyopon and Keiichi, and now it feels as if they are cramming as much story as possible into these last few volumes to make them relevant again after ignoring them for the majority of the series. I mean, I get it… Anna x Hashiba was the main attraction, so a lot of attention had to be placed on them; however, there are better ways to balance things. Now, because it seems as if they are in panic mode to cram as much story into these two forgotten characters, Anna, Hashiba, Tsutsui, and Tomoya feel like afterthoughts.
I know we have one last volume to go to wrap everything up and give everyone an epilogue, but I just felt the attention could have been spread around a bit more evenly throughout the series. Outside of that, this was a good volume, though. Keiichi overcoming his insecurities about the future is a nice big step for his character; however, we still have a bit more to go… especially when it comes to Nozomi. There were some steps taken here to help get us in the right direction, but nothing that got us to the destination. I’m assuming that will be saved for the wrap-up.
This was a very character-centric volume, with the only true story progression being their graduation. Then again, with the amount of development given here to Keiichi, keeping the story withheld until the final volume was probably a smart decision. Looking forward to seeing how this one wraps up!
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