After the Rain

Episode 10

Following last week's exploration of Akira and Kondo's emotional lives outside of their relationship to one another, After the Rain has decided to keep its focus on articulating the middle-manager's psyche. This takes us to their opening interaction for the week – yet another awkward non-date, this time to a book fair where Kondo can explain his hobby further to a confused Akira. After some more reminders that Kondo is both old and a nerd, he runs off to look at some books, leaving her stranded in this unfamiliar environment. Apparently this is a recurring problem for him, as seen in the episode's following ruminations on the trajectory of his life.

This scene leads to us learning more about exactly how his marriage broke down. Apparently his attempts at becoming a novelist distracted him from his family, and this precarious work-life balance fell apart when his literary endeavors amounted to nothing. Our manager just happens to be that deadly combination of “obsessed with literature” and “too insecure to actually publish anything,” so he wasted big chunks of his life on fruitless projects. At least his odd friendship with Akira seems to be giving him the confidence boost that he needs to continue doing what he loves. And unlike a lot of other “young woman rejuvenates older male artist during his midlife crisis” stories, Kondo's recovery isn't based on the two of them becoming emotionally entwined. Instead, Kondo gets better through the emotional experience of trying not to get romantically involved with the young woman who appears to be too vulnerable for outright rejection.

You can certainly criticize Kondo's approach to this situation, but I have to give the show credit for the fact that we've reached episode 10 without a dangerous development in the romantic aspect of this relationship. They've had some intense moments together, but they don't seem to have overridden Kondo's desire to keep things appropriate between them, and Akira has been gradually regaining emotional connections external to him. At this point, I can see the show concluding with the barest initiation of romance between them at the very most. Anyone more than that would be coming out of nowhere. A strong platonic friendship between the two would be the best note for the show to end on, but I wouldn't be too mad if the show used a flash-forward to hint at some reciprocal spark between Kondo and a matured Akira in the future.

Speaking of the show's other protagonist, Akira's emotional life is still taking a backstage to Kondo's for the second week in a row. It looks like she's still mulling over her tiff with Haruka, and they're both yearning for the type of reconciliation that seems impossible for them in the moment. Other than that, she's still refusing to go through the physical therapy necessary for her to resume running, which tells us that she's still hooked on Kondo as the singular solution to her problems. The silver lining is that she seems to be approaching an emotional revelation that would push her to become independent of him for a while. Kondo seems to have communicated something to her with his speech about the bird's nest, in which the struggling swallow obviously represents Akira's present struggle to find direction in her adolescence. Hopefully she'll start running again by the end of the show, which will help her pull back from the unhealthy depths of her fixation on Kondo.

Otherwise, Akira spends the episode fantasizing about the easy transmission of complex thoughts that Kondo describes in his anecdote about the “world's shortest letter.” In other circumstances, I'd say that Akira desires this sort of mind-melding communication with Kondo, but I actually think that her thoughts were more focused on communicating with Haruka in this moment. While quarreling, the two girls keep glancing at each other's accounts on a messaging app, which makes me think that they want to reconcile but simply lack the ability to articulate their emotions. This is another thing that Kondo may be helping Akira learn, since he seems paralyzing self-aware about his own feelings and how they operate.

In spite of its dodgy premise, After the Rain has not become a cliché “older man is rejuvenated by beautiful, endlessly giving, and conveniently available younger woman” narrative. Its power dynamics are much more complicated than that, creating more of an equilateral interaction between a young person and an older one, where the imbalance of knowledge between them (Kondo has far more insight into the nature of his emotions than Akira) is balanced out by differences in their proactivity (Kondo is painfully paralyzed relative to Akira, who follows her impulses unquestioningly). It's been a heartwarming ride so far, and I can't wait to see how it concludes.

Grade: B+

After the Rain is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.