Your lie in April

Episode 14

This is the first Your Lie in April episode in some time without a performance, right? It sure feels like it's been a while. With Kosei's piano competition and then the gala concert right on its heels, characters have expressed their feelings through emotional performances in episode after episode of this series. As powerful as it was, it was beginning to feel stale, especially with how emotionally draining the best of those moments were. So it's nice to return to the understated teen melodrama of previous arcs.

And what melodrama we had this week! Kaori is in the hospital, and appears cheerful and recovering quickly when her friends visit, but is clearly hiding the truth of her condition. She even has the nurse remove her IV drip when she knows her friends are coming. Tsubaki and especially Watari seem none the wiser, but Kosei—knowing far too much about hospitals and illness—sees through it. He also has some painful flashbacks to his mom's time in the hospital, visualizing her in Kaori's place. He may be over his mom as a driving force in his musical life, but clearly he hasn't progressed as much as he claimed last week. Her ghost is still there, hovering around him, and impacting his relationship with Kaori as it becomes more and more obvious that her condition is likely terminal.

The other plot thread this week was all about Tsubaki. Poor, poor Tsubaki. No one loves and understands Kosei quite like she does, but we all know she's not destined to be with him. This is a romance anime and Kosei and Kaori are the main characters, so it's to be expected that they'll end up together. Tsubaki seems to know she's the loser even before she comes to terms with her feelings this episode. Heck, she's already tried to move on, dating other boys in order to escape her feelings. Then, Kosei drops the bomb that he's moving away to attend a music-focused high school, and she suddenly realizes how strong her feelings really are. Music keeps pulling Kosei away from Tsubaki and toward Kaori, who shares his hobby and his talent. They have entire conversations now that Tsubaki doesn't understand. (Or Watari, but he seems to think Kaori is his in spite of their conflicting interests. At least somebody is happy in this show!)

This love triangle is a familiar one in anime, setting up the childhood best friend who knows a boy's past and secrets, with the girl he meets later that he has more interests and hobbies in common with now. Music was always Kosei's "thing" that Tsubaki would never understand, the same way baseball was for Kosei. As they get older, and their futures became more defined by their talents, it was inevitable they would drift apart. Tsubaki is more connected than she thinks though, as when she starts humming Debussy's "Au clair de la lune" along with Kosei because she heard him practicing it. This happens not long after Kaori warns Kosei that he'll slip without her guidance. He won't, because he still has Tsubaki to guide him (and Hiroko, for that matter). The episode actually did a lot to merge Kaori and Tsubaki's stories, so it didn't feel like the resolution to last episode's cliffhanger was neglected in favor of someone else's story. The girls can be compared and contrasted easily: both are highly emotional and passionate about their hobbies, but they tend to express those things in very different ways.

One nice thing about shifting the focus away from performances is how much it brought out Your Lie in April's original score. Written by Masaru Yokoyama (who also scored this season's Rolling Girls), it features a mix of eclectic yet understated musical ideas. This week brought out its more powerful accents, moving away from the usual trickling piano to the bouncy rock of Tsubaki's childhood flashbacks. It still prefers a lighter touch than most anime soundtracks, just slightly augmenting the mood of a particular scene rather than defining it. It even does this in the performances, where it will add backing drums for extra "oomph" to these teen musicians' psychological crises. (Though those don't always work for me.) This was a great episode for music in the show despite its lack of concerts, with the exception of the insert song that "Au clair de la lune" transitioned into during Kaori and Kosei's walk in the sand. It was uninspired and sucked a lot of the juice out of a very dramatic moment. Otherwise, this was a great week for Your Lie in April's original music.

There were also a lot of beautiful visual moments and direction. Some examples include the play of the darkness and shadows during the BEACH WALK, especially in the first minute of this episode. The camera flipped between different shots of the school to the tune of Kosei practicing, usually of objects, walls, or students running far away. It showed how empty their junior high is without Kaori to brighten it with her energy. Tsubaki is plenty energetic in her own way, but not in the shiny, enthusiastic flavor that Kaori brings.

Kaori is clearly hiding some less shiny stuff behind that mask of hers, with even her smiles coming off as rehearsed. It's not just that she's on an IV drip and likely has a terminal illness, but there's obviously some personal trauma tied into it if she's so afraid to tell the truth to her closest friends. As much as I enjoyed Tsubaki's development this week, I'm hoping that next week focuses more on Kaori. We still don't know much about her considering how important she is, and it's time to get this story's engine running again.

Rating: A-

Your Lie in April is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a musicologist who studies film music. She writes about anime and many other topics on Autostraddle.com, her blog and her Twitter.
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