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EP. REVIEW: Your lie in April

Comparing slapstick humour from Full Metal Alchemists and YLIA is comparing apple and oranges.

Comparing slapstick humour from Full Metal Alchemists and YLIA is comparing apple and oranges.

"It also explains her complete frustration for at Arima. Here is Kosei Arima, the brilliant pianist, with every opportunity in the world; whose fear of failure keeps him from living his life. She has no patience for that kind of weakness, it's a luxury Kaori can't afford to have. Kaori isn't selfishly ignoring Arima's issues, she's trying to push him past it.
It's not 'get over it' so much as 'you can't give up"

It's a bloody cartoon, it'd be like feeling bad for Wile E. Coyote after getting blown up so many times in order to chase and catch the Road Runner. He's always going to be fine in the next scene cause it's all just for base comedic purposes, same as how Arima Kousei doesn't end up in the hospital the next scene after every time he's left lying in a pool of his own blood.

Even though he has given up on playing the piano, he refuses to let go completely and dispose of his piano, and even has a music related job, creating sheet music for popular songs by ear. (This suggests that he has perfect pitch, meaning he knows what the note is when he hears it played. That is a fairly impressive trait, but not necessarily related to musical ability.)

So I'd think it would be likely that Kosei has perfect pitch, if his mom has been drilling piano into him since he was little. At least that makes it possible for him to keep up some music-career-related stuff when he's not performing?

It looked to me like she was of the "absolute precision" school where the musician is to do nothing other than what the composer "intended" as put down in the sheet music. And apparently Kosei had developed a reputation of never playing a note out of bounds. Until this latest episode.

As for Koari's behavior, that falls under a totally different category than Tsubaki. She is trying to draw out the musician in Kousei. She is appealing to their commonly shared passion for music and pride as musicians. She is basically reminding him that he is, at his core, a performing musician and that his life has been colorless because he is denying his nature.

The people who complain about the abusive behavior of the two heroines all seem to be missing a key point: Kousei is miserable at the beginning of the story. His life is completely boring and meaningless. Even though he has given up on playing the piano, he refuses to let go completely and dispose of his piano, and even has a music related job, creating sheet music for popular songs by ear. (This suggests that he has perfect pitch, meaning he knows what the note is when he hears it played. That is a fairly impressive trait, but not necessarily related to musical ability.) His closest friend, Tsubaki, feels that 'time has stopped' for him and it is clear that he is basically going through the motions and not enjoying life in any way, shape, or form.

Kaori, who knew all about him from a 'fellow competitive musician' point of view and has parents who were big fans of his playing, sees the current Kousei as a shell of his true self and is pushing him to re-engage with the world of competitive classical music as a way to regain his true self. In that sense, I don't view her behavior as bullying him. It is more akin to a coach or rival challenging him to get back in the game.

If there is criticism to be had of the show's approach to Kosei's issues, it's that it oversimplifies the "solution" to them. This hasn't bothered me yet because I suspect that in its 22-episode run, it will eventually do more with the issues, but at this point, I'm sick of hearing the same thing over and over.

This episode's greatest accomplishment is an argument in defense of itself. It establishes a strong argument against the idea that Kaori is being selfish about wanting Kosei as her accompanist, and that the show in any way promotes or is flippant toward emotional abuse. Your Lie in April understands far too well the abusive pressure Kosei has undergone and the toll it took on him, and episode 5 establishes that Kaori gets it too. She knows he's not an ordinary child prodigy and is also a potential liability to her competition career, but she needs him and needs to help him all the same. Actually, Kaori seems to understand what Kosei is going through a little too well, as if she's gone through the same experience.

Have I said how much I hate Kaori? I did? Well, it's worth saying again.

Your Lie in April wasn't out to wow anyone this week, but it still turned in a great episode. It was a good reminder that even when this show isn't going for spectacle or psychodrama, it's still one of the best things airing right now.