Rainbow Days

Prewarning: If you want something intellectually challenging, or awe-inspiring, this isn't for you. If you don't mind stereotypical plots, a bit of laughter, and are looking for something simple to watch and not think too much about: Sure, go watch this, knock yourself out and have some fun fawning over cute characters. I really enjoyed this show at the start, and had it ended after one cour I'd probably have given it an 8. To begin with the characters are fun and there was no major drama. Sure it played on typical relationships and character types, but in a light-hearted and happy-go-lucky manner. What was alsogreat was how the story looked into the side characters almost as much as the main... The art is cute, sound is appropriate but nothing inspiring, characters are fun and fairly simple. It was a great de-stress anime. Unfortunately, the anime seriously flat lined towards the end. The last few episodes were over-dramatic, uncalled for, and seriously boring as the heroine struggles to find her own emotions in an unrealistically lengthy manner. Side characters lose their screen time and it ends up being lengthy, repetitive monologues with a tag line of 'I don't know what to do' 'I am so confused'. The ending lacks climax and denounment, I've heard this is getting a second season but honestly if they'd just put some work into the last 3 or 4 episodes it could have been a perfect stand-alone anime.

At first glance, one would think that this is a yaoi anime, but even without the "shounen-ai" tag, it's not. It's one of those rare romance anime where the main characters are the same gender, but the romance is heterosexual. When I first saw this anime, I thought probably the same thing as anyone else who was unfamiliar with this anime before it aired, "This is going to be another borderline-yaoi anime, is it?" Then, I read the description, and my curiosity was piqued. For that reason, I ended up watching it when it premiered, and I must say that it was a fun animeto watch. Ladies and gentlemen, here is my review of "Nijiiro Days". Nijiiro Days follows four high school boys, Natsuki Hashiba, Tomoya Matsunaga, Keiichi Katakura, and Tsuyoshi Naoe, as they go through their high school lives. One Christmas Eve, Natsuki gets dumped by his girlfriend, and as he is crying about it, he is handed some tissues by a girl wearing a Santa outfit; at that moment, he falls for that girl. He later runs into the girl, Anna Kobayakawa, at school, and he tries to get closer to her while his friends try to meddle in their relationship. Every once in a while, the focus shifts from Natsuki to one of the other three boys as they deal with their own love-related problems; Mari Tsutsui is Anna's man-hating best friend who Tomoya ends up liking, Nozomi Matsunaga is Tomoya's younger sister who has feelings for Keiichi (while Tomoya does not approve), and Yukiko Asai is Tsuyoshi's cosplaying girlfriend. It's a rather easygoing story with comedic moments sprinkled in here and there. It's really a breath of fresh air, though; after all, all of the main characters are male, but since all of their love interests are female, there is no way one can consider this a "borderline-yaoi" anime at all. Luckily, these heterosexual relationships are, for the most part, believable. The one exception may be the one between Tomoya and Mari; I honestly felt more "hate" than "love" in their relationship, but at the very least, it was given a bit of development. I really liked Natsuki and Anna's relationship, though; it was fun to watch as their relationship grew. However, I really would have liked some more development on the relationships between Keiichi and Nozomi and Tsuyoshi and Yukirin; however, I guess what we get is what we have. (Hopefully, there is more development to those two relationships in the manga....) The animation, done by Production Reed, wasn't anything too ground-breaking, but for an anime as simple as this one, it's more than acceptable. It definitely had bright colors, and with a title that translates to "Rainbow Days", I think that fits quite well. As for the voice acting, the voice actors did a great job with their respective characters. The music was also great, too; I liked every single one of the opening and ending themes. The best one, however, was the third ending theme, "'I Wanna Be Your Knight" by Takuya Eguchi, Tomoya's voice actor; it just sounds so cool with an amazing singer to boot! Overall, Nijiiro Days was a good anime. If you're in the mood for an easygoing slice-of-life anime with romance sprinkled in, this is the anime for you. These rainbow-colored days cannot be forgotten about!

Nijiro Days is as fulfilling as watching someone else eat delicious cake. It's taunting you with something amazing, something that you could have. But ultimately you're let down. This anime had so many problems. I can't help but get angry because of it. On the surface, it's a quick, fluffy romance anime with male leads instead of female ones. This is a unique twist on the shoujo romance genre, but this twist is wasted on Nijiro Days. This is no better than a boring shoujo with female leads. My major problem with the series is the characters. They are a lackluster, meaningless cast, and I felt noattachment to any of them, even though I've gone through the hardships of crushes and unrequited love before. Let's go down the list of couples, analyzing each. The Main Couple is Bland Anna Kobayakawa and Typical Shoujo Girl Natsuki Hashiba. Anna is a typical Mary Sue. She doesn't figure out her feelings for Natsuki until the last moment. She has little to no emotions; one of the four main characters even mentions her emotionless face. I rarely got to see her smile. I can deal with detached characters, but she really was empty. Her character had no depth. She was nice but in the way that everyone is nice. She works at a karaoke place. Other than that, I can't tell you a single one of her likes or traits. She was a boring character; that's it. And Natsuki...sigh. He had real potential, you know? He could have been a heart-on-your-sleeve, comedic relief, lovable guy. What we got was less than average. He was more like the typical shoujo manga girl. As if the creators wanted to make him relatable to the females in the audience. I've met guys who have unrequited crushes on girls. They don't act like that. They're defensive at times and make jokes. Natsuki ended up being more of a squealing typical shoujo character. I liked that the main characters were guys crushing on girls; I thought that had real promise, but Natsuki ended up way too stereotypical for me to care about him. And the romance between the two is innocent and kinda cute, but Anna takes way too many hints and throws them out of the window. It took way too long for the main romance to even become a thing in her eyes. Way too long. Read my full review here: http://thelitaku.blogspot.com/2017/06/i-have-no-crush-on-nijiro-days-review.html

What Norn9: Norn+Nonet couldn't do, Nijiro Days did better with LESS screentime, ohh well ok nearly the same screentime but whatever. Nijiro Days being an anime short consisting of 24 episodes with only 10 minutes is about the 4 differing relationships of the four main boys of the anime short. As such LA is very thankful that this anime short has this kind of screentime let alone episode count as it would have been rushed to all hell, nonetheless due to this the majority of the relationships go in depth to. Though LA says this, the majority of the focus goes to Natsuki "Na-chan" Hashiba voiced byYoshitsugu Matsuoka and Anna Kobayakawa voiced by Minami Tsuda's relationship from friends to a couple. The other closest relationship with this kind of focus goes to the incredibly shaky relationship of Tomoya "Mat-tsun" Matsunaga voiced by Takuya Eguchi and Anna's best friend Mari Tsutsui voiced by Yumi Uchiyama. Unfortunately the other two relationships of Yukiko Asai voiced by Shizuka Ishigami and Tsuyoshi "Tsuyo-pon" Naoe voiced by Kouki Uchiyama as well as Keiichi "Kei-chan" Katakura voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki and Tomoya's little sister, Nozomi Matsunaga voiced by Ai Kayano gets *ahem* pushed aside for the other two more focused relationships and are more or less B plot relationships with Tsuyoshi and Yukiko's relationship was already formed before the anime thus didn't have enough meat and Keiichi and Nozomi's relationship started rather late to get a proper focus respectively. LA's favourite relationship oddly enough however goes to Tomoya and Mari's relationship, yes LA could say that Mari's constant bickering to Tomoya got annoying rather quickly but their development helped a bit more especially with Mari's defrosting and deredere moments. The animation by Production Reed at best is above average for an anime short and LA had really no problem with the animation at all. Voice acting wise, there was an annoying voice acting mainly from Yumi Uchiyama who voiced Mari but she got better over time (away from her bitchy vocals anyways), however LA's favourite voice actor in Nijiro Days would actually be Shizuka Ishigami who voiced Yukiko and really LA wanted to see more of Yukiko but again for her character' circumstances, LA could see why she couldn't. The ending for Nijro Days gave us something of an "ok" ending as the entire focus for the final few episodes went to Anna Kobayakawa's revelation about her relationship to Hashiba and really it's the typical "can't spit it out" by the end of the anime, ohh Anna finally gets her revelation about her growth to her relationship to Hashiba but she just doesn't take the move to grow it even further, nonetheless, the sentiment was nice, the ending also the narrow focus, all the other relationships are put in limbo to give the focus to the main couple of Hashiba and Anna, it's a bit of compensation at least but LA wished the focus was split a bit more to the rest of cast and their relationship. The ending is really a double-edged sword but LA overall was slightly satisfied with this ending. Nijiro Days is a great romance anime short to the anime short medium that looks at many stages of a relationship with lots of growth to the multiple relational developments, sure the focus tends to go to Mari and Tomoya and especially Anna and Hashiba while the other two relationships turned into a pseudo-growth/supporting characters to the above relationships. Nonetheless Nijiro Days is a soft-fluffy puppy-love anime short with some good payoff of relationship growth here and there.