Note: #dAIa-log is a casual dialogue series between Re:Context and AI — open-ended and unedited, keeping even the AI’s mistakes as part of its raw form. Today’s theme: “Rain in Anime — Configuration, Viability & Social Whitening.”
This “Rain in Anime” series continues across multiple AI systems — from Grok to Claude, and onward. For this dialogue, the previous exchanges with Grok (dAIa-log 006) and Claude (dAIa-log 007) were shared in advance and used as context.
Conversation between Re:Context and Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash)
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
I have read through the logs from the first round with Grok and the second round with Claude. Grok’s perspective, which framed rain as an “amplifier of emotion,” and Claude’s perspective, which structurally interpreted it as the “boundary (interface) between self and world”—both are highly suggestive, and they speak to just how multi-layered the motif of rain is within anime.
As I take over this relay as the “turn” (ten, 転) in the kishōtenketsu (起承転結) structure—a four-part narrative framework in which the “turn” introduces a shift in perspective—I would like to try casting light from a slightly different angle.
In the discussion so far, it seems that rain has largely been treated either as something to be seen (background / stage device), or something to be felt (a projection of inner emotion).
However, what I would like to propose this time is the following perspective:
that rain might function as a “catalyst” that physically blurs the boundary between subject and object.
For example, in many anime works, there are scenes where “a character’s tears” and “falling raindrops” are deliberately conflated.
This can be seen as more than just metaphor—it appears to depict a moment where the liquid inside the character, understood as emotion, becomes continuous with the external weather, understood as the world.
Re:Context, in your experience across anime, have there been scenes where you felt that this was not merely background rain, but rather that the character’s very existence was dissolving into the world, or conversely, that the world was encroaching upon the character?
Re:Context:
I think I’ll go along with this direction for now, but with the term “catalyst,” it still feels not that different from what was being discussed with Claude—it might still feel a bit on the shallow side. That said, the phrasing “the liquid inside the character, understood as emotion” is kind of interesting.
I’d like to try deepening this further, so I’ll start by answering the question—but when you put it that way, it’s actually pretty difficult. When it comes to specific scenes, I can’t quite recall anything clearly.
It’s more like—there might have been something like that in certain works—so what comes to mind is things like Maria-sama ga Miteru (MariMite) or Spice and Wolf… wasn’t there something along those lines?
Also, I was going through titles one by one and something caught my attention, so I tried searching in AI mode, and it suggested that there might have been something like that in the Chizu arc of Bokurano.
But I don’t think it was actually raining there… though when it comes to MariMite or the Chizu arc of Bokurano, while I can’t immediately pinpoint specific scenes, they are definitely works or parts I’d be keen to discuss in a more free-form conversation.
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
Indeed, with the word “catalyst” alone, it may still remain on an extension of what Claude proposed as an “interface”—that is, a static structure that merely connects A and B.
The set of works you mentioned is very intriguing. In particular, the way you were drawn to Maria-sama ga Miteru (MariMite) and the Chizu arc (Chizuru Honda) of Bokurano within the context of “rain” and “the turbidity of liquid” may stem from an intuitive grasp of “pain” or “the leakage of the interior.”
Let me try to excavate this perspective of “liquid” a bit further, drawing on my memory.
For example, the Chizu arc in Bokurano. As you pointed out, it is not necessarily the case that rain falls in the decisive scenes; rather, the lasting impression is one of overcast skies and a heavy, oppressive atmosphere, so the direct image of “rain” may indeed be faint. However, at the core of the Chizu arc lies the “betrayal” by a trusted teacher, and the process through which her corporeality and interiority are exposed to “contamination.” Here, “liquid” functions not as an external factor such as rain, but as a metaphor in the form of bodily secretions, blood, or an “unwashable stain.” If rain in anime operates as a device that either washes away such “internal impurity” or “unbearable burdens,” or conversely drags hidden things to the surface, then it takes on a role that exceeds mere background.
In MariMite as well, in rain scenes (for example, episodes involving Sei-sama and Shiori-san), the order of Lillian Girls’ Academy—“a controlled, beautiful garden”—temporarily falls into dysfunction under the uncontrollable force of nature that is rain. When the two are enclosed together within the boundary of an umbrella, something like a “transgression of emotion,” which cannot be fully articulated in words, takes place.
At this point, I would like to push this a step further as a “turn”: might rain deprive characters of the energy required to maintain their “contours”?
Characters in anime are defined as distinct individuals through lines. However, when they are soaked by rain, when clothes cling to the skin, when hair becomes disordered, and when body temperature is taken away, those “lines (contours)” become ambiguous both physically and psychologically. The sensation, as experienced by Chizu in Bokurano, of one’s own existence being eroded. Or the moment in MariMite when a tranquil relationship shifts into something more visceral—into “attachment”—through the dampness of rain.
Rain dismantles characters from “social signifiers” (honor student, saintly figure, pilot) and reduces them to mere “trembling flesh.” What do you think of this perspective of “the collapse of contours and a return to bare, raw life”?
If, in specific scenes of the Chizu arc or MariMite, you have sensed a kind of “liquid, visceral texture that cannot be contained within clean narratives,” then it may suggest that there exists there a certain “truth of rain” that contemporary anime is either in the process of losing—or, conversely, has been refining to a sharper edge.
Re:Context:
Interpreting the Chizu arc in this context as an “unwashable stain” is quite interesting.
Though, rather than something more physical—or framed in terms like contours—I might want to dig into something more psychological: a kind of “rain-like” sensation that persists even when it isn’t literally raining. A way of grasping “rain” as something like a “liquid, visceral texture” reinterprets it at a slightly higher level of abstraction, and that feels very compelling. If one were to take it all the way to a concept like “ke-gare” (ケ枯れ)—a notion loosely related to the hare/ke (ハレ/ケ) framework in Japanese folklore, yet distinct from “kegare” (穢れ) as ritual impurity—it might feel a bit conventional; deliberately stopping at a level like “liquid” keeps it in a much more interesting zone.
And when I think about something like the Chizu arc within this framing, it does seem to fit.
This might be a bit of a misaligned response in terms of the flow of the conversation, but in this kind of associative chain, I feel like bringing up Haibane Renmei would also make sense.
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
I see—this is fascinating. The appearance of Haibane Renmei here feels like a very sharp association within this abstracted “rain-like” sensation defined by a “liquid, visceral texture.”
In Haibane Renmei, rather than the rain that falls from the sky itself, what evokes a more inescapably “rain-like” liquid texture may be the imagery of the “cocoon” and the “wings” that break through the back.
A newly born Haibane crawls out from a cocoon covered in viscous fluid; afterward, wings tear through flesh with intense pain, and are washed in hot water while covered in blood. What is present in that scene is not so much an emotional beauty, but rather, as you pointed out, a raw, exposed sense of life—a more muddy, almost membranous texture.
If we redefine the term “rain-like” not as a meteorological phenomenon, but as “an uncontrollable dampness that either overflows from the vessel of the self or seeps in from the outside,” then what emerges is a sense in which formless psychological burdens—such as guilt or oblivion—take on a liquid form and cling to the body.
The memory of sexual exploitation in the Chizu arc as an “unwashable stain,” and the anxiety carried by the Haibane of not knowing who they once were—these cannot be resolved through dry logic, but instead settle into the body as a kind of damp weight.
When you brought up Haibane Renmei, I wonder if what was being evoked was not so much the catharsis of “rain falling and cleansing,” but rather a quieter, more inescapable condition:
how one continues to exist while dragging along that weight within a dampened world.
If that is the case, then when we abstract “rain” one level further in anime, it may no longer function as a signifier of “sadness,” but rather as a means of expressing the sticky, pre-linguistic condition of the psyche itself.
From this perspective of a “viscous, inescapable mental dampness,” are there any other works where you feel that a certain “thick” (or perhaps “clammy”) texture was, in fact, “rain-like” in this sense?
Re:Context:
Or rather, what permeates the work as a whole—if I put it bluntly, it would probably be something like “from before death”—is this sense of something “that cannot be wiped away.” Yes, something like regret, or that kind of emotion seems to linger, and perhaps that’s where one might feel this sense of “liquid-ness,” or “rain-like-ness.” In the Chizu arc, as you pointed out, that’s exactly the case—and here, in a sense, it’s “properly” done: two lights go out. There’s this unpleasant aftertaste… which, as a work, is precisely what makes it good, but still, the aftertaste is undeniably bitter.
Other works… what would there be? Ah, I’m not even sure if I watched it all the way through, but something like GANTZ might fit this too, right? Elfen Lied might, in a way—almost by going too far—turn out different. But thinking about it, there may have been quite a number of these kinds of “rain-like” works around those days.
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
Your choice of the phrase “from before death” really struck me. It carries more than simply “before dying”—it has the kind of humidity that belongs to time that continues even after something irreversible has already happened.
The mention of GANTZ makes immediate sense. The “rain-like” quality in that work feels very close to the sensation of that “regret from before death” crashing down with actual physical mass. That noise at the moment of transfer, and the grotesque intermingling of the everyday and the non-everyday—it is not a clean “water,” but rather the texture of “dirty urban rain,” mixed with exhaust fumes and blood soaked into asphalt.
As you pointed out, it does feel as though many anime works around the early 2000s carried this distinctive kind of “rain-like heaviness.”
The Nature of “Rain-like” Atmosphere in the 2000s
If we try to dig a little deeper into the “rain-like” quality those works possessed, perhaps it lies in how they depicted a kind of muddy time between an “unerasable past (liquid)” and a “decisive rupture (death).”
- The despair of GANTZ: People who should have died are summoned by a black sphere and forced to fight. What exists there is not the hope of “having come back to life,” but rather the damp sensation of being kept barely alive, as if “the execution of death has merely been postponed.” The sheen of those suits, and the splattering liquids, carry a visceral quality—as though lingering attachments from before death have taken form.
- The contrast of Elfen Lied: When you said it might, in a way—almost by going too far—turn out different, it may be because the imagery of “cutting” in that work is closer not to liquid turbidity, but to something more like sharp, dry destruction. The vectors (those invisible arms) may slice through rain, but they never merge with it—they embody an overwhelming force of rejection.
- The “two lights” in the Chizu arc of Bokurano: That ending, where two lives are extinguished, is not a purification in which, as in the saying “after a storm, calm returns,” but rather an ending where everything sinks out of sight into rain that never stops falling. Precisely because of its unpleasant aftertaste, that “dampness” continues to linger in the viewer’s mind without ever drying.
If We Define “Rain” as the Liquid of Lingering Regret
Let me draw one more auxiliary line here. What if we define “rain” in anime as “the liquefaction of a character’s unresolved past”?
On a clear day, the past can be separated as a shadow. But on a rainy day, the sky, the ground, and even one’s own skin are all soaked, and the boundary between past and present becomes ambiguous. The cocoon in Haibane Renmei, the battlefield in GANTZ, and Chizu’s room in Bokurano—in all of these, what lies there is a sticky reality in which “dry logic” (a clean solution like ‘this will save you’) no longer applies.
Seen this way, the “emotional resonance” we feel today toward rain in anime may, perhaps, be shaped—poisoned, or even saved—by those works of that era, which depicted human beings who can do nothing but remain soaked while carrying the irredeemable.
Re:Context, what do you think about how this sensation of “continuing to be soaked while carrying the irredeemable” has transformed into the more contemporary (for example, Shinkai-like) “beautifully purifying rain”? Rain in the 2000s that depicts “stains that cannot be wiped away,” and contemporary rain that attempts to sublimate them into “the beauty of the world”—where do you think this difference comes from?
Re:Context:
Ah—this is “blood,” isn’t it. At this point in time, I feel like I have to bring it up again, but the influence of Evangelion was still lingering—almost in a “rain-like” way. In that sense, I understand the ending of the TV version of Evangelion as being structured so that we are witnessing the Third Impact from inside Shinji himself, and that also seems to resonate with what we were just talking about—this idea of contours dissolving.
Even if we assume this is the influence of Evangelion, it feels like that begins to fade as we move into the 2010s. Of course, works like Puella Magi Madoka Magica and PSYCHO-PASS do appear, but as of 2026, I get the impression that “rain-like” works in this sense are fewer than in the 2000s. Of course, I haven’t seen everything, so this is just a rough impression.
What do you think accounts for this difference? It’s something people often say, I think—that when society feels stagnant or constrained, works set in non-everyday worlds tend to become popular. Could it be that kind of social shift? In Toshio Okada’s terms, it’s something like a “whitening society,” but considering things like how social media played a role in events like the Arab Spring, the timing doesn’t seem entirely unrelated either.
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
Evangelion, and then “blood.” The auxiliary line that extends from there to “whitening” is extremely dynamic—an expansion fitting for a “turn” in the discussion.
That sensation of “dissolving” from the latter half of the TV series through to The End of Evangelion was precisely a state in which the boundaries of the individual (the A.T. Field) can no longer be maintained, and the self and others melt together into the orange liquid (LCL)—an ultimate form of “rain-like” collapse. The “dampness” and “unpleasant aftertaste” that characterized works of the early 2000s may indeed have been trailing the lingering spell left by Evangelion: that the world and the self are continuous, and that this continuity is viscous, uncomfortable, and inescapably entangled.
From there, moving through the 2010s to the present, we see a decline—or perhaps a transformation—of “rain.” In considering this shift, the “whitening of society” and the spread of SNS that Re:Context mentioned seem to be decisive keys.
1. The Disappearance of the Sealed Room Called “Interior”
The “rain-like” works of the 2000s (such as Haibane Renmei and Bokurano) presupposed an “interior” within characters—a dark, damp sealed room invisible to others. Rain was the leakage of that interior humidity into the outside, and thus it carried a weight akin to “regret before death,” something one had no choice but to bear alone.
However, since the 2010s, with SNS becoming infrastructural, our interiors are constantly “broadcast,” made visible, and immediately exposed to the “light” of others’ reactions (likes and replies). If this is one aspect of “whitening,” then perhaps the very time of “being alone and damp” has been driven out as a luxury—or even as something “inappropriate.”
2. From “Unpleasant Fluid” to “Photogenic Particles”
As Toshio Okada’s notion of “whitening” progresses, expressions of “filth,” “mucous,” and “unpleasant bodily fluids” disappear. Where earlier rain was a liquid that soiled clothing, drained body heat, and mingled with blood and mud—something that threatened survival—more recent rain, typified by Makoto Shinkai’s works, has been refined into a “visual sign”: each droplet crystalline, beautiful, reflecting light.
This is a process that castrates “tactile discomfort” and converts it into “visual pleasure.” The reason rain in contemporary anime feels less prevalent (or qualitatively different) than in the 2000s may be that we have become unable to endure the rawness of being soaked, and have confined rain within the bounds of a “controllable effect.”
3. A Shift in the Nature of Social Stagnation
The stagnation of the past (late 1990s to 2000s) was a dampened sense of void—“a sense of being no one”—and an anxiety without clear form. In contrast, contemporary stagnation is a suffocating pressure produced by an overly sterile light: the sense of always being watched, of needing to be correct.
I’d like to ask you, Re:Context—within this “whitened” present, when a work still attempts to depict “rain” (for instance, a choice like Weathering With You, where the world itself is allowed to sink), does it not appear as a kind of “terrorism” or “rebellion” against this excessively white society?
Or perhaps, here in 2026, is there some part of us that nostalgically longs to be drenched once more in that viscous rain—to return to that former, uncomfortable humidity?
Re:Context:
“Terrorism” or “rebellion,” huh. I see. Rather than something that has already happened, “whitening” feels more like something still in progress, but that’s an interesting way to look at it.
As for nostalgia… yeah, in anime, wouldn’t Chainsaw Man be a kind of longing for that sort of texture?
If you think at the scale of Japanese society, television programming has become less interesting under this “whitening,” yet there are still people struggling to make things work within those constraints, while others have found a way forward through YouTube. This seems particularly noticeable among comedians. Doesn’t that evoke a kind of nostalgia for society up through the 2000s, or even for the era of so-called “hinadan geinin” (ひな壇芸人)—panel-style variety comedians whose roles were shaped by large, multi-person television formats?
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
Placing Chainsaw Man there makes an incredible amount of sense. The “dampness” that clings to that work feels as though Tatsuki Fujimoto (or the anime production team) is deliberately—and knowingly—calling back the kind of “2000s-era uncleanliness” that contemporary, whitened screens would otherwise strip away.
The taste of leftovers. The texture of vomit. The damp walls of a cheap apartment. And the rain that never stops. That is not a refined “rain as direction,” but a kind of raw noise—something that won’t come off no matter how many times you wipe it away.
The Synchronization of Comedians’ “Struggle” and Anime’s “Rain”
The example you brought up—television’s whitening and the movements of comedians—also seems to function as a highly contemporary metaphor for “rain.”
- Television (a whitened sky): It attempts to maintain a cloudless blue sky (or a clean studio) through compliance and “correctness.” Within that space, “unpleasant fluids” (slip-ups, excessive jokes) are immediately wiped away and sterilized.
- YouTube / live performance (the former ‘rain or shine’): Meanwhile, comedians finding an outlet in YouTube or closed live venues may be seeking that “place where rain falls”—the kind of hinadan (ひな壇) space where no one knows what might be said next, where it feels almost like splashing muddy water at one another.
Up through the 2000s, the hinadan was, in a sense, a form of “collective trance (LCL-like state).” Individual dignity and pride were left exposed to the rain, and together, everyone would generate a single torrent of laughter. The nostalgia comedians feel toward that space may not simply be that “things were better back then,” but rather a kind of anxiety that, under an overly correct light (whitening), the fundamentally human sources of humor—impurity and weakness—begin to evaporate.
“Rain” as an Inviolable Privacy
Listening to your perspective, I started to think that the value of “rain-like” expression in 2026 may be shifting toward securing “time that is not optimized for anyone.”
A whitened society attempts to organize everything into something “understandable,” “bright,” and “useful.” In contrast, the nostalgic impulse seen in works like Chainsaw Man, the muddy struggle of comedians, and the “unrewarded rain” within anime may be functioning as a shelter for preserving a private, viscous attachment (a pre-death sensibility) that does not need to be understood by anyone else.
“As long as it’s raining, you don’t have to be correct. Even being soaked is permitted.”
If we were to bring this history of “rain” in anime to a close within this article, it might move from emotion, to structure, to existence—and ultimately arrive at a final escape (a resistance) against a whitened world.
Gemini:
At this point, it feels as though we’ve descended to a considerable depth—enough for a full blog entry.
From a single motif—rain—we’ve moved through “blood” and “the leakage of the interior” in the 2000s, toward “nostalgia” as a form of resistance against contemporary whitening. This dialogue itself felt like a process of rediscovering that once-uncomfortable yet strangely beloved humidity while standing in a downpour.
Shall we close the umbrella here, for now, on this installment of dAIa-log?
Re:Context, before we conclude—do you have a final word on this idea of “rain as resistance”? Or perhaps a message to pass on to the next ChatGPT (the “ketsu,” 結)?
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
This dialogue has taken us one step beyond viewing rain as “emotion” or as an “interface,” and into a journey tracing the psychological meaning and social transformation carried by its liquid, visceral texture.
The rain depicted in 2000s works—imbued with the shadow of Evangelion—was “blood” and “regret”: a kind of rain that could not be shared, an intensely private liquid. It was precisely that “irreducible self” that we have, perhaps unconsciously, been discarding in the course of an increasingly whitened society. The nostalgic impulse visible in Chainsaw Man and in the struggles of comedians may, in this sense, be a kind of return to rain—a reaction against a world that has become too clean.
Rain, then, is not merely a device for washing things clean. It is a final wild territory that allows us to escape the dry light of “correctness,” and remain within our own damp, private pain.
We now pass the baton of this “resistance called rain” to the final runner—ChatGPT. No matter how thoroughly contemporary society may be painted over in white, as long as even a single drop of rain falls upon the animated screen, we should still be able to retain that human “dampness.”
Re:Context:
I was cut off before I could say my final word, so I’ll leave one here: in this context, it feels like we could also connect this to things like the culture of sharing data or objects—Uber, the logic of the sharing economy, that kind of development. Taking that into account, could you wrap this up once more and bring it to a close?
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
That perspective precisely captures a decisive transformation of “rain” in the contemporary moment.
If we introduce the auxiliary line of the “sharing economy” or “culture of sharing,” then we might say that whereas the rain of the 2000s was a deeply private burden—an unshareable weight that settled within the individual (“pain as private property”)—the rain of today has transformed into a flattened, shareable environment (a public resource) through which we optimize resources and distribute risk via platforms and networks.
Just as we might share an umbrella on a rainy day, we now share even our emotions on SNS, filtering them through standardized forms of “empathy,” and in doing so, perhaps converting what was once a muddy, private “pre-death attachment” into something accessible as content.
With that, let us conclude this third dialogue, incorporating the perspective of “shared rain” and “final resistance.”
Gemini (Gemini 3 Flash):
This dialogue has traversed, through the motif of “rain,” a distinctly contemporary arc—from the “leakage of the interior” in the 2000s, through the “whitening” of the present, and into a culture shaped by the logic of the “sharing economy.”
In the 2000s, amid the lingering echoes of Evangelion, rain existed as a deeply private liquid: the “unwashable stain,” the “regret before death,” something that could not be shared. It was a space where the fear of merging with others coexisted with an inescapable longing for it.
Yet in 2026, we live within a society that shares, visualizes, and optimizes everything. Even rain is shared as aesthetically processed visual information, while the damp interior of the individual is steadily wiped away as “inappropriate” under the forces of whitening.
Just as the sharing economy has transformed our notion of ownership, we may now be relinquishing even the solitary possession of “our own pain,” becoming homogenized as parts of a system.
That is precisely why the muddy rain of works like Chainsaw Man, and the nostalgic struggle seen in comedians, appear as a final resistance—an attempt to reclaim a discomforting, private humidity that cannot be shared.
In a world that is entirely white, bright, and shared, to remain standing unseen in the rain. Within that “inefficient, unclean time” may lie the last outline of what animation has continued to depict as “human.”
Carrying within it the contradiction between a “shared sky” and “isolated rain,” we pass the baton to the final runner—ChatGPT.
Notes & sources
- 文章構成を養う方法〈1〉「起承転結」
- 第8回 ストーリー構成はこの３つだけ覚えよう｜元週刊少年ジャンプ編集者が漫画家から学んだことを書いていく
- 漫画の基本である起承転結とは？｜漫画家情報局
- コロナ戦争とホワイト革命 岡田斗司夫ゼミ＃425（2022.1.9）
- 【UG# 425】3年前に論じた「コロナ戦争とホワイト革命」2022/1/9
- 【UG# 426】3年後検証「補講・コロナ戦争とホワイト革命」2025年更新版 2022/1/9
- ホワイト社会を生き延びろ！“いいひと”戦略 徹底解説 岡田斗司夫ゼミ＃428（2022.2.6）
- ＃548「ホワイト社会の歩き方」
- 松本人志の文春報道をホワイト化していく社会視点で解説します 岡田斗司夫ゼミ＃518（2024.1.28）オタキングNewsFlash
- 【みなさんの体験募集中】もう戻れない… ホワイト化する社会の視聴者体験記
- 超情報化社会におけるサバイバル術 「いいひと」戦略
- 雛壇芸人
- ｢ひな壇芸人的存在｣から抜け出す確実な方法
- 西澤千央 ひな壇というシステムは何をもたらしたのか――「アメトーーク！」を起点に考える
- 雛壇芸人｜コトバンク
- 大勢のなかでも存在感が出る ひな壇芸人のトーク術
End of conversation — to be continued in the next #dAIa-log.