In some ways, Ame to Kimi to is a series that hasn’t worn especially well for me. Elements sometimes seem a bit repetitive. And some of the things I found charming for a while are somehow a little less charming now. Some of the side characters (like Ren, so help me) have proved to be pretty annoying. Nevertheless there’s a certain truthiness to it, to lean on a modern expression. The things it just gets it really gets. And if you’re a person of a certain temperamental bent those moments really hit home, because anime doesn’t address them all that often.
We start this time with a visit to the animation studio where Hiura-san is working on “Mountain of Storms”, which Fuji-san has provided the screenplay for. Hiura is the Yang to Fuji’s Yin, the fire to her water. His whole life is collectivism – schmoozing, cajoling, organizing a team. Everything in hers is being alone, living inside her own head with only rare forays into the outside world. His life is foreign to her, but Fuji recognizes the stress it puts him under when he’s feeling overwhelmed because she could never deal with it herself. Just as he could never survive being in his own company most of the time. People like her and people like him have lives that occasionally overlap, but they can only be visitors in the other’s world, their orbits crossing rarely.
One thing they share is that when they create something, it becomes a part of their identity. Their names attach to it. For most people, what they create they create anonymously. Is that something to be envied? It depends on perspective I suppose – it could certainly seem that way, but especially when one is a very private person it can also be incredibly stressful.
Finally we have Fuji’s two friends returning (they seem to be in most episodes now) first for a hanami party, and then for a spring clear-out. Fuji being a minimalist (and all her clothes being basically the same) I can totally see – Mimi is a hoarder, as it happens. She’s also the recipient of a huge stack of books Fuji is discarding, even though she doesn’t read (bees are interesting, though). One of the articles Fuji is moving on from is the shirt she wore the day she found Kimi – a fact he remembers but she initially doesn’t. Eventually this shirt gets repurposed into a cat toy (as in, a tanuki toy shaped like a cat) which finds its way into the ED. A rare concession to sentiment on Fuji-san’s part, but sentiment has its place even (or especially) in the life of a minimalist.
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