Rascal Does Not Dream lights up the Enoshima sky the night after its final film opens
The Fujisawa Enoshima Fireworks Festival on October 17 will fire a 30-minute show set to the series' music, with announcements from Mai Sakurajima, one day after Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dear Friend reaches Japanese theaters.
Sakuta and Mai's story is ending, and the seaside town it calls home is giving it a send-off. The Fujisawa Enoshima Fireworks Festival, held October 17 on the Nishihama stretch of Katase beach in Kanagawa, has partnered with Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dear Friend, the movie that concludes the franchise.
Between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m., the display will be choreographed to tracks from the franchise's soundtrack, and Mai Sakurajima will voice original announcements while the shells burst overhead. Anyone watching from home can tune in to live radio coverage on Radio Shonan (FM 83.1) or watch on J:COM TV; the festival also has a YouTube live stream, though that feed will not carry the music. Stormy weather cancels the event outright, as no backup date has been set.
The tie-in also shows up around town. From roughly October 9, posters roll out across Enoshima island, Fujisawa's city hall and its tourism center, the Katase Enoshima tourist office, the Katase Subana shopping street, and Odakyu line stations running from Katase-Enoshima up to Chuo-Rinkan. The Shonan Fujisawa Film Commission posted the details on September 26.
The date sits one day after the film premieres in Japan on October 16. Dear Friend picks up after the 2025 TV season Rascal Does Not Dream of Santa Claus and is billed as finally revealing what lies behind "Puberty Syndrome," the phenomenon that has afflicted students throughout. CloverWorks animates again: Soichi Masui directs, Masahiro Yokotani writes and oversees the scripts, Satomi Tamura handles character designs, and fox capture plan scores it. Asami Seto and Kaito Ishikawa are back as Mai and Sakuta.
TV viewers first met the pair in 2018 in Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai. The source novels by Hajime Kamoshida, with art by Keji Mizoguchi, started in April 2014 on ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Bunko imprint and ended with their last volume on October 10, 2024.
