Your Lie in April is an anime about the turbulence of youth, first love, and the explosive power of music to channel our deepest emotions and project them onto others. The series focuses on 14-year old Kosei, a former piano prodigy who stopped playing after suffering a mental breakdown due to his mother's death. He finds himself unable to hear the notes he plays anymore, and his life has become dull and aimless as a result. This all changes when he meets Kaori, a spirited and wild violinist who motivates Kosei to play once again, with feeling. Alongside Kaori and his childhood friends Watari and Tsubaki, Kosei confronts the spectres haunting him, and discovers what really lies in the heart of a musician.
First and foremost, the most noticeable thing about Your Lie in April is the astounding visuals present. Mixing traditional hand-drawn animation with CGI and watercolors, Your Lie in April might be the best looking anime of all time. The backgrounds are often detailed and gorgeous, heightening the mood of the scene without overwhelming it. And, the visuals are at their finest during the musical performances. Rather than show us what the audience would see with the naked eye, we are taken into an alternate reality of sorts, the inner mind-scape of the musician. The show crafts surreal, elegant, and often poignant sequences that convey the emotions and innermost thoughts of the musician while they play, springing to life the feelings they are attempting to share with the audience through their playing. Also significant is the use of color and pallet when relating to Kosei's journey in particular. At first, he sees the world in drab, monotone colors, washed out and blending together. But, Kaori's introduction brings a bright blast of color to the show, and the colors only deepen and become richer as the series progresses.
The music is, of course, incredible. The series has a wonderful original score, but the real highlights are the classic pieces performed by our musicians. From Beethoven to Chopin to Kreisler to Debussy, there is a wide variety of music present, and each one is used to punctuate a character arc, opening a window into our character's soul. From Kaori's free-wheeling with tempo on "Violin Sonata No.9, 1st Movement" to Kosei's emotional farewell to his mother via "Love's Sorrow" these familiar pieces become imbued with new meaning, and become transcendent. Combined with the unique visuals, each piece becomes a whole new thing, something you want to be able to live in yourself over and over again, to be able to feel that openly and grandly.
My only nitpick with Your Lie in April, and it's a small one, is the over-use use of slapstick humor. While levity is much needed to allow you to breathe in between the monstrously huge emotional performances, the use of physical humor (usually against a boy who had at one point suffered abuse) falls flat in comparison to the rest of the series' successes. But really, it's nothing that takes away from the show, but rather it stands out so much because the rest of the series is so good at everything it does. The voice acting is top notch, and the story is simple but told well and with wonderful, well-rounded characters. The show manages to balance rapturous joy with tragic heartbreak at every turn, making you invest more and more of yourself into the story and these characters. Even just thinking about moments in the series, or hearing that opening titles song can make all kinds of emotions rise to the surface and soar out of me. Kaori often asks in the show, "Will you forget me?" The answer, Your Lie in April, is never. 10/10
