×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

After the Rain
Episode 7

by Gabriella Ekens,

How would you rate episode 7 of
After the Rain ?
Community score: 4.6

Seven episodes in, After the Rain has reached perhaps its most significant climax yet. After weeks of being pushed around by the high school girl who claims to be in love with him, Kondo seems to have finally reached a breaking point, snapping at Akira in his own mild way. As resistance to what she's done up to this point, this act is very minor, but it's enough to prompt some dramatic new developments in their awkward equilibrium.

As part of her one-sided quest to learn more about her beau, Akira asks Kondo about the book that he checked out from the library, and he becomes oddly defensive. Unable to read the mood, Akira presses further, impressed to learn that he's acquainted with a big important book author. This pokes at Kondo's low self-esteem a little too much and he snaps, growling that she “doesn't know a thing about him.” This is true, of course. For two people in a relationship with such earnest feelings behind it, they're both self-absorbed, and Akira in particular is transparently using Kondo as a balm for her own emotional issues. This repudiation of the fantasy that she's crafted around the two of them shakes Akira to her core, so she spends the next few days wrapped up in the sting of rejection.

Once she recovers somewhat, Akira reverts back to her old mode and tries to force renewed intimacy with Kondo. Kase's callous articulation of her psychology (the dirtbag reads her like a book in the worst way again) prompts a defensive Akira to show up at Kondo's house unexpectedly while he's sick at home with the flu. Of course, this is a massive intrusion, but Kondo seems to have reverted back into pushover mode and lets her in. Once inside, they have one of the most genuine conversations that they've had so far, with Kondo advising Akira to appreciate her youth for what it is. While it's good advice, Akira can't look past the pain that she's been feeling lately. The haze of her current emotions prevents her from envisioning a future, so she's desperately seeking an escape from herself instead. As someone whose teenhood wasn't that long ago, I found this scene pretty relatable – it's hard to listen to people saying things like “you'll appreciate all of this later” while you're right in the middle of such formative emotions. Moreover, Akira's naïve desires mirror Kondo's more self-aware ones just enough for them to keep their odd emotional connection going. In the end, Kondo admits that he's grateful to Akira for stirring up feelings of nostalgia in him, and that's the real reason why they haven't ended this whole thing yet.

Following this confession, Kondo is overtaken by an unusually strong surge of emotion, so he moves to embrace Akira. His interior monologue articulates that he's feeling something akin to love for her in this moment, even though he knows that this would be a frivolous use of the word, not to mention irresponsible considering all the factors between them. Despite this, he's so overwhelmed by his own desires to both relieve Akira's heartache and luxuriate in feelings of youth that he finally gives into them. It's a beautiful moment of connection between two souls, made acceptable by our intimate understanding of their situation, which is blessedly devoid of predation for now.

After the moment passes, reality reasserts itself and Kondo starts desperately backpedaling with the insistence that his display of affection wasn't romantic. (Keep in mind that two people of the opposite sex hugging is more explicitly romantic in Japan.) Still, the damage has been done – with this act, the two have become more embroiled than ever, although the exact nature of this relationship is also growing more complicated. Akira took this misstep as an acceptance of her feelings, although this leaves her even more confused by that “we're just friends” comment. In terms of dealing with Akira, this week was very “one step forward, two steps back” for Kondo – not that I'd expect anything else from our pushover daddy.

All in all, this was yet another standout showing from After the Rain. The drama was especially potent this week, and the show's usage of atmosphere to convey specific emotions remains top notch. If the production on this show had been more pedestrian, it wouldn't be anywhere near this good, since so much of its strength lies in the evocation of very specific emotional sense memories. My favorite example of this was probably the show's emphasis on Akira's clumsiness following Kondo's harsh words. I know that I start making these sorts of dumb daily life mistakes in the aftermath of emotional upsets, when it feels like an unusually large chunk of my brain's computing power is being used to process what happened, diverting energy away from my spatial awareness. It's not as weather-based as some of the show's most iconic imagery, but I've found that my favorite parts of After the Rain are when it gets really accurate about the specific ways in which a person's emotional world changes their interpretation of their environment.

In that vein, the rainstorm/climax conflation was pretty cliché on paper, but I did appreciate the association of their feelings with that groggy infectious haze. Still, neither one of them can take that night back – Akira even comes down with Kondo's flu. Oddly, she seems happy about this to a degree, since it means that they've “exchanged fluids”. Akira, I wish you all the best, but that's some Mysterious Girlfriend X-level of horny. I think it'd be hard to get horny when you're spewing up mucus everywhere, but to each their own I guess.

Grade: A

After the Rain is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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


discuss this in the forum (458 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

back to After the Rain
Episode Review homepage / archives