Your lie in April

Episode 12

When the narrative isn't actively propelling you forward, Your Lie in April is a hard show to get through in one sitting. It's easily one of the most emotionally draining anime streaming right now, and unlike many other series like that, it's not because it's dealing with especially complex ideas. Instead, Your Lie in April zeroes in on the personal melodramas of a small group of high school students. Some of these are fraught issues, like Kosei's history as an abused child and his need to come to terms with that in the wake of his mother's death. Others are less so, like Tsubaki's gradual realization that Kosei is way more into Kaori than her. It's a testament to how well-made this show is that it still feels compelling after plumbing the same few wells over and over, but that still makes it a huge stone to lift after a season break.

Luckily, this week's Your Lie in April came into its second cour more like a lamb than a lion. While there were some heavier and more psychological moments, this episode was largely about watching the characters bounce off each other. Those head-trips are powerful, and Kosei still gets a quasi-one at the bottom of the pool, where he has a realization that his psychosomatic inability to hear notes is a gift as much as a curse. Yet they can get repetitive and bog you down, so I preferred this shallow-end return to Your Lie in April. This week's slice-of-life vignettes are gorgeously conveyed through its use of lighting and its original score. The whole fireworks sequence was a great example of this, even if it relied on overly obvious foreshadowing. (Kaori's lack of plans is revealed as the camera pans to a firecracker sputtering out.) It was gorgeous to watch them pop and crackle against the characters' faces, and it gave a more grounded context to the episode's flights of psychological whimsy.

Unfortunately, a greater emphasis on slice-of-life meant more of the show's dreaded slapstick humor. The upside is that it's finally starting to get its bearings in this department. Most of the jokes were still obnoxious, but they were more seamlessly weaved into the scenes where they showed up. Kaori's father's "WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH MY DAUGHTER???" blow-up was something that many other anime have done before, but it was so visually distinct from the rest of Your Lie in April's humor and unexpected with a kid like Kosei, that I laughed anyway. The sudden switch to her parents smiling when they realized who she'd dragged home just made it better.

When the episode did go for heavier lifting, it wasn't the one-two-punch previous episodes employed. They were more like "gentle reminders" of the issues that Kosei has experienced in a less soul-crushing package. One of the themes of this episode was how we make memories with music, and how music in turn carries the emotional baggage we associate with those memories. Kosei realizes he's stressed out about accompanying Kaori's piece because his mother played the piano version for him as a child. (It's interesting to see his mother when he was that little, being gentle and playful with him. You wonder what made her into the tyrant of his later memories. Was it something about her illness?) He talks about this to Hiroko, and ends up spilling his general stress about his mom's memory. He wants to move on from her, but can't escape from his worries about what she'd think of him now. Hiroko tells Kosei that his mother always wanted him to be his own person, and when he stood up for himself, she was proud of him for how he "grew as a person and pianist" in that moment. I'm not sure if I completely believe that, but it reassures Kosei—and us—far more than any psychological dream sequence has.

At the end of the episode, Kaori does a predictable Kaori thing and shows up late to her Gala concert. Yet, the other characters' reactions, especially Kosei pointing out how this doesn't jive with her excitement about the concert, reveal there's more to her flakiness than meets the eye this time. I'm sure it has to do with Kaori's illness, and I hope this second half of Your Lie in April explores that issue and Kaori's character further. If we're going to have more melodrama, we need a fresh coat of paint on it.

Rating: B+

Your lie in April is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a graduate student in musicology, who has written about anime and many other topics for Autostraddle.com and her own blog. She tweets at @composerose.