First Impressions: Your Lie in April

For a video version of this first impression please go here.

Going into this episode all I knew about the anime was that it was about a guy who played piano and a girl who played violin. Well, that and a few other basic plot details, but I had no idea how it was going to happen!

My first impression of the first impression: Beautiful animation! Just gorgeous!

Thoughts on the theme song: Not what I expected, but it introduces the characters nicely. I can tell that there will be two female main characters and two male main characters. I especially liked the crescendo in the middle.

So, your main character is this bespectacled dude named Kousei. He was a child prodigy at piano. The episode opens with a scene of him playing in a giant concert hall. Then the music stops and there is an abrupt time skip and scene change that brings us to the present. Kousei is a middle schooler (which I was surprised to learn).

At the end of the school day he walks home with his friends. One of his friends mentions how when you love somebody everything is colorful. Kousei thinks to himself that he obviously has never been in love because he sees the world in a monotone. I got the feeling that part of this had to do with his mother who pushed him to become a talented pianist, but died when he was 11. This caused him to lose the ability to hear himself play the piano.

One Saturday morning Kousei is waiting to meet his friends near a playground when he hears the sound of live music. He sees a girl playing an instrument called a melodica (think a mini piano that you blow into - I swear I’m not making this up!). She plays with an obvious joy that surprises him.

As matters would have it, the girl (her name is Kaori) and Kousei go to the same school and have some mutual friends. She is a violinist and is performing for a contest that day. When Kaori invites him to come watch her performance Kousei tries to back out of going, but he gets dragged along.

I sensed that Kousei tends to avoid musical events because they remind him of his mother and his inability to hear the piano, so I was curious to see what would happen when he went to watch Kaori play. I was so curious to see what would happen next that instead of recording my observations in a more permanent form than field notes I pushed the ‘next video’ button. This happened again and again until I had watched the first five episodes and it was 11:00 at night (which for me is late). ;)

Note: To read my review for this anime go here.