Rainbow Days is a soundly mediocre effort from Production Reed, a studio that doesn’t seem to produce anything really good in the first place, unless you count derivative magical-girl fare or antiquated spacebots stuff. Experience in those genres doesn’t seem to have translated over to Rainbow Days, which is described as a slice-of-life/romance effort that follows the story of four boys who are good friends. One of them wants to date this girl, and his friends meddle, and that’s it. That’s the plot.

But slice-of-life plots aren’t necessarily boring. In their own ways, they can be quite insightful and entertaining, and I’ve never turned up my nose at a properly done romance. The premise of Rainbow Days doesn’t exactly send sparks flying, but I gave Rainbow Days a shot anyway. I can now categorically inform you that you can skip this paean to studied mediocrity.

Rainbow Days is supposed to be a slice-of-life and a romance. But in romance, the #1 most important requirement is that you care about both participants in the romance. Rainbow Days fails epically at this.

There’s no character to care about in Rainbow Days at all, actually, as the main quartet of boys is only distinguishable by hair color and The Girl is only different because she’s The Girl. The blonde guy is supposed to be the peppy and cheerful type, so it’s vaguely interesting that he’s pushed into a role at the forefront, as that trope is usually relegated to sidekick status. We aren’t introduced to any indicator of depth in his personality or relationship with his friends that would indicate that he’s an object of interest in his own right, though, so we have no reason to care about his attachment to The Girl.

As for The Girl, she could be any girl in the entire world as long as she was reasonably pretty. She barely speaks, doesn’t emote, and is mysteriously ill. She is, in short, the same trope in 2016 which Rei Ayanami was created in 1995 to deconstruct. The trope is as tired and uninteresting now as it was back then. Two characters who don’t stand on their own can’t engage in any kind of interesting romance.

When it comes to slice-of-life, you need to have a life worth looking at, richly imagined and as richly executed. The devil’s in the details when it comes to slice-of-life; even the sleepiest backwater has its own points of interest to offer. But we don’t even know what town Rainbow Days is set in. We know nothing about the lives of our four color-coded protagonists nor does the show give any indication that it ever plans to show us anything about them.

In Rainbow Days , “slice-of-life” appears to be code for “no plot no problem.” But devoid of the minute, loving attention to detail that a good slice-of-life demands, Rainbow Days is left with nothing but the ramshackle excuse for a romance to serve as a plot. At the end of the day the most interesting and realistic character in the show is the friendship between all four characters, and even that’s run a little thin.

Their banter has a glimmer of real humor and likeability, and the voice actors are as charming as possible within the tight constrictions of their roles, but that’s it. A show with pretty cardboard and some limp banter and The Sickly Girl as love interest? No thank you.

Finally, neither the animation nor the coloring is any good. For the coloring to be bad in a show that’s color-coded is painful. Rainbow Days is obviously intended to appeal to the shoujo audience, but you have to put a little more effort into the details to get those dollars. The hair of the main quartet is barely shaded and appears to be colored with a simple gradient owing less to style and more to ease of production. Characters in the background don’t even blink, and simple actions like lifting a glass look choppy. The studio is so chary of their animation budget that the show looks like a flipbook.

At least the voice acting is lively.

In short: should you watch ‘Rainbow Days’?

No. It’s dull, it has no characters worth rooting for, it has no plot, it has no originality, the art is mediocre, and it depicts nothing. It feels like a production studio took a long yawn and this just happened. Don’t bother.

Rainbow Days airs on Funimation here with new simulcast episodes at 10:30 AM eastern.