Anime Review: Your Lie in April

The anime is also known as Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso. This is the kind of anime that you either love or hate. It was hard to see the suffering the protagonist had to go through as his friends try to support him but were not able to reduce his pain. The following are the characters in the anime and my thoughts:

Arima, Kousei is protagonist who was known as the human metronome because of his piano playing ability at a very young age. He was unable to hear his own music soon after his mother passed away. He has given up playing the piano but held on through his assignments in school.  As far as he is concern, he has no other skills other than playing piano but he has lost that due to his disability. As the story progress we are given a glimpse of his tortured childhood where he is forced to play piano and nothing else. He started taking up piano again after much pestering from Kaori Miyazono.

Miyazono, Kaori is a free-spirited violinist introduced to Kousei Arima by his childhood friend in what was to be a double date Tsubaki was to introduce her to another friend Watari. However, the first meeting did not start well when Kaori mistook Kousei as a pervert. Her style of play went against what the judges were looking for in her first competition but she did not care as long as those who heard her would be moved and would remember her. It is later in the story that we see that she had an ulterior motive, to get Kousei to play again. She was moved by Kousei first public performance and had set a goal to get her idol back into music but her time was limited.

Sawabe, Tsubaki is Kousei neighbor from childhood. He always declined her request to play because he had to practice piano. Together with Ryouta Watari, the three of them were close friends. She treated Kousei as her dumb big brother and hated music because she did not understand it and felt that music kept taking Kousei away from her. She is more physical and is the captain for the baseball team in their school.

Watari, Ryouta is close friend to both Kousei and Tsubaki and is the boyfriend to Kaori. Even though Kaori is his girlfriend but it looks like Kousei spends more time with Kaori because Watari is busy with his duty as the captain of the soccer team in school.

Seto, Hiroko is a close friend to Kaori’s mother. She is famous pianist and feels guilty for the Kaori’s suffering because she is the one who suggested to Kaori’s mother to make him a pianist. She returned to Kaori’s life after Kaori made the first appearance in a piano competition.

Igawa, Emi a capable but emotional pianist. She was the main competitor to Kaori. Takeshi was inspired to compete after seeing both of them in a competition. She has a goal to surpass Kaori.

Aiza, Takeshi is a very capable pianist with the sole goal of surpassing Kaori. Takeshi, Emi and Kaori were always in the top three in all the competitions they participated in but the top prize always went to Kaori. Kaori was always unreachable because he left immediately after each competition without waiting for the results. Takeshi considered Kaori his hero.

Aiza, Nagi is Takeshi’s sister and idolizes his brother. She asked Hiroko to teach her how to play piano but was assigned to Kaori instead. The training paid off when she successfully played a duet with Kaori in which Kaori challenged her while she managed to keep up.

There are a few other support characters like Koharu Seto and Nao Kashiwagi. I liked how the stories developed between the episodes as well the connection between the characters and in the end the love of mother and child and how this was not communicated (and in the end misunderstood).

Disclaimer: I was not paid to write this review.