My Favorite Guilty Pleasure

First of all, I must say that although I am really fascinated with Japanese culture, I'm not really an anime fan. I have nothing against it; in fact I can appreciate the genre as an art form, but I'm not all that into it. This show, however, had me hooked by the time I had watched three episodes and I was able to finish the series in two sittings across two days. I liked it so much that I binged it before I even had access to the English version, so I had to give it my full attention in order to read the subtitles. Once I finished watching the show, I found myself emotionally affected by the twists and turns of the story, and the first thing that I did was share it with my best friend. To this day, we still sometimes talk about how the story is such a parallel for my own life.

I was introduced to Your Lie in April by a girl that I had hit it off with at a video game store. We were actually discussing video games and showing YouTube clips on our phones, and when she realized how much I loved the musical score in the scenes, and that I was a pianist, she had to show me a clip of this show. I didn't even try to watch it for the next several days, but seeing as she worked at the store and I knew that I would see her again, I thought I should check it out in case she asked me what I thought about it. And I am so very glad that I did.

Your Lie in April is about a teenage piano prodigy named Kousei Arima who succumbed to tragedy in his personal life in a way that ended his concert career. He meets a violinist who refuses to accept that his music career is over, and by forcing him to duet with her, she is able to help him recover not only his will to play but also his passion for life itself. The encounter sends Arima on a path of self discovery and one of healing from the tragedy of his past while inspiring him to forge relationships with friends and rivals that will endure throughout the ages.

As a pianist who had his own sabbatical from the instrument and had returned to it, Your Lie in April hit really close to home for me. I don't claim that I was ever the prodigy that Arima is, but many things from the show are all too familiar for a fellow musician such as myself. I would not be able to share each parallel without providing spoilers, so I will refrain, but I really hope that any who reads this will check this show out on Netflix. It's only one season and the episodes are only twenty minutes long, so it wouldn't be a unreasonably long binge, but it would certainly be a memorable and worthy one.

The saga is quite the heavy and emotional story, full of deep character introspection and development, while at the same time providing plenty of comic relief with that precise brand of humor that I imagine would be typical of an anime show. One of the most amazing things about it, though, is when you finally receive the revelation of what the title actually means. I thought that I had the plot all figured out but in the end, the finale left me blown away and full of many different emotions.

The most significant thing about Your Lie in April for me is the change that it brought to my life. As a musician, I had always struggled terribly with stage fright, but after a few times of watching this series I realized one day that I was no longer struggling with it. The show contains some pretty epic stage mishaps, and the way that the characters handle them is still an inspiration to me. Since being led to watch this anime, I have had an epic fail of my own on stage, and I'm not sure that I would have ever went back on if it had happened to me several years before. At the very least, it would have greatly magnified the stage fright that was already so crippling to me. In fact, now that I have students that must face the intimidating daunt of the stage, I have considered encouraging them to watch the series in the hopes that it will be as helpful to each of them as it was to me.

As a show that is so close to my heart, it has been such a pleasure to write about it and share it with any who reads this. I truly hope that when any of you find that evening we all experience where you can't quite decide what to stream, that you will give Your Lie in April an hour or two of your time. I can just almost guarantee that anyone who does, will watch it through to its conclusion and indulge in an experience that is so rich with humor, emotion, and raw inspiration that could apply to any aspect of life, especially the journey of a writer. I close with a quote from the show that I believe any and all of us can relate to on one level or another.

Will I be able to reach them? I hope I can.