I know I'm 3 years late to this train, but can we talk about what this anime could've been? Seriously, great music...

I know I'm 3 years late to this train, but can we talk about what this anime could've been? Seriously, great music, really good animation, decent hook. Just absolutely marred by shitty, melodramatic character writing. I basically gave up on taking it seriously after Kousei flashes back to his 10-year-old, emotionally-taxing internal soliloquy of "Im just a soulless machine that plays piano." Like, what the fuck? One of my only audible "godamnit"s watching anime.

And why is everything that leaves every characters mouth some kind of profound, introspective truth? This show wouldve been perfect if 1)it didnt play the retarded "hit the baka MC" gag at every serious moment and 2) the other characters werent granted this blatantly retarded wisdom and foresight for drinking the water of the plot. The only thing I wanted to see from that show was someone making a genuine mistake, but instead I get a story where most everyone is merely coping as victims of circumstance and marginally develop their big decision making skills.

Which leads me to my plot device gripe: Kaori's death. As if it wasn't fucking obvious enough with enough death flags to suffocate a fag parade, it has to be the most stupidly arbitrary death Ive seen in an anime. So she dies during surgery why? Because a prodigious 14 year old girl, of her own autonomy, wants the slightest chance to play violin again at the extreme risk of her life? And her parents let her do this why? Because she has zeal? Because she's gonna die anyway (which is a bullshit excuse)? Sick of paying the hospital bills? The anime would've been way better if her parents just said "No," and things went from there. But lo and behold, the struggle bus and the short bus for retards are one in the same. Really this just stems from the problem with most every character in this anime, their choices are so stupidly cohesive to the whole that the entire story just seems contrived.

Instead of having Kaori die to sheer "fragility," why not just give her REALLY bad carpal tunnel syndrome? That is a very real and present fear for people who play any kind of music, and I honestly thought the anime was headed in that direction. And instead of the whole "you've been fucked by life" motif, suddenly Kaori must deal with a direct consequence of her love for music. The way it is, her death is ultimately arbitrary and furthers Kaoris role as bubbly genki girl who is only there to develop the MC.

And then we get all of her exposition dumped on us at the end. I was pissed that the "lie" in the title was "teehee, I really like someone else." I honestly just wanted something simple and thematic like, "you have to lie to yourself to become a great musician," or "the lie is what we create for the audience." Especially with such little focus on romance. I think the writer of this story just worked backwards from the ending thoughts in Kaori's letter, and ended up piling bullshit with all the stupidly inorganic plot devices and foreshadowing. This anime had huge potential for the entire music tag. It's a damn shame it missed the mark with its high-school level writing.

Op is a fag

Yea, pretty much. The lie itself was really dumb, as youve said, as well as most other things. The one thing i disagree with is i think its ok for her to go into surgery if thats what she wants, gives her a better chance of higher quality of life. But thats a small redemption in a show of unbearable flaws.

this isnt your blog fuck off

>So she dies during surgery why? Because a prodigious 14 year old girl, of her own autonomy, wants the slightest chance to play violin again at the extreme risk of her life? And her parents let her do this why? Because she has zeal? Because she's gonna die anyway (which is a bullshit excuse)? Sick of paying the hospital bills?
Why are you acting like risky surgeries are uncommon and that this doesn't happen relatively frequently in real life?

I didnt really interpret the surgery as a lifetime cure. I feel the illness's parameters are already poorly defined to begin with.

I suppose Im left with too many questions about the nature of her illness and how her parents interpret it. The show filters a lot of this information in its storytelling.

>great music
You might think that but my guess is that anyone who's actually familiar with the music in this anime and classical music in general will have a problem with the music in this anime (or rather what was done to it). This is through and through an overrated piece of garbage.

>don't discuss an anime on this board meant for discussing anime

You're a fucking retard

What was the point in pretending she didn't love kousei?

kaori was such a fucking bitch

It's called autism.

Beautiful Dove, come back to us in April:
You could not over-winter on our world.
Fly to some milder planet until springtime;
Return with olive in your claws upcurled.

One more reason I think the story was written backwards from the letter.

I honestly would've liked 22 episodes of discovering that Kaori's actually an autistic savant that eventually dies of a brain aneurysm after a collapse.

>I didnt really interpret the surgery as a lifetime cure.
It wasn't a lifetime cure. It was meant to extend her life and offer her better quality of life, but it was never intended to be a cure. This is frequently how terminal illnesses will work, especially cancers. Doctors will perform risky surgeries or treatments to extend life and improve quality of life while knowing a total cure is impossible.

To not fuck things up for Tsubaki. This is spelled out for you verbatim.

And she still fucks things up for Tsubaki.

Fuck tsubaki, why would you worry about her when you're dying from a terminal illness? The real reason was so the title would make sense

Life doesn't always work out as planned, my dude.

>why would you worry about her when you're dying from a terminal illness?
It's this mysterious concept called empathy.

Leave us to shrikes and raven until springtime:
We let them find their food as best they may;
But you, we do not grow the grain you feed on
And you will starve among us, if you stay.

My problem isnt with the surgery itself, its the plot surrounding it. The surgery is added because of her "struggle to the end" mentality, yes. In this sense it stresses her theme. However, the characters involved and the implications of the surgery were unexplored.
Moreover, the only reason it was on the same day as the finals was to give us the groovy ghoulie duet scene. It just feels like a synthetic addition to an already vague plot point.

But oh, in April, from some balmier climate
Come back to us, be with us in the spring!
If we can learn to grow the grain you feed on,
You might be happy here; might even sing.

>However, the characters involved and the implications of the surgery were unexplored.
I thought it was pretty heavily implied that her parents left the decision up to her, which also isn't strange or out of the ordinary for someone of her age. It might even legally have been her decision, but I'm not well versed on the laws surrounding this.
>the implications of the surgery
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
>Moreover, the only reason it was on the same day as the finals was to give us the groovy ghoulie duet scene.
Well, yeah. It's not really an unbelievable coincidence though. Far stranger things happen to just about everyone.

The Japanese get their rocks off on the concept of suffering in silence. This is also why misunderstandings are so prevalent, it's a culture-wide disease.

>a-1
shit

You fuckers better stop imagining god knows what about "slice of life", stop analyzing anime only in terms of realism and fathom the definition of "melodramatic"

thank you
good night

>parents involvement
Age of majority is 18-20 in Japan. I doubt she could make such a decision on her own. The way it's presented in the anime is "I saw my parents cry, I know I'm gonna die." and I wish there was more to it than that. That reminds me, Arima has a dad too.

>implications of surgery
Like we said, it's not a lifetime cure. So whos to say, if it worked, that it would even get her what she wanted. She was in PT to walk again, but how does the surgery affect her hands? Are they operating on another part of the body? Removing cancer? Can she not play violin because of general loss of strength (but ofc gag strength is pure strength)? Or does it pertain to her joints? How fast would her recovery be? Maybe she would consign herself to just composing music in her last days if it wasnt worth it? Not all of these need answers, but her illness and other motivations needed a bit more definition.

>the day of surgery
The anime doesnt clearly define the surgery as urgent to her life, so its hard to interpret how much time she had left compared to what she would gain. I would expect her character to get it scheduled after Arima's finals, but then we lose the death scene. I would be fine with this if everything else didn't mesh so conveniently.

>I doubt she could make such a decision on her own.
Why? To me it seems like you're reaching to find ways to make this situation seem unfathomable, but it really isn't at all. It's completely believable.
>The way it's presented in the anime is "I saw my parents cry, I know I'm gonna die." and I wish there was more to it than that.
There's a scene in which they're all shown in a room discussing her terminality with doctors. 2 scenes, if I recall correctly.
>whos to say, if it worked, that it would even get her what she wanted.
The doctors.
>how does the surgery affect her hands? Are they operating on another part of the body? Removing cancer? Can she not play violin because of general loss of strength (but ofc gag strength is pure strength)? Or does it pertain to her joints? How fast would her recovery be?
The details of the illness are left vague because ultimately they're irrelevant to what the show is about. This isn't House or Grey's Anatomy, it's a show about how people (everyone involved) react and come to terms with terminal illness.
>The anime doesnt clearly define the surgery as urgent to her life
Yes it did. Her death was imminent. She was literally in palliative care. Have you ever watched someone die of a terminal illness? When it reaches to the point where you're never going to leave the hospital again, you don't have much time to go.

>do I fit in yet
You're not even doing it right. Neck yourself.