'After the Rain' Anime Premiere, Latest News: Series Airs on Jan. 11; New PV Previews Song By CHiCO With Honeyworks
With the winter anime season fast-approaching, a new promotional video has been released for the upcoming Japanese slice-of-life anime series, "Koi wa Ameagari no You ni (Love Is Like After the Rain)," also known as simply, "After the Rain."
The promotional video gives viewers a glimpse of the series main protagonists, Akira Tachibana, who will be voiced by Sayumi Watabe, and Masami Kondo, who will, in turn, be voiced by Hiroaki Hirata. Additionally, the 30-second video also previews the opening theme song titled, "Nostalgic Rainfall" performed by CHiCO with Honeyworks.
The series is based on the manga of the same name written and illustrated by Jun Mayuzuki. It debuted in Shogakukan's "Monthly Big Comic Spirits" magazine in 2014 and later transferred to the "Weekly Big Comic Spirits" magazine in 2016. It has been published in nine collective volumes since November.
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It tells the story of the 17-year-old girl, Akira, who has always been bad at expressing her emotions, and she has thus been deemed to be aloof and emotionally detached. She used to be the star of her high school track team until an injury forces her to quit running.
Having lost both purpose and direction due to the incident, she found a kindred spirit in the 45-year-old, Masami Kondo, who is the manager at the family restaurant where Akira is working part-time. Like her, Masami has also once been forced to abandon his dreams by some unforeseen circumstances. This, along with their daily interactions with co-workers, will eventually make Akira harbor some secret feelings of love for the middle-aged man.
The series is being directed by Ayumu Watanabe under Wit Studio. Deko Akao is in charge of the series composition, while Yuka Shibata serves as both character designer and chief animation director. The music is being composed by Ryo Yoshimata. The ending theme song titled, "Ref-rain," will be performed by the Japanese pop singer, Aimer.
"After the Rain," premieres on Thursday, Jan. 11, late night at 12:55 a.m. JST on Fuji TV's noitaminA programming block. Information on other broadcast schedules and online resources can be found on the series' official site. Episodes will also be exclusively streamed by Amazon Prime Video in areas inside and outside Japan.
The series has also inspired a live-action film that is set to be released next year on May 25.
