Your lie in April

Episode 8

When I was in high school, I had a musical rival. He wasn't just my rival on our mutual instrument, but in everything: writing music, talking about it, and getting attention from our orchestra teacher and classmates. On some level, I knew he was far better at playing the cello than I would ever be, but that just made me more obsessed with besting him in some musical area. So I understand well why Takeshi turns down a trip to Germany for a chance to finally defeat Kosei Arima in competition. It's easy to get caught up in the rush of green-eyed envy, especially when you're an angry, obsessive teenager.

Rivalries and the effect they can have on you as a performer are the theme of this week's episode. Your Lie in April makes it clear that this isn't always a bad thing, which is both interesting and very true. Having another person to compete with can energize and inspire you in a way that abstract goals (or for that matter, outside pressure, like Kosei had from his mother) just can't. You can measure yourself against a rival in a very immediate way, and you get the adrenaline rush of running a race when you compete. On the other hand, it can easily slide into an unhealthy fixation and make you lose track of why you're in that race in the first place. A rivalry shouldn't take the place of your actual goals—which is what it seems to be doing to Takeshi, as he turns down bigger opportunities just to compete with Kosei. With Emi, the "unhealthy" aspect took over long ago; it's the only thing that keeps her playing now. That'd be some fantastic stuff if the series didn't use it for gender-essentialism about women being more "combative" and having less control over their emotions.

That said, Your Lie in April is overall richer for developing these rivals, and expanding the cast beyond Kosei, Kaori, and their friends. It also makes the series more about music and performance itself, rather than one relationship and how that's reflected in their technician-vs.-artiste performing styles. This episode is constructed a lot like a typical episode of Shirobako (a series that's much more about the art than its individual characters) in showing how one issue affects everyone across its world. I think that approach will turn Your Lie in April into a much stronger show over time, and makes this week's episode truly great. Kosei and Kaori's romance is well-worn stuff, after all. Zooming out into the wider world of teenage classical music competitions gives it more room to say something new.

Speaking of zooming: I love this series' dynamic direction, and how that contributes to its heightened emotional world every week. In Takeshi's Chopin performance, the camera swoops between different Dutch angles, or suddenly zooms from Takeshi's face up toward the ceiling or out to the audience. Its constant shifts match the energy of Takeshi's playing and the snapshots of his childhood memories watching Kosei. Your Lie in April is pure melodrama, and it helps that the entire creative process is working to achieve this end. Many emotionally-heavy, relationship-focused anime go for more understated direction, letting the writing and character designs speak for themselves. That can work, but this show is better for eschewing that approach. It makes Your Lie in April a constant thrill to watch. The show's material also allows it to be capable of topping itself each week, like its musician characters in their performances.

Unfortunately, the comedy doesn't work as well, precisely because the show goes to such melodramatic heights when depicting the intensity of characters' inner worlds and relationships. When Takeshi just spent the last several minutes sweating it out over his piece and his rivalry with Kosei, it isn't believable to see his post-performance stress reduced to a slapstick gag, or his admiration to a wiggly dance. Your Lie in April would be a near-perfect show if it could nail its transitions between the serious and the silly. It excels in the former partly through its originality, and dramatic camera techniques that might be considered ridiculous on paper but work beautifully in context. So why does it run to the familiar anime well of turning its characters into super-deformed chibi clichés when it wants to be funny?

Your Lie in April is at its best when it's on the "artiste" side of that familiar dichotomy: when it's trying for its own thing rather than what other anime have already done well. This series works because it's not a typical romantic melodrama. The more it settles into this, the more it will connect with its audience, and give them a performance to remember.

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