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Don’t you just enjoy the sound of the piano? How about the sound of a violin? The power of music is really amazing. It can express various kinds of emotions: anger, happiness, loneliness, sadness and many others. This was masterfully expressed in the anime “Your Lie in April” or 四月は君の, and we are amazed at how music really does do a great job in conveying the emotions it needs to.

 

THE STORY & CHARACTERS

Your Lie in April is an anime adaptation of a manga written and illustrated by Naoshi Arakawa. The story follows our male protagonist Kousei Arima, a 14 year old student, who also happens to be a piano prodigy whom dominated many competitions when he was younger. His domination, however, did not last very long as shortly after the death of his mother. He lost his ability to hear his own piano (yes, just his piano) after a mental breakdown while performing at a piano recital.

After losing the ability to hear his piano, Kousei no longer plays the piano anymore. 2 years have passed and he views the world in monotone, without any flair or color but is still somewhat content with his life. However, his life will start to change when he meets a girl by the name of Kaori Miyazono.

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The story consists of 3 other main cast members. We have Kaori Miyazono, a violinist with a violent yet caring personality who transferred to Kousei’s school; Tsubaki Sawabe, Kousei’s childhood friend and neighbor; and Ryouta Watari, the captain of the school’s soccer team who is really popular with girls and also Kousei and Tsubaki’s childhood friend.

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The entire main cast are pretty well developed aside for Ryouta because it doesn’t seem like they gave him enough time to show much character development (maybe it’s just me). All the other characters had several episodes to expand on what they really wanted as a person, what problems they faced, and how they got over their problems.

In the beginning, the show was focused on the music elements of the show. The show was mainly trying to get our male protagonist back into playing the piano. It was only later on that the romance element started to become more prominent, and became a big part of the show that motivated the characters and advanced the story. More characters were introduced later on in the show to give Kousei more challenges as well as help him to continue moving forward throughout the show.

ANIMATION AND SOUND

The animation quality overall was really smooth, as expected from A-1 Pictures. Some of the piano scenes were done in CG, which may looked a little weird to some people but I did not find that to be an issue. The colors in the show were vibrant and pleasing to the eye. In short, the show looked pretty amazing.

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The music in this show was fantastic. It consisted of piano pieces, which suited the mood of the show really well. The ones that were not piano pieces also sounded really great, and brought out the mood of the moment really well. The show also had a really great opening theme song. One that made me screamed in anger and then sunk into depression when they changed it in the second half. Well at least the second opening sounded really great too.

 

FINAL VERDICT

In summary, the anime series was great to watch, and I had enjoyed every moment of it. The moments where the pianists had internal dialogues within themselves as they played had great impact. The moments where the characters discovered themselves were really moving. I found myself many times in situations where I constantly rooted for our male protagonist to succeed.

The music was great and was something you can listen as background music. This was probably the anime which I had the most fun watching during the winter anime season. As I feel that evaluating a show with a generic score is not a good idea, I will just conclude by saying that this show is definitely worth your time watching, especially if you are into the romance and/or music genre. Even if you are not that interested in either genres, I would still recommend you give this anime a shot.

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