Rascal Does Not Dream Of A Knapsack Kid - light novel

         Rascal Does Not Dream Of A Knapsack Kid (青春ブタ野郎はランドセルガールの夢を見ない) is a the ninth volume of the Rascal Does Not Dream light novels written by Kamoshida Hajime featuring artwork by Mizogushi Keeji.  The ninth volume was originally release in 2018 and in English in 2022.

      The following synopsis may spoil some aspects of the first eight novels in the Rascal Does Not Dream series, if you do not want to ruin those stories stop reading until you have.  

Book Eight: Rascal Does Not Dream Of A Sister Venturing Out review here!

      Sakuta has a strange dream about a young girl who looks like Mai when she acted in her first roll.  The girl appears lost on Shichirigahama beach.  He talks to her, trying to understand what is going on but in the end he is more puzzled.  He is almost positive the girl is Mai, but none of that makes sense.  He sees her again, but this time he isn't sleeping, before he can find out anything his Mai arrives, leaving the girl to disappear like the wind when he turns around.  He doesn't have a lot of time to sort anything out as Mai has sprung a surprise meeting with her mother, following her graduation ceremony.  The meeting is tense as the two women are still at odds with each other.  Mai's mother none the less approves of Sakuta.  Back at his home, celebrating with dinner, Mai surprises him with a marriage certificate.  She claims it is a good luck talisman for his studies and when the time is right they will make it official.  In addition, his father calls with news that their mother is finally in a mental state to see Kaede.  Apprehension sets in for both of the siblings, as they will be seeing their mom for the first time since they moved.

    After Kaede's graduation ceremony they take the trip to the apartment their parents live, a place different from their home as a family.  Kaede is overcome with anxiety over how her mom will react but once they enter the living area of the small apartment the apprehension melts away and they being talking like no time had passed.  The visit has gone so well that Kaede ends up staying the night with them, leaving Sakuta to return to their apartment, not wanting to abandon their cat.  The next morning he wakes up to the strangeness that is an almost empty house.  It isn't until he is seated in homeroom that he realizes something is terribly wrong.  He is suddenly suffering from the same 'adolescent syndrome' that Mai had gone through when they first met, almost a year earlier.  Sakuta is suddenly non-existent.  Unfortunately the person he feels that can pull him back into reality, Mai, is out of town working.  He heads back to his parents apartment but his mother and sister do not see him.  In a fury of emotions he flees to the safety of the beach, the beach that he has been saved at more than once.  As if by design, the young version of Mai appears, even though it is late at night.  She leads him to the train and he falls into a restful slumber, the sound of the train comforting him with its lullaby.  He wakes to find himself in his bed, in the house he originally lived with his parents.  They can see him, they know who he is, but this is not his life, things are different and he understands he needs to return to his real life and correct his problem.  

   I will be honest, I wasn't excited to be revisiting the same 'adolescent syndrome' we went through in the first volume.  I was disappointed that we didn't get an new problem to solve, some fantastic new complexity and narrative gymnastics.  Instead we tread some already travel paths.  Beyond that it is nice to have the narration continue to move forward, into the future of the characters.  Too many stories particularly manga, stick with a small window of time.  Even though we have only covered about ten months across all nine volumes, it doesn't seem like there is an end to the story, even if we are seeing some repetition.  There are some threads for future issues that are being laid, taking us into a new sphere of conflict.  There was a moment of panic where I thought Sakuta was going to be reset to a time in the past, not end up in a parallel world, replacing that version of him.  This volume feels similar to Your Name and the final Kimagure Orange Road movie, at least the second half of the story where Sakuta is in full blown 'adloescnet syndrome' mode and I started to enjoy it more.

    In the end this was a good continuation of the franchise, it didn't have the drive and tension that early volumes did, but it did dig deep into Sakuta's psyche.  We see him try to work through his own issues this time, taking the experiences he has gained helping everyone else.  He realizes he has to work through this on his own, but in reality, he can't do everything alone, needing to still lean on those that are important to him.  But there was never any doubt that a positive resolution would be reached.  Instead we are set up for a shift in narration and a time skip.  But this is really the least enjoyable volume so far.  The next volumes could be quite interesting as we see an entirely new phase in the life of our slacker protagonist.

Book Ten: Rascal Does Not Dream OF A Lost Singer review here!