One of my fave mangas is on film and of course I am supporting it by buying the DVD. I shipped them, but I don't want to give away anything via spoilers. It is a May romance movie and it is so good. The story, the morality about independent thinking and the acting from the main actor and actress to the supporting cast. Well done. It's a fun manga-based movie about a high school student and athlete to really demands and wants and covets her divorced boss. He is not able to break free and is mainstream so resists her. What happens later? you have to watch.

Now, as much as I do enjoy Asian cinema, then I found "After the Rain" (aka "Koi wa ameagari no yô ni") to be somewhat of a swing and a miss from writer Riko Sakaguchi and director Akira Nagai.

Why is that? Well, because the movie was unfathomably slow-paced with very little of any entertainment happening throughout most of the movie. Sure, the movie was very well acted and the characters definitely were interesting, but boy the pacing of the movie was a killer.

In fact, it was so atrociously slow-paced and uneventful that I gave up 63 minutes into the ordeal. I just simply couldn't expose myself to any more of the dull storytelling.

And yes, the movie does deal with a very stigmatic and taboo topic, one that definitely could have made for a more interesting movie, had the script and storyline been more wholeheartedly constructed and written.

Nana Komatsu (playing Akira Tachibana) and Yô Ôizumi (playing Masami Kondo) definitely carried the movie phenomenally well with their individual performances and there was just a very unlikely chemistry between the two on the screen. However, if they had a proper storyline and script to work with then the result of the movie would have been much better.

This movie was a bitter pill for me to swallow, especially since I wanted to like it, given the performances by the two lead performers. But there simply wasn't enough happening in the movie to keep me interested.

As such, I am forced to rate "After the Rain" a less than mediocre four out of ten stars. And I also have to say that I am not going to ever be returning to finish watching the rest of the movie.

It's a cute movie about a high school girl becoming infatuated with her 45 year-old boss at her part time waitress job. They develop an unusual friendship. It's perfectly innocent though and there isn't even a hint of anything indecent. The characters are very likeable and the movie is a wholesome, nice feel-good experience.