This is the first anime I’ve watched in a very long time. I chose to watch this because I like things which are pretty and emotional and beautiful, and this show just clearly advertises itself as that, so it seemed like a good choice to start me on my journey of watching more anime. And you definitely get exactly what you see on the box here.

I have a lot of thoughts about this show. This will contain spoilers.

To begin, the art and music are just phenomenal all throughout and it honestly feels like practically every screen in this show is a painting. The colors are exactly my thing too, particularly the super rich blue that’s all over the opening credits. Just pure visual bliss.

In terms of the story, I feel like I have learned something about my taste in fiction, which is that even though I do really like stories about characters going through tragic emotional growth, I prefer it if this growth is obtained while tying in to some other main plot or mission. This felt sort of like “You signed up watch characters go through sad things and be sad, so here you go, here’s your emotional catharsis” but it’s just sad for the sake of being sad? Which is fair enough and I get that that’s a genre too, but it’s not my preference, I don’t think.

My favourite characters were Tsubaki and Emi for sure, though the latter was sadly underused and underdeveloped and didn’t really get a conclusion to her arc other than “she got past her funk and played piano better”. Tsubaki was just the most relatable for me and her unrequited love is the saddest and hardest part of the show to watch. Her feelings of self-hatred because she knows what she’s doing is wrong are so understandable and really well written. The way she ultimately deals with the situation in such a messy way and nothing really gets resolved is perfect as well. Her segments were definitely my favourite. I also really like the way the show’s own narrative frames her story – she gets long segments in some episodes about her plight, and then the episode moves on and becomes all about Kousei and Kaori. Because she is just the side character. In Kousei’s life, and in the show. It’s a cool narrative device which I’m sure the writers intended. He never even thinks about her much in the scenes she’s not in, and even when she tries to admit her feelings, his first thought is “Was she joking?” which is painful but honest to life. Her plot where she also leads on that other guy because she can’t admit she is in love with someone else was also really sad.

In comparison, I didn’t find Kaori to be very interesting at all. In fact, she feels to me like just a collection of tropes. Her character felt like it was intended to make me think “Wow, isn’t it awesome how she is so pretty and wise and mature? But also she has a funny side where she gets all comedically angry, haha?! What a paradox, am I right?” but it just doesn’t feel realistic. These characters are, like, 14, and she already has all the wisdom of life, love, and the universe. Now, I don’t think this is unrealistic – someone can be capable of being extremely wise while also having a childish side. In fact, I think most people do. And I think teenagers can be super smart too. It just feels a bit forced here, and it feels like the writers were trying too hard to make me think this character was some sort of beautiful enigma. This is not a Mary Sue from my understanding of that term, but it’s still a character that seems to be designed to just be as perfect as possible. (Including her comedic side which is often referred to as being a negative, but you’re clearly meant to think of it as a positive)

So for me, she was not very relateable, which is what I look for in fictional characters. And part of that is that you never understand her motivations. This only gets revealed at the very end in a monologue, but for me, that’s a little bit too late, even though it does make things make more sense retroactively. But during the series, and particularly the final stretch, I was just constantly thinking “Why do I have no idea what Kaori really wants? Who does she actually like? Why is she dating Watari? Does she know who she is in love with?” and etc. When all the other characters have inner monologues that help you relate to them, it just further made her a weak spot in my ability to relate to the storyline, especially because she just felt unrealistic overall.

Now, the ending does explain things, but I’m not sure this actually makes things better. And I’ll say the reason for this is because I can’t tell how the show wants me to feel about her. The final segment is written, acted, and composed, as if I am meant to feel bittersweet and sad and grateful about her, complete with a credits montage of shots of her meant to make me think about how much I love her. When in reality, I am thinking “Oh, okay, so she actually did some really fucked up things” I mean, she strung along one guy who she didn’t like, she lied to him and said she liked him and dated him for a year while she was just using him to get to another guy who she also lied to and pretended to friendzone even though she was in love with him and she knew (did she?) that he was in love with her to. She forces him to go through all sorts of self-doubt by not admitting she loves him.

Now, that’s all well and good – I understand it, love is hard to deal with, we all tell lies, we all do immature things. But it’s not portrayed that was? Or is it? The show doesn’t feel like it wanted me to view her in this complicated light where I can see how many bad things she did. It feels like it wants me to gloss over all that and just think “Aww, she was beautiful and she loved Kousei, yay” Maybe I’m interpreting it wrong, but it left me with very mixed feelings. In concept though, her character is great. The idea of it is good. Dying girl wants to take control of her remaining years, falls in love with boy, can’t admit, deals with her own issues, etc. Just in execution I wish I could have related to her more. Nagi is another character I ended up really liking, and is another example of a character who was easier to relate to because she was a lot messier. Like Tsubaki, she had a lot of conflicting emotions and we get to go through that journey with her, and I ended up growing quite attached to her by the end of it. Opposite of Kaori who we just don’t get to go on the journey with her, so she always feels foreign, and not in a good way.

Kousei’s arc is really well done as well, in particular the parts about his mother. This was really painful to watch at times because it’s a very brutal depiction of abuse, and not just abuse, but the kid’s reaction to it where he still loves his mother and doesn’t know how to feel about it, and thinks he is the one who has done something wrong. Really tough stuff and the show dealt with it really well. I also liked the nuance they gave and how they also had times where they showed that his mom had another side, where she was capable of being a good person and a loving mother. They brought this duality back a bit with Kaori later, to remind us that everyone has the capability of being good and bad. The show as a whole also just has a general theme of people being able to have two sides, because each character can flip between being super serious and emotionally mature sometimes, and being immature at others.

I think that was done because they wanted to keep the show from being too heavy. They couldn’t have only sad emotional things, they needed to mix it up by constantly having all the over-the-top comedic moments, or else it really would just be sad for the sake of being sad. So, I do like that and it helped make the show more relateable as a whole, since like I said, I want the sad moments and the character growth to be intertwined with other parts of the character’s journeys. But I am a big believer that the serious parts of life and the, uh, non-serious parts of life are a lot more intertwined than people let them be, and it’s actually quite realistic for people to go from talking about life or death situations to discussing baked goods in the span of a minute, so I do like this aspect of the show and it feels like it is encompassing the full range of human experience.

The piano competition stuff was always quite funny. Even without having seen much anime, I am used to the classic formula of big action scenes happening as the characters go through inner monologues, and the observing characters monologue about what’s going on in the action and how it represents characters feelings, but they converted it into piano competitions which is hilarious, but it works. I am a big believer in art being used to express people’s feelings so I liked all the motifs there, the “Let it reach them” stuff, the final performance where he is performing with Kaori’s spirit as she says goodbye. I would like to believe it wasn’t just a metpahor – maybe a person’s spirit really can reach another person in this way. I like to believe that life is more about the soul than the physical body, so this is all good stuff to me.

The other area I had some confusion about how the show portrayed it is the idea of how people’s mental health can be affected by competition and pressure. I had a very hard time relating to the first dozen episodes where Kaori was forcing Kousei to participate in competitions even though he clearly has PTSD regarding the piano. Yes, there is some merit to people having to just dive in and face their fears, but also, this kid is having breakdowns over his abusive mother and you want to put him on a stage in front of hundreds of people when he’s just going to crumble because he can’t hear the notes. It really didn’t feel safe. Ultimately, it works out because this is an anime, but it just felt irresponsible. The show also continues to make me think about how bad these competitions must be for people. Kids or adults – making people stress out, unravel their whole lives practicing for something, only to deem them failures if they don’t reach the #1 spot, with everything riding on this, they won’t make it into a school they want if they fail, etc… This all feels quite wrong, especially when music and any art form is meant to be a celebration of life and we should all be able to appreciate others, not compete with each other. I like competition, but only when it is done in good spirit and you are able to appreciate everyone’s efforts whether they win or lose. I don’t know anything about the music competition scene but if the show depicted it accurately, it really seems like a dismal place. If kids are actually going through this stuff in the real world, it just seems like a recipe for disappointment and feelings of inadequacy.

Ultimately, Kousei’s arc shows something which I believe is inherently true about not just music, but other art, and anything in life really – when you get out of your own head and put your focus on other people, things go much more smoothly. For the first half of the show, when he is playing and practicing, he is only thinking about himself and his past and his problems. In the second half, he is spending all his time teaching someone else, and this helps him get over himself and focus on the music. And he is also dedicating his performances to Kaori, and by putting his thoughts on her, he gets out of his own way. Ultimately, life is about other people and your connections with them and you do a lot better when you get out of your own head and realize that. It’s a lesson I could stand to remember more…

Anyway, I mostly wrote my complaints here because those are the things I had on my mind that I wanted to hash out, but my feelings about the show are mostly positive. It handled its themes really well and I definitely come out of this show really wanting to use it to motivate me in my own life and learn the lessons it wants me to learn about how life is short, and creating art is worthwhile if you pour your heart into it because you will never forget it, and how you should be striving to form real connections with the people you care about, whether through words or through art, and how you expressing your true self can then inspire others to do the same.

I think that is all I had to say… Ultimately a very beautiful show in every way and despite my issues with the main heroine, I still really enjoyed it and definitely got quite emotional at many points. Even if I wasn’t particularly invested in her, you can’t help but have your heart pulled apart by many of the events in the final episodes. The final episode was really well done too, very bittersweet ending and I like how simple they kept it. In the end, it really is, like I said, exactly what you see on the box: pretty and emotional. And sad. Despite some narrative issues I have, the production as a whole is just top tier.