Following Fuji, a novelist in her 30s, after she takes in a stray dog stuck outside in a rainstorm, With You and the Rain executes its simple plotline with delicate mastery. A quieter anime among the other Summer 2025 releases, I was prepared for this to be a monotonous trek through this woman and dog’s repetitive antics. But while it does carry its subdued tone throughout the whole season, the story combines comedic moments with its sincere, reflective ones, emulating the cozy, ruminative air of a slice-of-life book Fuji herself might enjoy.
Contrary to my assumptions after watching episode 1, Fuji doesn’t have a drunkard for a father, nor does she have overly grand problems with anyone in her close circle. The main source of tension comes from something more internal: her independent nature. Although not a fault of hers, Fuji’s inclination to spend her time alone naturally puts distance between her and her loved ones, and it’s hard for her to be unaware of it with each interaction.
With her dog You, however, Fuji can’t put any distance inside their shared apartment. As much as You sometimes seems like an apparition or a materialization of the voice inside Fuji’s head, it is very much a real dog — although a very tanuki-shaped one — with its own personality, curiosity, and animalistic neediness. As it prods Fuji with its pressing questions, it prompts Fuji to open up more in an effort to kindle their bond. Perhaps because You is a dog and not human, Fuji also vocalizes her feelings to it more freely, leading her to gradually extend this honesty to other people in her life.
ⒸKo Nikaido, KODANSHA/With You and the Rain Project
As You comes to learn, Fuji likes doing things on her own terms, and though they coexist with little ups and downs, Fuji’s bothered by this aspect of herself, even going so far as to call herself a careless person for it. She feels guilt over avoiding her dad when he suggests coming over to her apartment to see her and You, feels guilt over leaving You alone at home to attend to her own needs — but she still chooses these decisions in the end. Guilt is not the same as regret. Still, there’s a clear discomfort within Fuji for recognizing this selfishness but not being able to let go of it.
That’s how Fuji sees herself, anyway. But whether she recognizes it or not, Fuji is the opposite of careless. She knows her reserved, independent lifestyle worries her rambunctious father, leading her to limit their interactions to limit his worries by extension. She declines an invitation to go to the beach with her friends and goes just with You instead to bathe in the beach’s tranquility, and she’s upfront about wanting this space to her friends, later making up for it by hosting them at her apartment. Her shame over not doing enough for her loved ones is not unfounded, but her care is much louder than she realizes it to be.
ⒸKo Nikaido, KODANSHA/With You and the Rain Project
Though Fuji possesses this good-hearted candor from the very beginning of the show, she undergoes a deeper maturation as the season progresses, steadily expressing more of her boundaries and needs while still being her eccentric self. And the people around her cherish her unique show of love, from her parents to her neighbors to her high school best friends. One of her friends, Ren, tells her wholeheartedly, I’m glad you’ve been reaching out when you need help. She says this with full love for the Fuji who’s more reserved, simply happy that Fuji feels more comfortable after all these years to open up a little more. It’s a revelation to Fuji, not only that she’s developed in this way, but also that others recognize her efforts without necessarily resenting the more private side of herself. Fuji, who has spent most of her life alone and whose independence was often conflated with seclusion, has put in the effort to welcome people into her life without sacrificing the core of her identity.
What I love about this exploration of Fuji’s maturity is that it happens alongside people who have already been in her life for some time: her elementary-schooler neighbor Kii Ella, her parents, her twin brother Teru and his wife Wako, her high school friends Ren and Mimi, and so on. Though the show’s premise highlights Fuji’s new, blossoming friendship with her dog, much of the show is centered around the evolution of her long-lasting relationships as new events arise — like her brother’s wife’s pregnancy, or her old friend Hiura’s request for her to write a screenplay for his animation, or the presence of a tanuki-shaped dog in her home. As she figures out the pace of her daily life, these relationships find their own familiar rhythm, and remain worth maintaining.
ⒸKo Nikaido, KODANSHA/With You and the Rain Project
Another element of this show that struck a chord with me, a bit unexpectedly, is Fuji’s conflicting emotions surrounding being a novelist. She doesn’t revel in her occupation of being a full-time writer, and never has; becoming a writer just seemed like the natural path for her as a longtime bookworm. A lot of writer characters (and writers in general) are portrayed to be shy about sharing their work, but I find that the shyness usually comes from fearing judgment for their magnum opus, whereas Fuji’s shyness stems more from embarrassment, as well as the doubt that her work does any good for the world. I don’t love to write, she narrates. Just loving it isn’t enough.
As someone who’s been writing stories since I could grab a pencil, the idea of pursuing an intensive creative profession like a writer without loving the act is a bit unfathomable to me. But every creative process has its ups and downs, and I found myself heavily relating to Fuji’s self-inflicted pressure to create a work she’s proud of. It’s no easy situation to be at odds with an activity so heavily tied to your identity. This too is an ongoing relationship Fuji will be working out the kinks of, probably for the rest of her life.
Luckily, she now has You as a roommate and companion to lean on during her work process. It encourages her to take breaks, asks questions about her writing, and reminds her to eat. It’s simple, and it’s enough to keep her going.
ⒸKo Nikaido, KODANSHA/With You and the Rain Project
This story’s charm is in all its subtleties, and that praise goes to not just the story but the animation production. There are some anime adaptations where you can tell a handful of disconnected manga chapters were thrown into one episode, with only a brief eyecatch to glue them together. But even with its episodic source material, With You and the Rain unfolds without any of this clunkiness. Even episode 7, which cycles through several B-plots, felt just as coherent as the rest of the episodes, with its 20 minutes bookended by scenes of Fuji stuck in writer’s block and all the little scenes in between presented as her trying to distract herself from it. I loved the page-turn transition between each B-plot, a thematic visual effect that made it feel like we were flipping through a record of Fuji’s daily life.
So much kudos must also be given to the auditory element of this show, especially Saori Hayami’s (Spy x Family, Sakamoto Days) performance as Fuji. Hayami has an elegant voice that I often recognize immediately upon hearing, even if her characters have varying levels of energy, but here I didn’t recognize her at all. It’s not bad to have a distinct voice, of course, but her incognito performance made me all the more immersed in Fuji’s story. As Fuji, Hayami’s signature inflections are much more understated but not any less emotional, blending in with the jaunty storybook-orchestra tracks and rainy soundscape, and it was hard not to be moved by her poignantly stated self-reflection.
Most of all, I am deeply moved by the symbolism of rain and the analogy Fuji relays in the closing episode of the season between rain and living beings: Rain comes down from the sky and will someday return to it, just like us. It’s fleeting, often unexpected, something different within quotidian life. This message is enforced by both the characters and the various backdrops of rain and other bodies of water, from the coastal shore to a passing roadside river, from Fuji and You taking a quiet bath side by side to them being caught in the thick of a downpour. After watching other anime where the titular metaphor was beaten into the ground, I really appreciated how the production managed to make this water symbolism appear throughout the season without feeling pervasive, and how the analogy perfectly encapsulated Fuji’s story.
At the end of the season, Fuji tells You that this unexpectedness is why she loves the rain so much, which at first seems surprising coming from a character as orderly about her needs as she is. But it makes sense for someone who surrounds themselves with a small, cherished circle of people to be fascinated by the blips in the mundane that make the remaining time in our journeys all the more interesting.
