This review will contain spoilers.
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The series main conflict, just going by the premise alone, would seem to be the age gap between the main couple we will follow, but once you finish watching this show you will realize that is the least problematic thing about it. Honestly, I feel disappointed because I thought I would love this show and had it on my list for what feels like an eternity, yet it reminded me of why I don't like romance anime. After the Rain is a show with stunning visuals and a gorgeous color palette, filled with fluid animation and accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack, but the writing makes everything go downhill.

Our Protagonist is a 17-year-old girl named Tachibana. She used to be the star of the tracking club at her school before she got injured. She works at a Café and has a crush on her 45-year-old manager, Kondou. These two lack chemistry and it has nothing to do with their ages. Tachibana is young, and I don't know how much I can blame her actions on her age since many people act differently no matter how old they are, but she is incredibly childish compared to her appearance. She legitimately got pissed at the fact that her, again, 45-year-old manager, had a son. Did she ever think about the possibility that her manager could be married or divorced, or had a girlfriend or anything at all? she looks like the smart character you would find in any other anime, but she isn't. I still don't know if that is a good or bad thing.

In episode 3, we get a love confession and it is extremely awkward. It is also from this point onwards that I started to completely lose any sort of empathy towards this girl. All the steps she took after and the way she treated those around her made me utterly dislike her. There was hope on my part that the show would at some point, try to show how the way she acts is not okay, but it never happened. There are many types of love, however, it would be an insult to call whatever she has going on with the manager love. If the love you feel for someone, is affecting or otherwise hindering your performance, and it consumes all your time, that is not healthy. Not for you, nor the person you are crushing on. Tachibana very clearly needs a hobby. Yes, she got injured. Yes, she probably feels depressed after "losing" what she enjoyed, running, but this is partly on her. A relationship is not the same thing as therapy. Getting a boyfriend or girlfriend will not solve your problems and people don't exist to take care of your mental health. That's on you.

After her embarrassing confession, the manager wasn't able to turn her down for whatever reason, and she managed to get a date with him. Now, I am not 45, but I can imagine being confessed by a teenager could have made him uncomfortable. Why go on a date with her anyway? especially when we were never given any hints in the beginning that he looked at her any different than any other employee? Just like this, the relationship between Tachibana and the manager continues on a thorny road, and it is always Tachibana forcing her way or making Kondou uncomfortable in order to get what she wants out of him. She is pushy and has no self-awareness. In order to get closer to the manager, she continuously lies about her interests to appear to have things in common with him ( asking about books and setting up a date to a book fair when at best her interest in books is minimum.), tries to monopolize him (getting angry when the other employees started warming up to the manager about a hamster he had gotten.), shows up uninvited to his house, in the middle of a damn storm, even after another coworker told her she probably was forcing herself on the manager, tried to guilt-trip the person she quote, "loves" even though said person was sick with the flu and had a fever, overall she is obsessed and the least she should be doing is trying to date anyone. This girl doesn't deserve anyone's pity or consideration (except in episode 4 when the chef harassed her and forced her to go on a date with him. That was terrible and I hate him).

Tachibana is what is mostly wrong with the anime. She put first her "relationship" with the manager rather than her relationship with her childhood friend Haruka. How are you going to drop the bond you have had with someone over years, for a shaky friendship you've started having with a man you've known for a little and who you know nothing about? this is insanity. Even nearing the end of the show, Tachibana makes no attempts to call out to Haruka and try to talk things through, but she sure has enough time to be setting up "friendship" dates with the manager. She does nothing to fix her friendship with Haruka until the last episode and even then it is underwhelming because she does it over text. Amazing.

In episode 10, Tachibana asks the manager what happens if a swallow can't fly like the others, clearly talking about herself and the injury she got. The only reason this fails to add to her character or make me feel sorry for her is that it isn't that she can't fly, it is that she doesn't want to. You cannot force someone to do things, they have to want to do them on their own. Tachibana doesn't want to try, she just stays stagnant. Even her friend, Haruka, tried telling her to come back to the team, which resulted terribly since Tachibana wasn't up to it yet. She was mostly just happy over probably being able to see the manager more if she worked her shift every day. The only reason, the way I interpreted it going by what the anime showed, that she decided to make an effort was because she heard the manager was going to. After teaching Yuuto, the manager's son, how to run better, he said his dad had made a promise to himself and that he was going to try harder. When Tachibana heard this, her eyes lit up. So if the manager had decided to stay the same and make no improvements to his life, you would have done the same? this is depressing.

If the main protagonist, Tachibana, is this bad and unlikeable, then the other protagonist might be better in comparison right? well....not completely. He is an adult so I am going to blame most of the childish acts that Tachibana does on him. Kondou lets her literally get away with murder. If you don't like this girl in any romantic way, but rather want her to grow and not stay depressed as you did for many years, then set boundaries. Don't spoil her. He has the same issues as Tachibana and this is mostly the fault of the author for writing them this way. Yes, you can get interested in life and hobbies with the help of others, but the way Tachibana and Kondou bounce of each other and behave with one another is not the way to go about this. He was more interesting than her, so I'd probably have enjoyed this show a bit more if it focused on his life and not hers.

This was probably supposed to be, rather than a romance story, one where two characters help each other grow but unfortunately other than finally trying to get back into their hobbies, the bad habits the characters have are not worked upon and neither Tachibana nor Kondou should be in a relationship with anyone. The show looks gorgeous, but this wasn't anything other than a disappointment. I may need to not watch "romance" anime for a while.