Your Lie In April
Anime review
Spoiler alert !
"Taking on a challenge and creating something is painful. But it's fulfilling."
Your Lie In April (Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso) is a Japanese romantic drama manga series that was written and illustrated by Naoshi Arawaka, and has been adapted into an anime television series.
"Music was everything to me, and I just abandoned it. I don't deserve to be a performer. I put everything I had into performing because I wanted my mother to get well, and what do I have to show for it? I'm at the bottom of a dark sea and I'm going to be all alone. I can't hear my notes. I can't hear the sound of the piano. I'm scared."
Kousei Arima is a 14-year-old boy famous for his skills as a pianist. He is well-known for winning several music competitions. However, he stops playing when his mother, Saki dies. He loses the ability to hear the sound of his piano while playing at a competition which completely breaks him down.
It has been 2 years since Kousei has touched the piano. He spends his time with his friends Tsubaki and Watari.
One day in spring, he meets a girl named Miyazono Kaori. She is a violinist. Kousei is flabbergasted by the way she plays the violin. Watari and Kaori start dating, while Kousei and Kaori become friends.
Kaori pursues Kousei to return to play the piano. She convinces him to be her accompanist for a violin competition. Kousei reluctantly plays the piano. Midway through the performance, Kousei loses the ability to hear his own playing, causing him to make mistakes in the score. Kaori stops playing, leaving the audience shocked. She looks at Kousei and they both start playing again. In spite of the fact that they got disqaulified the moment they stopped playing, they give out a performance that leaves the audience in awe.
Kousei soon realizes that he loves Kaori. Kaori asks Kousei to play at a piano competition.
"Unable to hear your music, you try to abandon the piano despite still clinging to it for support. That's why you try to hide it under dust and books like you're turning your back on it. You love it, but you can't go near it. You miss it, but you can't touch it."
Kaori motivates him and makes him practice every day.
"It takes courage to sail in unchartered waters. I'm sure there are plenty of musicians in the same boat thinking "There's no way I'm going to do this / Why don't you play it then?" And yet they pick it back up and start playing again. That's how you make the most beautiful lie. We're only 14. Be afraid later! Throw away your fears and just go for it! Just play with sincerity and put your all into giving the performance of a lifetime."
The extent of her belief in music leaves Kousei amazed.
"She's merciless. Her unbending gaze. Even when her back is turned, she refuses to let me give up."
He decides to give it a try. On the day of the competition, other participants, especially Emi and Aiza who consider Kousei as both their biggest rival and hero, are enthralled to see him. Before going onstage, Kousei remembers Kaori's words, "We're all scared of getting up on stage. Maybe you'll mess up. Maybe the whole audience will shun you. Maybe you can't really get up on stage in a perfectly unclouded state. Whether you're sad, or a mess, or you've hit rock bottom, you still have to play. You need to grit your teeth and walk onto that stage."
Kousei starts off well, but he becomes unable to hear the piano. Memories from his childhood start playing in his mind.
"He is like a digital watch, never off by even a split second. No personality in his performance. The Human Metronome. Made for competitions. His mother's puppet. A slave to the score." Thoughts of what people used to say back then clouds his mind, making it hard for him to focus. He ends up getting the score wrong, yet again.
However, he does not lose heart. He practices more with Kaori for an upcoming violin recital. Kousei asks Kaori why she didn't get mad at him when he made a mistake during their first performance. She says she never cared about winning. "I play with everything I've got. So that the people who've heard me will never forget me. So that I can live in their hearts forever. That's my reason for existing. I'm a musician, after all.
On the day of the recital, Koari doesn't show. When another performer insults Kaori, Kousei decides to play alone, wanting to prove how good she is, to show how she changed his life. "A single petal that sailed into my life." He pours all his feelings into the piano. "I never knew music could be so vibrant and efflorescent. Music really can make your blood boil." The audience cheers him on, happy to have the old Kousei back. "His notes feel like being in the height of spring."
Music transcends words. It is communication through words. Music is freedom.
After the recital, he finds out that Kaori is hospitalized because she collapsed on the night before the event. He visits her, and even then, all she tells him is to practice harder.
Kousei reconnects with a friend of his mother's. Hiroko takes him as a student. She starts training him for a competition that would decide his future as a pianist. She asks him to teach a young girl named Nagi. Nagi and Kousei do a performance together at a music festival. It is where Kousei finds his way back to the piano. "Go on a journey", he thinks of Mozart's words and play the score almost perfectly. He has a flashback into his childhood; the day his mother came to see him perform. He was very excited to see his mother in the audience. He only played for her. She was a great pianist who couldn't play anymore as she had become sick. Her son was making her dreams come true by winning all the competitions. Kousei wanted his mother to feel proud of him and to get better. But, after the competition, she beats him saying he messed the score. Deeply hurt, Kousei yells at his mother that he wished she was dead. Sadly so, she dies the next day. Ever since, Kousei is scared to touch the piano. From "the scent of fabric softener, the quiet lullaby, the smell of antiseptic, the echoes coming from the footsteps, the cloudy and white linoleum floor", Arima changes his imagery to "the smell of chalk, a window with unsightly cracks, echoes from distant sports teams, the shadows of cherry blossom petals, the faint breathing of a sleeping girl." He changes the scenery.
As a reply to Hiroko's question of what made him come back to the piano, Kousei says, "One day in april, I met a really weird violinist. Totally outrageous, totally self-righteous. But the way she smiles at the people she likes is angelic. She managed to kick, punch, and drag me on stage again. I saw something I'd never seen up there before. I wanted to see that sight again with my own eyes one more time. That's what made me think...I'd like to become a really weird pianist! She expanded my world. When I saw her play, the world was suddenly saturated in color. As if everything had just started to sparkle. She's like a rollercoaster. Crying, laughing. She's got me hanging on tightly at every bend. She gave color to my monotone world. She's a really dazzling, really strong person. She's ultra-violent, her personality blows. She leaves the worst first impression and yet she is so beautiful."
One night, when Kousei visits Kaori, she tells him that she is anemic and might never get better. She asks him, "Will you come with me to find out how it ends?" Kousei is torn apart by this revelation. "Why would you say that? After howling at me, knocking me down, and forcefully making me stand onsttage... after carving so many scenes into my mind that I don't want to forget. I feel so, so bitter. And I feel just as sad. You gave me so many things."
He can't help but think of the time when his mother was sick, the same way Koari is now. "Bursting into laughter without warning, getting hysterical over trivial things, crying out of the blue, suddenly turning gentle. She's not like her. She's nothing like her", he tells himself.
Kousei asks Kaori to perform with him one more time. She works hard to bring back her energy. "There was a boy that I met in April. He cried, failed, and struggled so hard it was unseemly at first. But onstage, he shone like a star, and he seemed like a dream-like rendition of a melody. I made a promise with that boy that I will perform with him one more time." She decides to attempt a risky surgery to be able to hold the violin once more. "Isn't it funny how the most unforgettable scenes can be so trivial? We're stuck in this unbearable heat, with no end in sight. Just how many days have we been spending like this? I can't stand it anymore. But then, I catch a glimpse of you, looking all heroic. It's like the stars have aligned. Suddenly, everything is right in the world again. It's not just the music. It's something else. Something between us. Some sort of...harmony. I feel like I'm about to burst with emotions. The kind that I want to express through music. But there's a fine line between hope and despair. And right now, I'm walking that line. But maybe, just maybe...between hope and desire, a melody starts to play."
"There's an ever-present sorrow hanging over Arima's music. For his growth to be spurred by sorrow...if Kousei is to walk that path, he might have to lose someone to keep walking."
While visiting Kaori one day, Kousei finds that her health is deteriorating, and she is taken to the ICU. Kousei gets more and more devastated with each passing day. Kaori's surgery and Kousei's competition is to happen on the same day. On the day of the competition, Kousei is not in a state to perform. He gets onstage and bursts into tears. But then, he gazes into the audience and see his friends. "The people who played a part in my life. The people who made my life fuller. I can't let them down. That's who I am, how I am going to live my life, because I'm a pianist. Just like you...I'm a musician, after all!" He plays the piano with the most sensual touch. "It sounds so deep, so unhurried. Like a whisper, like a show of affection, so gently...the sound of Chopin's Ballade, emanating so sorrowfully." He looks up to Kaori while playing, and feel her presence, the sound of her violin with him. "The reason I am here right now is because I had you." By the end of the performance, he realizes that she couldn't make the surgery. He cries out loud and ends the last note with a goodbye to her.
At her funeral, Kaori's parents give Kousei a letter. He reads the letter. "Kousei, you're an awful person. Laggard, slowpoke, dummy. I first met you when I was 5. It was at a recital for the piano school I used to attend. You playing notes was as colorful as a 24-color palette, the melody began to dance. I decided right then and there that I want you to play the piano for me. That is why I became a violinist, so I could play with you someday. I was elated to find that you and I went to the same school. But all I could do was watch you. There was no space for me to slip into. So, I told a lie. Miyazono Kaori likes Watari Ryouta. That was the lie I told. Arima Kousei, it brought you to me. My underhanded lie brought forth a person who was so far from how I imagined them to be. You were more negative and passive than I thought, not to mention stubborn and relentless. Your voice was deeper than I thought, and you were just as gentle as I thought. I love you. Was I able to live inside someone's heart? Was I able to live inside your heart? Did I reach you? Did my music reach you?"
Kousei says silently, filled with tears, "It did."
"Spring will be here soon. The season I met you is almost here. A spring without you...will arrive."
"From the moment that we meet someone else, none of us can ever be alone. We're all connected."
Your Lie In April is a deeply saddening series. Through 22 episodes, the anime makes us feel everything the characters felt. It makes us laugh, cry, and live in a different world through the music they play. I have inserted many dialogues and quotes from the anime because they mean so much to me and has touched me in so many ways, I feel grateful. There is so much depth in each line, and that is exactly what I love about anime - its attention to detail.
Your Lie In April has stayed with me throughout April alongside #BlogChatterA2Z, and it will continue to stay in my heart forever.
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