Your lie in April

Episode 13

For as weird as Your Lie in April and its direction can be, at 13 episodes it's begun settling into a routine. Kosei has some sort of a performance, often contrasted with other people's performances. He starts out fine, but then the notes get foggy and he sinks underwater. He has a series of flashbacks to when his mom was alive and pushed him too far in music. He stresses out as the audience watches in horror, and the judges make snotty comments about how his performance is falling apart. Kosei might even stop entirely. Then he has some revelation about his past or his relationships, starts again, does a fine enough job for the rest of it and leaves the stage. So it goes.

It says something about how powerful the substance is behind the style, that Your Lie in April keeps its fans chugging along in spite of some repetitive and by now cliché imagery. To use the show's ocean metaphor, it's like we're being slowly submerged in Kosei's issues, learning more and more about his history each week through those underwater vignettes. Still, it can't help but feel like the same old story, which makes it hard to build up much anticipation before watching each episode. That was how I felt going into episode 13—and yet, it wowed me again. Kosei had a true breakthrough this time about his mom, and these flashbacks were his most important—equal parts heartbreaking and heartwarming. Yes, Saki and Kosei had some good times together after all, and that doesn't diminish or change her horrifying abuse of him later in life. Hiroko's presence in Kosei's life offers us a richer perspective on Saki. We see who she was before Kosei became a pianist, how that decision was made (it had more to do with Hiroko than her), and even learn about Saki's own feelings after realizing how much she mistreated Kosei—and where that mistreatment came from in the first place.

If anything, Your Lie in April "gets" child abuse on a deeper level than any anime this side of Penguindrum. Media typically portrays abusive parents as completely heartless and unsympathetic, with their victims needing to cut them off and forget all feelings toward them entirely, because that's the right answer. In real life, though, it's rarely that black and white, and abusive parents often do care for their children deep down—but they're broken people who struggle with knowing how to show it. The child, especially as they grow up, often has to navigate complicated feelings for their parents: condemning and despising them for what they did, but still wanting to love them, and truly cherishing those moments when their parents' love for them did come through. Much of adulthood is realizing that your parents are human and prone to mistakes, and child abuse victims must balance this truth in the most extreme ways possible. Still, many will process those feelings and still move on into a healthy adulthood. Penguindrum dealt with the complexities of growing up as an abuse victim through the darker side—how the abused can become the abuser when they start forging their own interpersonal relationships, because it's all they've ever known. Your Lie in April is the optimistic side, that if a kid like Kosei can forgive but not forget, he can properly process his baggage and move on into new relationships that will hopefully influence him more positively. It's not a universal answer, but it's the right answer for him, as we see when we realize how deeply Kosei's mother cared for him underneath all the fury.

Saki, like a lot of parents who push their kids too hard, was terrified. She was worried about how the world would break her son, and particularly how he would survive without her when she learned she wouldn't be with him for much longer. She knew he couldn't have a career as a pianist unless he was at the very top of his game—and as a music conservatory graduate, I can confirm this. It's interesting that she plays "Love's Sorrows" so he could "learn about sorrow," instead of the same composer's "Love's Joy." She was so focused on preparing Kosei for a world that would harden him, that she didn't realize she was already going too far herself. She forgot to give him that essential other half of the composition: the joy that would get him through those hardships.

Yet, the flashbacks to Kosei's earlier memories of her, when he was just beginning his piano training, are full of joy and love. They're hopeful, and that hope and joy make their way into Kosei's present-day performance, as he processes his feelings so that he can finally let go. The end of the episode sets up for plenty of "love's sorrows," with Tsubaki's growing realization that she has feelings for Kosei he doesn't share and, of course, the reveal of just why Kaori missed her performance. Still, I think it will be joy and the music that connects them to those feelings that gets everyone through these struggles. Your Lie in April itself finally managed to balance its moods, instead of weighing us down too much in the melodrama. It let rays of hope shine into Kosei's dark sea, making this one of its best and most powerful episodes yet.

Rating: A

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.
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