The story is about a boy named Kousei, a pianist that used to win very competition, until something happens. When he was 11 years old his mother died. He then just stops playing the piano due to the trauma caused by his abusive mother. He then meets Kaori, a character who makes a huge impact on his life and encourages him to start playing the piano again. She then asks him to be her accompanist.
Now here's my problem: This anime had no idea what the fuck it wanted to be. Sometimes it was trying to be a romance. Sometimes it just tries to just be an anime about classical music. Other times it tries to be comedy, and this just doesn't work. To be honest, it was a terrible idea to try and combine all three of them, because it clearly didn't work here. Sometimes this anime would make you feel sad, but next second you see childish comedy that comes out of nowhere and vice versa. This brings me to my next point
The unfunny comedy really killed off my enjoyment of this anime. Times where the girls would just beat the shit out of Kousei and moments like that. I find that to be unnecessary and it just ruins the vibe. As I said before, this anime tries to include stupid comedy during "depressing" moments. It really lessens the quality and my enjoyment a lot. If only this anime was more mature then I would've enjoyed a lot more. Sadly this isn't the case here.
I will say that the romance between Kousei and Kaori was pretty decent. Any moment with Tsubaki though was just terrible for me though. This brings me to my next point.
Some characters in this show get too much backstory/screentime yet they have no significant impact on the plot. Tsubaki is the perfect example of this. Her entire "romance" with Kousei and jealousy has nothing to do with the story. At least the romance between Kousei and Kaori was significant. They're both musicians so Kousei can understand Kaori more than Tsubaki. And this jealousy thing was just a little bit too cliche for me. I came into this anime thinking it was just about classical music and sad moments. I didn't come here to watch this childish ass romance and jealousy bullshit.
Another example of a character that got her own arc when she shouldn't have: Nagi. What was the point in introducing this character? I honestly don't know why she's even a character. She just comes out of nowhere and becomes a student of Kousei just to play at a festival. After that she's completely irrelevant. I think she had a bit too much screen time for the nonexistant impact she had on the plot.
And holy shit Emi and Takeshi are easily the most annoying characters in this show. Their obsession with Kousei is clearly abnormal, and I just felt like punching my screen everytime I saw that shit.
When it comes to characters in general, there aren't many good ones. Kaori was the typical and cliche female character you see in a lot of slice of life anime. Watari was easily the worst character in the entire show. One dimensional, and cliche. Those are the two words that describe most of the characters in this show. I will admit that this show does a good job of making its characters likeable. Even then, when it comes to actual quality writing they aren't very good characters.
The best written character was Kousei obviously, and also my favorite character. Unlike many of the other characters, he actually got great character development.
Another problem I have with this show is the flashbacks. There's a lot of flashbacks showing Kousei/Tsubaki as kids, and they get annoying real fast. A lot of them didn't really have anything to do with what was currently going on in the story. They just didn't do anything...? As I was watching this I was always asking myself: what does this flashback have to do with anything? I'm specifically talking about the flashbacks with Kousei and Tsubaki. Some of them were relevant, but some of them were also completely irrelevant and served no purpose.
When it comes to pacing, thats one of the biggest problems of this anime. The pacing is just too slow...I feel like the show is also repetitive. I was getting annoyed by Kousei whenever he just stopped playing his piano. It got annoying real fast. That was only for the first half of the show though. The second part of the show got really repetitive as well. First Kousei practices piano, then contemplates on whether or not he should visit Kaori or not. The plot structure is very formulaic, specifically the second season.
The music and animation are obviously top notch. It would be weird to not have good animation or music for a god damn music anime. I feel like the soundtracks for this anime were overshadowed by the piano playing though. I never really noticed the background tracks to be honest. This anime has two great openings that are easily in my top 10 favorite openings of all time. The art was absolutely amazing though. The art is unique and far different compared to most other modern anime nowadays. I'd give the art a 10/10.
Even though it looks like I'm shitting on this anime, I still enjoyed it a lot. There's just many things that I would've done differently if I was writing it. Firstly, it should've been more mature. All that childish comedy and shit can go away, or at least have a limited amount of comedy. Secondly, I would just get rid of Nagi and Watari. Actually I would just get rid of any character that gets too much screen time even though they're underdeveloped and don't have a significant impact on the plot. Lastly, I would fix the pacing. If those three were better then this anime would've been a 9/10 at the very least. Unfortunately they had to make this anime childish to appeal to a younger audience...
Story/Plot: 6/10
Characters: 510
Art: 10/10
Music: 10/10
Animation: 8/10
Overal: 6/10
