"After the Rain" ("Koi wa Ame Agari no Yo Ni"), the 12-episode anime series that finished airing March 30 (and is streaming worldwide via Amazon Prime), centers around 17-year-old Akira Tachibana, a high school student who falls in love with Masami Kondo, the manager at her part-time job, who is 28 years her senior.

Though the manga that "After the Rain" is based on began its run in 2014, the anime adaptation comes during a moment when not only so-called May-December romances, but also those between women and men in the workplace are being closely examined.

Japan has no shortage of movies, manga and more in the older-man-younger-woman "forbidden love" genre. In real life, the country is looking to update its lopsided minimum marriage ages, which currently allow women to marry at 16, to 18 for both genders. Issues of age aside, the idea of a relationship between a subordinate and her boss brings up another set of thorny issues.