Apr 6, 2018
This is my first review, so have patience. Warning: spoilers ahead. I think this anime is very polarizing. Some will love its visuals, which are very good, and its shift away from a controversial subject that makes them uncomfortable. Others will see it as a disjointed, poorly plotted story that loses its way after episode 7. The story advertises itself as a romance between a 17 year old girl and a 45 year old man. It's clear both from the OP and ED that this is the main audience draw.
The story starts with a depressed Akira,
...
apparently a budding track star who has suffered an achilles injury. She meets Kondo in a restaurant to which she runs to get out of the rain. Rain is a metaphor here, but the anime hits you over the head with it. In contrast to Koi Kaze, where wind was used to mark essential turning points, here it is used bluntly as an attempt to convey emotions. It gets tiring after a while.
This anime is a classic bait-and-switch. The tension and best story writing do indeed involve the crush Akira has for the much older manager, a divorcee with a child and a dead-end job, suffering a mid-life crisis. Being Kondo's age myself, I really empathized with his plight. A little insight into Japanese society makes clear that the author had no choice but to steer clear from this subject. Compensated dating is a current social problem in Japan, and the issue of divorce, ironically, is more controversial than incest (at least to the Japanese censors). The manga, which I have read, and the anime are really two different stories. The manga is dark, using themes from Japanese culture dealing with Yuki Onna, a ghost -like succubus. Guess who that is? It delves more into Kondo's suffering. It's dark and unsatisfying ending has aroused indignation in Japan. It comes as a gut punch. I give the author license to draw dark stories, but they must be well-plotted, and the anime, while less dark, does not meet this criteria.
The tension between Kondo and Akira ramps up to episode 7, ending with a scene reminiscent of Koi Kaze, for those familiar with that dark masterpiece. It then goes into an entirely different direction, thus dropping all the tension that drew the viewer to the anime in the first place. Thus, it fails to resolve the central conflict that held my attention: how can a much older man in Kondo's state withstand the avid attention of a very beautiful young woman? In real life, of course, such attention would create a serious internal conflict for the man, even if he had no intention of returning the affection. Here, it really is not touched upon, except in episode 7, which was brilliantly filmed.
After episode 7, the series loses steam as it tries to re-focus to the safer topic of life lessons. However, good drama is not safe, and it feels like a cop out after all the tension that had been built over the previous episodes. There is not even a satisfactory explanation for why this relationship was necessary to achieve the changes in the characters' life directions. A college friend, introduced late in the series, seems to be the primary influence on Kondo. A friend and Kondo's son seems to have been the tipping point for Akira.
I really wanted to drop this after episode 10, but I saw it through. WIT Studio, which produced the series, did an admirable job making the drawn-out manga into a 12 episode anime, and the production values are high. But it is a half-a-story, and thus earns a 5.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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