Your lie in April

Episode 18

I never thought I'd say this, but Kosei Arima has a selfish streak. It was excusable before, when he was struggling to make his own life after defining it around his mom's wishes. He decided to make Kaori his "person he played for," and seemed at ease with that. Kosei still has the ghost of his mother defining music for him though. He hasn't shaken his problem with "hearing the notes" at all. In fact, he enjoys and relies on it, and falls apart when Nagi's concert throws off this skill. Kosei nearly sabotages everything, taking over Nagi's part as well. This leaves the audience gasping at Kosei "having his way with her" (Hiroko's words).

At the end, it all works out: Kosei pushes Nagi to reassert her place in the piece. It helps that as their arrangement of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty moves into the famous waltz, Kosei has the melody for a while. This puts them on more even ground, allowing them to work as a team. In the process, Nagi and Kosei realize something the audience already knows: they have a lot in common.

Both of them are prodigies who are bad at dealing with stress. Few people are good at it in their preteens, but Nagi already shows a lot of destructive habits. She refuses to sleep or eat when she's devoted to practicing. Also, their primary motivators for playing are other people, specifically older family members. In Kosei's case, his mom was the one driving him to become a piano-playing machine, although he's found a "healthier" focus for his music lately in Kaori. Nagi is more realistic from the start. She knows she's doing this to impress her brother and not setting unrealistic goals. Nagi still throws herself into her passion too much, but she knows it's only temporary. Over the course of the piece, she realizes she shouldn't overdo it. Performing itself is intensive enough, and she doesn't need to destroy herself in the process.

This hammers home how much Your Lie in April believes in "playing for others." The best performances come from having someone to play to in the audience, whether they're your brother or your crush. It doesn't come from working for some abstract career goal, as Kosei's mom thought he should. (When he succeeded at piano, the show implies, it was because he played for her.) Nagi even says outright that she doesn't "yearn to be a pro" or "give all of herself to music," just to make people remember her playing. Kosei's life changes when he meets a girl with similar musical goals.

That's a message I take issue with, as someone who's known many professional classical musicians. Sure, there are plenty of them like Kosei, whose stage parents push them into it, denying them any other path. However, many others choose the intense discipline and focus that a musical career requires on their own. It's not so much that they're selling their souls to music as that the "person they're playing for" is themselves. I agree that people can enjoy music without wanting to be a professional, but I think this show sells the actual professionals short. It portrays the musical life as full of hardships and disappointments, only occasionally glimpsing the other side. For people who truly love it, it's more like what Nagi experienced this episode. The endless practicing pays off when you're in the zone of a favorite piece, and you don't mind if you pass out at the end because you don't want to stop playing. Many of my best teenage memories come from orchestra concerts exactly like that.

This energy comes across clearly in this episode, as the first half carries the audience like a wave. It's been a while since the last performance episode, and this week was a reminder that they're the best parts of the show. They communicate so much about the characters involved and the relationships between them, and through little more than great direction, a few introspective words, and the power of music itself. These scenes are the best arguments for the transformative power of musical performance. That's the heart and soul of Your Lie in April, and that's why I keep coming back. Don't tell us what we're supposed to think about music. Just show us. Music is especially hard to describe in words, and it's better to just let the notes play.

Plus, the performances are so much fun. I can't be the only person who hears the Sleeping Beauty Waltz and wants to get up and dance, right? (It makes Kaori get up and air-bow along, which is cute and tragic all at once.) Kosei and Nagi were like actual dancers, swooping back and forth in-tune with each other. The best musical duets feel a little like dancing, and though I'd like to see Kosei play with Kaori again like he wants, it's good that he has another partner to take her place now. He's more than met his match in Nagi.

Rating: B+

Your Lie in April is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a musicologist who studies film music. She writes about anime and many other topics on Autostraddle.com, her blog and her Twitter.