ANIME REVIEW: “FOREST OF PIANO”
Written by: meltrosz
"Forest of Piano" is an anime television series adaptation composed of twenty-four episodes that were split into two seasons with twelve episodes each. The first season aired from mid-to-late 2018, while the second season aired from early-to-mid 2019. It is very rare for an anime to be set in the classical music world, due to few of them being able to achieve mainstream success like the popular series "Your Lie In April" or "Sound! Euphonium" did. As someone who enjoyed the two aforementioned series and loves listening to classical music, I was instantly interested in "Forest of Piano" and looked forward to discovering new pieces through the show.
The series is about a virtuoso named Kai Ichinose and his journey to becoming the best pianist in the world, as well as his interactions with the people he meets along the way. The story starts when Kai was in elementary school. He meets Shuhei Amamiya, the son of a famous pianist and a child prodigy, who was being bullied by their classmates. The two instantly became friends, and Kai shows Shuhei an abandoned grand piano he discovered near his home at the edge of the forest when he was three years old. Due to being abandoned for a long time, the piano has stopped producing any sound, and Kai is the only one who can play it for some reason. With it, he taught himself how to play the piano and is able to perform any piece after hearing it once. It is revealed that the piano belonged to Sousuke Ajino, a brilliant pianist who was considered to be the best in Japan but had a short-lived career due to an unfortunate accident. He fell into depression after the accident and decided to become a music teacher instead. Coincidentally, the school he was teaching in is the same one Kai and Shuhei attend. After hearing Kai play the piano in the forest one night, Sousuke became so enthralled with the former's playing that he finds new meaning in his dull life ― to let the world hear Kai's piano. He takes Kai in as his disciple, and later even became his guardian. Since Kai comes from the lowest rungs of society, his friends and family had feared that he would acquire a tarnished reputation because of them, therefore they decided it would be best if Sousuke was his guardian. This is also one of the reasons Sousuke wants Kai to be recognized as a world-class pianist― so that it would no longer matter what his background is since his talent will speak for itself.
Warning: the following review will be long because there were a lot of points I wanted to discuss, and I hope you'll stick to the end!
Based on the premise above, it is obvious that it had great potential to become an amazing adventure, and although I loved the first eight to ten episodes, I think the rest of the series fell short of its fantastic start. Nevertheless, it was able to capture the world of classical music in a beautiful and entertaining manner while still paying attention to minor details like how pianists focus their minds before performing. They also showed that even a virtuoso like Kai, who can memorize any piece by hearing it once, would still need to practice countless hours in order to be able to perform― although it was funny that Kai only had to repeatedly grind chromatic scales to play Chopin's "Minute Waltz (Op. 64 No. 1)". They also displayed how letting someone develop their musicality while they are still young gives them a huge advantage over others who only memorize the sheet music robotically, albeit the latter is more likely to win competitions in the series. I also loved the beautiful teacher-student relationship between Kai and Sousuke, which is almost like a father-son relationship. Kai would do anything ―even if it seems impossible― in order to help Sousuke, and the latter would also make countless sacrifices to push Kai to the top. However, I think the story fell apart halfway through the series.
The whole second season was set in the prestigious International Chopin Piano Competition― and the animators did a great job at replicating the venue. Due to the setting, there wasn't a lot of plot development during those last twelve episodes because they were mostly performances. Therefore, I think the writers felt the need to add drama to the story by making some of the judges in the acclaimed competition corrupt and biased. I cannot say for sure that corrupt judging in that competition does not happen, but the execution was simply poorly written. It made sense when Kai did not win the competition in the first season since the judges were looking for accuracy in following the sheet music, as interpretations are hard to score objectively. However, in the second season, some of the judges dropped one of the popular competitors during the first round because he rose to stardom on his own without a teacher like them behind him. One of the judges also tried to have Kai disqualified from the competition during the second round because he was so talented that he was a threat to Poland's winning. In both cases, the "official" reason the judges tried to give was that the two pianists' interpretation of Chopin's music does not correspond with theirs, which is a very lazy and vague reason for me. I wish they came up with a better excuse since interpretation is a very subjective matter, so it makes no sense to drop outstanding pianists so early in the competition for such a reason.
I also find it hard to believe that this will happen in real life in such a prestigious competition, considering that the judges selected are well-known and respected musicians. Doing such a blatant act of bias and giving weak excuses can be disproven easily by everybody, and they will be putting at risk the reputation they worked so hard to build for several decades. Some of the judges in the series, such as the one I mentioned earlier, were biased towards Poland and against the other countries. It may or may not really happen in real life, but it was tiring to hear them mention Poland in everything to the point that even the "forest" image evoked from Kai's piano style became "Poland's forest". However, there were also some interesting schemes, like some judges making deals with each other to score their students favorably. I don't know if that really happens in the competition, but it's at least realistic and it's something I can believe.
Aside from plot development, the series also suffered a bit with character development. Some side characters were introduced haphazardly, only to never be heard from again after a couple of episodes and with the exception of Kai and Sousuke's characters, the other main characters were slightly one-dimensional. One of the main protagonists, Shuhei, was just an insecure boy who was massively obsessed with Kai for most of the series. His turmoil was interesting to watch in the first season, and he also had great quotes like "I can't run away from [Kai] anymore. He was never catching up from behind me. He's been running far ahead of me." However, in the second season, all that maturity suddenly disappeared, with Shuhei just whining about his inadequacy and how he'll never be able to catch up to Kai. He was later able to find his own style and sound, which gave him the self-confidence he desperately needed since the first season. On a side note, for Shuhei to find his own style right before a performance is the worst possible timing― with consideration to the fact that a classical music performance is planned in advance, so a change in his technique spontaneously will lead to mistakes, and as his father said, the balance will crumble.
After Shuhei redeems himself to the viewers through his character growth, his father replaces him as the bothersome character in the series. He pointlessly checks out the other competitors' performances and endlessly worries that Shuhei will be dropped, ignoring the fact that his son has just given the best performance of his life. Although it was annoying to watch, it was a nice depiction of the impact of parents' expectations on their children's mental health. It was Shuhei's father who unintentionally influenced his son to believe that the latter can only grow as a musician after he bests Kai. Shuhei's father also unconsciously used his son to fight a proxy war with the disciple of the person he considers his rival ―Sousuke― despite the fact that the two never even officially met. In spite of having their own backstories, some characters remained forgettable and only served as a foil to Kai. I would have preferred if they spent all that time pointlessly building the others' characters into developing Kai's character instead, which seemingly took a backseat during most of the second season. Kai would just be shown watching while the other characters were performing. Additionally, Kai's performances were not that hyped, which makes you sometimes forget that he's the main protagonist.
I think many of the problems with this anime could have been solved if some things were executed better. Like many other anime about classical music, "Forest of Piano" also uses one of the tropes I hate the most in this genre― random flashbacks and the audience "talking" during performances. Even great anime like "Your Lie In April" is no stranger to this kind of practice, but I feel like this series was even more excessive with it to the point that we'd hear the thoughts of random members of the audience we don't even know. I think anime directors underestimate the capability of viewers to appreciate and listen to classical music, so they feel the need to fill the void with monologues, backstory narrations, and random comments from the audience. However, I think these scenes would be much more magical if the only thing you'll hear is the music, and the emotions of the piece are conveyed through visual effects rather than having a character explain what the viewers should feel. I would empathize more with each character's backstory this way in contrast to having them narrate with the music in the background. Moreover, the whole scene sometimes becomes disjointed, as the background music you hear doesn't correspond with what they're showing us. This is because the scenes follow the narration, rather than the music. Besides, in real life, a performer wouldn't be having flashbacks while performing in the first place, as being distracted would lead to mistakes.
Another problem that I think could have been executed better is the imagery from Kai's piano playing. As the title suggests, Kai's playing style is described as "forest of piano", and we would always be shown the image of a forest while he's performing. I'm not an expert in classical music, so I don't know if his performances really evoke such imagery. However, in my opinion, each piece has its own emotions and story, and although it's up to the performer how they interpret the piece, I find it confusing how it's possible that Kai's performance for any piece would always evoke the same image of a forest. I can understand that the director probably wanted to show that Kai is special and that he has a unique sound, but I wish they would have played more with the concept and varied the image of the forest somehow― for example having rain in the forest, kids playing in the forest, or birds singing in the forest. They addressed this issue towards the end and had Kai "exit" the forest, which means that he has evolved as a musician and can now use other imageries. Although I know what they meant, I think the director tried to simplify it too much by suddenly giving us random images of skies and seas while Kai was performing, which doesn't even make sense in the first place because his inspiration for the piece at that time was the plains.
The biggest problem for me with this anime is the animation. Most of the scenes are in 2D animation style and would change to 3D animation during performances. It was a nice idea since they were able to depict finger movements on the piano better with that kind of animation style. However, towards the latter half of the series, the 3D animation dropped a lot in aesthetics, which made it distracting for me to watch. There would barely even be any animation during performances. They would show a still frame of the performer for a few seconds, then digitally zoom and pan around. It would immediately be followed by a still frame of a random audience member, with more digital zooming and panning. I believe that the visual experience is just as important as the listening experience, so no matter how beautiful the music in the background is, the shoddy work with the animation takes away the pleasant experience and becomes a distraction.
Nevertheless, the series at least had a lot of great music like the opening theme, where they used Chopin's Étude Op. 10 No. 1 in C Major, commonly known as "Waterfall", but accompanied by an orchestra. They also used one of my favorite pieces, Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World": Fourth Movement, which they transcribed for a piano quintet. Some may be familiar with the first few seconds of the piece as the intro to the viral dance craze "Baby Shark"― yes, that was not the Jaws theme. I also loved how they had real professional pianists behind each of the main characters, making their performances much more authentic. I also greatly appreciated how the anime would put subtitles to label which piece is being performed since I'm not familiar with some of them.
Most of the pieces used in the anime were composed by Frédéric Chopin (one of the biggest names in classical music especially for piano)― almost as if they wanted to introduce the viewers to his works. But what I find very interesting is that the pieces they gave most emphasis on weren't the pieces I was familiar with like "Ballade Op. 23 No. 1", "Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2", or his well-known études. Instead, the series focused on many of his beautiful polonaises, mazurkas, preludes, ballades, nocturnes, and études that I haven't listened to as a casual Chopin fan, giving me a lot of pieces to add to my playlist. It makes sense that they played a lot of different Chopin pieces given that half of the anime is set in the International Chopin Piano Competition. However, I fear that a casual or non-fan may be overwhelmed with the number of pieces thrown at them since the series doesn't really linger on a particular Chopin piece for too long and quickly switches to the next, which isn't much time to get into it.
Overall, if you're an anime fan and want to experience a bit of the classical music world, I recommend watching the first season of the show. If you want to dive deeper into classical music, I would recommend watching the second season as well. If you're just in it for the story, then I don't suggest watching the second season since nothing really happens in it and the performances will probably feel repetitive and boring. Nevertheless, I think the finale of the second season was able to pick the series back up to its feet again― and it was a satisfying conclusion. Kai's journey to becoming the best pianist in the world was very engaging and heroic, nearly making you forget that he came from the fringes of society. I also found it interesting that the team behind the series are actually aware and conscious of holes in the plot, and they address them through the characters in the story. However, I think these holes shouldn't have existed in the first place, and they should have fixed them before they happened. Anyway, that's all for my review of "Forest of Piano", and thank you for reading everything!
__________________________________________________
Story: 7/10
Characters: 6/10
Cinematography: 5/10
Music: 9/10
Animation: 6/10
6.6/10
__________________________________________________
PROOFREAD BY: @lex.
GRAPHICS BY: @meltrosz
Written by: meltrosz
"Forest of Piano" is an anime television series adaptation composed of twenty-four episodes that were split into two seasons with twelve episodes each. The first season aired from mid-to-late 2018, while the second season aired from early-to-mid 2019. It is very rare for an anime to be set in the classical music world, due to few of them being able to achieve mainstream success like the popular series "Your Lie In April" or "Sound! Euphonium" did. As someone who enjoyed the two aforementioned series and loves listening to classical music, I was instantly interested in "Forest of Piano" and looked forward to discovering new pieces through the show.
The series is about a virtuoso named Kai Ichinose and his journey to becoming the best pianist in the world, as well as his interactions with the people he meets along the way. The story starts when Kai was in elementary school. He meets Shuhei Amamiya, the son of a famous pianist and a child prodigy, who was being bullied by their classmates. The two instantly became friends, and Kai shows Shuhei an abandoned grand piano he discovered near his home at the edge of the forest when he was three years old. Due to being abandoned for a long time, the piano has stopped producing any sound, and Kai is the only one who can play it for some reason. With it, he taught himself how to play the piano and is able to perform any piece after hearing it once. It is revealed that the piano belonged to Sousuke Ajino, a brilliant pianist who was considered to be the best in Japan but had a short-lived career due to an unfortunate accident. He fell into depression after the accident and decided to become a music teacher instead. Coincidentally, the school he was teaching in is the same one Kai and Shuhei attend. After hearing Kai play the piano in the forest one night, Sousuke became so enthralled with the former's playing that he finds new meaning in his dull life ― to let the world hear Kai's piano. He takes Kai in as his disciple, and later even became his guardian. Since Kai comes from the lowest rungs of society, his friends and family had feared that he would acquire a tarnished reputation because of them, therefore they decided it would be best if Sousuke was his guardian. This is also one of the reasons Sousuke wants Kai to be recognized as a world-class pianist― so that it would no longer matter what his background is since his talent will speak for itself.
Warning: the following review will be long because there were a lot of points I wanted to discuss, and I hope you'll stick to the end!
Based on the premise above, it is obvious that it had great potential to become an amazing adventure, and although I loved the first eight to ten episodes, I think the rest of the series fell short of its fantastic start. Nevertheless, it was able to capture the world of classical music in a beautiful and entertaining manner while still paying attention to minor details like how pianists focus their minds before performing. They also showed that even a virtuoso like Kai, who can memorize any piece by hearing it once, would still need to practice countless hours in order to be able to perform― although it was funny that Kai only had to repeatedly grind chromatic scales to play Chopin's "Minute Waltz (Op. 64 No. 1)". They also displayed how letting someone develop their musicality while they are still young gives them a huge advantage over others who only memorize the sheet music robotically, albeit the latter is more likely to win competitions in the series. I also loved the beautiful teacher-student relationship between Kai and Sousuke, which is almost like a father-son relationship. Kai would do anything ―even if it seems impossible― in order to help Sousuke, and the latter would also make countless sacrifices to push Kai to the top. However, I think the story fell apart halfway through the series.
The whole second season was set in the prestigious International Chopin Piano Competition― and the animators did a great job at replicating the venue. Due to the setting, there wasn't a lot of plot development during those last twelve episodes because they were mostly performances. Therefore, I think the writers felt the need to add drama to the story by making some of the judges in the acclaimed competition corrupt and biased. I cannot say for sure that corrupt judging in that competition does not happen, but the execution was simply poorly written. It made sense when Kai did not win the competition in the first season since the judges were looking for accuracy in following the sheet music, as interpretations are hard to score objectively. However, in the second season, some of the judges dropped one of the popular competitors during the first round because he rose to stardom on his own without a teacher like them behind him. One of the judges also tried to have Kai disqualified from the competition during the second round because he was so talented that he was a threat to Poland's winning. In both cases, the "official" reason the judges tried to give was that the two pianists' interpretation of Chopin's music does not correspond with theirs, which is a very lazy and vague reason for me. I wish they came up with a better excuse since interpretation is a very subjective matter, so it makes no sense to drop outstanding pianists so early in the competition for such a reason.
I also find it hard to believe that this will happen in real life in such a prestigious competition, considering that the judges selected are well-known and respected musicians. Doing such a blatant act of bias and giving weak excuses can be disproven easily by everybody, and they will be putting at risk the reputation they worked so hard to build for several decades. Some of the judges in the series, such as the one I mentioned earlier, were biased towards Poland and against the other countries. It may or may not really happen in real life, but it was tiring to hear them mention Poland in everything to the point that even the "forest" image evoked from Kai's piano style became "Poland's forest". However, there were also some interesting schemes, like some judges making deals with each other to score their students favorably. I don't know if that really happens in the competition, but it's at least realistic and it's something I can believe.
Aside from plot development, the series also suffered a bit with character development. Some side characters were introduced haphazardly, only to never be heard from again after a couple of episodes and with the exception of Kai and Sousuke's characters, the other main characters were slightly one-dimensional. One of the main protagonists, Shuhei, was just an insecure boy who was massively obsessed with Kai for most of the series. His turmoil was interesting to watch in the first season, and he also had great quotes like "I can't run away from [Kai] anymore. He was never catching up from behind me. He's been running far ahead of me." However, in the second season, all that maturity suddenly disappeared, with Shuhei just whining about his inadequacy and how he'll never be able to catch up to Kai. He was later able to find his own style and sound, which gave him the self-confidence he desperately needed since the first season. On a side note, for Shuhei to find his own style right before a performance is the worst possible timing― with consideration to the fact that a classical music performance is planned in advance, so a change in his technique spontaneously will lead to mistakes, and as his father said, the balance will crumble.
After Shuhei redeems himself to the viewers through his character growth, his father replaces him as the bothersome character in the series. He pointlessly checks out the other competitors' performances and endlessly worries that Shuhei will be dropped, ignoring the fact that his son has just given the best performance of his life. Although it was annoying to watch, it was a nice depiction of the impact of parents' expectations on their children's mental health. It was Shuhei's father who unintentionally influenced his son to believe that the latter can only grow as a musician after he bests Kai. Shuhei's father also unconsciously used his son to fight a proxy war with the disciple of the person he considers his rival ―Sousuke― despite the fact that the two never even officially met. In spite of having their own backstories, some characters remained forgettable and only served as a foil to Kai. I would have preferred if they spent all that time pointlessly building the others' characters into developing Kai's character instead, which seemingly took a backseat during most of the second season. Kai would just be shown watching while the other characters were performing. Additionally, Kai's performances were not that hyped, which makes you sometimes forget that he's the main protagonist.
I think many of the problems with this anime could have been solved if some things were executed better. Like many other anime about classical music, "Forest of Piano" also uses one of the tropes I hate the most in this genre― random flashbacks and the audience "talking" during performances. Even great anime like "Your Lie In April" is no stranger to this kind of practice, but I feel like this series was even more excessive with it to the point that we'd hear the thoughts of random members of the audience we don't even know. I think anime directors underestimate the capability of viewers to appreciate and listen to classical music, so they feel the need to fill the void with monologues, backstory narrations, and random comments from the audience. However, I think these scenes would be much more magical if the only thing you'll hear is the music, and the emotions of the piece are conveyed through visual effects rather than having a character explain what the viewers should feel. I would empathize more with each character's backstory this way in contrast to having them narrate with the music in the background. Moreover, the whole scene sometimes becomes disjointed, as the background music you hear doesn't correspond with what they're showing us. This is because the scenes follow the narration, rather than the music. Besides, in real life, a performer wouldn't be having flashbacks while performing in the first place, as being distracted would lead to mistakes.
Another problem that I think could have been executed better is the imagery from Kai's piano playing. As the title suggests, Kai's playing style is described as "forest of piano", and we would always be shown the image of a forest while he's performing. I'm not an expert in classical music, so I don't know if his performances really evoke such imagery. However, in my opinion, each piece has its own emotions and story, and although it's up to the performer how they interpret the piece, I find it confusing how it's possible that Kai's performance for any piece would always evoke the same image of a forest. I can understand that the director probably wanted to show that Kai is special and that he has a unique sound, but I wish they would have played more with the concept and varied the image of the forest somehow― for example having rain in the forest, kids playing in the forest, or birds singing in the forest. They addressed this issue towards the end and had Kai "exit" the forest, which means that he has evolved as a musician and can now use other imageries. Although I know what they meant, I think the director tried to simplify it too much by suddenly giving us random images of skies and seas while Kai was performing, which doesn't even make sense in the first place because his inspiration for the piece at that time was the plains.
The biggest problem for me with this anime is the animation. Most of the scenes are in 2D animation style and would change to 3D animation during performances. It was a nice idea since they were able to depict finger movements on the piano better with that kind of animation style. However, towards the latter half of the series, the 3D animation dropped a lot in aesthetics, which made it distracting for me to watch. There would barely even be any animation during performances. They would show a still frame of the performer for a few seconds, then digitally zoom and pan around. It would immediately be followed by a still frame of a random audience member, with more digital zooming and panning. I believe that the visual experience is just as important as the listening experience, so no matter how beautiful the music in the background is, the shoddy work with the animation takes away the pleasant experience and becomes a distraction.
Nevertheless, the series at least had a lot of great music like the opening theme, where they used Chopin's Étude Op. 10 No. 1 in C Major, commonly known as "Waterfall", but accompanied by an orchestra. They also used one of my favorite pieces, Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World": Fourth Movement, which they transcribed for a piano quintet. Some may be familiar with the first few seconds of the piece as the intro to the viral dance craze "Baby Shark"― yes, that was not the Jaws theme. I also loved how they had real professional pianists behind each of the main characters, making their performances much more authentic. I also greatly appreciated how the anime would put subtitles to label which piece is being performed since I'm not familiar with some of them.
Most of the pieces used in the anime were composed by Frédéric Chopin (one of the biggest names in classical music especially for piano)― almost as if they wanted to introduce the viewers to his works. But what I find very interesting is that the pieces they gave most emphasis on weren't the pieces I was familiar with like "Ballade Op. 23 No. 1", "Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2", or his well-known études. Instead, the series focused on many of his beautiful polonaises, mazurkas, preludes, ballades, nocturnes, and études that I haven't listened to as a casual Chopin fan, giving me a lot of pieces to add to my playlist. It makes sense that they played a lot of different Chopin pieces given that half of the anime is set in the International Chopin Piano Competition. However, I fear that a casual or non-fan may be overwhelmed with the number of pieces thrown at them since the series doesn't really linger on a particular Chopin piece for too long and quickly switches to the next, which isn't much time to get into it.
Overall, if you're an anime fan and want to experience a bit of the classical music world, I recommend watching the first season of the show. If you want to dive deeper into classical music, I would recommend watching the second season as well. If you're just in it for the story, then I don't suggest watching the second season since nothing really happens in it and the performances will probably feel repetitive and boring. Nevertheless, I think the finale of the second season was able to pick the series back up to its feet again― and it was a satisfying conclusion. Kai's journey to becoming the best pianist in the world was very engaging and heroic, nearly making you forget that he came from the fringes of society. I also found it interesting that the team behind the series are actually aware and conscious of holes in the plot, and they address them through the characters in the story. However, I think these holes shouldn't have existed in the first place, and they should have fixed them before they happened. Anyway, that's all for my review of "Forest of Piano", and thank you for reading everything!
__________________________________________________
Story: 7/10
Characters: 6/10
Cinematography: 5/10
Music: 9/10
Animation: 6/10
6.6/10
__________________________________________________
PROOFREAD BY: @lex.
GRAPHICS BY: @meltrosz
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I like the manga better. The movie adapted the material better too, so you could just watch this instead. The second season can be a drag. It's a series I'd like more with a better execution.
yeah I could see it was a great story but was ruined by the director and/or animation. haven't seen the manga or movie yet (although I know they exist) so I may check them out
