Overall Thoughtsĭespite its flaws, I felt that Your Lie in April was a VERY solid adaptation of the anime.
I liked her a bit more here in the film than the anime. She seemed more like a fun character which makes the plot points in the second half hit just a tad harder. The tsundere tendencies she had from the anime seemed to have disappeared in this live-action adaptation. Kaori’s personality is also a bit tomboyish in the film. This would be the beginning of Kousei’s journey to recovery. Kaori is pretty good at playing the violin and she ends up talking Kousei into entering a competition to help bring his drive back. Kousei wants to take a picture and Kaori mistakes him for a pervert. She’s a friend of Tsubaki’s that Kousei discovered in the park when she was playing a song to a bunch of little children.
Her character felt a little bit on the empty side compared to the anime, but then again… time constraints and all that. The rest of the time, she just shows up when she’s needed and disappears when she’s not.
That’s about the only role Tsubaki seems to play here. She has a bit of a crush on Kousei and they have a nice little scene in the movie where they really drive that point home, much to Kousei’s ineptness. She’s taken on the sister role for Kousei as she’s always looking out for him. She’s Kousei’s childhood friend and next door neighbor. That was one of my concerns going into this because it’s very easy to play a music track over some animation and then just cut in a couple of key parts of the characters playing the instruments to match the music, but how would something like that in a live-action setting? Pretty flawlessly as the characters (or the stand ins on the other side of the camera lens) did an amazing job of matching the musical scores and it never broke my suspension of disbelief even once! The musical scores throughout the movie were still very well-done. Cutting out a lot of the extra points in the story ended up being a good thing as it actually improved the flow of the main story and kept everything concise and to a point. While I found some faults with the anime dragging in the back half of the season, the movie doesn’t really have that problem. Some of the supporting characters like Watari and Tsubaki don’t really get as much detail as they did in the anime, but due to the nature of the movie, it’s something that had to be expected. The story itself had many facets to it in the anime, but the movie focused solely on main story of Arima and Kaori. While things had to be cut out as you can’t fit a whole 22-episode anime into two hours of film, I was still rather surprised at how well it came across on in a live action movie format. This is a slice of life movie that did an admirable job of adapting the source material. Little did he know that Kaori would become the key to rejuvenating his interest in music and pulling him out of the dark abyss he had sunk into. One day, a girl named Kaori Miyazono was playing a song in a park and it caught Arima’s attention. When she passed away, a void opened up in Arima’s heart and he lost the ability to “hear” the notes he was playing, causing him to freeze during any performance that he tried to give. His mother was an extremely strict teacher, but she was also very ill. Often referred to as the human metronome, he has won several competitions with his God-like piano playing skills. It’s time to take a look at the theatrical release of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, or better known as, Your Lie in April. That is the premise for a movie that brings romance, comedy, and classical music to the forefront for your entertainment. When the world becomes dark like the bottom of an endless sea one young man must find a way to save himself from drowning in the music world and find the light that exists in his heart.