Akira Tachibana used to love running, but after an injury, she can’t run like she used to. Now, she passes time by working in a family restaurant where she finds herself slowly falling in love with the divorced manager.
The age-gap romance might be off-putting to some, but After the Rain handles it in a very mature way. The characters of this series carry it by feeling fresh and real for characters in a romance show. If you want more anime recommendations like After the Rain, then look no further.
Anime Like After the Rain
For Fans of Age-Gap Romances
Sweetness and Lightning
After the death of his wife, high school math teacher Kouhei Inuzuka is left to care for his young daughter, Tsumugi. He does his best, but his busy schedule and poor culinary skills limit them to eating convenience store food separately. One day, his daughter expresses an interest to eat together after talking to one of his students in the park, Kotori, who deeply enjoys food. He rushes over to the restaurant owned by the student’s mother, but she is not there. While Kotori tries her best to cook for them, her skills are lacking. However, together, Inuzuka-sensei, Tsumugi, and Kotori learn to expand their cooking skills.
While After the Rain wears its romance on the cuff, Sweetness and Lightning has some hints of romance that are never confirmed or explored. However, both shows take a look at relationships between a high schooler and a much older man. After the Rain dares to explore romance while Sweetness and Lightning chooses to focus on the food, family, and friendship.
Koi Kaze
Saeki Koushirou has dreams of becoming a wedding planner, but his own love life is in shambles. After being dumped by his girlfriend, his desire for love is dulled, but again awakened by a chance encounter with a high school girl. Unfortunately, as it turns out, this girl is his sister whom he has not seen since his parents’ divorce, and she is coming to live with him and his father.
Not only is there a large age gap to overcome in Koi Kaze, but it creates the ultimate storm of taboo stigma by daring to make the couple siblings as well. While this does give Koi Kaze that extra large helping of potential for drama, like After the Rain, it actually handles the romance in a very mature and somewhat realistic way.
Garden of Words
On one morning during the rainy season in Tokyo, an aspiring shoemaker named Takao Akizuki decides to skip class and sketch in a garden. There he meets the mysterious Yukari Yukino. After offering to make her new shoes, they continue to meet up during the rainy season, exchanging words in that garden and alleviating their worries through conversation. However, as the season ends, their relationship is put to the test.
While we don’t usually do movies, when I watched After the Rain, all I could think about was Garden of Words. Interestingly enough, when you watch Garden of Words, most people think “Damn, I with this had been longer,” so really After the Rain grants that wish. While the gender roles are reversed, both series approach age gap relationships maturely and address not so much relationship drama, but more so if the fundamental relationship will work.
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For Fans of Restaurant Work
Blend S
Maika is a person with naturally bad luck, although much of that comes from her mean-looking eyes. These eyes have since prevented her from gaining part-time employment in order to fund her dreams of studying abroad. However, one day she meets a man named Dino who runs a very special café. Inside, the waitresses all adopt very specific personas for the customers, and Dino wants Maika to be his sadistic-type girl. However, despite having the eyes for it, Maika isn’t a sadist.
If After the Rain wasn’t a manga adaptation, you might think they looked at Blend S and decided to do a more serious version. While Blend S is definitely more of a comedy, it does follow a high school girl working in a cafe with complicated feelings for her older manager. While Maika has a dream she wants to pursue, Akira’s dream is freshly dead, so the moods are different though.
Working
Souta Takanashi has a fondness for cute things, so when the cute and small Popura Taneshima asks him to work at Wagnaria, a family restaurant, he can’t turn her down. Little did he know about all the unique personalities that also call Wagnaria their place of employment.
After the Rain is about one story in a restaurant while Working is about the many different stories of the many different employees. While Working can be serious and dramatic, for the most part it is light-hearted and comical. While it doesn’t have any age gap romance specifically, it does have a little romance.
Ristorante Paradiso
Nicoletta is on her first trip to Rome with a mission – to ruin her mother’s life after she walked out on her 15 years ago. She tracks her mother down to a restaurant, but as soon as she enters, everything changes. She becomes enamored by the place, and one waiter in particular. Suddenly, her urge for vengeance fades and her desire to cook starts to grow.
Aside from the foreign influences in Ristorante Paradiso, these anime series are actually quite similar. Both shows are about a girl that starts working at a restaurant and slowly becomes enamored while a charming older gentleman that is either divorced or separated. While After the Rain explores the romance more, Ristorante Paradiso strongly hints at it.
For Fans of Reforging Your Life
Golden Time
Banri Tada has finally been accepted into a private law academy in Tokyo, but due to an accident, he is without all his memories. During his freshmen orientation, he meets Mitsuo Yanagisawa who is consummately stalked by Kouko Kaga, a girl from his old school. Banri begins to hit it off with both of them. As they spend more time together, their fates seem intertwined, but for better or worse?
There is no more cliché and effective way to foster a life change than to give a character amnesia like in Golden Time. However, you do get to watch Banri make a change in his life and struggle to keep it. The change in After the Rain is less dramatic, but going from being a runner to the relatively mundane life of working has its distinct melancholy.
Tatami Galaxy
At a mysterious back alley ramen stand, a lonely college student in his final year accidentally bumps into a man that calls himself the God of Matrimony. There he pours his soul out to the god about all the regrets he has about his college life, which he spent bitterly trying to break up couples. However, soon he finds himself back at the very start of his college career. Can he change the past or will he just repeat past mistakes?
A lot of After the Rain is about looking back at the past and trying to build towards a better future. However, Tatami Galaxy takes the character on a trip back to the past to see if he can change it. Both shows, while distinctly different, actually have a similar sort of tone and are particularly thoughtful.
Maison Ikkoku
Yusaku Godai is a college student that is just beginning to live on his own. However, when he first steps into the Ikkoku boarding house, he finds it inhabited more assertive weirdoes that try to take advantage of him. However, just as he is leaving, he bumps into a beautiful girl. This girl, Kyoko Otonashi, as it turns out is recently widowed and the new manager of the boarding house. Thus, he decides to stay, doing his best to see the charm in his new dwelling.
After the Rain separates itself from traditional romance series by kind of avoiding all the traditional romance drama. Alternatively, Maison ikkoku kind of steers right into it. You get a lot of that cliché romance drama, but with a more approachable age gap story. Of course, it frequently rewards you for sticking with the clichés with those sweet sticky romance moments too, unlike in After the Rain.
Do you have anime more anime recommendations like After the Rain? Let us know in the comments section below.
