Your Lie in April: A Beautiful Journey Through Loss and Redemption | Anime Review

    After the holidays, I had taken a brief hiatus from watching anime due to my university semester getting quite busy. So when my exams finished in April, I promised myself to quickly get back into watching anime again. But I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to watch. Definitely not something too long, and nothing too confusing to follow either. I then remembered the title “Your Lie in April” recommended to me a while ago by a friend. Pair this recommendation with the fact that I frequently started seeing clips from this anime all over my Instagram reels, and it was a no brainer! My return to anime would start off with Your Lie in April (also fitting that I watched it in the month of April as well!).

    Man, what an anime it was! It took me about four days to get through it but it felt much longer given the character progression and wave of emotions experienced throughout. Going into this anime I was told one thing: it’s a sad one. Not in a bad way or anything, just that the storyline and ending would make me feel sad. I was a bit worried about this, given I had just come off a stressful three weeks of writing final exams, but nonetheless I gave it a watch. Now without further ado, here is my review of Your Lie in April. (Oh and Spoiler Warning by the way!!)

    Quick plot summary. Your Lie in April follows the life of Kousei Arima; a once talented pianist, a child prodigy, winning competition after competition by playing musical scores note for note. However, after the passing of his mother, he struggles to play the piano; unable to hear the notes when he plays. The boy who once practiced for hours on end has now let his piano collect dust. Two years later, in his final school year before entering high school, Kousei meets Kaori Miyazono while accompanying his lifelong friend and neighbor Tsubaki to Kaori's hangout with Watari, the guy Kaori is interested in and Kousei's best friend. Kaori is a talented violinist who after seeing Kousei’s skepticism towards the piano, appoints him to be her accompanist and play alongside her at an upcoming musical competition. Reluctantly, Kousei agrees and returns to the stage for the first time in two years.

His path to getting back on track as professional pianists is a rickety one, as he still struggles to hear the notes he plays; causing him to freeze up and play off tempo. As he plays the keys, he continually grapples with emotions stemming from his troubled past, which revolves around the childhood abuse inflicted by his ailing mother, who compelled him to play the piano instead of experiencing a normal childhood. Kousei’s return to piano also rekindles past drama with rivals Takeshi Aiza and Emi Igawa, who view him as an antagonist at the beginning but bond with him later down the line. However, it is through bonding with Kaori that Kousei learns the importance of playing the piano with a purpose, letting his thoughts express themselves through music, and not being a slave to the default musical score.

While things start looking up for Kousei, with his past trauma healed and his piano playing improving. Things start to take a tumble when Kaori is hospitalized due to health conditions she’s been struggling with in secret over the past few years. Her life becomes doom and gloom until one day Kousei says that he wishes to duet with her one last time. Upon hearing this, Kaori becomes determined to get better, opting to take an all-or-nothing surgery to get her back to normal. During this surgery, which also happens to be the same day as a prestigious piano competition that Kousei performs at, she passes away. Kousei, while heartbroken to have experienced another loss in life, shows resilience and sticks with the piano this time around, because he has learned that when he plays, he plays with Kaori in his heart.

Your Lie in April tells a beautiful story that revolves around redemption from trauma, namely in the perspective of Kousei who is getting back on his feet after losing his mother. This is symbolized by his return to piano playing. The anime does something really unique that I can’t say I have seen done too much before. It conveys character development and emotional climaxes through music. If you think about it, every piano competition marked a significant turning point, whether it was Kousei bidding a final farewell to his mother or breaking free to infuse his performances with his own emotionally expressive style. Kousei’s piano playing after meeting Kaori allowed him to grow as a person. This means of storytelling was done really well, and to be honest it makes it hard to write a review because when I think about how this show made me feel, quite a few of the most powerful emotional experiences were conveyed through instrumental pieces and visuals rather than language and tone of voice from protagonists. 

Another aspect of the anime that I really liked was seeing how the trio of “rivals” consisting of Kousei, Takeshi, and Emi, formed a friendship after initially being hostile with each other (at least the latter two were). In the early episodes, Takeshi made many heated exclamations about wanting to defeat Kousei and best him as a pianist. And while he still views Kousei as a rival to be bested towards the end, he comes to genuinely care for him as a human. In the end, the trio still operate under the dynamics of healthy competition, but a newfound friendship has blossomed between them. This friendship is built upon the shared commonality of being a pianist and is one in which genuine care for each other’s well being is fostered. It was a neat little resolve that put a smile on my face.

    Another thing that really touched me with this anime were the childhood scenes depicting Kousei and Tsubaki’s lived experiences that led them to become the dependable duo that they are in present times. Child Kousei just sounds so innocent and pure, you can’t help but smile when he speaks. These brief looks into their childhood help emphasize just how close these two characters are. It makes watching Tsubaki’s internal conflict of having romantic feelings for Kousei difficult to brush aside. Obviously the love dynamic between Kousei and Kaori is the one fans want to see blossom. However, while watching this, I couldn't help but also wish for Tsubaki's happiness. She faces her own life struggles, grappling with uncertainties about her future path. It's a relatable dilemma shared by many, myself included. So as a viewer, deep down, Kousei ending up with Tsubaki would have been an outcome that may have satisfied me. But of course this doesn’t explicitly happen, and the final episode of the series reveals something that reels you back into shipping the two music playing protagonists.

    After Kaori passes, we see Kousei visiting her grave with Kaori’s parents. They give Kousei a letter that Kaori wrote to him before her surgery. Kousei doesn’t read the letter immediately, and instead keeps it with him for some time until one day seeing a cat on his walk home from school and deciding to read it. This letter dropped a bombshell of a revelation both for Kousei and us fans who have been watching the show for the previous 21 episodes. We learn that Kaori has actually known about Kousei Arima since her childhood; when she saw him perform at a competition that defined him as a child prodigy. She looked up to him and even wanted to become a violinist because of him. We also learn why the anime is called Your Lie in April, because indeed a lie was actually told by Kaori in April, back when she first properly met Kousei. The lie was that she had a romantic interest in Watari and that the initial hangout among Kaori, Kousei, Tsubaki, and Watari was intended to be an initial stage to get closer to Watari. The truth of the matter was that said initial encounter was actually an outcome from Kaori’s desire to become closer to Kousei! Kaori believed it would be awkward to join the trio's existing friend group directly, so she started a rumor that she liked Watari as a strategy to forge a connection with Kousei. And this worked! Because as we know, that initial encounter led to Kousei being back in a music hall for the first time and soon after, reaching for the piano keys again. But the saddest part (in retrospect, because remember, Kousei reads this letter after Kaori passes) is that in her letter, Kaori confesses that she is in love with Kousei and has been the whole time. This part really gets you because throughout the show Kousei has not only been motivated to play piano for Kaori but also learns what the feeling of love feels like and that he feels it for Kaori. Alas, he learns that the feeling is mutual too late… or does he? While yes it is sad that the stars seemed to have crossed for the two protagonists and we don’t get to see them form a romantic relationship, Kousei makes it clear to Kaori that he will never forget her and that she will live on in his heart whenever he plays the piano. It is this promise that I believe is the reason we don’t see Kousei abandon the piano like he did after his mom’s passing. This time around, piano playing and his feelings for Kaori are linked… motivating him to keep his head up and face the upcoming spring season without her physically there. 

    Also, nice touch by the final end credits for exclusively showing pictures of Kaori’s moments throughout the series. By doing this, viewers like you and me were able to go on a trip down memory lane, but with an added twist: the knowledge that this whole time Kaori knew her life was short and was in love with Kousei. Down the line, a rewatch of this series with Kaori’s outcome and intentions in the back of mind will definitely offer a new perspective when following the plot. 

What an experience Your Lie in April was! And now for my final rating…

I have a 5-step rating scale that goes as follows (in order from least admiration to most admiration):

😐 = Mid

🙂 = Decent

😃 = Great

🤩 = Really Enjoyed

🥰 = Absolutely Loved!

Watching Your Lie in April was an emotional experience that I Really Enjoyed 🤩. The praise about this anime prior to watching it had my expectations high, and I can confidently say that they were met. Now I get why people warned me the show would make me sad, both through seeing Kousei deal with overcoming his trauma and Kaori’s short lived life. Although, I didn’t physically cry at the end because I kind of expected something to happen to Kaori ever since the first glimpses into her health problems when she got off the bus at the hospital or when she took several pills while in the restroom in the early episodes. But upon letting the story sit with me for a couple days, I do feel this lingering internal sadness. So the anime has resonated with me for sure. Of course the ideal ending would have been for Kaori’s surgery to be a success, her to be healthy again, and to share the stage with Kousei ever after. But just how the series starts with depiction of navigating loss, it ends the same way. Kousei’s character development is immense and I would like to infer that he has ended up alright with fond memories with Kaori pushing him on to be the best pianist he can be. Through this interpretation I am satisfied with the ending and more than satisfied with Your Lie in April as a whole!

Thank you for reading!

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