What an interesting little series is Koi wa Ameagari no You ni – full of contradictions.  It asks unpleasant questions in an aesthetically pleasing way.  The themes at its heart can be argued to be tasteless, but they’re handled invariably with good taste and ample discretion.  I think the margin for error with this premise is effectively zero – any slip-up cold be fatal and tip this whole enterprise over into the unsavory.  But through seven episodes, it’s managed to slip through the eye of the needle – a testament to the skills of Watanabe Ayumu and to the nature of the source material.

I think on some level this episode highlights one of the essential problems (obviously, there are many) at the heart of this relationship.  Akira is in love with Masami at least in part because he’s so much older than she is – so different from the coltish boys her own age who lust after her clumsily (and Kase).  Yet she also wishes he were younger than he is – even something as simple as a messenger app highlights for her that he’s a middle-aged guy with a flip phone who probably can’t figure out how to use it.  And there’s no denying that Akira’s youth is alluring to Masami-san (though in his defense he’s never initiated anything romantically with her) – yet you can palpably sense him wishing she were older, so that his feelings wouldn’t be seen as so utterly wrong (not least by himself).

Masami-san has been at the very least unfailingly kind to Akira through the whole uncomfortable development of their relationship, but for the first time this week we really saw him slide into frustration – when Akira was pushing him for information about his (presumably) ex-wife’s book, and showering him with praise he didn’t feel he deserved.  “You know nothing about me” wasn’t intended to be hurtful but it was no doubt the most prickly thing Masami has said to Akira in this series.  And it was hurtful, because it was dismissive – and from her perspective, the worst thing he can be to her is dismissive.  Akira wants to be taken seriously by Masami, both as a person and as a potential mate.

The problem is, he was right – at least in the sense that Akira sees an idealized version of Masami that he knows doesn’t exist.  He sees himself as a man who never finishes the job (marriage, fatherhood?) and has nothing to be proud of.  But even if Akira’s view of him is idealized it’s also strangely accurate – because she sees the essential nature of him under the veneer of weariness and disappointment that’s built up like scar tissue over the years.  That is, a decent and intelligent man who never takes out his own disappointments on those around him.  There’s an interesting story in his failed marriage, I’m sure, though I don’t think it’s destined to be a major part of this story.

“Tachibana, you always appear out of nowhere on a rainy day.”  There’s a sense that those words carry a lot of symbolic weight, no question about it.  In Masami’s stagnant life, Akira-san must seem very much like a typhoon herself, disrupting it loudly and violently.  There’s certainly rain when she appears at his apartment after he’s taken a sick day as a typhoon hits, and no matter how much he tries to pretend otherwise, Masami is deeply impacted by Akira’s arrival.  She stirs feelings in him he’d thought forgotten, and he both loves and hates that fact.

Again, all this seems grounded in contradiction.  Masami’s internal monologue here is the crucial moment of the episode, the most revealing.  How could he not feel for Akira, a beautiful creature who awakens the spirit of his youth – yet everything he’s ever learned in life tells him he mustn’t act on what he feels.  Everything is so simple and sharp for her, like a bell, but for him it’s all so complicated and muddy.  Does he want to go to her and hug her in part because Masami wants to do the only thing that will cause Akira to stop feeling the youthful agony she’s currently experiencing?  Absolutely.  But he also wants to do so to bask in the warmth of that blazing youth.

When Masami says “I’ll close my umbrella and get wet in your rain”, there’s no question those are his true feelings shining through – much more so than his desperate “I was hugging you as a friend!”.  He may truly believe what he feels is too frivolous (and selfish) to be called love, but Masami seems to have decided to leap into the typhoon himself – to accept all the risk (and it’s formidable) that goes along with acknowledging Akira’s feelings, and his own.  Of all the contradictions roiling in this typhoon of an episode, the most violent are surely in Masami himself.