How much do you love music? Are you happy playing it perfectly, or are you passionate enough to put more flavor and effort into it? These are some of the questions at the heart of The forest of Piano, a Netflix´s exclusive anime that´s a fascinatiing watch for musical stuff, and that recently released its 2nd season internationally on Netflix on June 24.
Kai Ichinose is the son of a prostitute, who's been playing the abandoned piano in the forest near his home ever since he was young. Shuhei Amamiya is practically breast-fed by the piano as the son of a prestigious pianist. Despite their upbringings, both develop an interesting friendship/rivalry that tests their motivations to play piano, and how music can affect our lifes. Out ofthe 24-episode run, the first six episodes are all about letting you know these 2 kids in depth and see how they grow up on playing piano and participating in their first competition, while the rest of the series is one of the best and most unconventional torunament arcs you may find in a non-action shonen series, as Kai and Shuhei enter into an international competition where they test their talents against themselves and other more seasoned contestants.
THE GOOD
Since the series is character-driven, a lot of the series´ plotting consists of many character arcs that reflect the questions posed by the series. From how Chopin inspired Kai´s musical and personal life, to Shuhei discovering that he needs to be a creative musician instead of a methodical one, to Sosuke Ajino leaving a legacy as a pianist and accepting that he many never play piano in concerts, to Wei Pang´s emotional but painful upbringing and using piano to vent his wrath with the world. Also, there are also moments in season 2 where the show discusses how musical competitions can get rigged by perfectionist judges wanting the participants to be as good as the classic musicians instead of celebrating and analyzing their creativity and passion. It´s a theme that not many musical shows talk about, so I´m glad Forest of Piano shed some light into the matter, and it´s also a big part of why the ¨tournament¨ arc of the series is so brilliant, with the other part being the display of talent between the contestants and their motivations to participate on the competition.
Considering it´s the area that it had to nail down the most, the series doesn´t falter on its music. Previous news about the show informed that the production staff would include* some real life pianists to perform the characters´ pieces, and despite playing well known and lesser known piano pieces from various classic musicians like Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, the performances are portrayed according to the character´s personalities, showcasing interesting versions of the songs played. If a character likes to play gentle tones, the piano sounds warm and delicate. If the character is a bit angsty, the piano sounds fierce and intense. When both the piano pieces and the story are put together, they create emotional experiences that inmerse the audience even more into the performances and even help us comprehend the characters´ musical development more. The soundtrack outside the piano pieces is ok, not much to talk about.
THE BAD
Not everything in the series is perfect however. Some interesting character arcs were dropped before they could get somewhere interesting, while some seemed to be put in the story just because, like some reporters digging into snome secrets about the contestants that shouldn´t be revealed. At some points, the series attempts to have some fantasy elements that feel more tacked on than complementary to the series, and the female piano players are underwrittenin comparison to the male ones. Then there´s the visual department. It´s difficult to give some well animated scenes to make for convincing piano playing, but this series barely tries and clashes with the beautiful plotting. Characters are drawn as if done by amateurs, the background art sometimes shines, but mostly it hits an uncanny valley level of realism with an awful combination of amateur 2D and 3D scenery. In season 1, the piano-playing scenes are done with basic, dummy-like 3D models via motion capture, which is enough noticeable to get you out of the inmersion, and season 2, no characters are shown playing piano, instead relying on a mix of static images accompanied by visualizations of either a particle rain, or a kinda multicolor flag waving, in what feels like watching a Windows Media Player visualization. It doesn´t help that smoe interesting monologues are placed over these scenes in a lazy directorial way.
However, if you´re willing to set the bad stuff aside, this is a solid recommendation that you´ll love more if you are passionate for music, but if you´re just a casual, you can get a lot of interesting stuff out of it. And if you watch it with pre-teeens or teens learning to play piano, it offers them some interesting advice. Despite Carole and Tuesday being another hit musical Netflix series being released next August, I hope this series gets some well needed attention from anime watchers and casual viewers as well. I give it an 8/10.
Submitted July 07, 2019 at 08:46PM by skerllyfc https://ift.tt/2NDCF9i
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