"Koi wa Ameagari no You ni", or "Love is Like After the Rain", is a short 12 episode anime by Studio Wit, known best for their renowned show "Attack on Titan". Airing in winter of 2018, "After the Rain" did not get much traction and was looked past by many, grouping it in the box with the overwhelming number of other seasonal shows that are quickly forgotten. For me however, this show absolutely sparkled, and is one of the more memorable anime I have watched.
"After the Rain" is by no means a phenomenal show, nor does it bring up any topics that reshape how the audience views something. In fact, it is a very simple show. "After the Rain" is about Akari Tachibana, a high school girl who falls in love with the manager at her part time job at a family restaurant. Her manager, Masami Kondou, is a divorced man in his mid 40's. Tachibana's unrequited love is what carries the plot forward.
On its own, this premise is strange at best, if not uncomfortable. To have a teenage girl head over heels for a man in his 40's sits wrong with a lot of people, myself included. This however, isn't what makes "After the Rain" so memorable. I chose to write about "After the Rain" because it does a fantastic job of using silence and scenes where nothing in particular happens in order to create an emotional response in the audience. Simply put, "After the Rain" chooses to remain still at the perfect moments.
The stillness of this show occurs in many different ways, whether it is silence from a character, or the lack of movement in a frame, or even choosing to not add soundtrack to a scene. Each of these choices isolates a single thing that is happening in a given moment of the show. The most common use for this is to show Tachibana's love for her Mr. Kondou. There is never a full explanation for why she is in love.
Mr. Kondou isn't a particularly attractive man, he is rather clumsy, forgetful, and not particularly funny. He doesn't have a large amount of money, and he doesn't treat Tachibana with anything beyond simple kindness. Yet by even the third or fourth episode, there is no question of why Tachibana would be in love with this man, it is simply a pure emotion that the audience comes to accept.
I think that's what really stood out for me in "After the Rain". The show is paced slowly, but it never drags. Instead, it tells the audience; "Be patient and come along with me, I have something wonderful to share."