Ranked #3468

Piano

Well this show is quite boring most of the time, and it is listed as "romance", but it only hints at the romantic interests of some characters. If you begin this show thinking it will be a love story, full of drama, and boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, stop! It has very little drama(and it potrayed poorly), and even less romance. Now if your into the whole "slice of life" and reality anime series, then give this show a shot. It takes a different approach then most of those series (Air, To Heart, etc), instead of following a male lead, it follows a female. Most, if not all of this show is about Miu Nomura's relationships with her family, friends, and Piano teacher(and a bit about her playing the piano, although not as much as you'd expect from some anime named "Piano"!).

Oh, and the only reason I finished this show was because it was on "On Demand" for free, and I had nothing else to watch at the time.

Plot: There really is no plot in this anime, at all. It does sort of end, as a "coming of age" story, but very little happens in the story. I thought to be a story there has to be some sort of obstical for the character(s) to overcome (person vs person/Person vs nature/ person vs self?) apparently my English Teacher was wrong, because there are NO obstacles to overcome in this anime. There is very little progress in the show, and it is very slow.

Characters: This anime has many interesting characters! If there is a strong part of this show, it is the characters. Takahashi (the guy Miu has a crush on) is interesting and mysterious, Yuuki has the whole "tomboy" thing going on witha bit of a twist, very interesting, Miu's teacher is the MOST interesting character so of course they decide to give him the least amount of screen time, and even Mui's mother and father are pretty cool , and don't get the time on screen they diserve. Miu is a pretty decent character, but her attitude is very "off", and she is dull when compared to the others. However she does have the whole "cute/ innocent" thing going on, that could have been developed more, but instead they decided to make the show even more boring, and go nowhere. And although this anime has GREAT characters, that are very interesting, they don't do anything interesting at all. This show had a a lot of potential, but it didn't use it!

Art: It's pretty cool, and matched the whole "slice of life" thing it has going on. Pretty realistic, and all the characters and backgrounds look good. However don't look for anything amazing, or lots of hard work being pu into the animation. It is just "above average" but seeing how the characters don't do anything, it's just walking and talking animated pictures. There is no place for them to shine the animation, but it does bring in that "realism" feeling by looking so realistic.

Sound: Another great part of the show, that doesn't get enough time to shine, is it's music. The classical music that would possibly save this show is sometimes not even bothered to be played in an episode. Although when some music is playing, it's useally good.

Dubs: I never watched the Japanese Verson, sorry, so I have no idea what that verson is like. As for the english verson, it is acceptable. Nothing horrible, very well rounded, but it allows a few actors to "shine", but not Cowboy Bebop or anything amazing like that. Marc Diraison gives the best performance by far, as the Piano Teacher. But since he's barely in the show this does not really matter. Sean Schemmel (Adult Goku in DBZ , English Dub) does have a small part, and is probally the most known actor here. Pretty much if you like dubs, watch it, but this is not an amazing dub, that a sub only guy would like. So if your a subber, keep the Japanese track on no need to test out english on this dvd. But if you like dubs, not bad enough to resort to subtitles. I have no complaints with the dub (expect that it is very boring, but I blame the plot, there's not much exitement you can throw into this show. The plot kills everything pretty much), so I suggest this to other dubbers .

Final Vertic: If you like slice of life shows, watch this show. It brings something new to the table. However it is very boring, and drags on, and has almost no plot. Watch for the characters and the "realism" , not for romance or music. read more

I’m usually into slice-of-life anime, but Piano was just too real. Usually, slice-of-life anime isn’t really close to life, because if that happened, it wouldn’t be that interesting. Everything that happened in Piano had a high probability of happening in real life, so I wasn’t really interested. I’m not saying it’s bad, but I don’t think it’ll ever be one of my favorites.

One thing I noticed about Piano is that the story focused more on the lives of Miu’s family and friends. It was only in the last 4 episodes that the focus shifted to Miu. I guess it was better that way, because Miu was kind of uninteresting. Her friend Yuki was more interesting. So was her piano teacher, Shirakawa-sensei. I also love the fact that most of her family loved to drink and be merry.

I did like the voice actors for this anime. Ayako Kawasumi played the role of Miu. I don’t think it was Miu was one of her best roles, but she’s great nonetheless. Jun Fukuyama, one of my recent favorites with roles such as Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass and Kimihiro Watanuki from xxxHOLiC, was great as Takahashi.

I noticed the character designs right away, because the design is very similar to Ah! My Goddess’. That’s mostly because Kousuke Fujishima, who did the original manga of Ah! My Goddess, was the one who did the original story and character designs for Piano. All in all visuals were okay, although there wasn’t really anything special about it. Simplicity was the key feature of the visuals, and if you prefer simple over extravagant, then you’ll like Piano.

The music, as expected, consisted of a lot of classically-influenced piano music. I was really impressed when I found out that Ayako Kawasumi played the piano for the opening song. She’s certainly very talented. The ending theme, “Kokoro no Oto” by Yoko Ueno, was also very nice – I memorized it right away.

Since it was very close to real life, one good point to add about it is that it’s very easy to watch. If you want to watch something that’s not so complicated like most anime these days, or if you want to watch something that’ll relax you, then Piano is for you.
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