You know, maybe I ought to just give up trying to figure shit out.

As a general rule, I try to avoid putting any stock in collective review sites for anime, for reasons that should be fairly obvious.  Even so, there are times when I’m truly mystified by what I see at sites like MAL.  With a show like Gurazeni I expect it – that’s a very esoteric series about the business side of baseball in Japan (I can practically hear the collective yawn).  But when I saw that the premiere episode of Piano no Mori was bringing in an average well below 7.0, I confess that, in spite of myself, I was truly flummoxed.  What in the world is going on here – am I missing something, or are most viewers simply not seeing what I’m seeing?

Don’t get me wrong – this premiere wasn’t perfect.  The CGI piano sequences weren’t exactly exquisite, for example.  But on balance I found everything in it that I wanted to find.  It was certainly a complete mystery going in, ironically since it’s based on a beloved and strong-selling manga that’s already had a successful anime film adaptation (can it really be 11 years ago?).  Fukushima Gainax has basically no track record, and the staff (including both series and general director) not much more.  What would this show, the first large-scale project attempted by this offshoot of the most-legendary ever but now largely defunct studio in TV anime history, bring to the table?

I would argue they brought quite a lot.  The premiere started off briefly with the adult versions of the two main characters, Ichinose Kai and Amamiya Shuuhei (now professional pianists), before flashing back to the day they met in elementary school.  This, of course, takes us to familiar ground largely covered by the movie, but it’s been so long that it almost felt like the first time.  Just how much time this version plans to spend in the childhood arc is unknown – it only has 12 episodes to work with, and the manga has enough chapters with Kai and Shuuhei as kids to fill that on their own.

Series length is, in fact, the largest red flag I see with Piano no Mori, because the first episode certainly didn’t hoist any more.  For those unfamiliar with the story, Shuuhei (Taichi You) is a young aspiring pianist who’s just transferred into a new school.  In addition to the usual cast of bullies and morons, there’s a strange wild boy named Kai (Shiraishi Ryoko).  When the head bully gives Shuuhei the challenge that he must go to the forest at night and play the “ghost piano” there (the other option being to show his naughty bits), Kai and the bully get into a fight – a regular occurrence.  Eventually Kai leads Shuuehi into the forest, where he plays “Little Brown Jug” on the broken piano there – the same tune their teacher Ajino-sensei (Suwabe Junichi) had played earlier for Kai after the fight.  The catch – Shuuhei can’t get a note out of the piano, no matter how hard he bangs the keys.

Not having read most of the manga, this is the part of the story I’m familiar with – and it’s a good one, with many facets to it.  There’s ties to Kai’s troubled family history (his mother is called a “whore”, and apparently works in a less than savory industry).  There’s also the matter of Ajino-sensei’s past – he was once a famous pianist but had to give it up after an automobile accident, Shuuhei’s mother tells the surprised boys, and in fact we learn that the broken piano once belonged to him.  And of course, the matter of why only Kai can make that piano sing – and why he’s able to play brilliantly on a single hearing, despite no training, but only on that piano.

Gainax has taken the piano side of The Piano Forest quite seriously – they’ve hired different pianists to perform the roles of each of the characters who will be featuring later (there are several).  As I mentioned the piano scenes (those not the remainder of the premiere) are mostly CGI, and it’s not the most elegant depiction one could hope for.  Apart from that, though, I think this premiere is surprisingly handsome – the backgrounds are lovely, the character designs seem on-point, and the direction is snappy and stylish.  And weirdly, somehow it actually looks like a Gainax show, sort of.  I can find no reason why it should – none of the staff ever did work at the old Gainax studio in Tokyo that I can see.  But the lines, the movements, the cinematography – the lineage is definitely apparent.

So again – this was a highly-anticipated (relatively, and by a certain segment of the anime fanbase) series, with what seemed to be an excellent first episode.  That’s why the disconnect with the consensus reaction is so strong for me – I have no problem facing the facts when the premiere of a show in my top tier fails to deliver, but Piano no Mori is anything but such a case.  Are the ones driving the numbers down fans of the manga and movie who don’t like this version, or new viewers who aren’t taking to the story generally?  Who knows – and in the end, who cares I suppose.  This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve highly rated a series that was generally disapproved of, and I know it won’t be the last.

ED: “Kaeru Basho ga Aru to Iu Koto (帰る場所があるということ)” by Aoi Yuuki