2 April 2016: In re Rainbow Days
Sure, just stand there watching her sleep. It's not weird or nothin'.
I only started watching Nijiiro Days (Rainbow Days) because I thought it was going to be about a dude getting cockblocked by his friends as he attempts to hook up with some girl from his school. It turns out I was dead wrong about a critical part of that premise (his friends are actually trying to help him get with the girl), but it also turned out the show is pretty good even without cockblocking, jerkface friends.
Natsuki worries Anna's slovenly appearance means she has recently had the sex.
Potato-kun—and he's totally Potato-kun—has a crush on a dull girl who sort of has the same hair style as Arcueid Brunestud from Tsukihime. Early in the series, he's worried he doesn't have a chance with her because he thinks she regularly bails out of her classes to copulate with Cool Teacher during school hours. Naturally, this is a bullshit misunderstanding on his part. Not Arcueid is the sort of girl who needs a lot of naps, not dick, to get her through each day. Oh, and Cool Teacher basically disappears from the show once we learn that Not Arcueid already sort of likes Potato-kun too.
You can tell he's the cool teacher because he dresses so sloppy.
At this point, it would sure be nice if Potato-kun and Not Arcueid could just have some sort of happy romance like Kare Kano (except with dimwits), or maybe make the show about various other potential romances around them, like in Hatsukoi Limited. Well, we don't get the former because God damn Potato-kun and Not Arcueid are too stupid to get together even though they clearly like each other and everyone knows it, but we sort of get the latter because the two of them have friends who are a lot more interesting than them.
Default expression.
Notably, Not Arcueid has a purple-haired lesbian friend who is sort of in love with her and pretty hostile towards anyone who might come between them. (Not Arcueid might be Purple-Haired Girl's only friend.) Incidentally, Purple-Haired Girl is not tsundere, okay, for the same reason Soryu Asuka Langley is not tsundere either. (Those of you insisting otherwise are as wrong as the people who think Asuka has twin-tails. But I digress.) Purple-Haired Girl is tsun-tsun to a lot of people, but is dere-dere to Not Arcueid. That's only false tsundere unless she eventually gives up the dere-dere to Sex Offender.
You can tell sexual assault is imminent because you can't see his eyes.
Sex Offender is one of Potato-kun's friends, and I call him that even though he's only sexually assaulted Purple-Haired Girl one-and-a-half times. I'm actually rooting for Sex Offender and Purple-Haired Girl to get together. I enjoy their angry hijinks. Sex Offender also has a kid sister. She got introduced sort of late in the show, so I don't know too much about her except that Kid Sister has a crush on BDSM Guy. BDSM Guy is a sadist who gets a lot of girlfriends, but can't keep any of them because none of them enjoy the bondage or getting whipped. Aside from being aroused at hurting people, he seems to be an all right sort of guy and hasn't ruined Kid Sister for marriage yet at least.
She's not yandere, she's just cosplaying a Linux distro with dependency problems.
Potato-kun's only friend with a healthy relationship is Tired Guy who seems exhausted all the time for reasons I can't understand and on which I don't care to conjecture. Oh, Tired Guy is dating someone from a different school, Cosplay Sex Girlfriend. They seem okay together, although she always seems to have a lot more energy than he does.
The power of lesbianism.
Anyway, Rainbow Days is an all right show that's still sort of about romance even if Not Arcueid is sort of slow and Potato-kun is God damn Ling Ling, the panda prude. The show is half-length, but it'll run for two cours. As far as I know, the cours aren't split, so I guess I'll be watching more Nijiiro Days this spring. Hopefully Tired Guy and his Cosplay Sex Girlfriend won't keep hogging that pot o' gold all by themselves.
