Title: Rainbow Days Vol. 16
Author: Minami Mizuno
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 197
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: June 3, 2025
Final Thoughts
We have finally arrived at the final volume of Rainbow Days! Volume 16 serves as a series of epilogues that takes us through the basketball team, Keiichi/Nozomi, Matsunaga/Tsutsui, Tsuyopon/Yukirin, Hashiba/Anna, and finally, their graduation trip. While the epilogues were all nice, they all carried a single theme with them, emboldening and solidifying their relationships along with looking towards the future.
Looking back on the series, I would sum it up with a single word: fun. Our four main characters had a great dynamic with one another, playing off of their personalities perfectly. You get the feeling that these are four friends with a deep connection to one another, and the past couple of volumes that dug into the relationship clearly show that these will be four friends who will be together for the rest of their lives.
Each one had their own romantic interests to chase, all with their unique set of challenges. Hashiba’s challenge of becoming a man worthy of Anna, a girl who wasn’t quite sure what love was, Matsu overcoming a challenge with Spit Girl’s deep hatred for men, and Keiichi overcoming his challenge of maturity and fears of being abandoned. I left out Tsuyopon because he seemed like the only one who didn’t have much in the way of challenges outside of making the tough decision to go to the same college as Nozomi or embark on a long-distance relationship.
The development of each relationship was truly unique and didn’t feel forced or contrived, with one exception, when this series fell into the same trap that a lot of other romance series do, and they introduced a rival for Hashiba when there was no need to do so. Artificial drama feels so cheap and like a complete waste of time. If anything, that is the only true negative mark I can put on this series.
While there were no major (or weird) hooks, this was a series that didn’t need any. Rainbow Days is just four high school friends finding love and being there for each other through good times and bad, even if some of those bad times were with one another. The series emphasized an honest and realistic lens into the lives of ordinary teenagers and managed to pull off a compelling narrative without the usage of heavy tropes or gimmicks (minus the school festival arcs because we will NEVER escape those… EVER.)
Some may complain about that because there are those out there who openly seek that weird trope or hook to make the romance more interesting; however, I think that Minami Mizuno did a phenomenal job with making this series interesting enough to where you can enjoy it from beginning to end without such gimmicks, and it was all thanks in part to great character development.
Now, even though I just sang its praises, I have to take a step back here and call out the fact that since the manga did play it safe, that might not be someone’s cup of tea. Some people might find this series to be either average or slightly above average, and they would be right. Rainbow Days doesn’t do anything to reinvent the wheel, nor does it take many risks. There isn’t anything wrong with that, except for the fact that it might not do enough to stand out for some people, truly. Rainbow Days is the type of manga that you can read from beginning to end, enjoy what you’ve read, and probably leave on your bookshelf. It’s the kind where you can probably easily recall the events that happened, but not the kind of manga you’ll text your friend about immediately and tell them that it’s a must-read-before-you-die series.
I guess the best way to sum up this manga is that it’s a fun comfort read. Just a good, solid romance series.
Overall Score: 3.5 / 5
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media.
