Thank you for the music, the song Kaori’s singing
What They Say:
“Inside Spring”
Kousei and Kaori spend some time together and get to talking about Kousei’s past. Will he ever be able to play a piano again? What happens if he can never overcome his fear, will color ever return to his life?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Of course it was going to happen. It’s destiny! A musically talented young boy by not-so-happenstance a young girl who’s just as talented at music. They click. He’s a little too passive and she’s a little too aggressive. I mean, she beats him with a melodica the first time they meet and a shoe a few days after. They’re not a normal couple, but it’s what we get in anime. They’re perfect. She’ll play the violin and he’ll play the piano and we have a musical match made in heaven between a virtuoso and a prodigy.
She brings light to Kousei’s life—or should I say music. If the case is the latter, which it is, then I suppose I have to say she brings music back. As he says in the final moments of the episode, his life is colorful again. That’s the power music has on a person. His metaphor of being trapped deep beneath the sea, unable to hear the sounds that reverberate from the piano ring true with his other color metaphor. The palette of the show is perhaps a reference to it, with its vibrant colors seemingly everywhere on screen. The sea is not so colorful, if you feel trapped by it. But Kousei, perhaps forcibly, was finally taken from the water by Kaori.
Music was not something that Kousei decided to leave, it was something that left him. Dormant, his musical genes lay inside of him while Kousei figured out life as a mere junior high school student. The girl atop playground equipment playing a melodica awakened it. The girl playing Beethoven’s Kruetzer awakened it. Not verbatim, but Kousei said something like, “It was a performance that made those two girls go out and buy flowers for you, even though they’ve never met you.” It’s the highest praise he can give, in the state he’s in. He never says the music was wonderful, but he implies it with every word, every syllable, every letter. He loves it and he wants to get back to it. He just doesn’t know how.
In Summary:
I had hoped the performance would be this episode, but alas. We get a mini-performance in a coffee shop where he bemoans the state of the piano, so close to water. In it, we see that he is still a brilliant piano player, somewhere under the guise he puts up. Not only that, but he likes it. He likes it as much as Kaori likes the violin, but he doesn’t know how to show it. As I said before, it’s always been an obligation. Maybe now, partner in hand, it won’t be an obligation anymore.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Equipment: PS3, LG 47LB5800 47” 1080p LED TV, LG NB3530A Sound Bar
