Piano no Mori (TV)

I have no idea how to judge this, but do have a clear idea of it, so with the anime adaptation of both the Madhouse film and the completed manga itself, let's see what you get with the 1st half of this series while waiting for the 2nd cour to be set next Winter (at the time of this review).

As many would suggest, watching the film made by Madhouse in 2007 is a plus (or how I would interpret it as a MUST) because Gainax clearly rushed out of proportion, seeing that the manga made an extensive approach to cover the emotions felt by the ... MCs-turned-rivals Kai Ichinose and Amamiya Shuuhei from children to grown-up, full-fledged pianists. And for manga readers like myself, it's a no-brainer with the most well-beloved pianist-turned-teacher, Sousuke Ajino, having an accident wreck his ability to play with teaching Kai to not surpass anyone, but to find his own voice, from the piano in the forest onto the big scene.

This 1st half covers pretty much the rushed film adaptation onwards to the Polish competition that came to an abrupt end with the 2nd cour left to go. And with music anime, it's a dime a dozen with hits (Your Lie In April etc.), and Piano no Mori falls few and far in between with these. It's a good adaptation, and pretty much still getting used to the CGI which helped in transition moments and such.

As of now, please watch Madhouse's film (which encompasses Episodes 1-4) and follow up on the rest when it comes soon, but for anime-onlys, this series is good if you want a music anime, only if it prefers to your tastes for competition-filled drama.

Alright, this anime might be hard to review, but I'm up for the challenge.

Story 5/10
The story was alright but lacking through all the piano playing.

Art 6/10
The art was fine, but the use of CGI was jarring.

Music 6/10
The music was fine. There was a LOT of piano playing. Don't get me wrong, I love the piano, it's one of the most beautiful sounding instruments in my opinion. There was just a lot of it and none of it really stood out to me.
...
Characters 7/10
Here is where it gets hard for me. While watching the show I wasn't all that impressed with the characters. Kai's mom was hot. Takako was my favourite character, but she hardly showed up at all in the latter bit of the show. Despite this, while I watched the final end theme and saw all the characters in front of the piano in the forest, I couldn't help but think how much I liked the cast. 7/10 it is.

Enjoyment 5/10
I'm not gonna lie, I didn't get much enjoyment out of this show. Near the end of the show I was just waiting for it to be over.

Now for the overall. This anime is categorized as an adventure anime, but I wouldn't call it that, so if you're looking for adventure I would look elsewhere. This show is definitely a music anime, and I get that, so if you like listening to at least two hours of piano, I think, then this is definitely for you more than it is for me. This anime is categorized as a comedy, but I don't think I remember laughing at all, so don't come here for the comedy. I feel the drama was forced so don't come here for that either. Finally, this show is categorized as a school anime. The first bit was school, but if you're here exclusively for that, for some reason, then you won't enjoy the whole thing. Due to the alright start and the rather boring latter bit of this show I have decided to give it 5/10. Now, this is my second time writing this review. I already wrote it once and my phone decided to delete it, so my apologies if this one isn't as good as the original. I mean you'll never know, but you know what I mean. Have a good day.

I've never been so bored binge-watching an anime before. I wanna get this review out of the way so I can ultimately forget about this show and move on with my life.

Story - 5
It's fine and leads to a few fun ideas throughout the show, but none of them are really developed interestingly. I think. Honestly, I don't remember. I literally am writing this review five minutes after binging the entirety of this show and its blandness has led me to forgetting everything about it. Also I'm still irritated about the fact that Kai is apparently "The Chosen One", but whatever.

Art - 7
Easily the most ... interesting thing to talk about in this show is its blend of 2D with 3D animation, which I completely adored. The 3D animation was beautiful and worked amazingly into the story, but the big drawback was how stilted and awkward the 2D animation was. Points for trying to be different though.

Sound - 7
Plenty of beautiful piano pieces throughout the show, as one could assume. That being said the OST itself is rather bland and uninteresting. If you're a piano buff, you've probably heard most of the pieces in this show already, and if you're not, it'll all sound very same-y and it'll be hard to understand what the characters are getting so worked up about.

Character - 2
Kai is the only character that can even remotely be interesting, but most of the time he's boring along with the rest of the cast. The show continues to add more and more characters building up to a final piano showdown that falls completely flat, leaving the characters overall uninteresting and a total waste of time. Takako is especially shafted in this regard, which is disappointing because she had an actually interesting bond with Kai that's never brought to any sort of payoff. Easily the worst character in this entire show is Shuuhei, though. The show continuously tries to portray this self-centered and arrogant asshole as one of our main protagonists as he proves time and time again to be completely insufferable. He's either an extremely unlikeable protagonist, or an extremely boring antagonist, and the show can never seem to decide which.

Enjoyment - 4
Boring. This was very boring. I was interested for the first 3 or 4 episodes, but eventually it felt like the same five minute chunk of piano played over and over for the rest of the show. Every single episode feels like another shot of numbing novocaine injected straight into the wrist.

Overall - 4
I'm bored and wanna move on to more interesting projects. Watch the show if you want, but like, I can't say it'll be fun.