Koi wa Ameagari no You ni: Love Stays Forever Sweet and Young

"Age doesn't matter when you fall in love" goes the old adage. And this point of view about love very much fits the theme of the anime entitled Koi wa Ameagari no You ni (Love Like After the Rain).

Akira Tachibana

Akira Tachibana is a beautiful second year highschool girl who works as part-time waitress in Café Restaurant Garden. She was a former runner in her high school club until she got injured and had to quit.

She happens to have fallen in love with their café manager, Masami Kondo. Kondo is a divorced man in his middle forties living with his only son.

Flute lessons in the back of café, caught by Kondo
while practicing flute

How love winded in her direction started with Akira working in the café after classes. She barely noticed her manager until one afternoon during her break, she met Masami Kondo's son in the staff room struggling with his flute. She helped him play the metal pipe in the back of the café to avoid disturbing the customers.

Café Restaurant Garden inside look

Since then, she developed strange attraction to their boss at work even if some of her colleagues see their boss as an old man who smells with his clothes. But Manager Kondo is oblivious to these type of talk inside the café. He is an oblivious man when it comes to romance but very dedicated to his work as manager of the restaurant.

At first, Akira was silent about her hidden feelings to Manager Kondo.

Until one rainy day, wet to the toes, she went to the café and straightforwardly admitted her feelings towards him. Surprised by the confession, Kondo didn't know how to react and instead felt awkward. He brushed it off as a prank thrown at him by Akira and his staff. He dismissed the idea unreal. He's a divorced man, afterall. He knew better.

Koi wa Ameagari no You ni is a twelve-episode anime based from the manga created by Jun Mayuzuki. Anime adaptation is produced by Wit Studio under the direction of Ayumu Watanabe. The anime started its show in January 2018.

What is interesting about this anime is it digs deep into the heart of the love matter. The essence of developing and finding love between a divorced man in his middle forties and a teenage girl who is just coming of age is a type of relationship that isn't always easy to grasp nor understand. It takes understanding to have two unlike individuals to meet halfway ,and connection and empathy to two people widely distanced by age to hope for a happy ending together.

Akira Tachibana is the girl image of innocence, youth and beauty. She is young as a teenage highschooler. Her hair is long black, she has violet pairs of eyes and a pair of long slim legs. She's gentle-speaking, calm and poised.

Her biggest struggle so far is unable to run for the track and field club where she used to belong but she was able to adapt to her change of environment after a bout of depression.

Fresh a schoolgirl experiencing her first love, she brightens up immediately and blushes pink when Kondo's name is mentioned. Her character voiced over by Sayumi Watabe delivers a beautiful and honest voice of a teenage girl who will always be trusting and pure. I love her voice for Akira. Sweet, young, bright-eyed and full of trust and hope.

Masami Kondo

Masami Kondo, the manager of Café Restaurant Garden appears to be a boring average man in his middle age forties. He has wavy hair, straight nose and not too handsome face. If he doesn't speak he can be seen a total bore. But because he has a quirky funny personality inside of him, he makes a pretty interesting character, which is perfectly given to life by voice actor Hiroaki Hirata (Sha Gojyo-Saiyuki, Vinsmoke Sanji-One Piece). Kondo is a mixed of a humor type of guy and a serious man already bridled in life.

At first look it may seemed weird watching this anime as the love story's centerplot obviously decries huge age difference. But how the story flows and delivers deflects the unlikeliness of the couple involved.

Despite Akira and Masami Kondo stretched out by big age difference, their personalities bridged their age gap. In their hidden real selves revealed by each episode releases shows that they can be so much like each other. Only their age differences obstructs the issue. Personality-wise, Akira is very much alike to the young Manager Kondo. Kondo saw himself in her when she observed a bug on a tree and when she just carelessly put sugar cubes in his bitter black coffee. Only Kondo is conscious of his age gap and well, his divorced status. He already experienced pain through failure in marriage.

How this story proceeds will be shown and revealed in future episodes, thus, it will be an anticipation to wait and see.

Observing a bug, Akira and Kondo's young self

in his thoughtful thinking

The musical themes of this anime are lively and upbeat. "Nostalgic Rainfall" sang by CHiCO with HoneyWorks is a light fluffy type of opening song that makes you feel like riding on a weightless featherlike a broom while trying to catch love and getting it after the rain. "Ref.rain" by Aimer is a good musical sound to listen to while wallowing  inside the house during a heavy afternoon rain. It's me like wanting to go to her concert despite heavy downpour as the rain will just stop somewhere in the way.

Awkward silence under the tree

The anime illustrations of Ameagaru is neatly Japanese in nature with dashing French style sophistication mixed with American cartoon illustration style. I particularly like how Akira is drawn with perfect subtle elegance of beauty in effortless grace. She's a bishoujo of the classy innocent kind.

While it may seem strange to watch this starkly huge-age gap romance type of anime that streams away from the regular mainstream romantic plot, sitting on a sofa and watching Koi wa Ameagari no You ni brings in a new and refreshing love perspective that doesn't actually pour down heavy rain of unluck.

After a heavy rain downpour, the sun shines out smiling on to love, making it stronger and better. And love, as always survive, staying young, sweet and never growing old.