The Moon on a Rainy Night Volume 4 Review

Saki is close friends with, and secretly has a crush on, Kanon, a hard-of-hearing girl in her class. As the pair grow closer, Saki bumps into Kanon’s old school friend, Ayano, who confesses why she and Kanon no longer speak to one another, and warns Saki to not let herself get pushed aside for Kanon’s sake. Meanwhile, Kanon hears of a writing contest, and whilst trying to find inspiration, she ends up finding it much closer to home.

Admittedly when I first opened this book, I was a little disappointed. At the end of Volume 3, there was a big build-up on Saki’s side in terms of tension and romance, to the point where she was avoiding Kanon for a bit. Their relationship and, in turn, her feelings, grew a lot over the past two volumes: going to the movies together, Kanon revealing more of her past and her difficulties with her disability, and of course the sleepover with Saki feeling like her own confession was about to burst out of her. But in Volume 4, there’s little to no development of romance between the pair, outside of a small (maybe) spark from Kanon’s side and Saki pushing her feelings aside for now whilst dealing with the end-of-year choir performance. Considering how much tension was built over the last few volumes, I was saddened that we haven’t reached the confession yet. But that doesn’t mean it’s not to come, and that doesn’t mean that Volume 4 has nothing to offer. What this volume does instead, is bring our main characters forward in terms of development as separate people, rather than together.

As revealed in previous volumes, Kanon was a piano prodigy, but with her hearing loss also came a loss of her passion and future career prospects in the music industry (or at least in the way she wanted to be in it). But, as any creative knows, creativity never goes away, it simply changes to fit your circumstances and that’s what happens to Kanon. She writes for her school paper and ends up learning about a writing contest in her literature club and begins to seek inspiration for her writing. Her creative spark and process is nice to witness on the page. Her creativity coming out in a new way is also healthy for her. Instead of clinging to what she can no longer have, she’s finding new ways to express herself that don’t rely so heavily on her hearing. There’s also a nice moment for her and her mother when it comes to the choir. Kanon tries to sing the song completely on her own, and despite her mother being harsh in her criticism, she’s also overwhelmed that Kanon tried. It’s a really beautiful moment between the pair that rebuilds their strained relationship as well as showing that Kanon’s passion for music still shines, despite her disability.

At the start of the book, we continue where Volume 3 left off: Saki bumping into Ayano and learning the backstory of her and Kanon’s friendship. The first part, building up Ayano’s home life, how her parents relied so heavily on her to give up her teenage years to help raise her much younger siblings, was in the tail end of Volume 3. Volume 4 has the second half of the flashback, focusing on when the friendship breaks. Whilst Ayano says some very harsh words, you can totally understand where she’s coming from. Ayano’s struggles and trauma are much more ‘accepted’ in society, especially in situations where you’re supposed to put family first, honour mother and father (etc.) and can be easily waved off by school friends with ‘gotta help mum with the chores’ and so on. As a result, parentification is a lot easier to hide behind closed doors, and goes unnoticed. So, when Ayano finds herself also looking after Kanon due to her hearing loss, her load is much bigger. However, Kanon’s issues are far more visible and catered for, with support and understanding from others (from Ayano’s POV) so understandably, she breaks. She’s been stretched so thin that something was bound to break, and therefore lashes out at Kanon. But when she lashes out, she’s really lashing out at the life she’s been lumped with, as she cannot voice her worries to her family, so she does it to the only person who will listen and make her load lighter, even at the cost of a friendship. Whilst living with disability is very hard, it’s also easy to downplay how it impacts others, especially those who look after said disabled person; their life isn’t as hard as said disabled person’s, but also the carer can have unique stresses that those outside of that life can never understand. It’s that push and pull of guilt and anger that anyone, especially those who look after disabled people, can understand and empathise with.

Ayano tells all this to Saki to make sure that Saki doesn’t put her own needs to the side for Kanon’s sake. Will Saki listen to the advice? Perhaps, but so far not so much, as her feelings are still left unsaid. She also worries for Kanon in the upcoming choir contest, pushed into playing piano herself but also forced to work with another classmate who makes her negative feelings toward Kanon quite clear. We’ve seen this push and pull with Saki a lot over the course of the manga so far, but with a difference from Ayano. Saki does it out of her feelings for Kanon, and wanting to be closer to her, she’s also unfortunately used to being second fiddle in her own home, with little glimpses into her past showing that her mother often put her needs below others when growing up. This could lead to a big blow-up later on. Like Ayano, Saki will have her own breaking point but when will that be? Before or after her feelings for Kanon spill out? We’ll have to wait and see.

In the latter half of this book, Saki chooses the song for the choir, which ends up being Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s Ebony and Ivory, which is a really fitting track for this series and its themes. However, there’s a scene later where one male teacher practically info-dumps onto Kanon about the track and artists, which felt like just reading a Wikipedia article, rather than someone passionately talking about it (a translation issue? Not sure).

The latest volume of Moon on a Rainy Night (translated by Kevin Steinbach for Kodansha) is still an involving  read. The world and characters are so likeable and contain depths that make these chapters so enjoyable to read and discuss. Whilst the romance takes a back seat this time, there’s still plenty of development to absorb.

Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.