Woooo what an unexpectedly emotional journey! I missed the whole hype train when this show was first coming out. It was getting a hell of a lot of attention, but it failed to grab mine. I really wasn’t interested in a show about middle schoolers playing classical music. I mean come on. That sounds lame- even if you do enjoy classical music or, um, middle schoolers. Because of my immediate negative judgement, I didn’t bother looking into the show any further and threw it into my admittedly steep anime reject pile. So what ultimately drove
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me to watch this show that I never planned on diving into? I honestly only watched it because it was so easy to access on Netflix. Therefore, I went in with incredibly low expectations and was delighted to discover that I had actually found something worthwhile.
If you know absolutely nothing about the show, allow me to give you a quick and spoiler-free synopsis. The story centers around Kousei Arima, a prodigious pianist who lost his ability to play at the age of 11 following the death of his mother. Arima has since abandoned the piano, but is drawn back to it after witnessing a heartfelt violin performance by our lovely blonde, Kaori Miyazono. The narrative progresses, touching on Arima’s return to music, his blossoming love for Kaori, and Kaori’s own struggles. I can’t really say much more, but you get the gist.
Though cheesy at times, Your Lie in April captures something crucial about life. It delves into issues without pause, showing Arima’s complicated relationship with his deceased mother and his inability to let go of the past. Each character also offers something important. A little over halfway through the series, I began to strongly dislike one of the supporting characters, Tsubaki Sawabe, a childhood friend of Arima. I thought she was selfish and derogatory towards Arima at times, constantly reminding him that Kaori can never love him back. I was almost completely fed up with her character when I noticed something. Part of the reason I didn’t like her so much was because she reminded me of myself and my darkest personality traits. After that realization, I started to emphasize with her a bit more.
I also noticed that I was able to relate with most of the characters in the series because at one time or another, we’ve been them. We’ve known loss in our lives. We’ve dealt with heartbreak. We’ve experienced failure after failure. And that’s what makes the characters so believable. They can joke and laugh and play the piano like nobody’s business, but they’re still just adolescents and underneath that bravado, they’re all really fucking scared. The show isn’t afraid to show people of all genders and ages crying and that’s pretty darn important. Your Lie in April does a damned good job of creating believable characters that are easy to connect with.
Aesthetic-wise, the use of colors as a symbol is prevalent in the show, with characters repeatedly mentioning how when you are in love, everything seems to take on color. During more depressing moments in the show, colors fade and we are left with a bleak pallet that is overwhelmingly gray. Though they certainly make these changes conspicuous, it still ties in nicely and works with the overall ambiance of the show.
Now, time for my main criticism with the show. Haha. I’ve been eagerly awaiting this paragraph. One of the literal themes of the show is “music transcends words”. You’d think this would mean dialogue would be kept to a minimum or at least to a respectful proportion against the music itself, but it really isn’t. There is so much damn filler talking in this damn show. Characters will literally say a sentence and repeat it over and over throughout the episode until it is drilled into your head. It leaves little room for interpretation and the show spoon-feeds you the information instead of allowing you to uncover the message for yourself. The dialogue literally felt like slam poetry at times as a character said a sentence, gave a monologue, repeated the sentence, gave another monologue, repeated the sentence, and then repeated the sentence again (just in case you missed it). This got tedious, and overall detracted from the rest of the beauty of the show. In the show, the music really does speak louder than words, so why does it insist on having characters mentally monologue over their own beautiful music? It gets tedious and a bit insulting as the show makes sure you didn’t miss that important lesson, by repeating it verbatim.
In a similar vein, the show consistently flashes back to previous scenes, sometimes playing a full scene that was featured in the same episode or the episode before it. At the beginning, this is understandable considering while it was originally airing, viewers may have needed a brief recap, but these recaps are certainly not brief and they aren’t exactly necessary. Your Lie in April is 22 episodes, with each episode being around 20 minutes, sans the theme songs. With the amount of flashbacks that occur and at the frequency at which they occur, I would argue that the show could be brought down to 20 if not less episodes if even 50% of these flashbacks were removed.
Oftentimes flashbacks are important, but in many of the circumstances in this show, they really aren’t. They don’t provide new details or give us a new perspective. They seem there to fill airtime and really distract from the flow of the show. Sure there are some important ones from Arima’s past that actually do give us details and a fresh perspective, but there are even more flashbacks that repeat scenes and ideas from previous episodes or even from just a few minutes prior in the current episode. This repetition just isn’t imperative. I want to see my precious music babies smack around on that piano, not be interrupted by a dull monologue and even duller flashbacks that we have already seen before.
Despite these criticisms, Your Lie in April is still a wonderful show and I am hella happy that I actually watched it. Despite its PG rating and high school slice of life appearance, it deals with actual struggles in a refreshingly human way. None of the characters are perfect, but they all try their hardest and sometimes that doesn’t work out for them. That’s life. Not anime life, but actual life. And though us viewers probably aren’t Mozarts ourselves, we can still enjoy the show and everything it has to bring, from its pleasant animation to its pleasant soundtrack to its pleasant messages.
Would I recommend it? Absolutely. If you find yourself stuck inside on a rainy day, armed only with Netflix and some popcorn (and some tissues <-- That is crucial advice), you better cozy up on that sofa and cue up some Your Lie in April. Because it’s more than a bunch of music dweebs shitting out competition awards and bitching about Beethoven, it’s a refreshing reminder of what it means to live and how we all seek out our own meaning.
7/10
Jul 6, 2017
Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso
(Anime)
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Woooo what an unexpectedly emotional journey! I missed the whole hype train when this show was first coming out. It was getting a hell of a lot of attention, but it failed to grab mine. I really wasn’t interested in a show about middle schoolers playing classical music. I mean come on. That sounds lame- even if you do enjoy classical music or, um, middle schoolers. Because of my immediate negative judgement, I didn’t bother looking into the show any further and threw it into my admittedly steep anime reject pile. So what ultimately drove
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