Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: anime, Comics, Crunchyroll, entertainment, hulu, manga, valentine's day, your lie in april

Dissecting Your Lie In April For Valentine's Day

From a conversation with Adi Tantimedh on Hangouts… there are spoilers…

Your Lie In April could well be the most emotionally-wrenching anime series of this season. Streaming on Hulu and Crunchyroll in the US, it's about classical music prodigies, specifically a 15-year-old boy who stopped playing the piano after his mother's death. Then he meets this girl, a violin prodigy.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ZrxnkW67M[/youtube]

She drags him screaming and kicking out of his depression and forces him to be her accompanist.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4oR8wiPqg4[/youtube]

This is a ten-minute scene that's at the midpoint of the series where the main character finally has an epiphany about his art and his late mother.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTALj29MU7M[/youtube]

Then there are other prodigies who are his rivals.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVxG1LOsm0U[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UD-YeSp6es[/youtube]

Then he discovers that she's dying. And he finds a parallel with his mother.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU2o-zr9JME[/youtube]

The final twist is in her confession letter after she's gone.

She knew who he was and his tragedy before she even met him. She decided to contrive a meeting by dating his best friend, and spent the least year of her life orchestrating her plan to pull him out of his depression and make him perform again and admit he's an artist, and could become a great one. That was the lie she made up when they first met in April.

It says a lot about surviving abuse and trauma. It's so heartfelt it's easy to forgive its melodramatic "damaged boy redeemed by dying girl" plot. It's one of the most intense examinations of music as art as personal expression and life struggle.

There's an amazing line where the famous piano teacher, who was his mother's best friend, watches him heal from the death of his mother at last and realizes that for him to become a great artist, he's going to have to lose someone he loves again.

And of course, that happens.

It's one of those rare anime that's better than the original manga, because you actually get to hear the music.

They got some talented artists to play the music in the quirky, unexpected ways the characters do. The screenwriter also put in scenes that should have been in the manga that covers certain beats and moments that should have been in the manga but the creator didn't put them in at the time.

In that effect, the manga is the "first draft" of the story that the anime improved on. The anime's pacing is also tighter.

Yen Press are publishing the manga in Spring. The manga serialisation just ended last week in Japan, so the anime series will also end within the next two months at episode 24, probably with the same ending.

But possibly improved.

Each of the kid prodigies is an archetype. The hero is The Prodigal. The violinist he falls in love with is The Free Spirit. The fiery pianist girl is The Diva. The rising star boy is The Upstart. His younger sister (not in the clips) is The Future.

And after all that? The actual trailer for the show…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcMRAe-6zds[/youtube]

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