2014, 22 episodes:
AniDB
vt Your Lie in April
Modern romantic comedy. Kousei was a child prodigy at the piano, but
gave it up. Two years later when he's in high school, he randomly
meets Kaori the violinist, who insists that he should be her
accompanist in a competition.
I'm being deliberately vague because the first half of this
series explains much of the back-story of why Kousei stopped playing
and allowed his life to turn dull and grey – and sets up the second
half, which appears to be on a straight line to romantic tragedy but
may or may not actually make it there (no spoilers). There are music
competitions (apparently one has to win these to be taken seriously as
a pianist, but it means that some of the sports anime tropes become
relevant), and plenty of actual music on the soundtrack.
Characters are distinctive and realistic in the usual anime/manga
style (there's one child who's rather exaggerated but she doesn't
appear much). For reasons which weren't apparent to me, part of the
side of Kousei's spectacles doesn't get shown, perhaps to make it
easier to see his eyes (as in
this image);
this is distracting at first but one gets used to it.
While the protagonists are moderately sympathetic, they're definitely
not perfect. Kaori could just be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who's there
to break Kousei out of his multi-year funk, and there's certainly some
of that, but she ends up being a rather more complex character than
that role would indicate. (A revelation in the final episode
undermines this horribly, but it's still good up to that point.)
Kousei may be a musical genius, but he does have to work for his
successes. Minor characters are more simply drawn (at one point one
feels that everybody must have been inspired to become a pianist by
seeing the young Kousei) but do their jobs; the Other Girl who's also
fallen for Kousei, but doesn't realise it herself, has a practical
friend who's a hidden gem of a character.
This is one of the more interesting entries of this winter season;
as with Sword Art Online 2, it's not afraid to push emotional
buttons, but it never quite veers into farce. Recommended.
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