New Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dear Friend clip reunites Sakuta and Kaede

The final stretch of Rascal Does Not Dream keeps warming up. A special clip from Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dear Friend just dropped, and this time the leads are Sakuta and his sister Kaede, one of the most important bonds in the whole saga. The preview arrives with the film already out in Japan since October 16, 2026.

The video is the movie's second special preview and focuses entirely on the relationship between the two siblings. Its length has not been detailed, nor whether it will be distributed outside Japan, but seeing Kaede with weight in the promotion says a lot about the place she will have in this finale.

The campaign has been publishing a different heroine every Sunday at 8:00 p.m. Japan time for weeks. Mai Sakurajima opened the series on April 19 and Kaede took over on April 26 with an illustration accompanied by her own video. The image included a line that sums up much of her arc: "After all... I want to go to the same high school as my big brother."

The team saying goodbye to the saga

Soichi Masui returns to direct with CloverWorks handling animation. Masahiro Yokotani writes the script, Satomi Tamura is in charge of character designs, and fox capture plan composes the music. Aniplex distributes the film in Japan.

The cast brings back Kaito Ishikawa as Sakuta Azusagawa, Asami Seto as Mai Sakurajima, and Yurika Kubo as Kaede Azusagawa, joined by the rest of the franchise's usual actors.

The film adapts the Hajime Kamoshida novel that shares its title with the fifteenth and final main volume of the series, published in Japan in October 2024. Keji Mizoguchi provides the illustrations, and the work is released under ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Bunko label. Yen Press has licensed the novels and the manga in English.

A finale with reality at stake

In the story, Mai Sakurajima reveals that she is Touko Kirishima. From there, situations people had dreamed about start manifesting in reality, a hashtag dedicated to those dreams disappears without explanation, and Sakuta receives a message from another version of himself warning him to stop Touko Kirishima before reality is rewritten.

For those who want to catch up, Crunchyroll streams the two TV series, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (2018) and Rascal Does Not Dream of Santa Claus (2025), plus the three previous films: Dreaming Girl (2019), Sister Venturing Out (2023), and Knapsack Kid (2023).

The commercial bar was set high. Sister Venturing Out sold 118,108 tickets in its first three days and Knapsack Kid was around 119,000, numbers that give weight to the theatrical format for saying goodbye to the story.

With the film already in Japanese theaters, the next step is its international run, still with no set schedule. The preview, meanwhile, confirms that Kaede will have weight in the saga's conclusion.

What do you expect from this finale? I'll read you in the comments.