Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso

Making use of a calm, vibrant palette, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso begins by depicting a mysterious blonde chasing after a black cat. Weirdly enough, it feels like it's meaningful; each camera angle is loose and meticulously timed, and the cuts between don't hinder the flow. I soon came to realize, however, that the problems lie not in the execution, but the narrative; so much so that it ends up being more of an eye-catcher than a drama.

The struggles musicians face are apparent for most: Writer's block, commitment, or even becoming notable are some of the most common examples of these. Arima's struggles, on ... the other hand, are quite different. Ever since the death of his abusive mother, he's been too traumatized to hear his own playing. But when he meets the aforementioned blonde, Kaori, that all changes. Dubbed love at first sight, the series documents the ongoings of Arima and Kaori as they succumb to the world of music. By itself, this is no problem, but by introducing these characters minutes apart, we're given no time to really understand either of them. Instead, the viewer learns of Arima's past through an intrusive series of flashbacks throughout. Placing these sequences in the middle of recitals and performances disregards any tension that they may have created in the first place. Because of this, winning or losing doesn't matter; it's unsatisfying and hard to care either way.

Sadly, this isn't the only problem Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso faces. The dialogue feels like that of a middle school creative writing project, and when combined with a healthy amount of melodrama, it's hard not to laugh in ridicule each time Arima whines about his "monotone" life. In fact, it's a challenge to take this seriously. Each episode is filled with around ten or more minutes of these monologues, and in the end, it feels mostly redundant; a way to drag out the length of the series. The rest of the cast isn't even as lucky – the only information we get about them is regarding their past tragedies or to further the annoyingly weak symbolism regarding growing up. Since every major character is about 14, any appeal to emotion through dialogue only comes off as disposable and pretentious teenage angst. Constant similes are made regarding the texture and flavour of any musical performance, but they sound completely hilarious and synesthetic ("The smell of chalk. […] The faint breathing of someone asleep."). There's even some comedy here and there, but it's incredibly unfunny and gets in the way of the little drama that's left - by portraying gags with brief changes in artstyle, the otherwise appealing consistency of the animation is interrupted. It might be welcome in a comedy series, but why is it here?

Despite my other complaints, the OST itself is fairly interesting. While the arrangements of traditional classical pieces are nothing to get too excited about, they're nice enough to listen to for a few minutes while trudging through the rest of the show. Arima's disjointed playing isn't always welcome, though, as some parts sound a little too horrible. Even deaf musicians of his skill level and tenure should be unable to play that badly when given basic theory lessons. The OST itself consists of mostly ambient music to build tension, but it isn't anything too extraordinary – any fan of electronic music should find most of these tracks dull and utterly forgettable. The OP, on the other hand, is something that kept me watching each week; Goose House's acoustic harmonies really set the mood for the show, and I dare say that nothing else in the series lives up to it.

As a package, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso is bloated and gimmicky to the point of exhaustion, but it's decent entertainment nonetheless. The main storyline doesn't even progress for eleven episodes. It's like a Pitchfork résumé. If you're looking for a pretty experience and not too much more, you should definitely give the series a try — maybe even marathon it now that it's over!

'Your Lie in April' is quite possibly the most disappointing anime that I have ever seen. This is because the series brings you in with gorgeous visuals, fantastic sound work, an interesting concept and elements of delicious suspense... and then lets you down with horrible story execution, insufferable characters, and an ending which makes you want to go into "Kyle mode" and punch a hole through the fucking screen. I really, really wanted to like this series... but it just wouldn't let me.

To get it out of the way, here is how I rated the show (out of 10):
Story: 3
Art: 10
Sound: 10
Characters: 2
Enjoyment: 2
Overall: *3/10*

***SPOILER ... WARNING: PLOT ELEMENTS & ENDING REVEALED***

I thought about going into detail on everything wrong, and right, about the series, but I think it would be better if I went into the two things that drag this series down into the pits: Kaori, and the "twist" ending.

Let us begin with Kaori, who is one of the most terrible female MCs I have ever seen. She is selfish, dishonest, manipulative, abusive, self-righteous and histrionic, far more resemblant of a spoiled, ditzy cheerleader than a well-accomplished music prodigy. She spends the entire series forcing Kousei to relive traumatic experiences just so she can get him to play the piano, either as her accompaniment on-stage or simply for her own amusement, all the while leading him on with mixed signals as she is dating his best friend, a popular jock-type who is almost his exact opposite. She constantly belittles him for doing any little thing she doesn't like, hitting him excessively and/or talking down to him like a misbehaving child. On occasion, she will be incredibly sweet & endearing towards him while they're hanging out... before eventually ditching him abruptly to hang out with her boyfriend. This shit is textbook psychological abuse.

Such behavior by itself doesn't necessarily mean the character is poorly-written, but what makes it particularly unpleasant is that her bullshit is presented as though it were a good thing for all parties involved! She is framed as some quasi-tsundere goddess with a heart of gold when she is actually just a sick, twisted, manipulative teenage bitch with a superiority complex. Talk about cognitive dissonance! Had she been portrayed as more damaged and/or morally-ambiguous, which would have been more suited to her actions, the entire series would have been drastically improved as a result, and she would have been, in the end, a far more compelling and even likable character... but that is not what happened.

Which brings us to the abysmal "twist" ending: It turns out that she was in love with Kousei all along and only dated his best friend to get close to him - the titular lie in April: "I like Watari" - claiming that she didn't have the confidence to approach him; however, Kousei doesn't find out about this until he reads it in a note, which she arranged to have delivered to him only after she was already dead.

What. The. Fuck.

So let me get this straight: She spends how many months belittling this poor kid over the agonizing pain he has experienced due to the death of his abusive & overbearing mother by being incredibly abusive herself, playing with his emotions and leading him on the entire time, all while dating a guy she secretly doesn't even like just to subject him to this disgusting behavior... because she was in love with him?! How fucking pathetic! Seriously, it's like watching an eight year-old boy go bully his crush on the playground because he doesn't want the other boys to make fun of him. Oh, and let's not overlook her bullshit excuse about not having the confidence - yeah, as if I am going to believe that a bubbly & outgoing teenaged girl doesn't have the guts to start up conversation with a shy loner, especially since she had no issue with beating & scolding him throughout the entire fucking show. This plot twist, and how it was executed, instantly made Kaori one of the most unlikable characters imaginable, and further ruined what little enjoyment the series could have brought to the table.

Again, had they presented Kaori and/or the revelation differently, this twist could have instantly made her more compelling, sympathetic & endearing, and had you looking at her actions in an entirely different light, especially since harboring such love for Kousei would have seemed more antithetical to her personality. Instead, we get a boring-yet-infuriating resolution to a mediocre story that leaves you feeling anything but satisfied.
_______________

IN SUMMATION: As I said before, this show had a world of potential, and I really did want to like it. I honestly thought it would have everything I wanted in a story like this, and it started out strong enough to make me anticipate the rest of the series... but then it took a watery shit all over my expectations, leaving me annoyed & dissatisfied in the end. Fucking blah.

Ok so, if you liked Your Lie in April for the inspiration and music aspect, then try Nodame Contabile. If you liked it for the drama, unrequited loves, and music, try Kids on the Slope.

These two shows did it way better than Your Lie in April.

----------------

It's about a piano genius boy who has been mentally abused by his over controlling, psycho mom, and thus is dealing with issues regarding his piano/musical life. Meets a forceful girl who's to change all that. She literally just comes along and forces him to do things her way. Most of the story is just so unrealistically exaggerated. You ... just can't take it seriously. This show is drama, I understand, but this is melodrama to the next level. I couldn't help laughing at parts I should be feeling sentimental about instead. Speaking of laughing, this serious show also attempts to throw in a bit of comedy. Fine, but make sure it's funny before you go and do that. The comedy scenes for the most part didn't work for me. It just felt forced, not natural, and well....not funny.

They have things repeated to you over and over, and even in the same episode sometimes. Good god, way to make use of the 22 min screen time you get. The story is kinda predictable, and the fact that they spell everything out for you doesn't help to alleviate the boredom. Throw in some unrealistic, overdone drama, and you're left cringing for the most part.

The art. The only thing that will fool you into thinking this anime is great. I wouldn't say the animation is top notch, but the art is indeed pleasing to the eye. The OST is kinda nice as well. That's it. Those are the only pros to this show.

For this to creep up even in the top 50s, I don't even know what to think. It's not terrible, but it's way way way overrated, and I can't fathom why it's in the top 15 on MAL (at the time of writing). The quality of the story, the script, and the characters doesn't feel like it warrants this anime to be in the top 50 even.

I fine with drama. Heck I LOVE a good touching show with or without romance. This show though, eventually became something I had to force myself to keep watching. If you are expecting this to be top quality anime that all should watch because it's sitting up here near the top of the list, you may find yourself severely disappointed... unless you're a preteen who loves romance and over the top sob stories. Then by all means go for it.


STORY:4
ART:8
SOUND:8
ENJOYMENT: 3
OVERALL: 4

This review has spoilers so if you haven’t watched Shigatsu yet, just scroll down to the bottom for the (spoiler-free) pros and cons section. If you do decide to read all of it, then you’ve been warned, it’s pretty long.


I would start by explaining the plot but I’m sure you know what it’s about by now. If you don’t know, go read it and come back. Did you read it? I don’t know about you but its premise to me sounds amazing. In fact, before Shigatsu aired, I thought it would be the easiest 10 I have ever given a show. However, I was quite ... wrong and I’ll tell you just how bad this show actually turned out to be.


This is a romance and drama anime, and in shows of these genres the cast of characters is the most important aspect. There’s a lot to say about them but to summarize our cast in just two words, it’d be “mediocre” and “underdeveloped.” There’s honestly not much to say about our MC, Kousei Arima. I liked him most of the time. The only time I felt frustrated with him was when, in one episode, his mom’s ghost finally smiles and it looks like he overcame his fear of playing but a couple of episodes later, he’s back to crying and clutching his head. What happened to all that character development, ehh??? Oh yeah, there was also that one time he said “Kaori’s the only person I need” even though his friends have been with him longer than Kaori has. How can you just ignore your friends like that for some girl you just met? Despite that, he’s the only character who gets a decent amount of development and his outlook on life changes by the end. If you compare how he was at the beginning with how he ended up, there’s definitely a difference.

Our other MC, Kaori, is one of the worst-written characters I’ve ever come across in any medium. She has no definitive personality and most of the time she’s insufferable. At the beginning she seemed like a nice girl but as it went on, the worse and worse she got. She could be replaced by a cardboard cutout of a VS Pink model with a speech bubble saying “You can do it!” and the show would be 10 times better. She’s just a plot device and because of that, the author forgot to give her a personality. The little bit of personality she DOES have makes no sense and is just all around inconsistent. One second she’s smiling and telling Arima to believe in himself and the next she’s hitting him for no reason. At least in other shows, the tsundere hits the MC because he embarrassed her or made himself look like a pervert, but with Kaori, she hits him for literally no reason. Every time Arima asked angrily “what was that for?!” I was asking myself the exact same thing. Why, Kaori, did you hit Kousei when he did nothing to hurt or embarrass you? Please tell me, I want to know just as much as he does. Kaori also loves to spout philosophical BS that sounds like she got from one of those Tumblr pages filled with filtered photos with “inspirational” text on it that girls like so much. She makes those stupid philosophical speeches many times, too. It’s not endearing, it makes it seem like she’s trying too hard with this “carefree and happy” vibe she’s trying to project. Kaori is also manipulative, proven by the fact that she cried one time to get Kousei to be her accompanying pianist. She could’ve just calmly told him that she admires him (I’m sure he’s quite used to hearing those type of comments) but no, she had to go and cry. And to make her personality even more confusing, there was that one time she asked Kousei out of the blue, “wanna commit double suicide? Nah, just kidding.” Her “personality” is an utter mess. That’s not her only flaw, though. We barely find out anything about her. The only things we know about her is that she likes sweets, cats and that she always wanted to perform with Arima ever since seeing one of his performances when she was little. That’s pretty much it. Her character is confusing, extremely underdeveloped and there’s no way someone like her can exist in real life. I do not understand why people think she is a good character and cry when she dies. She isn’t realistic, relatable or likeable so why do so many people feel sad when she dies? It’s like if you were watching someone kick rocks. Do you cry when you see those poor rocks getting kicked about? Hell no, they’re lifeless rocks. That’s exactly what Kaori dying is like to me. I don’t feel sad or anything because it doesn’t feel like she could be an actual person, as if she’s just some rock.

Tsubaki is another main character and Arima’s childhood friend and as with every “childhood friend” cliché, she likes Arima and boy, does she take forever to realize it. It was absolutely infuriating waiting for her to come to terms with her feelings already. Her chibi comedy bits were unfunny and incredibly annoying. Most of the chibi segments consisted of her yelling nonsense at the people around her. The worst example of those comedy bits being unfunny and just plain disrespectful was when in the last episode, Kousei is reading Kaori’s letter by the train tracks, there’s a sad atmosphere and all, and then Tsubaki shows up uninvited and kicks him in the shin (while looking like a chibi) and yells at him “don’t ever think you’re alone!” Who thought that was an okay thing to add to that scene??

Watari is Arima’s other friend and another plot device. There are two plot device characters in this show??? Yup. Watari only exists so Kaori and Arima can meet, and Kaori only exists so Arima can feel better again without getting any actual development of her own. Back to Watari. His only traits are: acting like a playboy and liking cute girls and acting like a bro to Arima. Even when he said he liked Kaori (for some reason), Watari just put his arm around Arima’s neck and said “I know.” Watari’s 100% top bro material. Too bad he barely gets any character development, either. There was a scene with him where I felt was the ONLY time I actually related to a character on this show and it was when his soccer team lost a match and he cried over their loss. That’s kind of childish but I’m sure everybody has lost a match or some competition and cried or at least FELT like crying. I could relate to how he was feeling at that moment. However, that’s the only lick of development he gets in the whole show. After that he’s mostly just ignored.

There are a bunch of supporting characters that are just….there. They don’t add anything to the story nor do their personalities get fleshed out. There’s Takeshi, Arima’s “rival,” whose main traits are: sporting a frown most of the time, acting confident in his piano-playing skills and having one of the most ridiculous hairstyles I have ever seen. Seriously, his hair’s ridiculousness rivals even JP’s from Redline. He would be completely forgettable if it weren’t for his retarded hair. There’s the other “rival,” Emi, who is only there because the author says so. She likes Kousei as well, so I guess her only real purpose is to be the third girl in his little harem. She’s a pretty useless character too. Here’s my problem with Arima’s “rivals”: their “rivalry” doesn’t feel like a rivalry because he doesn’t care about them. Not once, during a competition, did Kousei look at them, acknowledge that they have talent and say “I’m gonna beat you guys!” like actual rivals do. Takeshi and Emi think of Arima as their rival but he didn’t even remember their NAMES when he met them again after their last competition together. It’s a one-sided rivalry and that’s why I put quotation marks around the word “rival,” because Arima himself doesn’t think of them as rivals, he just ignores them most of the time, like their talent is nothing compared to HIS talent. There’s also Nagi, Takeshi’s little sister. She likes to say “what a cliché!” a lot, which is extremely annoying. Even though she only got a couple of episodes in the spotlight, I felt like I understood more of her personality than I understood Kaori’s in the entire show. Arima’s teacher and mother figure, Hiroko, was a pretty nice person and I liked her. She didn’t annoy me and there were no scenes with her where I felt like strangling her. She’s probably the best character in the whole show mainly because there aren’t any glaring flaws in her personality or role. I’m going to talk about one other character that people never mention in reviews: Kashiwagi, Tsubaki’s friend. She had literally the worst character introduction I have ever seen: by not getting introduced. One episode, she’s not there, and the next she’s hanging around Tsubaki and getting screentime. I thought I accidentally skipped an episode when I saw her. We never find out anything about her, she doesn’t do anything to help Arima nor do anything significant of any sort. Heck, she even got a spot in the second OP. But just look at her MAL page. There’s nothing on it. She shows up a lot and there’s no info on her to put on there.
You see all these supporting characters I talked about? Yeah, all of them are pretty much useless. They don’t have very interesting personalities not did I ever feel like wanting to learn more about them.

Overall, the cast is absolute garbage. None of the characters are interesting and character development is non-existent in this show. Arima was the only one who got even a bit of development while everyone else was ignored. But hey, he’s our main character, he’s the only one that REALLY matters here, amirite?


There is also an insane amount of flashbacks, foreshadowing, deathflags and inner monologues. Even the supporting characters get flashbacks. There are TOO. MANY. FLASHBACKS. The “foreshadowing” was incredibly obvious and made you see the ending coming from a mile away. They even made it seem like Kaori had a chance of living. There was one scene where her doctor tells her that she can have surgery and she decides to have it. This scene brought us false hope, making us think she’ll live, but since we’ve been stuffed to our necks with deathflags, it’s no surprise she ends up dying anyway. In one of the later episodes, Kousei comes out of the hospital (after visiting Kaori) feeling depressed, he sees that the black cat that REPRESENTS KAORI is lying on the street after being run over, dying, and he picks it up and tries to help it but it dies anyway. If that isn’t the most obvious “foreshadowing” ever, I don’t know what it is. It’s not subtle, that’s for sure. The inner monologues are just as annoying as the flashbacks and they show up at the most inappropriate of times: during performances. The most idiotic example of inner monologues interrupting the music being played was in one of Emi’s performances. Instead of hearing the piece she’s playing, what do you hear instead? Emi’s voice in her head exclaiming, “Hibike! Hibike!” Just STFU, Emi, and let me hear the song you’re playing! I hate it when people praise this show for having classical music in it when you can barely hear it. All you hear is the characters’ voices OVER the music.


The “romance” in this show is abysmal. If anything, it’s quite shallow. Kaori started to become interested in Arima after hearing one of his performances (and the reason why I say Kaori was only “interested” in Arima and she didn’t “like” him is because we never find out if she likes him or not. This makes their little romance one-sided), and the only reason why Arima started to like Kaori was because of her violin-playing and her little inspirational speeches. What, does he go falling in love with every one of his therapists, too? Because that’s basically what Kaori is to Arima. There is no romantic development between our two MCs, and they like each other for very stupid reasons.


One last thing I want to talk about is Kaori’s disease. They NEVER tell us what disease she actually has. It’s like the author just HAD to make her have some sort of disease but didn’t care enough to think about exactly WHAT disease she will have. I have seen people try and GUESS what disease she has based on her symptoms. The very fact that people had to GUESS and that the show never told us is incredibly lazy on the author’s part.


I will talk about the good parts, though. The OPs and EDs were above-average. I even listen to 2 of the songs regularly because I just liked them SO MUCH. I have one complaint, though: the second OP wasn’t as good as the first one (although I still liked it) and it didn’t fit the overall tone of the show in the second half. Luckily, the second ED makes up for the positivity of the OP with a more sad melody, definitely fitting the tone better than the OP. The animation was pretty good and the backgrounds were lovely. The actual animation was pretty solid, for the most part, but sometimes they used still shots during performances, so whenever they did that it just looked lazy. I was quite pleasantly surprised at how the last episode and Kaori’s death played out. The last episode was really well done (except for that one scene with Tsubaki I mentioned earlier). I thought the last episode would have a really depressing tone and lots of crying and screaming from Arima but the atmosphere was actually quite mellow compared to other episodes and there was no crying, either. After Kaori’s death, they skipped the whole grieving process (I’m quite thankful they did that) and moved ahead to a little while after her death when the characters have gotten used to her being gone and have stopped crying. This creates a very peaceful atmosphere. Another thing, Kaori’s “death” scene was actually quite tasteful and special, in a way. The way they showed her “dying” was a pretty good way to show her leaving the world. And that concludes my points on the good parts of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso.

As for my personal enjoyment…..there was none. At the beginning I quite liked it but the more it went on the more I hated it. I didn’t ENJOY watching these kids deal with their problems. If anything, I feel only pity towards these characters, living in that sorry little world of theirs.

****************************************************************

Pros
+ Above average OPs and EDs
+ Good animation
+ The last episode was well done

Cons
- Characters are unrelatable, boring and underdeveloped
- Lots of useless characters
- Foreshadowing was incredibly obvious, completely ruining the ending
- Too many flashbacks and inner monologues
- The slapstick chibi parts weren’t funny and uncalled for at times
- Terrible “romantic” development
- Performances kept getting interrupted by inner monologues, not allowing you to actually hear the music being played


For those that haven’t watched Shigatsu yet: if you like classical music, don’t watch this because you can’t even hear the music anyway. If you like romance, don’t watch this because it’s not romantic in the least. If you like watching realistic and interesting characters, then DON’T. WATCH. THIS. Don’t even watch it for any of the pros I listed. Just look up the OPs and EDs on youtube and save yourself some time. Don’t watch it for the last episode because it’s in no way worth suffering through 21 other episodes to watch, and if you’re watching it for the animation then you’re watching anime wrong. None of the pros I listed are worth picking this show up to watch.


I gave this show a 2 because there is NOTHING about this show that could’ve saved it. I couldn’t even find anything about the characters or story that was actually good. The only reason why I didn’t give it a 1 was because I loved the opening and ending songs, but that’s it. This show is garbage and it’s not even worth the salary of the animators who made it. It is horrifying that so many people think that this show is good simply because it made them CRY. Just because it made you cry doesn’t mean it’s a good anime, it just means you’re a huge baby who gets attached to cardboard cutout characters easily. I’m probably the biggest crybaby I know and I couldn’t even FORCE myself to cry at the end. It is a disgrace that better shows such as Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei and Uchouten Kazoku get rated lower than this turd.

Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso is a coming of age story about the 14 year old pianist Arima Kousei.
After the death of his mother he loses the ability to hear the piano.
Until one day he meets a very forced tsundere girl - Miyazono Kaori.
The writers wanted for Kaori to help Kousei return to the music world and show that it should be free and mold breaking unlike the structured and rigid style Kousei was used to.
But instead she literally forces him to do things her way turning him into her doge (couldn't resist) and becoming a Taiga (from ToraDora!) clone, giving a wrong message, that ... bullying traumatized people is fine as long as it's for their own good.

I understand that this show is suppose to be drama, but this is melodrama to the next level.
I couldn't help cringing at parts I should be feeling sentimental about instead.
Speaking of laughing, this serious show also attempts to throw in a bit of comedy.
Not sure how beating up an already traumatized person, but whatever makes your clock tick is fine by me.

Despite the large amount of unnecessary episodes, the majority of the supporting characters remain bland,forgetful and undeveloped. I would go as far as saying that most of them were completely unnecessary.
The only good developed character is the main protagonist who starts as a dull, gutless Shinji (from Neon Genesis Evangelion) clone who has no reason to play music anymore to something slightly better.
And another thing the character of Kaori got very late development. For the 90 % of the show she was just a forceful tsundere doing forceful things.

The main reason i even watched this sad excuse for an anime was because of the classic music it promised and it delivered.
There are some timeless pieces from Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and other prominent names of the music world.
Tho the Opening and the ending however were absolutely horrendous,but i have to say they were fitting for a show of the same caliber.
The voice acting was good,but not because of an amazing Seiyu cast,but instead of how easy it is to voice characters so shallow.

The animation of is beautiful full of vibrant backgrounds.
Another thing that made an impression on me was the scenes in which an instrument is being played the animation was at its peak.
The art itself is just plain moe which can piss some viewers,but that doesn't mean it's bad.And Unlike other moeblob the characters in this one have full lips.
What more can you want ?A good story ?Who needs those !?Just gimme dat tsundere loli!

Although having great Sound and decent animation,this anime had MAJOR phasing problem jumping from the tragedies of the main hero to the romance of a minor characters,pointless character interactions and some''genius'' mind though using monologues to the point of beating a dead horse.
At one point i just wanted Kousei to get in the damn robot!

For some actually good anime that revolves around music i point you towards Sakamichi no Apollon, White Album 2, Nana and Nodame Cantabile. Heck if being a weeb is not quite your tempo you might even watch Whiplash.(ba-dum-tss!)

The music and of course means original soundtrack is wonderful. I love the original soundtrack including its two openings and endings song.

In terms of art, I cannot say much. It is a good art, both character design and the concept art are great.

I must admit the animation was awesome! Just look at how Arima played his piano, not many music (especially) piano anime can animate such a great move of fingers on the keys. I am always, well almost hyperventilated every time I watched them play. It was outstanding.

The character development was... okay?

Now, in terms of story. I know many people love this anime, ... but I am sorry this was not my cup of tea. The idea was all good, I'd no problem... but how they put the idea and make it into story, I was just... should I say dreadful? The plot was horrifyingly slow. It was devastating for me to watch this anime, and disappointed, and tired, and so so so angry.

Moreover, the thing I most detest was the flashback that keeps appearing in the middle of the performance and repeating over and over again. I know flashback is important to build the feel and emotions, but this was too much. I was so annoyed that I feel like want to throw my TV away.

I think it will be better if they cut it into 12 episodes.. After the 10th episode, I skipped most of the part and only get into the performance.

So, the art and soundtrack are both mesmerising, but the story wasn't that interesting to watch. Piano no Mori movie is much more heartwarming than this sad romance music thing. In terms of story, Sakamichi no Appollon still wins compare to Shigatsu. My mistake was to watched this anime when I knew that romance anime is a no for me....

There are two things that I love; music and anime. Put them together and you end up with a....dropped anime? I was anticipating watching Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso after hearing that is is an award winning manga about a musical child prodigy learning to face his demons, with a bit of romance thrown in. If done right, this could have been another gem to add to the multiple other music-based anime out there. But instead it seems that almost everything went wrong.

The protagonist of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso is Kousei, an unbelievably talented musician who's mother's death has been haunting him, so much ... so that he cannot play anymore. Since then he's found life fairly meaningless, apart from moments of happiness with his two best friends; Tsubaki and Ryouta. Then one day he meets a near perfect-looking girl his age who is also a violinist and has arrived to change his world. There's nothing wrong with this premise; in fact there are many enjoyable films with the "depressed male meets manic pixie dream girl" premise. What follows is where the problems begin.

The first problem arises when Kousei is describing the loss of his musical ability. Instead of saying something a regular person would say, such as "I don't like it anymore", Kousei says he "cannot hear the music anymore". When I heard him say this I thought that it was just a bit melodramatic, nothing more. However, now that I look back I can see why he uses these words. Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso wants to be a feels trip, but doesn't know how. So it turns the drama dial to the max, even if things don't seem natural. The characters don't speak like normal people. Every line of dialogue (outside of the attempts at humour) is portrayed to have some deep meaning for them.

This is emphasised by the constant monologuing and flashbacks. Kousei isn't just seen struggling to play music, he'll have a discussion in his head about how difficult everything is and then there'll be flashbacks of his mother abusing him. He won't just have a few scenes showing that he struggles with girls (even though his best friend is a female - which is generally far more than what most guys have at his age), he'll launch into a monologue about how he's "always the sidekick" - repeatedly. There's nothing wrong with the problems he is facing seeing as there are people who have gone through similar circumstances. But there is no need to constantly repeat and emphasise these issues in an attempt to create drama.

Then there's the emotional and "life-changing" moments. The characters of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso are overcoming obstacles and creating new outlooks on life every few minutes. This is simply too much. This is where most critics start calling the show pretentious, which is understandable. No human being has the wisdom to come up with the realisations these characters do so frequently. No one reflects on their friendship, hobbies and place in life every second of the day. For a show that requires the viewer to relate to its characters, it does everything it can to achieve the opposite.

The next issue is Kaori and the cliches. Now, I don't believe that cliches are inherently wrong. Especially considering almost every adventure film involves the same plot devices. However, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso even failed to do cliches right. This is where Kaori comes in. She is meant to be an MPDG; the girl that comes in to Kousei's life to change his world. But, like the drama, this is turned up to the max. Everything about Kaori is meant to be perfect. She's happy-go-lucky, loves music, intelligent, willing to show her emotions, beautiful, gets along with children and has a massive interest in our protagonist. They even throw in that she's sick and dying in case everything else didn't receive an emotional response. However, due to how overboard they've gone to make her a MPDG, it's actually made even fans of the show to have some dislike for her. When she is pushing Kousei to play with her, the show is attempting to portray her as encouraging Kousei to come out of his shell, but it comes across as borderline bullying. Her character is simply a trope gone wrong.

The cliches continue for the other characters and it makes it predictable. Tsubaki clearly has feelings for Kousei but will end up accepting that Kousei does not reciprocate. Ryouta will not change at all and is only there to create a love triangle. Kaori's sickness will end up getting worse, but before dying she'll reveal that the whole time she loved Kousei. Kousei will end up coming out of his shell and still love Kaori even after she's gone. The side characters will come and go without doing much and each episode will be padded out with flashbacks and monologues. It is obvious what's coming and really only has content to last a film, not a whole 20+ episode series.

After all that rambling about the negatives (and there are more, but mostly minor at this point), there are some positives. The artwork in Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso is wonderful to look at. Take a screenshot at any point in most episodes and you would have a good wallpaper. The animation is fairly decent, especially when the effort is put in to the concert performances. The music throughout the show is brilliant and the choice of songs throughout are actually very appropriate. The OP is incredibly catchy and as much as I didn't enjoy the show, I still enjoy listening to the OP.

So, if you enjoy forced melodrama with music involved, then you might get more out of this show than I did. However, there are definitely better drama-based anime out there, even with music being a focus. Personally, I'm just disappointed knowing that this show could have been much better.

[4.0/10]

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

In a world where every teenager is a philosopher. Where every decision is backed up by a few minutes of brooding monologue, as the extremely obvious is explained repeatedly exists a show that is deeply flawed simply due to it's own genre trappings.

Your Lie In April is that show. In this review I will probably be harsher than perhaps I should be, however, watching all twenty two episodes elicited a very interesting reaction from me. One of frustration, exasperation, lost potential, and maybe just a little bit of hope.

A show that could've done so much right. A show that is dragged down by ... shallow themes, weak romance, appalling humor, limp characterization, and most importantly, a fetish for trying to make you cry. A fetish that gets extremely tedious to sit through.

In this review I aim to explain my dislike of many of these elements, however, I also want to touch on the hidden potential that occasionally shines through the cloying husk of this empty, repetitive show.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

[MUSIC]

So this show is about music. Specifically piano, however, it touches on just the broad strokes of the idea of music. The vague notion of what music can do to a person. The expression in music. This is actually kind of cool. One, because there is a sorry lack of shows that are about music. Two, because I love music!

Unfortunately, these themes are explained. Yes. Quite often. However, the show rarely ever demonstrates what it explains. The raw emotion of the piano is so powerful. Nonetheless, the show tries its hardest to bury one of the prettiest instruments under a blanket of monologuing and exposition.

While this is pretty common for Shounen anime, it was particularly frustrating in Your Lie. The whole point of music is that it doesn't need to be explained. Why the hell would they keep trying to explain it? This is where there simply needed to be liberties taken in adapting this show from the Manga. You can't hear music from a comic strip, so it makes sense to have characters listening discuss the impact it is having on them.

However, why would they include this into the show? What benefit does explaining something you can hear have? None. It takes one of the shows biggest and most repetitive themes of expression through music, specifically "reaching" someone through song, and spits in its face. Especially when there are constant cuts away from the actual music to flashbacks or characters you simply don't care about, like contest judges, monologuing about how "oh man, this dude is good at the piano cause he is using emotion to play!" Man, I wish I could hear this emotion! I wish there wasn't just snippets of this emotion they keep talking about!

...

With that being said, though, the big scenes involving piano and violin are absolutely jaw-dropping to look at. A-1 pictures, a studio I really didn't know had it in them, really went all out with little details. Fingers strumming the keys, the way a pianist flicks his wrists. It's all meticulously done. Of course there are bouts of time-saving still images that permeate through the shows middle half. Unfortunately, for as solid as the art is overall, these budget-saving and time-saving aspects are understandable, but i'd be lying if I said they didn't effect my overall enjoyment of the show.

These huge musical extravaganza's rarely get to breath, as I said, constantly being interspersed with monologues and exposition. This, however, has a nice turn with the final episode where that breathing room is finally given. It makes for a somewhat worth it wait, although I have to ask myself If I would have enjoyed the show more if every scene like this was made to express, rather than to explain.

...

The music itself is great, too. The pieces picked are all very beautiful. I found myself looking up the composition after it was played just to experience it outside of the show. They nailed the sound here.

While the opening was generally just OK, the closing tracks were gorgeous. Especially the one in the second half of the show. In fact, it's so pretty, that it almost feels as though it doesn't belong in a show that wears it's melodrama on its sleeve.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

[ART]

So the character designs are generally pretty good too. The art, as I've said, is almost always pretty to look at. The characters are all fairly memorable (in design), and flaunt unique traits... such as lips. Which is pretty interesting for an anime. This stylistic choice actually really grew on me and I found myself really enjoying how expressive this simple addition could make a character.

The art design isn't perfect, though. I found there being a huge dissonance between the characters at the forefront of the story and the same characters as seen in flashbacks. A simple two year flashback would revert these characters into blabbering children that looked like they were around six or seven, while the present had them at the "mature" age of fourteen, where they looked more like they were around twenty. That, unfortunately, I never got used to.

Every girl in the show wears hilariously short skirts. It's a weird thing to notice but I just couldn't help but laugh at this shows need to market these characters. There's something so weird about a character that looks distinctly mature, however, is just a fourteen year old girl with an incredibly short skirt. It's ridiculous to even imagine this kind of shit being applicable in the real world. It's like a bunch of older girls doing sexy cosplays of schoolgirls, rather than actual schoolgirls. It wasn't the smartest choice by the design team.

...

For it's music, the animators use extremely pretty CG to animate the fingers and the piano. On occasion there were a few textures that didn't blend too well with the cell-shaded characters, however, for the most part, the pianos and the hands playing them looked spectacular. I wish there was a bit more creativity put into the shot composition of these scenes, though, as I felt like I saw the same exact swooping shot of Arima's fingers strumming the keys multiple times.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

[STORY, CHARACTER, AND THEMES]


So inevitably I have to touch on what truly bothered me about this show. Because the sound and music are generally spectacular. The characters, the story, and the thematic elements were all fairly weak in Your Lie. In fact, they were straight up lazy.

A few unique elements into the generic "love triangle" were injected with the fact that the show really didn't have any villains. It was kind of refreshing to see the competition against Arima, our protagonist, were all well-meaning people who respected him greatly. Seeing this support each other was awesome and it makes me wish that the show really didn't have romance in it at all.

But it does. Oh boy does this show have romance. In fact, I'd say the amount of romance dwarfs any musical elements this show shows off. Just about every scene was plagued in melodrama. Just... plagued. I always disliked melodrama because it felt like something injected into a story just to stir conflict, rather than create progress.

The amount of melodrama in Your Lie is simply exhausting. Every scene played out so similarly, with such a low variety of topics, that I felt like I watched the same episode three or four times on occasion. That's really bad for a show that only runs twenty two episodes.

...

"Uh Oh, blonde girl lost her pencil! Watch as she looks at her hands and we get a PoV shot of her crying!" There is literally nothing more frustrating than seeing a show try, and fail, to make you feel sad about shit. Instead of developing characters, as in, making them like-able to begin with. Your Lie makes the bold move of just giving us emotional conflict right off the bat.

We hardly know these characters and they're already crying. This doesn't make me feel attached to them. In fact, I just found myself annoyed most of the time. No, I don't fucking care that Pixie Dream Girl is having health problems because I DON'T KNOW HER. Every piece of information about her is fed so ham-handedly that I never felt like I could connect myself with the heroine of the story.

She plays generic Pixie Dream Girl. If you don't know what that is, it's a character archetype that pretty much enters our protagonists life seemingly out of nowhere and inhabits this playful, cheery persona that sweeps them off their feet and has the protagonist do things he usually wouldn't do. These characters also often have sad backgrounds. This is the definition of Kaori, the blonde girl who does stuff and plays the violin... once or twice, I guess.

And so the story begins of kids caring too much about shit I couldn't care less about. I suppose that's the problem with the genre. Maybe i'm just really not into melodrama. I personally didn't know that the show was going to be literally 90% melodrama.

Especially since Kaori is less of a character and more of a tool for Arima to develop. However, this tool is so mediocrely portrayed and boring that I found myself with a mild disdain for her throughout the entire series. Which is sad since Your Lie has proven that it can write interesting characters with Arima's mom, Saki, who is this sympathetic character that has done horrendous things. It's hard to write a character like that and the show does so extremely well.

It's just sad that that's where it ends. The show really is just filled with the most generic possible characters apart from that.

We have...

---> Oblivious love interest number 2.

---> Sports guy

---> That friend who gives advice and is quirky

---> Younger girl that likes protagonist

---> Rivals who secretly know that they are worse than the protagonist

---> Other characters i'm forgetting.

...

The themes aren't handled much better, either. For example : "Maybe the light can reach the bottom of a dark ocean," is not only a quote, but also a prominent theme throughout most of the show. Arima being pretty much Shinji from Evangelion, but less interesting. So much so that we get direct homages to Shinji's hand. We see Arima's teenage angst being portrayed as though he is at the bottom of the ocean. It's dark, wet, and without sound.

That's a fine theme to touch on. Maybe even build a deeper story within. However, ironically, this theme about a deep ocean is incredibly shallow and surface-level. Yet it gets explained so often, and so bluntly, that I found myself rolling my eyes constantly at the screen.

This can be said about everything in this series. Everything is explained. Nothing gets to breath or marinate in your mind. If a motif is teased, get ready for it to be explained directly to your face. It gets so tiresome to hear the same thing being said in a slightly different way five times, only to move on to an equally shallow and obvious theme that is done the same exact way.

Wow, I never have heard love being compared to the seasons. Wow. What a creative and original idea. Maybe if they... nope, they're just gonna go ahead and say love is like the seasons forty seven times so you get that the weather around the characters is supposed to resemble their budding love.

...

So we have this Catcher in the Rye-esq edge to the protagonist that gets humdrum by episode four, but what truly is offensive is the fact that all of this edge is delivered like a punch to the mouth. With extensive monologues. I'm talking pages and pages of characters speaking into thin air. Dreary and endless doesn't even begin to cover how obnoxious this was.

Especially since hearing these fourteen year olds wax poetically about love is something that may have been interesting to me when I was fourteen, but now that I've grown up and realized that a crush on a girl in highschool isn't love. And most definitely doesn't deserve this much attention. It's not even a friendship that develops, I never get the idea that these characters are friends first, romantic interests second. It's all just romance in the most hackneyed possible way.

Even if these characters are just actually supposed to be edgy teenagers, it doesn't really do the show any favors by not making a comment about that concept. No, I don't find a kid being edgy interesting. It's more of a joke. Ironically, a funnier joke than anything this show can muster up. Have I mentioned how unpleasantly unfunny this show is? It's anime reaction humor that is so misplaced and awkward that it wasn't just unfunny, it was cringe-inducing at times.

Kids don't talk like this. Kids don't act like this. I don't care that he's a piano prodigy. The show never makes me care that he is a piano prodigy because the piano takes a sideline to more melodrama. A love triangle that spins its wheels until an axle breaks and it finally hits a lamp post and dies. Finally.

...

If this isn't annoying enough, the protagonist is literally the center of the galaxy in this show. Every scene that doesn't include him is about him. Every scene that he's in, is about him. I get that he's the protagonist, but by making every character live off him makes the entire world feel unnatural and artificial. Two girls walk down the street. What do they talk about? I'll give you one guess.

These characters have no discernible lives apart from talking about the main character. It makes sense for someone like Tsubaki to go on and on about Arima because she gets the glorious roll of the most retarded, unaware girl in the show. But the real kicker is that she doesn't even get a resolution. She's just another girl fawning over the protagonist.

I get that these kinds of shows are marketed towards teenage boys. Usually lonely teenage boys. And by including cute girls that secretly love them it gives these lonely teenage boys the ability to insert themselves into the position of the main character and pretend like they have cute anime girls wanting to suck their cock. I also get that Arima, unlike a lot of anime protagonists, is actually very talented at the piano. But it doesn't make the fact that literally every important girl character in the show is literally in love with him.

I say "literally" in love, because this show is so self-absorbed and unaware of it's ridiculousness that when a fourteen year old says "I love you," you are supposed to actually take it seriously. As if he found his soul mate. It's a joke.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

[CONCLUSION]

Is it clear yet that I have quite a few gripes with this show? If it weren't for the outstanding production and sound this show's grade would be fairly abysmal. It genuinely couldn't ring a single emotion out of me. That is not good for a show that's entire purpose was to ring emotion out of you. It's as if it's trying to milk a cow and it's not satisfied until ever last drop is squeezed out.

The main character, piano prodigy Arima, is pretty much friend zoned throughout the entire show. Except he's an anime protagonist so it turns out every important girl "loves" him.

The ridiculous themes, while extremely pretty in execution are incredibly empty. There is no substance to them so the show needs to repeat the same thing over and over again just to fill its run-time. I wouldn't call the show slow paced because I think that the pacing is all over the place. One episode is just a monologue stating something that a four year old could figure out, another episode has fifteen plot points it needs to resolve.

There's this weird dialogue-driven structure where a character just repeats a phrase throughout an entire episode. It's really corny and sometimes kind of unintentionally hilarious. Talking about hilarious, this show is the opposite of that. It's so unfunny that I actually felt kind of depressed after every joke it forced down your throat.

It had a few unique elements in it's genre archetype, as the general lack of villains and excess of competitors gave it a very unique and somewhat interesting vibe when it came to the actual concerts. However, these concerts really don't play a huge roll in anything but furthering melodrama. As I said, the expression through music is almost always dampened by rampant cutting into loud, obvious, and repetitive dialogue. Thankfully the show at least let the final, astounding bravado performance breath and it was spectacular to look at, even if I never really found myself attached to any of the characters.

...

I never really enjoyed melodrama. I think if I knew this show would have so much of it I would have stayed far away from it. It's not necessarily a bad show, in fact, my grade goes to show that it is but a woefully mediocre one. Which is sad because of how astounding some of the artistic elements are. That's where the topic of potential is ignited.

This show left me frustrated because it could've been so much more interesting if it axed every single romance element and became a show about a kid overcoming his own issues through music. Instead, it became a show about a kid overcoming his own issues through a girl telling him about music. Letting him explore a kind of expression in music he wasn't familiar with. Which sounds interesting in theory, but the amount of exposition through obvious themes ruined any potential for an interesting romance.

Romance isn't inherently bad. However, the characters in said romance need to likable. Arima is simply a perfect human being that was stricken with understandable stress. If he didn't go through what he did he'd be this nice, handsome, great guy with awesome friends and a happy life. This lack of actual flaws to the character apart from maybe being shy on occasion remove any actual relate-ability to him. I can't relate to his reaction to anything because the reaction is so cloying rather than raw.

Your Lie is deeply flawed through its own genre trappings. It takes itself so seriously that you may find yourself grasping for air. There is no levity. No wit. No brevity. It's just this slow crawl to the finish line. It's a very pretty crawl filled with great animation on occasion, pretty characters and strong voice work. But it's not a crawl i'd recommend. Especially if you dislike melodrama.

As I said, it's art and sound elevate a lacking product. The characters, story, and themes were weak and often too simple to explain potentially complicated situations. The music is beautiful but I can't say that's enough reason to watch something. A mediocre product, not because of it's lack of trying, but due to it's completely inconsistent nature.

If you want to see expressionism through music, watch Whiplash. If you want to see a bunch of broody kids monologue and cry fourteen times per episode, watch Your Lie in April.

I've finally got around to watching this anime just over a month ago. After I finished watching this anime, I was extremely disappointed. I've heard lots of good things about this anime, but unfortunately it ended up being a pathetic pile of shit. It wasn't even enjoyable to watch in the slightest. Also, I highly suggest that you don't read this review if you haven't already watched this anime yet.

I'll just give a quick synopsis of the story since I'm sure you all know what it's about. The story is about how a kid named Kousei is abused and forced to play the piano ... by his abusive mother. Fast forward to a couple years later, the heroine Kaori is pretty much forcing him to start playing the piano again. Kaori is a violinist and she pretty much begs him to start playing piano again. This Kaori girl then gets some unknown disease, therefore she's unable to play the violin with Kousei. Throughought the anime we see her struggling with this disease, and I admit that it was kind of sad to watch.

The story is actually pretty interesting to be honest. I have no problem with the story of this anime at all. What I do have a problem with is the bad writing and poor execution. I actually expected this anime to be mature since it's touches on things like PTSD, Depression, Suicide, Disease, etc. Unfortunately, this anime was not mature in the slightest. Infact, this anime was extremely immature which kind of disappointed me. There was many moments of unfunny and unnecessary comedy that really shouldn't have been there. I mean for fucks sake, the characters in this show talk about comitting suicide. I seriously want to know what the writer was thinking when he decided to add childish comedy to a manga that has mature themes.

The characters are just god awful and unlikeable it's ridiculous. The only one that developed as a character was Kousei. Every other character is one dimensional and unlikeable. I have no idea why people like Kaori. Just because she has a disease and the anime makes you feel sorry for her, that doesn't mean she's a good character. I felt bad for her aswell, but she's still a generic one dimensional character. I was disgusted at how annoying Tsubaki was. She's the most annoying female character I've ever seen in an anime, period. There's just way too many characters that serve no purpose to the story, such as Nagi, and the two people that are obsessed with Kousei.

This show becomes extremely repetitive very fast. I mean the second half of the show is the same thing repeated over and over again ad nauseam. I literally felt like I was watching the same episode over and over again. The last 12 episodes have very slow pacing and it was a pain to watch them.

The animation was good at sometimes, but bad at other times. Anytime there's a piano/violin performance, there usually is beautiful animation. Unfortunately anytime there's a comedy scene, the animation is just god awful. The art style just completely changes when there is comedy involved and it's animated so ugly. It's as if there's comedy in this anime just for the sole purpose of saving budget. If that's actually the reason, then that's absolutely pathetic.

I just didn't enjoy this anime one bit. It was extremely childish and immature I just couldn't stand it. I didn't enjoy the characters because they were annoying pieces of shit. The performances were fun to watch at first, but quickly became boring because of the slow pacing. I didn't enjoy watching the bad comedy. This anime is just bad and overrated.

Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso has a nice art & great music. I really like them. The anime has been raved as one of the best tear-jerker anime. Which I find hard to agree on. The story is about a girl who helped a music prodigy to continue pursuing his music career after a tragic lost which traumatized him enough to stop him from playing. Although she seems like an angel sent by the gods, not many of us are impressed. This was mainly because of the ending; when the secret to her lies revealed but doesn't gives any real impact.

There was no real ... connection between the main protagonist & the female character. They were not childhood friends, nor were they rivals who despised each other. They never shared special memories together. They were nothing. The backstory doesn't help set the mood. I feel nothing. It felt like it was made to fish for viewers sympathy for the female character who had terrible misfortune. I feel sorry for her. But not Sad. How can anyone feels anything about someone they have zero connection? The backstory really feels empty and one-sided. I find the female character unattractive. Yes she is beautiful, yes she is good with her instrument. But as a character, not so much. She was a stalker! She imposed her ideas on the guy. Sly her way into his group of friends. Using the best friend to get close. The protagonist may fall for her from her beauty, her determination, her caring, her being his best duet.. but I really felt nothing. The 'Lie' really fail to bring me to tears. I was left with a big empty hole in my heart. dissatisfied.

As someone who has played piano both for school and for fun, I feel like I need to rant about YLIA a little. Knowing even a little about classical performances completely killed my enjoyment of this anime. Here's a few reasons why.

1. No actual differences in the music. The writers keep saying a certain performance is good, or another is terrible, but even with all my training I can barely hear any of this supposed nuance. This is terrible sound design - there is a LOT you can do to make music sound different or bad.

2. Talking over the music. This makes point 1 ... even harder - judging music is difficult enough with zero background noise. It's considered very disrespectful to be talking in a concert, as it takes away the enjoyment of other listeners. There were so many points where I just wanted everyone to shut up and let the music do the talking. There's plenty of time before and after the performance which could have been used to explain the story, instead of drudging through shitty chibi comedy.

3. Skill level of the performers. I'm acquainted with one of Australia's best pianists. At the age of 18, he would have struggled with many of the pieces shown in this anime. The kids here are 12. Sure, it's explained that the characters are very motivated and have great teachers, but it's almost impossible for 12-year-olds to have that much technical and emotional prowess. There simply isn't enough time for their hands and brains to develop.

As for the rest of the anime, the pacing crawls along at a snail's pace, most of the characters motivations aren't relatable, and the comedy is completely out of place. A wholly unenjoyable experience that I don't recommend.

Your lie in April is one of the worse animes ever to be written. The animation is the only thing saving this pathetic excuse of a show. Honestly, this was the most lacking emotional anime I have ever watched. Violet Evergarden was even better than this sorry of an excuse anime. The characters especially are horrid, the main female lacks so much character development it makes me wanna puke. Honestly, I was crying. Crying with tears from laughing so hard.

Pathetic. Honestly, anyone liking this and protecting this has no taste in actual emotional anime, or actually animes that make you FEEL for the characters. Animes ... such as Clannad, Air, Kanon, Violet Evergarden, Macross Frontier, and so much more you really need to get better XDDD

This review only applies for the first 6 episodes of the series, it does not constitute for the overall experience of the anime itself and it will be comprised of what I liked/disliked about the anime and the reason I have had dropped it for.

Men are fucking worthless. In the situation that you see one, or are somehow friends with one, you should, in any situation, be violent towards them. Good examples of violent acts viable are throwing heavy objects at them, hitting them with musical instruments or simply punching them. Also keep in mind that men are creatures that are incapable of making a ... decision on their own. You should decide their future, even if the decisions they've made are to avoid the effects of PTSD. You see, they are incapable of rational or individual thought, so, if they choose not to do something, and you think they should do it, force them for their own good, especially when it directly benefits you, since you don't want to be pulled down by the decisions of a M.A.L.E. In the situation that these males don't abide by your will, keep hitting and harassing them with your request until they do. Don't accept rejection on any level. As a last ditch attempt, you have one last ultimate weapon. Crying. These species are so honestly pathetic around crying women, even when they can clearly see it is fake, that they will give up, and do whatever you ask of them. But maybe you are a kind person at heart and you'd never hurt or want to manipulate these animals. But trust me, it's okay. Because if you'll ask them "Do you resent me?" they will only answer that you make them better.

While dropping the exaggerated meninist attitude, this is how the life of Kousei Arima is. He is treat exactly this way by his friends and love interest(s). I can understand some degree of slapstick, designed to make the show more lighthearted and humorous. Sure, I am not a big fan of slapstick, but I witnessed it enough to understand what it means. However, in Kousei Arima's situation, it is entirely overdone. You see, this character, has PTSD, due to the abuse his mother put him through as a child. His mother was crippled by a disease and was unable to play on the piano due to it. The mother forced him to practice the piano continuously days and days on end while hitting him each time he made a mistake, and convinced him that if he wins the competitions, she will get better. Not only did the kid blame himself for any mistake he made, but his mother, the person he wanted to help, hit and abused him at every step of the way. And he was loyal to her to the point anyone who was badmouthing her, he would think to himself "I am the only person who is on my mother's side." Then his mother dies and due to the trauma, he was left unable to use the piano because he couldn't hear what he was playing on the piano as an aftereffect of the trauma. The anime's goal is for this character to rediscover his love for music. But instead what I see is how a 14 year old boy gets taken advantage of in this anime. Taken advantage of how?

To fill you in, as every relationship screaming quality storytelling, this starts by him taking an accidental photograph of his love interest while her dress is lifted up by the wind, revealing her crotch. She acts out violenty towards him. Then they get introduced to each other by their friends because they were supposed to meet in order to introduce this friend of hers to this girl so they can go on a date. The date consists of her playing at a violin contest. They listen to her and there the 14 year old forms the impression of, and I quote "She's ultraviolent, her personality blows and she leaves the worst impression, but she's beautiful". They eventually leave, but they meet again, where she angrily tells him to play a song on the piano in front of some children because otherwise she'd look bad. Then eventually they have a heart to heart and he tells her about the fact he can't hear the notes, but that doesn't affect his day to day life. Then she starts kicking him and tell him that he should play regardless because that's how people like them survive. Afterwards she decides that she wants him to play as her accompaniament at her next concert and has his group of friends bombard him with requests, music sheets and the song she wants him to play for an entire week. He dodges this harassment as much as he can until in the last 30 minutes until the competition. Then she cries in front of him and that convinces him to say yes.

Now let me change my example to something much more extreme and over the top, with which I hope will get my point across.

To fill you in, as every relationship screaming quality storytelling, this starts by him accidentally parking in an illegal space due to a flat tire, and her giving him a ticket because she works law enforcement. She acts out violenty towards him. Then they get introduced to each other by their friends with one of them having a date with her. The date consists of her going to a shooting range and shooting, I don't know, bottles. They watch her and there the war veteran forms the impression of, and I quote "She's ultraviolent, her personality blows and she leaves the worst impression, but she's beautiful". They eventually leave, but they meet again, where she angrily tells him to shoot a gun in front of some children because otherwise she'd look bad, somehow. Then eventually they have a heart to heart and he tells her about the fact he has flashbacks of his buddies dying every time he sees a gun. Then she starts kicking him and tell him that he should use a gun regardless because that's how people like them survive. Afterwards she decides that she wants him to accompany her to a nearby war zone but he refuses. She harasses him alongside his friends by placing guns at his work and playing the country's anthem. He dodges this harassment as much as he can until in the last 30 minutes until the troups assemble. Then she cries in front of him and that convinces him to say yes.

Again, an extreme parallel, but I need you to understand that any case of PTSD is serious, especially to the person that has been through the trauma. You don't get over your issues just because requests you to and you would avoid the triggers as much as possible because that could make you relieve the trauma and have flashbacks. The writing of the show pretty much makes Arima be bullied out of his depression and be forced to play for the laughs of others. And I simply find that stupid and unrealistic. You can't expect someone to get bullied out of their depression on the sheer fact that they got a crush. You can't simply expect that a character you've written as suffering of PTSD due to child abuse to simply do the activities other people want him to, when they abuse him in order to get him to do it. I am a generally insensitive person, but this is a subject that you do not delve in without understanding how such a person would behave. I am sure that someone that was traumatized by war would avoid fighting in another war. I am sure that a rape victim would have a hard time seeking romantic partners, if not simply avoid them entirely. And I am also sure that someone that has been abused as a child would seek to avoid the means because of which they were abused for. But one thing I am sure of is this. You will never be able to force these people into doing the cause of the trauma ever.

I wish I could've mocked it instead for the fact that it spouted cringy lines like "my spring came and she made my world colorful. why is the sky so starry tonight". I wish that I could've mocked it for having all the characters fall in love with each other just because they had screentime. I wish that I could've mocked the series for every other character being simply selfish pricks. But the way this character has been portrayed simply undermine any other complaints I might make because it simply ruined any sort of credibility I could've seen in the series. I cannot be entertained by a relationship that I would believe would never realistically act out this way, and much less by the fact that Arima is just expected to overcome this with no individuality and because his friends want him to. If the week would've been spent with the characters having a talk with him, telling him that he shouldn't give up on his hobby, as he seems to be still quite attached to it after some time, or bring any other arguments to him or at least try to reason with him, I could deem this at least acceptable. But nobody cares about what Arima thinks. Including Arima's boner for the blonde. Nobody tries to understand and be accepting of him. They just want him to do stuff.

The only thing I truly appreciated about this series is the production values. I've enjoyed the classical music even if I occasionally listen to classical music, but I appreciate it every time. And I also appreciated the detail put in the animation, like the realistic way the hands reflect onto the piano as just one example. It is dissapointing to me that this is wasted on Shigatsu, who equates hitting people as displays of affection as well as an endearing trait, which to be fair, is something common in anime. It is dissapointing to me that it is wasted on something that displays that someone's psychological issues are as just them being fussy and difficult about it. But the fact that is most dissapointing that the main character will be thankful for it, and think that his lifestyle is improved by going through this again. I wholeheartedly agree that if depressed, it is very important to do things that you don't want to do or normally wouldn't do. I also think that friend should be supportive of you and make sure that you are still active in your life. But forcing you to simply do something due to which you got traumatized, is neither support or a way to tackle depression. It's anguish and torture for the person forced to do so. I can't buy into this character acting the way he does, simply because I understand that trauma doesn't work this way.

The only way I can recommend Shigatsu is if you're easily influenced emotionally and/or impressionable, and are looking for a romance story with good production values. Shigatsu is that. It definitely has atmosphere and metaphors for the romantics out there, and as far as I know, these type of series depend on how you feel about them, rather than what you'd think. I am a more rational person, and I simply can't enjoy things I don't understand, and all of the previous paragraphs explain why I don't understand the way the story goes forward. And if I can't understand how he could see his romantic interest as his romantic interest, besides being 14 and horny, I can't appreciate this series.

The reason why I gave this anime a 3 is not because it’s bad, but rather because I wasn’t able to enjoy it at all.

Let’s state the good points first, the art is beautiful. The music is good too, even though there are too many « interruptions » (dialogues, inner thoughts, public reactions, etc) during the performances, which can’t let you enjoy genuinely the classical music.

Then, regarding the actual contents of the show : almost all the characters pissed me off, starting by the main one. It’s fiction, so let’s suppose a psychological disorder such as Arata’s is possible ; but he is whiny, indecisive, and ... annoying. Even thought his premise, while cliché, is not the worst and makes you want to root for him (« I’m a nice and talented guy but I’m still traumatized about something that happened years ago, and it explains why I’m absolutely not self-confident neither about music nor about the girl I like »), he’s too passive, and the way he acts towards himself and others often frustrated of disappointed me.
About the main girl, I can understand that she looks perfect because she is depicted from Arata’s point of view ; but I didn’t feel empathy towards her at all. Her behavior (I won’t spoil, but she made some important decisions revealed at the end) is well justified, but it feels too « fictionesque », too idealized. It’s not sufficient for her to look perfect from Arata’s point of view, she is also made to look perfect to the spectator.

These « bad » traits wouldn’t feel so awful if they were the only problem ; after all, the characters have some consistency. But all of it is intensified by the atmosphere of the show : the pace is sluggish, and everything is made to look over-dramatic. While the beginning looks light-hearted, it quickly deviates from this path. Most of the show is made of monologues, inner thoughts, and commentaries, which is really unbearable sometimes. At some point, even a simple discussion between the two protagonists can’t be « normal » anymore, and the « childhood memories » are just too much. What is more, because of this atmosphere, I wasn't receptive at all to the comedy.

Then, the ending … I guess it’s the reason why it got such a high score on MAL. Yes, it’s a beautiful and sad ending, but it’s far from enough to make up for the rest of the show.

Of course, it’s subjective, but the story, characters, pacing and atmosphere really suffer from the comparison to Nodame Cantabile. They have a similar premise (trauma of the main character, meeting with a peculiar girl in the first episode), but Your Lie in April is just too childish, really bad-paced, and wasted its potential ; besides, the musical dimension is just too different. While Nodame is centered about music, and actually teaches you a lot about classical, YLIA simply "uses" it : the characters and their relationships actually take the whole place, while music is more of a tool for their evolution and the advance of the story.

I admit 3 is harsh (and normally, I would have given it a 5), but this score also takes into account my disappointment. I enjoy good romances, bildungsroman, and I love classical music, so I had great expectations for this show since I only saw praise about it ; but sadly I had to force myself to watch through the end.

TL;DR: If you're considering watching this, I implore you not to believe the hype, and save yourself the frustration of watching this show. It really is terrible.

This show is the true embodiment of a tragedy, and not because this show is sad. The work itself is tragically bad. This show really threw me for a loop. Initially, while appalled by the character art (particularly the lips and eyes), I was still vaguely enthralled. The atmosphere in the beginning made the show seem full of potential. However, it quickly devolved into a mockery of a serious anime.

The main character was basically what it would look like ... if Shinji from Evangelion was a piano prodigy. He was indecisive, whiny, and uninteresting. I understand the effect the writers were going for with the psychological element of child abuse and loss, but it became an obnoxiously repetitive theme, that never went away. It even got tossed in at random points after he had seemingly put those demons to rest.

The main heroine was also an annoying character. Many of her actions did not make any sense, and she was often just generally obnoxious. The ending particularly bothered me, but that's a spoiler, and it's plain to see once one has seen this travesty. It was really the other girl in the love-triangle who was the one I found myself rooting for. Yet she showed no backbone, and did a lot of things that just didn't make sense.

The most interesting characters were Tsubaki, her friend (who came in mid-way through the story with no introduction whatsoever, no back story and no development. She ended up saying something really poignant at the end, and ruined it with a really inappropriate and poorly timed joke, as the mood did not warrant such a joke), Seto, and Koharu (she was genuinely funny and adorable even though she didn't contribute to the story at all).

My biggest issue overall with this show stems from the fact that it tries desperately to be deep and meaningful, but it ends up coming out as forced and unnatural. Every episode was littered with internal monologues where the characters thought deeply to themselves. However, I find it hard to believe that all of these characters, many of them 15 or younger, were thinking this deeply for such a significant amount of time. Even if I were to give them a pass on that, the use of this device lost its meaning quickly. When characters are having at least one epiphany an episode, it loses its emotional power. There's a fine line between having characters with awareness, and feeling unnatural. This felt unnatural. Characters and the audience need to be led towards the final climax: a real epiphany where the characters learn a lesson. But here, it was crammed down our throats every episode. By the time I reached the end, every one of these internal monologues made me upset and angry. There were so many literary, auditory, and visual devices used, but they were used in excess. In this situation less is more, because it can accentuate the truly important parts, instead of creating confusion about what's important and what's not.

Also, the way the characters' realizations were spoon-fed to the audience makes me think either the writers are stupid, the writers think the audience is stupid, or both.

The one redeeming quality of this show was the music. It was really good. I loved OP 1, didn't care much for ED 1, but I liked OP and ED 2 pretty well. Also Koharu was always there making a funny face to make me laugh. I needed those laughs to keep from tearing my hair out.

With that said, this show ranks number three on my all-time worst anime, right above Oregairu S2 and Guilty Crown. If you're considering watching this, I implore you not to believe the hype, and save yourself the frustration of watching this show. It really is terrible.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS

This anime is constatly praised for the emotional aspects that offers, however, this is something superficial if we analyze it in terms of writing, where it fails in everything it purposes. Let's analyze together the issues that this show had and/or tried to hide using the emotional manipulation:

1. Tragic pasts that goes nowhere: Arima suffers from PTSD for the constant punishment that got from his mother, while Miyazono had an incurable disease. Why the mother constanly punished Arima? Mystery. How it's possible that he, just, forgave her without a concrete reason or a signal of her regretting what she did? This ... one is a fucking nonsense. Not only shows a wrong message about bullying, but, also exposed the cowardly of the writer to solve conflicts in the show. Another issue with Arima is the fact that during the development of the anime he didn't achieve anything. The writer invested more time in another aspects that I'm gonna mention in the next points.

Talking about Miyazono, she's, basically, a plot device hidden in a cute girl with a dissease. She introduced Arima a new style of music and convinced him to play the piano again. The problem starts with the fact that without her, the plot, literally, can not advance, also, she doesn't have a characterization neither personality beyond its function as a plot tool. Even the author tried to give a background to some secondary characters, unlike her case. What is the dissease that she had? Mystery, it was never explained. There are also contradictions with her. If she was planning to cheer up the protagonist and help him with his PTSD disease, why she forced Arima to relive his traumatic experiences? No fucking idea. Why did she constantly make insinuations that she wanted to have a romantic relationship with his best friend? I don't know. The worst part is that this relationship ended being a reality. Why she constantly bullied him each time that he made a mistake to this point of physically assaulting him? It's all a fucking nonsense.


2. Slow pacing: It was really necessary to have internal monologues that didn't go anywhere in each fucking episode? I don't know. Is a wasted time that the writer could have used to make a proper characterization. Also, we had some side stories from the other characters that didn't contribute to the main plot. Wouldn't it have been better to focus on solving in the main story instead of putting these stories that also got nowhere? No fucking idea. Why the writer put a lot of flashbacks instead of showing what's happening in the present timeline? Mystery and a cheap way to avoid a proper storytelling.


3. Melodramatic and edgy scenes: Most of the emotional scenes presented are forced and overreacted. The "redemption" of the mother, each time before an important concert, each time that the protagonist wanted a new partner, the scenes in which Tsubaki was involved, when Miyazono tried to convice Arima to play with her and being a pianist, the physical aggressions of Tsubaki and Watari against Arima, Watari crying because his team lost a soccer match and many more.


4. Plot: The plot was, basically, four episodes of 22, that is the total amount of episodes thanks to the wasted time in the internal monologues and the irrelevant side stories. And, what was the objective or purpose of the main plot? It was supposed to be the growth of Arima, however, the focus was on the dying phase of Miyazono that I'm gonna explain in the last point.


5. Comedy out of place: It is not only the fact that the comedy was introduced at inappropriate moments, but also, in many cases, the program parodied the illnesses of our protagonist in those scenes, which I also found offensive. Wasn't this show supposed to try to take the diseases featured seriously according to the presented at the beginnning? Mystery. Also the comedy involving Tsubaki was awful to watch. Main mention to the final episode where after the major plot twist of the anime, the writer had to perform a chibi scene with her in a scene that supossed to be the most dramatic and sad of the anime. One of the biggest anti climatic moments that I've ever seen.


6. Music: A wasted element during the show. The writer could have focused on the development of the pianist career of Arima instead of the flashbacks, monologues and the irrelevant side stories, so, yes, this element wasn't fully approached here.


7. Romance?: The reasons of why Arima liked Miyazono was because she played a violin and her pretentious inspirational speeches (that contradicts her actions during the show). And from the side of Miyazono, the showed revealed that she liked him in a very forced way during the last episodes. Before that, she only showed interest for him becuase his performances and nothing else. The change didn't feel organic in any sense.


8. Ending: If Miyazono wanted all the time to be with Arima, why did she involved the best friend? It wouldn't have been better that she, on her own, tried to make the first steps? I don't know. Wasn't it extremely cowardly of her to confess this to Arima late knowing that she is dying? This was not only a terrible plot twist, also it gave an awful message about escapism and, also, bullying to be honest. And the worst part is that this ending could have easily been better if the show gave her a better characterization, in order to, at least, have greater empathy with her and showing her regrets of being unable to confess to Arima before instead of being something that came out, basically, out of nowhere and being really edgy for the double suicide proposal.


CONCLUSION

Despite having a good animation and soundtrack, that are the only positive aspects that this anime has, Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso fails at everything else. It's a shame that, having an interesting ideas and premise, the anime took the worst way possible and ended being a complete wasted potential.

The feels, Meh feels, so romantic, oh the sadness and makes me wanna cri evrytiem all aboard the feel trip.

This is all I have been hearing from people who have watched Your Lie in April and given the show masterpiece praise for it's "feel factor" "good characters", and beautiful animation. So as almost everyone loved this Anime, I decided to give it a try hoping that I would also go through the same emotion and personal joy watching this Anime.

Instead, no offense but all I see is a bunch of melodramatic teenage idiots trying WAY TOO HARD to make everything look sad and emotional ... while nearly every scene being plagued with unfunny and baffling comedy that pretty much ruins the so called emotion. I don't have problems with comedy, contrary I love it but Your Lie in April doesn't do it well. Not to mention that the story is a drag and pretty much the stays very much the same and takes up a whole episode list just to get straight to one point and plagued with very stupid and pointless arcs. Let me explain the problem with this Anime, oh and the romance is POOR! I MEAN REALLY POOR!

Story: 3/10
Your Lie in April's story is dry as dried omelet. The story had a promising start and for about the first few episodes seemed like a good field trip runner. But the problem already began quick. The story starts with a depressed young boy by the name of Kousei Arima who is depressed in life because of a dark past that ended in a very tragic manner and is now lost in life and is scared to play the piano again because he lost his touch with the piano. Sounds understandable at first, but the problem is the approach to this manner. Because of all of a sudden... ALL OF SUDDEN! A blonde chick named Kaori Miyazono enters his life and because he sees her playing the violin and keeps getting convinced from her and his friends in order to play the piano once again and then he is at it at long last. That to me is a awfully poor way to progress the story with that sudden change. It's not that it was handled bad, it's just that there was literally no emotion to put into it whatsoever and the way that it was handled was so forced and to an extent questionable since the drama and emotion was so forced and melodramatic that the emotion I felt was completely cut off.

The feel factor is mostly the most important part of the show. But I'm going to say something about this part. I didn't feel ANY feel factor whatsoever. Almost half of the scenes are forced as hell and the drama and crying are so melodramatic that I sometimes thought to myself if these were real emotions or just the script and the scenario trying their very hard to make me feel super sad. People claim the scenes are sad and while there can be some little emotion on what happens at the end this all feels like forced trashed melodrama to me and the fact that I was told by everyone that I was going to be very sad and going through a post depression feeling with this Anime made me even more angry. I mean, come on here! So many scenes like Tsubaki's stupid cry or kousei's worry for Kaori or trying hard to get him hearing the piano again. It's just so obscure to me that I didn't even notice that was suppose to be the focus of the show. I have seen more emotional and feel triggered emotions. No offense again, but these people that consider your lie in april to be one of the most emotional Anime's ever are the same ones that go on saying that shows like Elfen Lied or Kanon are edgy and bad at doing romance scenes and try way too hard to be emotional and heartbreaking for the audience. For me honestly it's the exact contrary to what I believe. It's not those 2 that are like that. It's this overrated pile of crap that is what I described earlier.

Now I am going to be completely honest on this subject. The romance between kousei and Kaori is perhaps the worst aspect of the show. People claim that the romance in this anime is good. But I'v noticed that no one can really give a good reason on why the romance is good. All I see is praise like *oh it's because of the feels, feels, feels, and feels". No one can literally explain why the romance in this Anime is good. Sometimes when watching this Anime I kept forgetting that this was a romance Anime since I LITERALLY DON'T SEE ANYTHING ROMANTIC IN THIS ANIME! They just have a thing for each other and say emotional things to each other and give them motivational speeches and wish each other the best of luck. THAT'S NOTHING ROMANTIC RIGHT THERE! YOU SEE THIS CRAP LITERALLY IN ANYTHING FREAKING GENRE! Like seriously, how the heck can this be considered a good "romance Anime" when both Kousei and Kaori literally do absolutely NOTHING with each other other than oh just think of each other and do nothing else. Sometimes when watching this Anime I wondered to myself if there really was a romantic connection between the two. There are no heartwarming scenes between the both. No deep affection, deep love, and stuff that will literally make you blush and make your heart turn all bubbly because of how damn cute it is. THERE'S NOT EVEN A KISS FOR CRYING OUT! Now I know that not all romance Anime's have a kiss but at least they progress the relationship. Ylia does NO SUCH THING AT ALL! So to me this is TERRIBLE romance and this is the plague that is killing romance Anime nowadays. The only 2 dumb meaningful things that happened between the both of them was some stupid scene where they started at each other with fireflies and another in the final episode where some very hardcore and forced melodramatic scene happens where it's [SPOILERS!] just him crying that he's gonna lose her with stupid flashing sparkles and visuals. Seriously how lame...

Art/Animation 8/10
The Art style is good. It's very pretty and the eyes, noses, and mouths look pretty cute too. I'd call it a bit aesthetic and spot on. The animation is pretty good too. Beautiful 4K like visuals that are at least enough to wow your eyes and the scenes being played were quite a pleasure to watch from the eye. Especially the music play scenes. Overall I give praise to the Art and Animation.

Sound/Soundtrack 7/10
The soundtrack is pretty good. There are some nice songs and believe or not but some songs are played well too. Just the problem is they can get really repetitive at times and sometimes they spam Pianos and try to force sad piano songs that just cut off the emotion. But a still good soundtrack at least.

Characters 1/10
THE CHARACTERS ARE A FREAKING ABOMINATION! LIKE SERIOUSLY THESE CHARACTERS ARE HONESTLY SOME OF THE WORST ANIME CHARACTERS I HAVE EVER SEEN!

Look, it may look like that I am over exaggerating, but honestly this is how I felt and I will give my reasons to explain why I think these characters are poor as hell and didn't enjoy them at all.

kousei Armia is a pianist prodigy who excelled very well at the Piano and won numerous competitions to claim the ultimate prize. But look from my perspective he is one of the most blandest and dull protagonists I have ever seen. He is beta for pretty much the whole show and he is a bore to watch and is no cool badass guy like we like to see. His lameness is just there to progress the story and had no alpha motives and remains a generic nice nerdy dork-like personality. His motivation to play the Piano is pretty hilarious since it seems like it was thanks to blonde poster chick that motivated him to play the piano through a very poor manner. Even though he had his friends for 2 years and were always by his side including a female childhood friend who was always there to support him and liked him at a young age but suddenly he doesn't like her and didn't like her at all since it seems like their support to him didn't mean crap all until the blonde chick suddenly comes to change his life. Wow... How strange is that...? What makes it even more funnier is that a age 14 Kousei acts like he's a 5 year old boy and pretty much does nothing else for his entire life which is also pretty hilarious considering that realistically boys around his age would probably be going under Tsubaki's skirt already because that's just how people are naturally. But instead remains an innocent and oblivious minded kid throughout the entire show is utterly stupid because lets be honest, THAT WOULD NOT HAPPEN AT ALL! You want an example? Go read Goodnight Punpun. It perfectly sums up youth very well. His romance with Kaori is poor as crap and as I stated before he does nothing romantic with her whatsoever at all. Nothing deep just hints and self thought feelings that he likes her.

Kaori is another disaster. She is an annoying stuck up blonde chick that meets Kousei and now suddenly bosses him around with a forced motivation. She is annoying, just there to be the poster chick, and has this illness that plays an important role for the show and because of that illness for the rest of the show, she doesn't really develop well at all and pretty much remains absent throughout the entire show. Honestly that illness hindered her progress really badly and quite sad how other side characters got more development than she did. There really is nothing much to say about her other than be there because again she is the poster chick of the show. She's the main girl and the main girl has to win for the sake of a poor story. Also, her encounter and personality with Kousei is unbearable to watch as she teases him with unfunny attempts to play with him and her romance with Kousei sucks because all she does is... Nothing...

Tsubaki is another pathetic character. She is one of those tomboy side chicks that are destined to get beaten by the main chick Kaori because it's some stupid dumb trope that's been there in romance Anime's since the late 2000s. She is good at baseball, bosses Kousei around, likes him, was always there for him to support him, but he doesn't like her back and then she becomes the side chick that losses. Yep, seen this stupid trope over and over again and hilarious enough this one is done the worst. She is literally just there to fill in the side chick role.

Ryouta is Japanese Soccer player who is currently negotiating a transfer to Manchester United for a record fee of a fee that is bigger than all of Japan's economy.

The rest of Ylia's support characters are obscure and irrelevant to the story. Kousei's mom is this evil wicked witch that abuses him, but then shows him sympathy. This causes a whole confusion if she really is evil. But all we know is that she is an abusive doofus and there is nothing else known about her. The rivals are just rivals and are there to put this DBZ like tournament feeling that goes flushed down the toilet since they are pretty much obscure. Nagi was just this girl to waste time and lead to a useless and pointless arc that really resulted in it being a waste.

Enjoyment 4/10
I didn't enjoy the annoying melodrama feeling at all. There was no enjoyment felt for me at all and most of the time I was waiting and hoping that at least something romantically meaningful was going to happen or least something that wowed me but nope. None of that happened at all... Instead all I got was pretty colors and pretty backgrounds with piano music that sounded nice but not enough to keep me pleased at all.

Overall 4/10
I did not enjoy Your Lie in April at all! I found this Anime to be extremely disappointing and a huge letdown. This Anime SUFFERS from melodrama, overuse of shock factor, scenes that are trying WAAAAY to hard to make me feel sad and worst of all the characters are an absolute mess to watch. I can't believe that I literally wasted at least 22 episodes of my life just to watch something that would let me down in the end. This Anime is not good in my opinion, the romance is one of the worst I have ever seen and it's pretty sad and hilarious too how a vanilla doujinshi or an incest Anime like Yosuga No Sora can capture the theme of love in a more romantic and deep way than this pile of disappointing garbage. The fact that it's compared to Clannad too makes me ask myself just what the heck is so emotional about it other than shock factor or forced melodrama. Sorry, to me this Anime is a HUGE disappointment and a letdown. Only the soundtrack and the animation was good. But that doesn't save it from being a bad Anime for me. Because if that were the case, then Sonic the Hedeghog 2006 would be the best video game in history am I right?

Watching this show back in 2015, I had high expectations for it.
Given its beautiful color palette, catchy opening theme, and incredible OST; I had given it the benefit of the doubt, ultimately making the show's outcome worse for me.

Characters:

Firstly, the anime centers around the overly-melodramatic life of our protagonist, Kousei. After his mother's death, Kousei refuses to play the piano any longer. Yes, I understand losing a family member is hard, but this melodramatic dialogue is prominent throughout the entirety of the show.
Oh, someone mentions piano? "Sorry, I don't like piano, nor do I play it anymore."
Take a drink every time he mentions the ... reasons why he refuses to continue playing, or anytime he makes a dramatic, or depressing line. You'll die.
He's the typical tragic-backstory-protagonist. Nothing unique, honestly.

Secondly, Kaori. She's the cliche tsundere love-interest that we've seen everywhere. Hitting the protagonist multiple times out of spite for "comedy". Which, ironically enough, is a trope this show tries to play out, and ultimately fails at. Her character isn't as likable as others put out. She's aggressive, rude, and bipolar, to say the least. Her character literally centers around her lies. Lies towards Watari, and her interests towards him. And lying about her terminal illness. Which, in itself was incredibly predictable for the outcome of the anime.

Tsubaki is more-or-less, the familiar childhood friend character. A sensitive, clingy, and caring side-character that'll never get the protagonist. And, that's how it plays out. Tsubaki hurts herself by clinging onto Kousei, although she knows that he doesn't have the slightest bit of interest in her - only seeing her as a friend.
She's a forgettable character that's only there for the sake of the plot "development".

Watari. There isn't much to say about him, other than; the only reason he's in this show is to make Kousei feel uneasy about his and Kaori's relationship, and is only posed as a friendly rival that ultimately has no other purpose in the show.


Art:

Nothing spectacular, the opening is decent, at the very least. But, nothing
extraordinary as a contrast to other shows. The only part I like is the pastel color scheme that fits perfectly for the anime's setting set in spring.


Sound:

By far, the only part I deem worthy of this show. The OST is beautiful, and fits the show. The classical hints throughout each piece are great. I love classical music, so this was a hit for me.


Story:

Oh, boy. Where do I start? This show is overly cliched, and I fail to even see how it has gotten such a high score. I cannot begin to fathom the overuse of cliches and easily predicted scenes.

The typical tragic backstory, overly melodramatic dialogue, are all factors that decreased my enjoyment for the show.
Kaori is rude towards Kousei because he refuses to play for kids, knowing about his mother's death. And even so, she is continually rude towards him, yet he chooses to accompany her with her performances.
He's known for "not being able to hear the keys", and repeatedly states the problems with his mother. This show attempts to play at both comedy and drama, although the two were not able to mix correctly in this show.
The ending was predictable as ever. Any terminal illness deems death, as what happened. Even though she said she'd be okay, she died.
The love confession and reveal of her lies were found in a letter Kaori had written for Kousei, and yadda, yadda, cue emotional scene #231.


In conclusion, I did not enjoy this show.
This in particular is why I avoid romance anime to begin with.
They're generally overly cliched, with general anime stereotypes that I'd prefer not to see for the millionth time.



Story: 3/10
Art: 4/10
Sound: 7/10
Character: 2/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall: 4/10

After watching anime for at least 15 years, I have never before come across a show that made me want to fast forward through it (or even drop it all together) in pretty much every episode... Until I stumbled upon "Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso", that is.

As a huge fan of music-themed anime like Kiniro no Corda and even ridiculously cheesy, dramatic and sentimental shoujo stuff like Sailor Moon or Shugo Chara, I had pretty high expectations for this show. Besides the plot itself, the reviews and rating also seemed pretty promising, with people often calling it a "tearjerker" and "deceivingly dark" in a ... Madoka-esque fashion. "Your Lie in April", however, is no Madoka. It's simply one of the most overrated anime shows in history.

From clichéd and plain-annoying characters that are impossible to like or relate to (even after 22 episodes), to the most repetitive sequences and predictable plot, this series was a total pain to get through.

Although some people have said that the progression is somewhat slow, the reality is that there is no progression whatsoever. With a story so obvious and predictable, it could have been told in 3 episodes. For some reason, however, it takes 22, and by the last one you're so bored and tired of this anime that you can hardly wait for it to end (knowing that you'll be shedding no tears for its sappy ending).

After hearing a supporting character say the same line literally 10 times (yes, I counted. That's just how boring this show was), you would hope that the words would somehow move you or the story would finally move on, but in reality, neither thing happens.

As if that wasn't enough, the series also throws in the most ridiculous chibi gags at the most inappropriate moments. The reason for this will forever remain a mystery to me, for they are neither funny nor entertaining, and only serve to kill the already-boring-and-miserable mood of the show and turn it into something outright pathetic.

Another thing that this anime is often praised for is its soundtrack, but this one is bland, at best. Both openings and endings are completely unremarkable and forgettable, just as the anime itself. Furthermore, the classical pieces chosen are also fairly common and clichéd, being easily identified by even the most ignorant and uninitiated in classical music. (Humming along to Debussy's Clair de Lune for an entire episode, anyone?)

With so many failures and disappointments throughout the series, this show's only saving grace is probably its art. Nevertheless, its striking beauty and originality quickly fade away as you are forced to watch the same scenes and dialogues play out over and over and over again. (Additionally, the use of the cherry blossom imagery seems rather excessive, even for Japan).

Overall, this show was a total agony to get through and certainly not worth the hours invested in it, but at least I will now know to be more careful with MAL ratings and rankings and not jump to watching the stuff that's most popular as I am positive that watching every other less-popular show will always prove to be a more rewarding experience than watching this sappy preteen melodrama that always tries too hard and takes itself too seriously in an attempt to make everyone else take it seriously too.

Hated it. Repeated lines, yes we get it. It's the theme of the show. But it felt deceitful-- just get straight to the point please-- at least show his piano-break-down scene earlier. Ugh.

I didn't like the monologue parts, it requires more depth in order for a monologue to be interesting for me at least. In this case, it just seemed like a whiny teenager who repeated his lack of color in his life. *Sigh*. Low libido, lol.

Sorry, I've been recently into comedies, so sexual humor has been a thing of mine lately, but I was just cringing upon watching this anime. Suggested to me ... by my friend/hubby. Please don't take my review too seriously, but please do consider it if you also had the same thoughts that I had.