Rainbow Days


Rainbow Days is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by. It was serialized in Shueisha's manga magazine Bessatsu Margaret from December 2011 to March 2017, with its chapters collected in sixteen volumes. A drama CD was released with the seventh volume of the manga in October 2014. A 24-episode anime adaptation produced by Production Reed aired between January and June 2016. A live-action film was released in 2018.

Plot

The manga follows four high school boys who are all friends. They do not belong to any club and just like to hang out with each other. Natsuki, the protagonist, is a hopeless romantic who has a crush on a girl named Anna who he met after his ex-girlfriend dumped him. He realizes he is in love with Anna and with the support of his three friends, he tries to show her how he feels in hopes of a relationship. However, he is faced with many obstacles.

Characters

Main characters

;Natsuki Hashiba
;Tomoya Matsunaga
;Keiichi Katakura
;Tsuyoshi Naoe
;Anna Kobayakawa
;Mari Tsutsui
;Yukiko Asai
;Nozomi Matsunaga

Other characters

;Taizou Sanada
;Wataru Mochizuki
;Shinsuke Nezu
;Chiba
;Yuuji Katakura
;Satomi-sensei
;Masaomi Tsutsui

Media

Manga

Written and illustrated by, Rainbow Days was serialized in Shueisha's manga magazine Bessatsu Margaret from 13 December 2011 to 3 March 2017. Shueishha collected its chapters in fifteen volumes, released from 25 May 2012 to 25 April 2017. A spin-off volume was released on 25 June 2018. A drama CD was bundled together with the seventh volume as a limited edition in October 2014.
In February 2022, Viz Media announced that they had licensed the series for English publication. In France, the first volume was published by Kazé Manga on 3 February 2016 and the second volume was released on 13 April 2016. In Indonesia, it was licensed by Elex Media Komputindo.

Volumes

Anime

An anime television series adaptation was announced in the September 2015 issue of Bessatsu Margaret. Tetsuro Amino served as chief director with Tomohiko Ohkudo directing at the animation studio Production Reed. Aki Itami handled series composition. The voice cast from the drama CD reprised their roles for the anime. The series debuted on 10 January 2016 with each episode 14 minutes length. Sonar Pocket performed the series' opening theme song titled "Best Friend", while its ending theme, "Rainbow Days!", was performed by Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, Takuya Eguchi, Nobunaga Shimazaki, and Kouki Uchiyama, the voice actors for Natsuki Hashiba, Tomoya Matsunaga, Keiichi Katakura, and Tsuyoshi Naoe, respectively. The anime is listed with a total of 24 episodes in the six Blu-ray and DVD volumes.

Live-action film

A live-action film adaptation directed by Ken Iizuka and distributed by Shochiku was released in Japanese theaters on 6 July 2018. Rainbow Days opened at #3 on opening weekend and sold 87,000 tickets with a box office gross of. The film was also screened with English subtitles at the Japanese Film Festival 2018 in Australia.

Reception

The manga has had over 3 million copies in print.