Ranked #3379

Ame to Shoujo to Watashi no Tegami

You ever feel like curling up on a soft couch and listening to the rain fall outside while you read a book?

I can tell you, this anime will leave you feeling like you've just done that.

Ame to Shoujo to Watashi no Tegami is a brilliant little anime about exactly that--the rain, a girl and a letter. The story is mostly simple: it follows a love letter and its author through a snippet of her day. Most of the story is internal monologues, so if you rather have a lot of action taking place, you won't get that. I thought the story was very sweet, humorous, and touching.

The art style is interesting. It blends 3D animation with the regular art. Now, this is something that won't suit everyone's tastes. The art is very soft, the lines aren't crisp, and there is a dull, almost watercolour-like tone to it. It also looks at some points like the characters were animated on one panel, and then superimposed on the backgrounds; it's an interesting technique, and makes the anime look like a pop-out book or an old children's novel, almost. It certainly is gentle-looking. I thought this anime was beautiful. The lighting, the backgrounds--these were extraordinary. The character art may have been the weak point, but it certainly didn't stop me from enjoying the style.

And wow, the music is astoundingly good. In six-odd minutes, we have a lovely little composition that will sweep you away and warm your heart. There's incorporation of all different sorts of music styles: woodwind, strings, and steel. It isn't driven by techno or synth or pop beats. The music suits the mood and is always in the right place and the right time.

Now, we have six minutes, and you can't do amazing character work with that amount of time. But thankfully, we go deep into our protagonist's mind, and learn what she thinks and how she feels as the story progresses. It's easy to relate and empathise with her. There aren't any other real characters. The love interest is stagnant, and doesn't serve as anything more than a prop, but the little girl in the store is an odd little character. She isn't deep or developed, but she is charming with her strong personality and quirks.

Ame to Shoujo to Watashi no Tegami was a wonderful short, and I loved watching it. It was fun, funny, romantic and had a wonderful atmosphere. The only real problems I can see with it is that the length may be too short for some people (I did wish it were just a bit longer--only because I was enjoying it too much) and the art style may not suit most viewers. It does look unprofessional, but it's a style.

I do recommend this to anyone who likes short films. If you appreciate more mainstream or blockbuster-type films, then this may not be for you. read more

Rain the Little Girl and My Letter is a work of an amateur, who just published his work in the net.
He calls himself (帝国少年) Empire Boy.
it's a moving story of a first love of a girl. It's hard to imagine that this story is told by a man... i can't help noticing the similarity to Senkai's "She and her cat". This very rainy scenery returns you to your barefooted childhood. Everything is so naive, that it won't leave you indifferent to the girl's feelings of being offcast.