The funniest thing about the rain, of course, is that characters are variously described as having gotten wet in the rain all the damn time, just ... not ... always.
It makes me think of the hypothetical logic battle where Erika decides to push the point for her reasoning (remember, she DID go so far as to look at the mud on peoples shoes during her crazy CSI investigation), and Beato eventually having to just go "
Look, I just don't really care about that, okay? The rain on Rokkenjima is just odd in that way, or something."
About the matter of "trust", I think there's a difference between TRUSTING an author, and thinking they're some kind of infallible Mystery Pope who never make mistakes, or subjective judgements in their own reasoning, and only offer solutions that will CERTAINLY please every person ever. It's not that I distrust Ryukishi's authorship, or "messed up his own story" or anything absurd like that ... I just think it's built on some bullshit-ery, and I accept it, since there's this HUGE running theme in the work about accepting people's bullshit-ery and understanding why they end up using said bullshit-ery.
On George in EP3, hell, the part that's always gotten me isn't that he's dead (Yasu and her shenanigans, or whatevs), but the part where Nanjo was all "Yeah, George - jump out the second story window! Go gaze upon the face of your recently murdered fiancee. I'll totes cover for you." It is SO inexplicable.