Your lie in April

Episode 3

The more I watch of Your Lie in April, the more interesting it becomes that the piece chosen to introduce Kosei to Kaori's violin talents was by Beethoven. At the end of the previous episode, it seemed sudden for Kosei to already be falling for this girl he considered the height of annoyance before her fateful concert. But then again, a great piece of music can easily have that effect on a hormonal teenager—and especially when Beethoven's own story parallels Kosei's so easily.

This episode spends a lot of time exploring Kosei's issues with piano-playing, and why his hearing problems were enough to drive him away from the instrument forever. He gradually loses the ability to hear what he's playing while he does it, even when it's something as simple as improvising on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for starry-eyed little girls. Just as Beethoven's encroaching deafness caused him to bang on his keys with frustration and even saw off the legs off his pianos, Kosei desperately tries to finish his performances, but to no avail. Unlike the famous composer, he is willing to give up music entirely rather than deal with the agony—but he won't if Kaori has anything to do with it.

Kaori gets more development and moments to herself in this episode, and it's easier to see how she defies the expected clichés I brought up in the previous review. She admires Kosei immediately, but also won't put up with any of his crap. She browbeats him into submission by forcing him to be her accompanist, enlisting the help of mutual friend Tsubaki to post the sheet music for Camille Saint-Saëns' Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (her competition piece) everywhere Kosei goes. This provides some fun physical comedy, and allows the animators to stretch outside of the watercolor designs that make up most of the series' visuals, proving they can do bug-eyed and cartoony just as well. It also endears Kaori to the audience, allowing her to come into her own more as a character as we see just how far she's willing to go to make Kosei do her bidding. She even makes the school loudspeakers play the Saint-Saëns piece over and over, annoying the other students along with Kosei, but nothing is too far to ensure that Kaori gets the famous prodigy she's always admired as her accompanist.

We also learn more of why Kosei has his issues: they're a psychological defense mechanism, an excuse borne from the insecurity that he'll never be as great as the composers he admires. This is a real problem for a lot of child prodigies, which is why they only rarely turn their juvenile fifteen minutes into lifelong musical fame and fortune. It's not just about technical flair being an easier achievement than artistic finesse (going back to that familiar "technician vs. artist" dichotomy), but it's also just about burnout. Kosei was already on the cusp of it, but then his mother's death completely broke him, and his brain put up some necessary walls.

Kosei's psychological scenes are among the best directed in the series so far. It's cliché at this point to compare a mind-trip in anime to Neon Genesis Evangelion, but Your Lie in April goes about as far as it can to evoke that in these scenes without actually pulling the viewer out of its own world. Kosei buries his face in his legs on the piano bench, while the voices of everyone he knows—even the black cat he met in the park—tell him that he's making excuses because he won't actually amount to anything. The music in this scene even somewhat resembles the ambient tracks of Evangelion's mind-screwy moments. The way this segues into Kaori pulling him out of this funk feels like a revelation, as he rushes him to the competition with her. Her actions manage to reveal more about her character too. (No wonder her Kreutzer Sonata performance was all over the place if she thinks she can go to performances without rehearsing with her accompanist!) It's moments like this that make me believe in Your Lie in April is more than just the latest slice-of-life romance. There's simply too much else lying beneath the surface here, and the creative team is gradually bringing more of it into the light.

In spite of its surface similarities to Nodame Cantabile and other music anime, Your Lie in April has the talent and the potential to be something unique, and episode 3 points that way forward. If it follows the standard set by this week, it'll be the show to watch this season—not just for music lovers, but for anyone who yearns for a good romance or character piece.

Rating: A

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 LGBT site Autostraddle.com and her own blog. She tweets at @composerose.