Four male friends and their uneven romantic lives give Minami Mizuno’s Rainbow Days its ensemble structure. Rainbow Days follows four male high-school friends—Natsuki, Tomoya, Keiichi and Tsuyoshi—whose very different personalities create overlapping romantic problems rather than one central couple dominating the series. Natsuki’s feelings for Anna provide an early thread, but the manga keeps returning to the friendship among the boys and to the girls around them as relationships develop at different speeds. Mizuno’s art is bright and expressive, and the tone is funny, relaxed and more interested in everyday school life than large melodramatic twists. The strongest shelf associations are shōjo manga, ensemble romance, school comedy and friends-to-lovers reading for fans of light character-driven series. Read more Less