Your Lie in April

[Spoilers for Bunny Drop ahead]

I seem to be on a trend of having to eat my own words. See, eons ago, in my Anohana review, I made the statement that I generally have little patience with tear-jerking romances – particularly those which play all the cliché tricks in the tear-jerking romance book (which I won’t mention, because of spoilers). To some degree, this statement still holds true; I have no love for Makoto Shinkai’s 5 Centimetres Per Second, although that’s a story for another time. The point is that I used to regard myself as emotionally immune to all shows of this type and nature. But of course, then came along a show which fits the tear-jerking-romantic-high-school-melodrama description to a tee…and I actually chose to watch it instead of avoiding it like the plague.

Your Lie in April (hereafter known as Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, or KimiUso), is a story about the return of pianist prodigy Kousei Arima to the music scene. As a kid, Kousei’s piano prowess was seemingly exploited by his terminally ill mother cum piano teacher, leading him to develop a flawless but mechanical style of playing, and earning him both high praise from critics…and the cruel nickname “Human Metronome” from his audience. Following a series of tragic events, Saki Arima passes away, son Kousei suffers a nervous breakdown during a performance, and for the next few years, he languishes in stagnation, unable to hear the piano despite not actually being deaf, until he meets a fellow teenage violin prodigy, Kaori Miyazono, who looks game to change his life forever…

I don’t get why people insist on comparing this show to Nodame Cantabile, because if one were looking for a music-themed story about the tension between technicalities and freedom in the musician’s philosophy, then the lesser-known movie, Piano no Mori, is a much better predecessor for comparison – but an inferior one, in my opinion. Which goes to show that KimiUso is considerably good at what it does; it explores the competitive, rigorous nature of the music scene, by portraying the nerves and stress leading up to a recital, but it also shows us the wonder and beauty that comes through a heartfelt performance. It’s a story about a musician’s motivations. It’s a story about musician’s aspirations. Oh yes, and of course, it’s also a story about relationships…a lot of messy, complicated relationships.

So let’s first talk about our main character, Kousei Arima, as well as his messy, complicated relationships. I’ll be frank, Kousei is everything I want in a main protagonist – he’s troubled, traumatised, confused, clueless, unconfident, he actually grows phenomenally in the course of the show; I might even say he’s a startlingly accurate depiction of your typical 14 year old, if your typical 14 year old could play like Mozart and lived with an abusive parent. Do you know who Kousei reminds me off? I’ll take the plunge and say it – if Shinji Ikari had dropped cello and taken up piano instead, and if Second Impact had never come, the two might have met at a piano competition and would either have become best friends or worst enemies. Seriously – mummy issues, girl issues, self-esteem issues, Kousei is Shinji with some ounce of self-control over his own tear glands and vocal chords.

Since I’m aiming for depth rather than breadth, only two other characters will be mentioned – the characters of Saki Arima and Kaori Miyazono. With regards to Saki Arima, boy…I’d go so far as to say that her haunting presence is the jewel in this show’s crown. In fact, the broken mother-son relationship that she and Kousei share is so phenomenally good, its absence in the show’s second half is what actually killed the plot for me. At first, I thought it was amazing how both Saki and Kaori serve as foils of each other – both expressing their love and encouragement towards Kousei through vastly different ways, and only one getting it right – but then I took a step back and thought…hang on, something’s not quite right.

See, I simply don’t understand how Kaori, as much as her analogous factual circumstances permit, fills in the gap that Saki leaves behind. She’s simply not Kousei’s mother. (And on that note, neither is Hiroko, although I feel that the writers could have done more with her if they had tried.) But hang on, you say, who’s telling this story, anyway? What’s wrong with Kaori being who she is – and influencing Kousei in her own way? What’s wrong with Saki’s maternal presence fading into the background, with the romantic thrust of the story starting to take centre stage in KimiUso’s second half? Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, and at best, I simply have to admit that I didn’t get it. Because like I said, a broken mother-son relationship was the hallmark of the show, and when something is broken – a good narrative offers the juxtaposition of a functioning, working version of said thing…or at least, a different version of it.

The best example I can think of isn’t from an anime, it’s from one of my favourite classics – Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. But since not everyone will have read Wuthering Heights, here’s an example from modern anime to help you see what I’m driving at. As much as I bash on Fate/Zero at times, I have to admit that it does have consistent themes which are well explored. Like the theme of kingship. Since that’s one of the selling points of Fate/Zero, we have three different Servants having three different takes on the subject of kingship – for reference, watch episode 11, Banquet of Kings. Rider thinks a king needs to instill confidence in his people by appearing strong and untouchable, Saber comes off as the goody-two-shoes ruler who wants to save everyone, and Archer is just bigotedly forcing everyone to worship him, or something. Once you start comparing like with like, you better appreciate the merits and defects of each object of comparison.

So, I feel like romance is the cheaper substitute for the best of what KimiUso had to offer. It’s a little like what happened with Bunny (Usagi) Drop and the manga’s second half – “wow, look, what a great father-daughter relationship we had going on here, now let’s turn our focus onto a romantic relationship in order to complete the story!” [SPOILER’S FOR BUNNY DROP] Of course, what’s more unforgiveable about Bunny Drop is the fact that both types of relationships are between THE SAME TWO PEOPLE, and thankfully KimiUso doesn’t go that far. But still. We have lots of romance in anime – anime has no lack of cute romance, and when KimiUso gave us Saki Arima, I thought it had struck gold. That’s not to say that they didn’t get the romance right, because everything in the last two episodes is brilliant all the way – and at the end of the day, I can forgive the direction the plot took, by virtue of the direction (pun not intended) of the series itself. Which, of course, brings me to a few thoughts about the art, animation, and sound.

Come on, everyone, this is A-1 pictures. There’s little I can say, with my limited vocabulary, other than the fact that everything looks absolutely gorgeous. The entire show is a montage of breath-taking scenery – both in the real world, and in the mind of the performing musician. The beauty of the real world is depicted in lush cherry blossoms and twinkling stars; and every on-stage performance is a kaleidoscope of melted pastels and artful lighting. Animating a musical performance is demanding by virtue of how picky some viewers can get about the integrity of the notes played – and on that front, fret not, you are indeed looking at what you’re hearing; and even where the budget can’t give us nimbly-moving fingers, the audience is instead distracted by gorgeous watercolour still-shots interspersing the animated scenes.

Said scenes are complimented, of course, by gorgeous classical music. I’m certainly not the best person to give a dissection about the significance of each piece, and I’m not going to try. But I’ll say this – to the layman who knows just enough to recognise the names Chopin, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, KimiUso certainly gives due respect to every bit of music that it incorporates. Some might find this statement a little confusing, given the number of elderly judges who frequently rise in indignance because “he’s desecrating Chopin by not playing according to the score!”, but I think those characters are there to be disagreed with, since the best of performances are the ones where the character deliberately infuses the piece with his or her own emotions. Also, props to this show by accommodating the untrained ears, by providing just enough background commentary from the watching characters, to guide the viewer’s perceptions of the performance. Gradually, though, by the last episode, there’s no longer any need for such commentary, and the final performance is testament to KimiUso’s ability to communicate without words.

All OPs and EDs are, as one would expect for a show about music, really good – and one simply has to watch the first OP, Hikaru Nara by Goosehouse, in order to get a firm sense of KimiUso’s flavour, and what it is about. The voice acting for a show like this (which attempts both humour and drama) is rather well done, and is complemented by a few nice pieces of background music. So nothing to complain about there.

If I had to express what I feel about KimiUso as a whole, I certainly couldn’t do it in eloquent language or through performing a sonata – instead, being a math geek at heart, why don’t you plot a y = |((x-1)^2)-5| graph for the range of 0 to 5 and see how my love for this show took a nosedive halfway through, before picking up again towards the end. There’s so much to like about this show – it’s a killer on all technical fronts. But writing wise, arrrrrrrgghhhhhhhh, this show is frustrating! Prior to the last few episodes, the middle portion was so bad that I was considering relegating the entire show to the scrapheap of untouchable titles. To today, I can’t even put my finger on what I disliked so much about episodes 14 to 19. The absence of Saki Arima was one thing. The appearance of Nagi was another. The random bursts of bad slapstick humour. The fatally pretentious writing that Nicholas Sparks is infamous for (“And in that moment, my heart was overcome with sorrow and emotion./ Underneath the twinkling stars, I called out your name and you turned around and looked at me, and I wished that we could continue like this forever and ever and ever and ever until eternity.” Yes, I made these up – but I kid you not this show’s writing occasionally sounds exactly like that).

At the end of the day, my problems with KimiUso can be distilled into one word – overkill. It’s an overly ambitious show, and while “too much” comes off as a good thing in terms of the artwork and music, it doesn’t come off as a good thing story-wise. It has too many characters, too many subplots, and way too little focus. It would have worked well had it been a character study about musicians – the way Ping Pong was a character study about athletes. Unfortunately, KimiUso can’t do that – because it chose not to. It didn’t stop with the stories of Kousei, Emi, and Takeshi, the latter two of which weren’t exhaustively done anyway – it went on to give screen time to the story of a non-musician peering into the world of performers (yep, I’m talking about Tsubaki), and diluted the power of that subplot by meshing romantic undertones into it. On the other hand, if it had been a pure melodrama featuring a love quadrangle, then Nagi must have been inserted at the insistence of some moe-holic writer during production, because seriously…why have Nagi at all?

That brings me to the final question – is KimiUso still worth the watch? Ultimately, I can’t help but say yes. Because after getting side-tracked and meandering aimlessly, it eventually pulls itself together and gives an ovation-worthy conclusion. And no, the triumph of KimiUso’s conclusion isn’t about the art, or the music, or the tears. Rather, I love the ending for its attitude and message. When the final credits began to roll, I thought back on my frustrations that Kaori couldn’t live up to Saki Arima, and decided…in the grand scheme of things, I think I can overlook the fact that Kaori’s no maternal substitute. Because in the end, what’s most important is Kousei’s resolutions as a person, regardless of the means taken to achieve them…and gosh, Kousei’s final resolutions are what made this show for me. Years ahead from now, I daresay I will look back on KimiUso, and remember it with fondness for the hope and positiivty that its final scenes gave me. And that means 7/10 for a tear-jerking-romantic-high-school-melodrama that did so many things wrong…but many more things right.