Piano no Mori (TV)

I really want to give it a higher score...

The story is beautiful, the characters... chief kiss ! Kai's progression was a delight to watch from the "feral" prodigy to the serious player. Ajino's story too (past and in-anime) was moving (I love Ajino). And of course, the music was great, heh.

I don't know if it's listed as such, but I consider it iyashikei, my favorite genre.

The art was fine and fit the atmosphere. But the CGI was too awful to be ignored.
And the still pictures... I don't know.

I've watched the series, not knowing there was a movie. People should rather watch that one, ... the animation could be less distracting. It is a good series, though.

You know that feeling of excitement, yet it failed to deliver? Piano no Mori is like that.

(Doesn't contain spoilers)
First thing I'd like to talk about, this anime is to show the classical pieces, and I get that. When it comes to storyline, it was a bomb, not a blast. The series started off okay, the point of view of the character is pretty normal like the other series. MC starting his journey with his interest in piano blah blah blah, we get that. The portrayal of having one of the famous pianist in Japan just shown up at the start of the episode is just ... a cliché. I've seen this scene so much at the start of the series, it's just boring and predictable.

Second, the overall story is not exciting but not too boring. You can say fairly, but we have different taste, so you watch what you like. Since it's all about piano and Classical Pieces, I didn't watch some scenes and I just went to skip it. Although, I did watch the full piano performance which is beautiful in my opinion. It's lacking, and those lines wasted some of my time if I were not to skip it.

Third, the art gets good when there's a piano scene. About the overall art, it doesn't stand out much and looks normal like the others. It did look exciting on the cover, but it's just the cover lmfao.

Fourth, the characters too are normal to me. There are rivalries and competitive characters as well which is normal. Some judges who I thought have no sense in judging, which is relatively normal like I said in the others too. There’s really nothing big or bad about these character stereotypes, it just looks boring with the usual ones.

Overall, it's not that bad, but it's not exciting as it looks. I'd say I'm more in the middle one. I didn't like it nor dislike it, it's unbiased, and I don't feel anything in particular about this anime except it's 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠. You can watch it because of the performances, but don't get your hopes up on the story.

SPOILER FREE***

Congratulations, this show stands out as one of the worst anime's of all time in my humble opinion. I have not often felt compelled to write such a negative review but here we are. Coming into this anime with an open mind very much did not pay off as this one-dimensional story of nonsense plays out as you might expect out of a children's storybook, not the good kind.

Story:
The chosen one goes through various artificial hardships and perseveres through magic, a magical piano! It's very bad and much is never explained, just turn off your brain and enjoy the piano music. It's much better ... than trying to make sense of this uninteresting garbage.

Art & Sound:
The art is rough and piano music is OK but unmemorable.

Characters:
The main character is the chosen one who can access a magical piano, so he can progress in his adventure without really trying. There is zero character development. Other characters include his prostitute mother who we as the audience are supposed to like, sympathize with and not think too much about the circumstances this would usually cause. Nothing to see here, and no supporting characters are otherwise memorable.

Overall:
This show is about the worst anime I can think of. There is no show I would less recommend than this one and there are some bad ones! Perhaps this review can save you from wasting the time.