Episodes 1-3 – With You and the Rain

Sometimes you choose an animal, and sometimes an animal chooses you. In the case of Kimi, Fuji’s new…dog…it’s a little bit of both. We don’t know how the tanuki got the idea to put himself in a cardboard box and ask to be adopted, nor do we know if Fuji is the first person to spot him, but what does seem clear is that there was some mutual selection going on from the moment she stopped in the rain to look at him. That’s just how it happens sometimes.

It’s also probably one of the greatest strengths of With You and the Rain, both in its original manga and anime forms. This is a story that understands the relationship between a person and their pet(s), particularly an introvert and the animal she lives with. Based on what we learn about Fuji in episode three (and combined with the first two), Kimi is the being she interacts with the most, and not just daily. She has good friends and a loving family, but she seems to prefer spending her time on her own doing her own thing, be that her work as an author or going places by herself. Kimi is a companion who doesn’t demand her time and attention in ways that wear her out. When she tells her friend Mimi that going to the beach with other people isn’t her thing, she’s not being mean; she’s just expressing that it’s more relaxing to do things solo…or with a “dog” rather than another person.

Something is soothing and relatable about that, and about this story in general. Fuji isn’t a misanthrope; she’s just an introvert. With You and the Rain is comfortable showing what that looks like for her. She knows her neighbors and interacts with them, she has her friends over, and talks to her family a lot. But she doesn’t go out with her friends, and the neighbor she seems closest to is a little girl, which may be a less demanding social interaction. Kimi perfectly bridges the gap between pet and companion in a way that’s perfectly comfortable for Fuji. He can write, so they can have real conversations (although I’ll be up on this hill yelling that I have real conversations with my dog and cats even though they can’t write for the foreseeable future), but he’s quiet and does his own tanuki thing. He enjoys going places or just being at home with his person. It’s just nice to watch.

This show succeeds by letting this gentle tone carry the story. Even the fact that Kimi is clearly not a dog is handled lightly – Fuji’s dad thinks he’s a yokai (and he’s probably right, given the way the leaf on Kimi’s head transforms), the vet knows this isn’t a dog, and Mimi is shunned for saying the quiet part out loud – but Fuji just sort of brushes all of that off. She’s not stupid, so she probably knows that her pup is a creature with some folkloric baggage, but that isn’t important to her. She’s an adult; if she wants to have a pet tanuki in the mythical sense, she’s going to have one. Everything else is just noise.

This creates an odd situation where the audience might like more answers than we’re likely to get. Is Kimi just really, really bad at traditional tanuki magic? Is this his transformed self? Is he enacting the apocryphal story about how cats domesticated themselves by just walking into someone’s house in the ancient Middle East and saying, “I live here now, human.”? I’ve certainly gotten three cats that way. In almost any other series, I’d be concerned about Kimi being up to no good. After three episodes of gentle, adorable, and wholesome pet/person interactions, I think he may have just wanted to be taken care of, loved, and give the same in return.

Relationships with animals who share our space can be a lot of things. With You and the Rain excels in its first three episodes at showing the range from cute to sweet to companionable. Kimi digs in the sand, gets stuck in the garbage can, and hides from guests who make him uncomfortable. Tanuki or dog, he’s a recognizable companion animal. There are worse ways to spend a summer than indulging in this sort of calm sweetness, and if this show keeps on as it’s been, we can look forward to a peaceful half-hour every Saturday to wash away the horrors of the real world.

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With You and the Rain is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.