After the Rain Overall Impressions:
I have seen bits of After the Rain in anime advertisements and in a news article that gave the original source material awards in 2018. After researching the anime and its premise on MAL, I was very interested. A romance between a 40 year old man and a high school girl. That got me wanting to see the anime day one after its airing of Episode 1. Man, watching this entire anime unfold was worth it.
Although the anime may feel slow-paced watching for the first time, it is incredibly appropriate and purposeful as it helps me sink in the many moments of Akira’s journey to loving Masami. After the Rain’s strongest aspects is its minimalistic storytelling and using visual presentation and animation for engagement. The story is very focused and has all the dialogue necessary for solid progression. This anime never ceases to amaze me with many memorable scenes that are beautifully animated by WIT Studio that captures the emotion of story events greatly. This is all presented in a way that is VERY genuine and true to the seinen genre, yet is never detrimental to plot progression.
The anime gets better every episode, exploring Akira’s and Masami’s relationships with other side-characters that gradually made me wanna root for their romantic love more. Surprisingly, the exploration of side-characters are treated as kind of sidelined, but their role in the story is still purposeful. The progression of side-characters is present and the moments of those type of characters feel well-built up enough for me to care for the rest of the cast. I will say, never have I once felt uncomfortable watching After the Rain. The strongly engaging narrative and plot never goes to weird territory. The romantic progression feels
natural and ties its build-up very nicely for me to not worry as much.
One thing I have to note is the anime ends though. It ends in a way that halts the progression of Akira and Masami’s relationship rather abruptly. Apparently, the anime’s ending is basically the manga’s ending (Which came out recently), skipping a lot of chapters. While that is really disappointing to hear, I feel everything that was set up for the anime adaptation’s story with it being a one-cour was summed up well enough to make watching the entire anime somewhat satisfactory. I would say that the After the Rain anime is a somewhat similar case to A Silent Voice’s movie adaptation. Basically, it is summing up the entire story in a short span of time, yet has enough content and quality to satisfy. (Although, I have yet to watch the movie of SV, I am basing this on the general reception of the movie and manga.)
I would definitely look into the After the Rain anime if you are looking for a simple/engaging story. Whether you want to see a high school girl fall in love with an older man is up to you, but if you choose to watch it, you will be in for a great time! This anime gets a VERY high recommendation from me for the Winter 2018 season.