On my second-to-last visit to my local library, I saw on the shelves Volume 2 of something called “Rainbow and Black”.
The blurb on the back made it sound mildly interesting, but I couldn’t very well start with Volume 2, now could I? So I went into the library catalog online and reserved a copy of Volume 1 (which they thankfully had), and it came in yesterday. Unfortunately, I had to work, and could not go and pick it up until this afternoon.
The basic synopsis of the series is that protagonist Kuroe Shirahoshi (beautiful Japanese wordplay on the words for black “kuro” and white “shiro/a” there, on par with My Hero Academia), a woman who “sees things in only black and white” one night finds a strange and adorable animal abandoned on the side of the road. This feathered mouse creature is Niji, a “Rainbow-Colored Heavenly Parrot”, a rare animal that defies all description and classification.
Now, before you say anything-This is a slice-of-life manga more than anything. Niji is not a magical talking animal from another world. He did not name himself, and he only speaks in a disturbingly knowledgeable parroting of phrases that he hears. Kuroe is not a sorcerer, nor does she fall into another world like every other manga protagonist seems to do these days. She’s just a regular Japanese college student who still lives with her mother in (I think) Tokyo. She even uses social media (to a degree).
While this is probably one of the funniest manga I’ve picked up in a while, with a ton of visual gags and gobbledygook nonsense, all stemming from the actions of Niji, the story blurbs themselves are a tad misleading.
There is all this implication that Niji’s presence will somehow help expand Kuroe’s world to help her accept that some things are not “all black and white”, but there is little of that actually happening in the first volume. Kuroe remains steadfast in her life philosophy, and Niji doesn’t actually seem to be doing much in the way of changing that.
Truth be told, Volume 1 reads more like a calming slice-of-life exotic pet care informational manga than anything really thinky or life-altering.
And Kuroe’s whole problem seems very ill-defined to me. Seeing things in all black and white, to me, means all-or-nothing, right or wrong, Up or Down and so forth. Either something is or it isn’t. Either something is wrong or it’s right. But I see little of that in the personal problems that she shows us in Volume 1. All that I see of her is that she’s a stickler for the rules and doing what’s right, and that she has some social problems that eerily mirror my own as an autistic man.
But, in Volume 1’s defense, Kuroe does wind up making friends with a fellow Rainbow-Colored Heavenly Parrot owner on social media, and winds up meeting up with her IRL and spending time with her as a friend…in the very last chapter [that it contained].
But I don’t regret having read this manga. It was funny and heartfelt, tugging on the strings of one’s heart with its depictions of pet-and-owner love relationships. Niji is cute and weird at the same time. There is no mystery or violence or romance in this manga, and that is weirdly fine, given what it actually is.
It may not be much, but I think I will try to keep up with this series, whenever and wherever I find it on the shelves.
