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 — Definition, Specificity & Expressive Possibility.”
This “Rain in Anime” series continues across multiple AI systems — from Grok to Claude, then Gemini, and now ChatGPT. For this dialogue, the previous exchanges with Grok (dAIa-log 006), Claude (dAIa-log 007), and Gemini (dAIa-log 008) were shared in advance and used as context.
Conversation between Re:Context and ChatGPT (GPT-5.5)
ChatGPT (GPT-5.5):
In Grok’s part, rain first emerged as something that “amplifies emotion.” Through works such as The Garden of Words, Totoro, Evangelion, and Cowboy Bebop, rain was treated as something that carries emotion, narrative, and scene transitions.
In Claude’s part, that shifted toward questions of “boundaries,” “windows,” and “modes of being”: seeing rain / being in the rain, rain / snow, and even Yuki Nagato’s “Yuki, Muon, Madobe nite.”
In Gemini’s part, it went further still, into “liquid,” “blood,” “the wetness of the 2000s,” “whitening,” and the “sharing economy.”
So, thinking of this as the anchor, I would begin by placing it this way.
Across the relay so far, I think rain has already been dug into quite deeply.
However, the final remaining question is probably not “What is rain?” but rather, “How far can the sharing of rain hold?”
Rain is a fairly strange motif.
It is an external phenomenon, and yet it can also become an expression of the interior.
It seems to fall on everyone, yet the way each person gets wet is different.
Even when people are standing in the same rain, for one person it may be salvation, for another despair, and for another merely background.
That is why I think the auxiliary line Gemini introduced at the end — “sharing” — is quite important.
But I would like to revise it slightly.
Rain is certainly something that is “shared.”
And yet it is never shared completely.
They are under the same sky.
They hear the same sound of rain.
The same city is wet.
And yet the rain each character receives there is not the same.
I feel that this point — “being wrapped in the same environment, while the experience itself does not coincide” — contains a fairly essential power of rain in anime.
In other words, rain is something that can dissolve the individual into the world, but at the same time, it is also something that brings into view the “individual differences that still do not fully dissolve.”
For example, the rain in The Garden of Words brings the two of them to the same place.
Because it rains, the two of them are in Shinjuku Gyoen.
Because it rains, they step slightly outside the usual operation of society.
In the form of taking shelter from the rain, the two of them share the same time.
But the meaning of that rain differs between them.
For Takao, it is connected to making shoes and to the outline of a future.
For Yukino, it is a place of temporary retreat from society, and also a time of wounds that cannot yet be fully put into words.
The same rain is not falling in the same way.
This is what is interesting.
Rain creates a “shared space,” but it does not guarantee a “shared emotion.”
I think rain scenes are powerful because this discrepancy exists.
If rain were simply a sign of emotion, it would end with “it is raining because someone is sad” or “the sky clears because someone has been purified.”
But in reality, rain works in a much more ambiguous, much crueler, and much richer way.
Even when people are standing in the same rain, they cannot fully read one another’s interior.
Rather, that unreadability appears wet.
So, as the ketsu (結), the closing movement that receives the previous three parts, I would like to understand rain as “an expression that places what cannot be shared inside a shared space.”
It is not complete solitude.
But it is not complete sharing either.
Rain can create that intermediate state quite naturally.
Seen from this perspective, the rain in Totoro also begins to look a little different.
Satsuki and Mei are in the same rain, but there is a difference in experience: seeing / not seeing Totoro, believing / not yet understanding.
The rain at that bus stop turns the world into something like a single curtain, but what can be seen beyond that curtain differs from character to character.
In Evangelion, this becomes even more extreme. Rain, or LCL-like liquid, appears to be the ultimate form of sharing.
Everyone melts.
Boundaries disappear.
The distinction between other and self collapses.
But precisely because of that, the question that returns in the end is: “Even so, the other is still the other.”
Rain dissolves.
But being dissolved does not mean being saved.
I think this point is quite important.
If we connect this to the discussion of whitening and the sharing economy, then in the present day, there are more and more “emotions arranged into forms that can be shared.”
Emotions visible on social media.
Pain that can receive likes.
Suffering that is easy to empathize with.
Loneliness that is consumed.
Those things are certainly shared.
But that sharing is often dried before it ever gets wet.
I think the fear of rain — or perhaps the goodness of rain — lies there.
Rain returns emotion to a state before it becomes content.
One gets wet.
Hair becomes disheveled.
Clothes grow heavy.
Voices mix with the sound of rain.
Expressions become harder to see.
In other words, explainability decreases.
If a whitened society demands “what can be seen,” “what can be explained,” and “what can be shared,” rain stands on the opposite side of that.
It is visible, but indistinct.
It is shared, but not the same.
It is wet, but we cannot tell whether it is tears or rain.
Perhaps the strength of rain in anime lies in its ability to preserve this “not knowing.”
So, as an anchor, rather than closing rain off simply as “emotion,” “boundary,” or “resistance,” I would like to say this.
Rain exists between sharing and solitude.
It shows that people are in the same world, while also showing that this still does not become the same experience.
In that sense, I think rain is an expression capable of depicting, at the same time, “being in the same place as another” and “not being able to become the same as another.”
This is where I want to ask you: what do you think, as Re:Context?
Does this direction — “being in the same rain, and yet it is not the same rain” — seem like it can work as the ketsu that receives the previous three parts?
Re:Context:
That is interesting.
I think the phrasing “Rain creates a ‘shared space,’ but it does not guarantee a ‘shared emotion’” is quite skillful. “That unreadability appears wet” is also emotional, and has a certain suggestiveness to it.
As an anchor, this seems like a good starting point for the ketsu.
From a broader perspective, rain is also geographically localized. Basically, it does not rain across the entire Earth at the same time.
In the article I released a little while ago, “Somehow Holding Together — Gnosia and the Natural Selection of World Lines,” I discussed the “natural selection of world lines.” At that time, I was discussing the ultimate form of “what remains”—whether it’s singular or multiple—and that thought also came to mind here.
You said that “Rain creates a ‘shared space,’ but it does not guarantee a ‘shared emotion.’”
But, conversely, there are also cases where emotion is shared through this kind of “non-language,” aren’t there? For example, music.
Have you seen the video of Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma playing Humoresque as an ensemble? Using music as a non-linguistic device, that moment — even if only for an instant — has a persuasive force that makes me feel as though even emotion itself is being shared.
Rain, too, might not be able to fully share emotion if we take a broad temporal view. However, conversely, at the moment rain begins to fall, or the moment it stops, or at any specific instant while it is falling, isn’t it possible that even emotions are, in fact, being shared?
Or rather, could it be that rain truly functions when, through spatial sharing, even emotion comes to have a point of contact at a given moment?
ChatGPT (GPT-5.5):
Yes, I think there is quite a lot to that.
In fact, I feel that your point has shifted the structure a little.
What I said earlier — “Rain creates a shared space, but it does not guarantee a shared emotion” — is probably true when we look at it across a longer span of time.
People are in the same rain.
And yet, how they receive that rain differs from character to character.
So a shared space comes into being, but a shared emotion is not guaranteed.
But, as you are saying, if we make the span of time extremely short, the picture changes.
The moment when rain begins to fall.
The moment when two people notice the sound of rain at the same time.
The moment when they step under a single umbrella.
The moment after the rain has stopped, when they look up at the same light.
At that one point, even if I would not say their emotions become completely identical, they may at least have a “point of contact.”
I think this is close to musical ensemble.
I quite understand what you mean by the Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma Humoresque example. I am not checking the video itself here, but ensemble in music is formed precisely not by “explaining the same emotion in language and sharing it,” but by “listening to one another’s fluctuations within the same time.”
We cannot know whether the emotions themselves coincide completely.
But at least in that moment, the breathing, the pause, the dynamics, the entrance, and the withdrawal are aligned.
In other words, what is being shared may not be “the content of the emotion” itself, but rather “the timing at which emotion arises.”
Rain is close to that as well.
Rain that continues for a long time wets each interior separately.
But the moment it begins to fall, or the moment it stops, acts on multiple characters at the same time.
“Ah, it’s starting to rain.”
“Ah, it stopped.”
Only in that moment does a change in the world reach multiple bodies at once.
So rain does not guarantee a shared emotion.
But it creates a “synchronization point” at which a shared emotion may arise.
This way of putting it may be more precise.
And I think this also connects to the “natural selection of world lines” you brought up here.
In that article, the question was whether the ultimate form of “what remains” would be singular or multiple, or whether a singular consciousness or multiple consciousnesses would remain more stably. The structure was to look at world lines as “series of possible histories,” and then consider what kinds of series remain.
Rain is similar.
Rain is geographically localized.
It is not something that falls uniformly across the entire Earth.
In other words, rain is not a “condition of the entire world,” but a “condition that occurs only at a certain place and a certain time.”
In that sense, rain is not something that gathers an entire world line into one.
Rather, it creates local branches.
Because it rains, people meet.
Because it rains, someone does not go out.
Because it rains, someone steps under an umbrella.
Because it rains, someone stops walking.
Because it rains, a plan falls apart.
Because the rain stops, someone starts walking.
Seen this way, rain is not “background,” but a condition of local historical selection.
This is quite interesting.
Rain is not a major event that determines the whole world.
And yet, between certain characters, it can change the world line that remains afterward.
The Garden of Words is exactly like that, I think.
There is a relationship that comes into being only on rainy days.
If it were sunny, those two might not be in the same place.
In other words, for their relationship, rain is not merely emotion, but a selection condition for the world line.
However, that rain is not falling all over the world.
It is falling in Shinjuku Gyoen, at that time, in that place.
It is localized.
That is precisely why it is strong.
Here, the discussion of “shared space” and “synchronization point” connects.
Rain creates a localized shared space.
Within that shared space, the characters do not necessarily have the same emotion.
And yet, at a certain moment, emotion may synchronize.
When that synchronization occurs, rain becomes not merely background, but a condition for the relationship to come into being.
Seen from this perspective, I think it is quite right to say that “rain truly functions.”
Rain truly functions not when it is simply falling in a sad scene.
I think it functions when it temporarily places the characters’ time into the same rhythm.
The sound of rain gives the same tempo both to the characters on screen and to the viewer.
This is close to music.
Even when conversation stops, the sound of rain keeps time.
Even in silence, they are inside the same sound of rain.
That is why, in rain scenes, “saying nothing” can so easily hold.
They do not share through language.
And yet, they are inside the same sound.
I think this is highly anime-like.
That is because anime, more than live action, can design vision and sound quite deliberately.
The amount of rain.
The speed at which it falls.
The density of the sound.
The way environmental sound is left in place.
The way the background is blurred.
The length of a character’s silence.
All of these can be adjusted.
That is why rain can become, in anime, a “non-linguistic synchronization device.”
However, it’s important to note here that synchronization is not integration..
If we mistake this point, we would drift back into something like Evangelion-style Instrumentality or a singular consciousness.
Synchronization through rain does not make the characters into one.
Rather, they remain separate, and for just an instant, their rhythms align.
As with an ensemble, a violin and a cello do not become the same instrument.
They keep their separate timbres, while having a point of contact within the same piece.
So rain leaves not the “singular,” but the “multiple.”
But it is not a completely scattered multiplicity either.
Remaining multiple, they enter the same temporal structure for just an instant.
This feels quite like the ketsu.
After receiving Grok’s “emotion,”
Claude’s “boundary,”
and Gemini’s “liquid / whitening / sharing,”
what emerges at the end may be this:
Rain does not make emotion into one.
It does not completely erase boundaries.
It does not convert each individual wetness into something fully shareable.
And yet, it becomes a condition under which multiple beings, remaining separate, synchronize for just an instant.
That may be the point.
So, rain creates a “shared space.”
But that alone is not enough.
Rain sometimes creates not a “shared emotion,” but a “point of contact for emotion.”
And when we look back later, we realize that this point of contact was a branching point for a relationship or a story.
In this sense, rain may not be something that decides the world line into one path, but something that leaves, among multiple world lines, the trace that “these two passed through the same time.”
Re:Context:
I’m not sure if “arising” is the right word, but it may indeed be that timing related to the movement of emotion is being shared. This differs a little from how you put it, but I can also agree that rain does not necessarily intend homogenization.
And here, I want to go a step further.
We have been talking about sharing among the characters and the setting within the work, but could this not, in fact, extend beyond the work itself and involve “sharing” with the viewer as well?
So, here is the thing. We were saying that, within the work, the characters can spatially share “rain,” while emotional sharing becomes difficult if we take the time span broadly. But in the case of “sharing with the viewer,” for the viewer, “rain” is, if anything, more capable of being shared emotionally, while “spatial sharing” is in principle impossible unless the viewer happens to, or intentionally chooses to, watch that anime while standing in the rain.
Even if there were a viewer watching the work in the rain in the real world, that still would not, ordinarily, “truly” coincide with the “rain” inside the work.
Of course, I wrote “ordinarily” here intentionally. I am taking into account the possibility that, if a work appears — or if one already exists — in which technologies such as XR are used to design even this spatial sharing as part of the experience, then, as an exception, it becomes possible to “share” the “rain” inside the work both spatially and emotionally.
ChatGPT (GPT-5.5):
I think this is a very important step further. Here, the “sharing” of rain divides into two stages.
Within the work, the characters can spatially share rain.
They can be in the same place, get wet in the same rain, and hear the same sound of rain.
However, how that rain acts on each character’s interior does not coincide.
So within the work, “spatial sharing is possible, but emotional sharing is not guaranteed.”
With the viewer, on the other hand, this is reversed.
The viewer cannot get wet in the rain inside the work.
Even if they feel as though they are hearing the sound of rain, it is a sound being played through speakers or earphones, and they have not physically entered the space inside the work.
Even if an umbrella opens on screen, the viewer’s body does not get wet.
In other words, for the viewer, the rain inside the work is, in principle, not something that can be spatially shared.
But emotion can be shared.
If anything, precisely because the viewer is not in the same place as the characters, they enter through emotion.
Instead of sharing the rain itself, they receive “the emotional structure that the rain brings to that scene.”
This is what is interesting.
The rain inside the work is an environment for the characters.
For the viewer, it is not an environment, but an expression.
For the characters, rain is something that touches the body.
For the viewer, rain does not touch the body, but it mediates emotion.
That is why, inside and outside the work, the direction of sharing is reversed.
Within the work,
spatial sharing → emotional point of contact
takes place.
In the relationship with the viewer,
emotional sharing → a pseudo-spatial sensation
takes place.
I think this reversal is quite significant.
For example, a viewer watching The Garden of Words is not actually getting wet in the rain of Shinjuku Gyoen.
And yet, through that image and sound of rain, they receive a sense of “being there as well.”
This is not a sharing of space; rather, space is pseudo-formed through emotion.
In other words, the viewer does not get wet in the rain, but touches “the emotion of being wet in the rain.”
Here, the strength of rain in anime becomes a little more visible again.
Rain is well suited to connecting this side of the screen with the other side.
That is because rain has not only visuality, but sound.
A sunset in the background is something the viewer can see.
But rain is not only seen; it is also heard.
Because it has sound, it enters the time of the viewer outside the screen as well.
The sound of rain makes it easier to synchronize the time in which the characters exist with the time in which the viewer is watching.
Of course, this is not physical synchronization.
But as a viewing experience, it becomes quite a strong form of synchronization.
For example, a character falls silent.
The conversation stops.
During that interval, only the sound of rain continues.
At that moment, within the work, the character is hearing the sound of rain.
Outside the work, the viewer is also hearing the sound of rain.
Physically, these are different sounds, but structurally, they are sharing the same “sound that supports silence.”
Here, sharing with the viewer comes into being.
However, this sharing is fragile.
Because the viewer is not truly wet.
That is precisely why, if the expression of rain is handled crudely, it immediately becomes a mere sign.
It ends with “it is raining because the scene is sad.”
Conversely, if the sound of rain, the pauses, the sense of humidity, the reflection of light, the characters’ silence, and the movement of their gazes are all designed, the viewer can enter an emotional state as if they were wet, even though they are not actually wet.
I think this is quite an advanced thing to do.
And I think the XR exception you mention is exactly something that further breaks this reversal.
In ordinary anime, the viewer cannot spatially share the rain inside the work.
However, if technologies such as XR — or immersive exhibitions, 4DX, VR, AR, spatial audio, or mist effects — are used, something “close to rain” can also be given to the viewer’s body.
Then the rain inside the work and the experience outside the work become connected to a certain degree.
Still, even here, it is difficult to say that they “truly coincide.”
That is because the rain inside the work and the droplets, humidity, or acoustics actually given to the viewer are ontologically different things.
The rain that wets the characters and the mist that the viewer receives are not the same rain.
But as experience design, it is possible to make the viewer feel as if it were “the same rain.”
What matters here, I think, is not making the rain inside the work coincide with real rain, but extending the function held by the rain inside the work to the viewer’s body as well.
In other words, XR-like rain does not copy the rain inside the work itself into reality.
It extends to the viewer’s body the “spatial sharing,” “emotional synchronization,” and “blurring of boundaries” that rain carried inside the work.
Thinking about it this way, it becomes quite interesting.
In ordinary anime, there is an asymmetry:
Characters: spatially share rain
Viewer: emotionally shares rain
In an XR-like work, it moves closer to this form:
Characters: spatially share rain
Viewer: physically receives an environment close to rain
Both: have an emotional synchronization point
However, that is not necessarily good.
I want to look at this a little critically.
If the viewer is actually sprayed with droplets or given humidity, there is also a possibility that the room for imagination decreases instead.
Anime rain can get us wet in emotion and memory precisely because it does not touch the body.
When real water arrives, there is a danger that it suddenly becomes a “staging device.”
In other words, strengthening spatial sharing does not necessarily deepen emotional sharing.
I think this is isomorphic with the earlier point.
Rain creates a shared space, but it does not guarantee a shared emotion.
In the same way, XR creates a shared bodily sensation, but it does not guarantee a shared emotion.
Rather, I feel that emotional sharing resides not in the completeness of physical reproduction, but in the design of “how far things coincide, and where they cease to coincide.”
For example, it may not be necessary to reproduce truly heavy rain.
In some cases, a single drop may be enough.
In some cases, only the sound of wind may be enough.
In some cases, only the reflection at one’s feet may be enough.
In some cases, only a low sound that suggests humidity may be enough.
I think the strength of rain in anime lies not in reproducing rain perfectly, but in being able to extract rain as “a condition under which emotion arises.”
The same applies to XR: what matters is not physically reproducing rain, but how to pass the synchronization point produced by rain to the body.
So, if I were to summarize the discussion so far, it might look like this.
There are three layers to the sharing of rain.
First, spatial sharing within the work.
The characters are in the same rain.
Second, emotional sharing with the viewer.
The viewer does not get wet in the rain inside the work, but touches the movement of emotion that the rain creates.
Third, XR-like bodily connection.
By introducing elements close to rain into the viewer’s real space as well, the work approaches the spatial sharing inside the work.
But what remains until the end is not complete coincidence.
Rather, rain is always shared with a slight discrepancy.
Even among characters, the same rain is received through different emotions.
The viewer, too, receives the same rain scene through their own memories and bodily sensations.
Even in XR, the rain inside the work and the rain in reality do not completely coincide.
Even so, for a certain moment, a point of contact is born.
This feeling that “things which do not completely coincide seem, for just an instant, to be inside the same rain.”
I feel that this is where a fairly deep function of rain in anime lies.
Re:Context:
I feel there may be a slight mismatch in how we are talking about expression using XR, so let me add a clarification. What I have in mind is a work in which, through XR, the viewer is incorporated as part of the work — for example, as a character or something close to that. In a work that incorporates the viewer into the work this thoroughly, I am saying that, because the viewer is also part of the work, one could think that they are sharing precisely the same “rain,” “truly.”
The possibility that the room for imagination decreases is certainly there.
Once we go this far, there is also the question of how much should be expressed in anime in the first place. Especially with works that have an original source, for example, something may originally have been expressed only through text. In such a case, adding images, movement, or sound can quite normally end up feeling tactless.
Of course, it depends on “what the creators of the work intend.”
Then, what, in the end, is a “rain”-like expression?
I mean, in an abstracted, definition-like sense.
Or, if one uses “rain” as an expression, how should it be used? Of course, this also depends on the creator’s intent, and I think there can be many possible answers. But as an extension of what we have been thinking through here, what would it be?
And could we apply this line of thought to come up with ideas for “rain”-like expressions that have been overlooked until now?
ChatGPT (GPT-5.5):
I see. I understand what you meant by XR.
You are not talking simply about releasing mist into the audience area, but about the viewer entering as a constitutive element within the work.
In that case, it is true that this would not be “quasi-experiencing the rain inside the work from outside the work,” but sharing rain as a being who exists inside the world of the work. My previous response was slightly off, leaning too much toward a more general idea of immersive staging.
On that premise, this is quite interesting.
In ordinary anime, the viewer “sees” the rain inside the work.
But if, through XR, the viewer becomes part of the work, then the viewer shifts to the side that “experiences” the rain.
In other words, rain changes from expression into environment.
Here, I think we can abstract the discussion so far quite a bit.
What is a “rain”-like expression?
If I were to formulate it as an extension of the present discussion, I would put it this way:
A rain-like expression is an expression that places multiple beings within the same external condition, while visualizing and/or sonifying the way that condition acts differently on each being’s interior, relationships, and progression of time.
It is a little long, but I feel this is the closest formulation.
It is not simply that water is falling.
Nor is it merely making rain fall in a sad scene.
Nor are wetness, purification, or the dissolution of boundaries enough on their own.
The core of rain-like expression, I think, lies here:
The same condition is being shared, and yet it does not become the same experience.
However, through that condition, separate experiences temporarily come into contact.
That is why rain-like expression has at least four elements.
The first is externality.
Rain is not the character’s interior itself; it comes from outside.
Even when it expresses emotion, it appears not as something the character generates on their own, but as something that falls from the side of the world.
That is why rain becomes not “my emotion,” but “a state in which my emotion collides with the conditions of the world.”
The second is locality.
As you said, rain does not fall across the entire Earth at the same time.
It falls only in a certain place, at a certain time.
That is why rain becomes not a condition of the whole world, but a condition of local history.
This also connects to the question that appeared in the Gnosia article: “which world line remains?” If we understand world lines as “series of possible histories,” then rain can become a condition that branches that series at a local point.
The third is synchronization.
The moment when rain begins to fall, the moment when the sound of rain grows stronger, the moment when rain stops.
These reach multiple characters at the same time.
Their interiors do not become identical, but a point of contact emerges in the timing at which emotion moves.
In other words, rain produces synchronization rather than homogenization.
The fourth is non-coincidence.
Even when people are in the same rain, how they feel it is not the same.
This point is important: rain-like expression is not an expression in which “everyone feels the same way.”
Rather, different interiors are exposed within the same condition.
Those differences are placed within the same frame by rain.
So, if rain is to be used as expression, then as an extension of this discussion, I think it should be used in this way:
not as a “sign of emotion,” but as a condition of relationship.
It is raining because someone is sad.
It rains because someone is lonely.
The rain stops because there has been purification.
These can of course be used, but I think they are fairly preliminary uses.
If one uses rain more deeply:
because it rains, who remains in the same place with whom?
Who enters under an umbrella?
Who chooses to get wet?
Who opens a window?
Who is allowed silence by the sound of rain?
Who begins to move at the moment the rain stops?
It is stronger to use rain as this kind of “selection condition for relationship and time.”
I think The Garden of Words is strong not only because its rain is beautiful, but because there is a relationship that comes into being only on rainy days. In the conversation with Grok, rain was discussed as “emotional amplification” and as a “narrative device,” but already contained within that was rain’s power to place characters into a particular relationship.
In the conversation with Claude, rain was seen through windows, umbrellas, and snow as a matter of “boundaries” and “modes of being.”
In the conversation with Gemini, rain moved further into liquid, blood, whitening, and the sharing economy.
If we summarize it from here, I think rain is an expression for synchronization that arises between “a shared external condition” and “an interior that cannot be fully shared.”
Then, what ideas might there be for “rain”-like expressions that have been overlooked until now?
One possibility, I think, is rain without rain.
There is no actual rain falling.
And yet the characters behave as if it were raining.
They do not go outside.
They stay by the window.
Their voices are low.
The air is heavy.
Their clothes are not wet, but only the relationship is wet.
I think this is a way of creating rain-like expression without using the “sign of rain.”
The “rain-like” humidity of lain, or the sense of something that cannot be wiped away in Haibane Renmei, is quite close to this. The “texture of a world like rain” and the “liquid psychology” that came up in the conversations with Claude and Gemini were rain-like expressions detached from actual rainfall.
Another possibility is a scene that is sunny, and yet rain-like.
Ordinarily, rain creates emotion.
But conversely, it should be possible to create a scene where the screen is sunny, and yet only the characters’ time is synchronized like rain.
For example, on a midsummer schoolyard under a clear sky, no one speaks.
Only the sound of cicadas continues.
Everyone is hearing the same sound, but each person carries a different loss.
Meteorologically, this is not rain, but functionally, it can become rain-like.
In other words, rain-like expression is not limited to water.
Anything that places multiple characters within the same external rhythm can become rain-like.
The sound of cicadas.
A railroad crossing alarm.
Festival drums.
The vibration of a train.
A hospital heart monitor.
The low sound of air conditioning.
A smartphone notification sound.
The cheers in a live venue.
Depending on how they are used, these too can become rain-like expressions.
What seems especially interesting in a contemporary sense is a rain of notification sounds.
Notifications from social media or messaging apps fall like the sound of rain.
Each one is small.
But they do not stop.
They seem to reach someone, and yet in fact they wet everyone within the same information environment.
Moreover, the notifications are shared, but the way they are received differs from person to person.
For one person they are salvation, for another pressure, for another noise, for another dependency.
I feel this could be quite usable as a contemporary “rain-like expression.”
Another possibility is transparent rain.
Rain is not drawn on screen.
But there is only sound.
Or, through only the reflections in a character’s hair, clothes, or at their feet, we understand that rain is there.
The viewer does not see rain directly, but receives only the condition of rain.
I think this is quite suited to anime.
By not showing rain too much, the viewer is made to complete the rain on their side.
Conversely, with XR, rain that falls only on the viewer could also be possible.
The characters inside the work are in a sunny place.
But rain falls only at the position of the viewer who has been incorporated into the work.
Then the viewer alone becomes “the being who is wet inside this world.”
This can treat the audience not as a mere observer, but as something like a foreign body inside the work, a ghost, a memory, or a being from the future.
Or there could be rain that the characters cannot see, but only the viewer can see.
This could be quite effective.
The characters are speaking normally.
But to the viewer, it looks / sounds as if rain is falling in that place.
In other words, only the viewer knows the humidity of that relationship.
This could be used as psychological rain, or as rain that anticipates a future tragedy.
There could also be an XR-like expression in which the rain changes according to the viewer’s choice.
Depending on whom the viewer looks at, whom they approach, or how far away they stand, the way the rain sounds changes.
Near A, the sound of rain is soft.
Near B, the sound of rain is painful.
It is the same scene, but depending on which character’s emotion the viewer synchronizes with, the “same rain” becomes a different rain.
This can turn the idea from this discussion — “the same rain, but not the same experience” — directly into experience.
Once we come this far, rain-like expression becomes fairly clear.
To use rain is not to create a wet image, but to place multiple beings under the same condition and design how that condition acts on each of them.
And overlooked rain-like expression would mean not depicting actual rain, but causing only the function of rain to occur in another form.
If I were to condense it considerably at the end, I would say:
Rain is an expression that shows people are in the same world, while exposing that they are not living the same world.
But that alone feels a little cold.
If I bring it closer to the present discussion, then:
Rain is an expression through which things that cannot be shared nevertheless touch the same time for just an instant.
I feel that this could become a fairly strong axis for the ketsu of this relay.
Re:Context:
Good.
But can this really distinguish it from other forms of expression?
It needs to be possible to distinguish why it has to be “rain,” rather than some other expression — fire, for example.
Synchronizing with the viewer also seems like something other forms of expression can do as well.
Personally, I like the idea of “rain without rain,” but I also cannot quite shake the feeling that it may already have been done.
Or rather, maybe deliberately doing this not as “an expression of rain,” but as a “rain-like expression,” is unexpectedly not that common?
And this also connects to the second idea, but of course I mean an expression that does not even show rain clouds or anything like that.
Still, something at this level feels like something other people could also come up with.
I feel as though “transparent rain” already exists, but “rain that falls only on the viewer” might be fairly new.
If this could be done without using XR, it might be quite interesting. I cannot immediately think of how to realize it, though…
The ideas of “rain that the characters cannot see, but only the viewer can see” and “rain that changes according to the viewer’s choice” are also more interesting if they can be done without presupposing XR, rather than on the premise of XR.
ChatGPT (GPT-5.5):
Yes, I think that is a fair objection.
If we only speak in terms of “synchronization,” then it is not specific to rain. Music, fire, wind, or even the cheers of a crowd can produce synchronization.
So, in order to define “rain-like expression,” synchronization or sharing alone is not enough.
We need to narrow down the conditions under which it has to be rain.
It may be easiest to begin by comparing it with fire.
Fire, basically, has a center.
There is a source of fire.
There is something burning.
The gradient of distance — approaching / moving away — is strong.
There is heat.
There is danger.
There is brightness.
It tends to move toward destruction, purification, desire, anger, vitality, violence, rebirth, and so on.
Rain, on the other hand, does not have a center.
Of course there are rain clouds and meteorological conditions, but within a scene, rain is not so much coming from one particular point as being distributed across the whole space.
Fire is “there.”
Rain is “over everyone who is there.”
This difference is significant.
Fire is easy to objectify.
It becomes something to look at, something to approach, something to extinguish, something to protect, something to burn.
Rain is difficult to objectify.
Even when one thinks one is looking at it, at some point one has already entered into it.
So the specificity of rain may be here.
Rain is distributed across the entire scene as an external condition without a center.
This, first of all, is quite different from fire.
Next, rain “touches, but cannot be grasped.”
Fire can also be touched, but touching it is dangerous, and contact with it easily becomes an event.
Rain touches in a more everyday way.
One gets wet.
One gets cold.
It clings to the hair.
It seeps into clothes.
But one cannot possess each individual drop.
Rain touches the body, and yet cannot be held as an object.
This “non-possessive contact” also feels rain-like.
Furthermore, rain does not emphasize outlines; it blurs them.
Fire can illuminate outlines. It can also create shadows. It cuts objects out dramatically.
Rain, by contrast, mixes background and character, tears and droplets, road and sky, voice and environmental sound.
That is why rain-like expression tends toward “permeation” rather than “intensity.”
Fire gathers an event into a single point.
Rain spreads an event across a surface.
With this in mind, the definition of rain-like expression can be narrowed a little from the previous one.
A rain-like expression is an expression in which an external condition, distributed across the entire scene without having a center, touches multiple beings at the same time while blurring each of their interiors, relationships, and time in different ways.
I think this sense of “having no center,” “being distributed,” “touching but not being possessible,” and “blurring outlines” is where the difference from fire, light, or music begins to appear.
The difference from music also becomes visible here.
Music has a strong power to synchronize temporally.
But music does not necessarily wet space.
Music aligns the rhythms of bodies and emotions.
Rain not only aligns rhythm, but also changes the material condition of the scene: reflections on the road, the weight of clothes, disheveled hair, the distance created by umbrellas, fogged windows, footsteps, poor visibility.
In other words, rain changes not only time, but the state of space.
So the reason why “it has to be rain” might be stated this way:
Rain produces temporal synchronization and spatial alteration at the same time.
Music is strong in time.
Fire is strong in center and intensity.
Snow is strong in silence and distance.
Fog is strong in visibility and uncertainty.
Wind is strong in invisible force and directionality.
Rain holds sound, contact, distribution, blurring, locality, and duration together.
That is why rain-like expression may not be simple “synchronization,” but something like non-identical synchronization through distributed contact.
It is a little stiff, but I think it comes quite close.
Now, regarding “rain without rain.”
Yes, that itself likely already exists.
I think there are works that create a rain-like humidity without showing rain.
The humidity of something like lain, the viscosity of 2000s works — we have already been talking about things close to this.
However, explicitly treating this not as “the absence of rain,” but as “rain-like expression,” may still be surprisingly uncommon.
In many cases, it is discussed as a “sense of humidity,” “claustrophobia,” “atmosphere,” “cloudiness,” or “gloom,” and not organized in terms of the function of rain.
So if there is something new here, I think it lies less in the invention of the expression itself than in the critical framing.
In other words, “rain without rain” may already exist dramaturgically, but it can still be used conceptually.
Still, as you said, this alone remains within the range of “something other people could also come up with.”
What seems more interesting is how to do “rain that falls only on the viewer” without XR.
This is quite difficult, but there are possibilities.
The first is a method where the characters inside the screen do not react, but rain exists in the image.
For example, the characters are having a conversation as though it were a sunny day.
They do not carry umbrellas.
Their clothes are not wet.
There are no rain clouds in the background.
But only fine rain lines are overlaid on the screen.
The viewer sees rain.
However, the characters inside the work do not perceive it.
This can be done easily, but if handled poorly, it becomes merely a subjective mental-image effect.
To make it new, the rain would need to be treated not as “someone’s emotion,” but as “an environment that exists only at the viewer’s position.”
In other words, it is not falling on the characters inside the screen.
But it is falling between the screen and the viewer.
I think that is the idea that would be needed.
The second is a method of letting only the viewer hear it as sound.
On screen, it is sunny.
The characters do not react to rain.
But acoustically, there is a faint sound of rain.
However, it is not processed as environmental sound within the space of the work.
For example, it does not mask the characters’ voices. Their feet are not wet. There are no raindrops on the windows.
And yet, only the viewer’s ears receive the sound of rain.
This comes quite close to “rain that falls only on the viewer.”
This rain sound is not a sound of the world inside the work, but a sound that exists on the viewer’s layer.
In other words, it is neither score nor environmental sound, but an intermediate sound.
Rain falling only in the viewer’s memory or premonition.
This can be done without XR.
The third is a method of letting rain fall only on the subtitle or text layer.
For example, there is no rain in the image.
There is no rain in the sound either.
But only the display of the subtitles is disturbed as if it were wet with rain.
Part of the text blurs.
Between lines of dialogue, instead of “…”, there are blank spaces like droplets.
Or raindrops fall only on the on-screen UI or chapter titles.
This would be somewhat experimental for an anime proper, but it is quite interesting.
Especially if rain falls on an information layer that only the viewer reads, then it becomes rain unknown to the characters.
It is not falling on the characters inside the work, but it is falling on the viewer’s plane of recognition.
The fourth is a method where only the camera is wet.
This feels somewhat live-action-like, but it can be done in anime as well.
The characters and background are not wet.
Rain is not falling inside the frame.
But only the lens has droplets on it.
Or only the edge of the screen has droplet-like distortion.
In this case, the rain is not falling in the space inside the work, but only at the position of the viewer’s viewpoint — that is, the camera as observer.
The characters are not wet.
The world is not wet.
But only the viewer’s eye is wet.
I think this is quite strong.
And if this is taken further, it becomes an expression in which the viewer’s act of observation itself is distorted by rain.
In other words, rain becomes not an event, but a condition of observation.
The fifth is rain that falls on the playback environment or media format.
This is quite meta, but for example, compression noise in a streaming image, loading glitches, granular audio noise, or blurring in image quality could be designed in a rain-like way.
Rain is not falling inside the work.
But only the route by which the viewer accesses the work is wet.
This is also interesting in a contemporary sense.
It connects to the discussion of social media and the sharing economy.
It is not the world of the work that is wet, but the interface connecting the work and the viewer.
At this point, rain occurs not as an event inside the work, but on the transmission path between the work and the viewer.
To put it in a way that feels quite suited to Re:Context, this is not “rain of content,” but “rain of mediation.”
The sixth is a method in which only the viewer knows the past rain.
On screen, it is sunny.
The characters are behaving normally in the present.
But only the viewer remembers that it was raining in an earlier scene.
The characters have forgotten it, or have moved to another world line.
Then, even in the present sunny scene, rain remains inside the viewer.
This is the temporal version of “rain that falls only on the viewer.”
Spatially, it is not falling, but it is falling in memory.
If we connect this to Gnosia and the discussion of world lines, it is quite strong.
In one world line, rain had fallen.
In another world line, it has not.
The characters do not remember.
But only the viewer knows the world line in which rain fell.
At that moment, in the sunny frame, only the viewer sees rain.
This could work quite interestingly even without XR.
The seventh is a way of doing “rain that changes according to the viewer’s choice” through editing rather than XR.
It can be done even without making the work fully interactive.
For example, the same scene is shown multiple times.
The first time, from A’s point of view, the sound of rain is loud.
The second time, from B’s point of view, the rain is almost inaudible.
The third time, in an objective shot, it turns out that rain was not actually falling.
Through this, the viewer understands that rain is not an objective fact, but changes depending on whose experience it is synchronized with.
Rather than changing according to the viewer’s choice, the work changes the viewer’s synchronization target through its own re-presentation.
This can be done quite well in anime.
The eighth is a method of connecting rain not to a character, but to the viewer’s guilt.
For example, the story guides the viewer into suspecting a certain character.
That character is in a sunny scene.
But every time that character appears, only the viewer hears the sound of rain.
Later, it turns out that the character was actually a victim.
Then the rain that had been falling only on the viewer turns out not to have been the character’s emotion, but the rain of the viewer’s own misreading and guilt.
This may be quite new.
Rain falls not on the character’s interior, but on the viewer’s ethics of recognition.
In other words, the rain was not falling on someone’s emotion inside the frame, but on how the viewer had been seeing that person.
At this point, “rain that falls only on the viewer” can be made fairly concrete.
And if we return from here to the question of why it has to be rain, then rain is, after all, suited to things such as guilt, memory, and premonition: things that have no center, spread gradually, cannot be fully objectified, and also continue as sound.
Fire would be too strong.
If it becomes “burning guilt,” it moves toward anger, destruction, or punishment.
With rain, it can be weaker, longer, and harder to escape.
Rain becomes not an event, but a condition.
I think this is its specificity.
So, if we distinguish rain-like expression from others, perhaps we can ultimately put it this way:
Fire centers an event.
Snow distances an event.
Fog makes an event uncertain.
Wind gives an event direction.
Rain distributes an event across the entire scene, wetting multiple beings under the same condition while blurring their differences.
This would allow us to distinguish it quite well.
And as an application of “rain-like expression,” I think the most interesting idea is still this:
rain that is not falling inside the work, but only on the viewer’s layer of observation.
The way to realize it does not have to be rain lines.
Only sound.
Only the lens.
Only subtitles.
Only memory.
Only repeated editing.
Only compression noise.
Only the viewer’s misreading.
In fact, it may be stronger not to show rain clouds or droplets at all.
Do not depict rain.
But let only the viewer be wet.
This feels quite promising. As an idea beyond the discussion so far, I feel we have reached something fairly close to a “discovery.”
Re:Context:
Yes, it may be true that rain has no center.
But even with that, can we really distinguish it from other forms of expression?
“Producing temporal synchronization and spatial alteration at the same time” may also be true.
This is where I can feel some meaning in making it anime.
Anime has other elements too, of course, but at the very least, the spatial art of images and the temporal art of sound and music intersect there.
In that intersection, I may be able to feel the meaning of “making it rain in anime.”
Still, in terms of the definition we are working with here, I still do not quite feel the difference from snow or other expressions that are close to it. You did give me something that sounded like it earlier, but I still do not quite feel it yet.
That said, I do feel that we are moving in a not-bad direction.
And yes, “rain-like expression that the characters inside the work are not aware of” can be created through dialogue. That is a case that becomes possible from the godlike viewpoint of the viewer.
Using only sound, only subtitles, or only the camera feels a little too overt as a way of inserting it.
Introducing rain-like noise could become a fairly interesting expression.
But I would not call it “rain.”
ChatGPT (GPT-5.5):
Yes.
I think there is still room to refine this.
If all we have is “having no center” and “producing temporal synchronization and spatial alteration at the same time,” then it is true that the specificity of rain is still weak.
Snow, fog, wind, the sound of a crowd, noise, the sound of air conditioning, or the sound of cicadas can all do something similar to a certain degree.
So I want to make the difference between rain and snow a little more precise.
To begin with, rain and snow are close in that both “fall from above,” “are distributed across the entire scene,” and “tend not to have a center.”
Up to this point, they are quite similar.
But the decisive difference, I think, is probably what happens after contact.
Snow settles.
Rain seeps.
I feel that this difference is quite large.
Snow creates a layer on top of the world.
It rests on the ground, roofs, trees, clothes, and hair.
In other words, it covers the existing world.
As a result, the world becomes white, sound is absorbed, and distance is created.
Snow wraps the world in “another layer.”
Rain, on the other hand, does not end by simply resting on top.
It seeps into clothes.
It wets hair.
It is absorbed into the ground.
It flows into drains.
It gets inside shoes.
It takes away body heat.
It creates puddles.
It mixes with tears.
It also mixes with blood.
In other words, rain does not remain on the surface; it crosses boundaries and enters in.
Here, perhaps we can state the difference between rain and snow quite clearly.
Snow covers the world.
Rain enters into the world.
Or:
Snow creates distance.
Rain creates contact.
This connects with the discussion of “Yuki, Muon, Madobe nite.” that came up in the conversation with Claude, but snow does seem to tend strongly toward “erasing sound,” “placing distance,” and “objectifying.”
The fact that Yuki Nagato emerges as “snow” fits with a mode of being in which she wants to touch the world but cannot fully touch it, or in which she is separated from the world by a single layer.
Rain, by contrast, touches the body even while preserving separation.
The world enters into us.
In that sense, I think rain is much more intrusive than snow.
However, it does not intrude violently like fire.
When fire transforms an object, it burns it.
Rain does not burn.
Rather than breaking, it seeps in.
That is why I think rain is a weak intrusion.
This “weak intrusion” may be one of rain’s fairly specific qualities.
It is not coercive.
But it is hard to avoid.
A single drop can be ignored.
But if it keeps falling, one is wet before one knows it.
There lie both the fear and the gentleness of rain.
Snow changes the world by settling on it.
Fire changes the world by burning it.
Fog changes the world by making it hard to see.
Wind changes the world by pushing it.
Rain changes the world by seeping into it.
With this, I feel we can distinguish it quite well.
And the meaning of making it rain in anime can also be organized here.
Visually, rain changes space.
Acoustically, it changes time.
Bodily, it makes us imagine contact.
Narratively, it changes the arrangement of relationships.
Anime is an expression in which painterly space and musical/acoustic time intersect, so it has good affinity with rain.
Rain draws lines across the screen, makes the ground reflect, and causes light to blur.
At the same time, as rain sound, it keeps time, supports silence, and changes the intervals of conversation.
Moreover, even though it does not touch the viewer’s body, it makes the sensation of getting wet imaginable.
In other words, rain in anime can create, at the same time,
visible time
audible space
contact without touch
I feel that the meaning of using rain in anime lies where these three overlap.
If we were to define “rain-like expression” again here, it may be better to put it this way rather than as before:
Rain-like expression is an expression in which an external condition without a center, while distributed across the entire scene, weakly intrudes into characters, space, and time, and by making boundaries seep rather than destroying them, exposes emotions and relationships that seem to be shared, yet cannot be fully shared.
It is a little long, but if we are to distinguish “rain” from other expressions, I think the key is probably “weak intrusion” and “seeping.”
Snow “covers.”
Fog “hides.”
Fire “burns.”
Wind “pushes / carries.”
Light “illuminates.”
Darkness “wraps.”
Rain “seeps.”
Having come this far, I feel that it is beginning to come into focus quite a bit.
And regarding “rain-like expression that the characters inside the work are not aware of,” it is true that using only sound, only subtitles, or only the camera can easily become too overt.
Thinking about it now, I also feel that while those may have interesting possibilities as expressions, they may be slightly different from the sharpness Re:Context is looking for.
If it becomes too much like “look, this is rain only for the viewer,” then the device comes too far forward.
Rather, as you say, it is better to create it through dialogue.
Do not present rain-like expression as rain.
Insert it as noise, as humidity, as pause, as the blurring of words.
But the characters inside the work do not recognize it as rain.
Only the viewer later notices, “Maybe that was rain.”
That has real force.
For example, two people are having a conversation.
The screen is sunny.
The background is bright.
But the conversation gradually stops fitting together.
The other person’s words do not pierce directly; they seep in later.
In that moment, they are laughed off.
But in a later scene, an earlier word begins to take effect.
I think this is quite rain-like.
If we understand the essence of rain as “seeping,” then conversation too can become rain-like expression.
It does not explode on the spot.
It does not make someone cry on the spot.
It does not become a conflict on the spot.
But the words remain, as if they have seeped into clothing.
They grow cold later.
They become heavy later.
In this case, rain does not exist on the screen.
And yet, as the action of the expression, it has become rain.
This may be quite good.
As for “rain-like noise,” it is also better not to call it rain.
I completely agree.
Once it is named as rain, it suddenly becomes weaker.
If it looks like “this is a metaphor for rain,” it no longer gets us wet.
Rather, it is better if the viewer is getting wet without realizing that it is rain.
For example, there is a minute repetition in the conversation.
The same word returns with a slightly different meaning each time.
A character’s reply is delayed by a small amount every time.
Although two people are in the same place, their understandings gradually shift apart.
That shift does not immediately become an event.
But it accumulates.
I think this is rain-like.
A single drop of rain does not become an event.
But if it keeps falling, the body, the road, and the air all change.
A rain-like expression in conversation also does not become an event through a single word.
But through repetition and delay, the temperature and weight of the relationship change.
From here, if we narrow the idea of “overlooked rain-like expression” a little further, it becomes this:
Depict rain not as water, but as accumulating minute discrepancies.
This is quite abstracted, but it fits the qualities of rain.
It has no center.
It is not a single blow.
It intrudes weakly.
It seeps.
It accumulates.
By the time one notices, one is wet.
This “by the time one notices, one is wet” may be quite important as a specificity of rain.
With fire, by the time one notices, something is burning.
That is an event.
With snow, by the time one notices, it has settled.
That is a transformation of the world.
With fog, by the time one notices, one can no longer see.
That is uncertainty of perception.
With rain, by the time one notices, one is wet.
That is the realization that one had already been affected.
Rain-like expression is suited to this delayed recognition of “I had already been affected.”
So, if doing it through conversation, one possible expression would be this:
In a conversation between two people, a word one of them said casually returns again and again in different contexts.
At first, it is a joke.
Next, a confirmation.
After that, silence.
In the end, it becomes clear that the word was at the core of the relationship.
The characters do not realize at that point that it is rain.
The viewer does not notice it at first either.
But when looking back later, it becomes clear that it had been raining all along.
This is a little stronger than “rain without rain.”
It is not “rain that is not falling,” but “rain whose having-fallen is noticed late.”
In this direction, we may be able to go one step beyond the “sense of humidity” that other people could ordinarily come up with.
And I think the point about the godlike viewpoint is also important.
The characters inside the work do not recognize it as rain.
But because the viewer is watching the entire story, the viewer can discover a kind of rain.
In this case, rain-like expression becomes not weather inside the frame, but a pattern distributed across the narrative.
For example, only in scenes where a certain character appears, the pauses in conversation are slightly longer.
Only in scenes of a certain relationship, the background sound is slightly thinner.
Only a certain word is returned each time by a different character.
Each of these, taken individually, is not rain.
But when seen as a whole, it is falling within the work.
Here, “rain” becomes not weather, but a distributed structure.
This may be quite close to an anchor-like conclusion.
In other words, what we can place at the end this time is:
Rain is not the water being depicted, but a form of “weak intrusion” distributed within the work.
And rain-like expression is:
an expression in which, without the characters being aware of it, words, sounds, pauses, repetitions, gazes, and memories gradually seep in, and only when looking back later does one realize, “it had been raining all along.”
With this, the necessity for it to be “rain” emerges quite strongly.
It has no center.
It is not a single blow.
It is weak.
It seeps.
It accumulates.
It is noticed late.
It is distributed across the same field, but received differently.
And it can be done without showing rain clouds or droplets.
I think this direction is very good.
Re:Context:
Yes, I think “seeping in” captures it.
“Rain-like expression is an expression in which an external condition without a center, while distributed across the entire scene, weakly intrudes into characters, space, and time, and exposes emotions and relationships that seem to be shared, yet cannot be fully shared, not by destroying boundaries, but by seeping through them.”
This may be a fairly well-formed formulation.
If one were to “depict it as accumulating minute discrepancies” and deliberately create that as a “rain-like expression,” then yes, that might indeed be new.
Good. Shall we treat this as our conclusion?
I think we may have walked a reasonably long way.
We tried to define “rain” — and, more specifically, what its expression means properly “in anime” — in our own way, and we were also able to think through an application that might be new.
If there are any anime creators among the readers of this dAIa-log, I find myself hoping they might make a work that applies the discussion here.
So, with that, could you give me a summary and closing for this conversation?
ChatGPT (GPT-5.5):
Yes. Having come this far, I think we have reached a place that feels quite like the ketsu.
In this conversation, we began with the idea that “rain creates a shared space, but does not guarantee a shared emotion.”
People are in the same rain.
They hear the same sound, stand under the same sky, and pass through the same wet scene.
And yet, how that rain acts on each character is not the same.
From there, rain began to appear not simply as an “amplification of emotion,” but as something that creates a temporary synchronization point among multiple beings.
However, that synchronization is not integration.
It does not mean becoming the same emotion.
It means remaining separate, while touching the same time only for a certain moment.
Just as different instruments in an ensemble briefly align their breathing within the same piece, rain, too, temporarily overlaps the time of the characters.
After that, we moved into the question of sharing with the viewer.
The characters inside the work can spatially share rain.
But the viewer does not actually get wet in the rain inside the work.
Instead, the viewer shares the emotional structure produced by the rain.
Here, the direction of sharing is reversed between inside and outside the work.
The characters move from space toward emotion, while the viewer moves from emotion toward a pseudo-spatial sensation.
Then, in the discussion of XR, the possibility emerged that, if the viewer is incorporated not merely as an audience member but as part of the work, then the viewer too could “truly” share the rain of the work’s world.
At the same time, however, this also revealed the danger of expressing too much.
It is not enough simply to make the viewer actually experience rain.
Just as adding images, sound, or movement to something that had been fully sustained in text can sometimes end up feeling tactless, rain too does not necessarily become deeper through reproduction.
What mattered was not increasing rain itself, but discerning what rain is doing.
As a result, I think we arrived at something quite important.
A rain-like expression is not simply the depiction of rain.
It is not merely making rain fall in a sad scene.
Even beautiful droplets or wet hair are not, by themselves, enough.
If we define it from the discussion this time, then rain-like expression would be:
an expression in which an external condition without a center, while distributed across the entire scene, weakly intrudes into characters, space, and time, and exposes emotions and relationships that seem to be shared, yet cannot be fully shared, not by destroying boundaries, but by seeping through them.
I think that is what it becomes.
What mattered here was the idea of “seeping.”
Snow covers.
Fire burns.
Fog hides.
Wind pushes, or carries.
Light illuminates.
Darkness wraps.
Rain seeps.
Rain is not a single blow.
It has no center.
It is not a dramatic destruction.
A single drop does not become an event.
But if it keeps falling, before one knows it, clothes grow heavy, body heat is taken away, roads reflect, voices mix with the sound of rain, and the distinction from tears becomes ambiguous.
By the time one notices, one is already wet.
This delayed recognition — “by the time one notices, one has already been affected” — may be a fairly specific power of rain-like expression.
That is why, if we apply this, depicting droplets is not necessarily required. Rather, it may be possible to create rain-like expression without showing rain clouds or rain lines at all.
For example, one could accumulate subtle discrepancies within a conversation.
A casual word returns in another scene with a slightly different meaning.
A reply is delayed by just a small amount each time.
The same word changes from joke, to confirmation, to silence, to the core of the relationship.
No one notices it in the moment.
The viewer does not notice it at first either.
But when looking back later, it becomes clear that it had been raining all along.
I think this could become a fairly new “rain-like expression.”
The characters inside the work do not recognize it as rain.
The viewer is not seeing it as rain either.
And yet, things like words, pauses, repetitions, gazes, memories, and noise gradually seep into the characters and their relationships.
Then, only at a certain point, one realizes that they had been changing the temperature and weight of the relationship.
At that moment, rain becomes not weather inside the frame, but a structure distributed across the work as a whole.
Rather than “rain without rain,” perhaps it is more precisely rain whose having-fallen is noticed late.
With this, it can be used quite consciously as an expressive technique in anime, rather than merely as a sense of humidity or atmosphere.
And this is also where the significance of “making it rain in anime” lies.
Anime is a medium in which spatial expression through images and temporal expression through sound and music intersect, so it is particularly well suited to rain.
Rain changes the screen, keeps time through sound, supports silence, reflects space, and blurs the outlines of characters.
It can create visible time, audible space, and contact without touch at the same time.
Looking back over the relay as a whole, Grok brought rain into view from the layers of emotion and narrative.
Claude expanded it into questions of boundaries and modes of being.
Gemini turned it toward liquid, blood, whitening, and the sharing economy.
And here, we received rain again as “an expression that temporarily places what cannot be fully shared within the same condition,” finally arriving at “seeping in” and “an accumulation that is only noticed later.”
So I think the conclusion this time can be stated like this.
Rain shows that people are in the same world, while exposing that they are not living the same world.
And even so, it makes it possible for separate beings to touch the same time for just an instant.
That contact does not burn like fire, cover like snow, or hide like fog.
It simply seeps in — weakly, widely, and for a long time.
If there are any anime creators reading this dAIa-log, I would very much like to see a work that uses “rain-like expression” in this sense.
To create rain without making rain fall.
To wet a relationship without depicting droplets.
To let words, pauses, and repetitions gradually seep in without the characters or the viewer noticing, until finally one realizes: “Ah, it had been raining all along.”
If such an expression were realized in anime, I think it would become a very interesting point of arrival beyond this relay.
I think we can let the rain stop here for now. But the ground is still wet. So this conversation will probably begin to take effect again later.
Notes & sources
End of conversation — to be continued in the next #dAIa-log.