There is a certain irony in Piano no Mori airing on the same day as Golden Kamuy.  Both are among my most anticipated shows of the spring, and both are probably being generally under-appreciated because of regrettable CGI.  I do get it – while nothing in this series has been nearly as bad as the bear stuff in Golden Kamuy, the piano sequences are such a potentially juicy part of the adaptation that it’s a shame to see them looking the way they do.  With enough skill and enough money CGI can be put to good use in anime, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence.  While I certainly have no reason to impugn the skill level of the folks behind Piano no Mori’s CG, I’m quite confident they’re nowhere close on the money part.

As for the rest of this adaptation, I’m basically very pleased with it, though that may be easier for me as someone who hasn’t kept up with the manga.  I know Fukushima Gainax is being forced to rush – they have only 12 episodes to work with after all.  It only makes sense that they’d speed through the sections of the manga already covered by the movie in order to get to the new stuff – hell, even first-rate reboots like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood rushed in order to focus on the new material.  But as much as I love this part of the story, it doesn’t feel like it’s being shortchanged to me.

As someone whose experience with Piano no Mori is mostly limited to the movie, the friendship between Kai and Shuuhei has always seemed like the heart of the story.  Shuuhei’s perspective tends to get overlooked, but in some ways his arc is actually more interesting.  He’s the one who understands the implications of what happens in this story, as far as anything piano-related. And he’s torn between his affection for Kai (clearly Shuuhei has never made friends easily) and his admiration for his talent, and his growing envy over Kai seemingly minute-waltzing in and taking his dreams away from him one by one without doing the heavy lifting.

Ajino-sensei does finally get Kai to do some heavy lifting here – by teasing the boy with Chopin’s Minute Waltz.  It’s the one piece he can’t master after one hearing, even on the piano in the forest – and the urge to retain his command over his talent is enough to get Kai to accept lessons from Ajino (which Shuuhei of course has never been able to do himself).  Yes, this is part of that “rushing” thing – Kai’s ability to master his practice drill in about half an episode is a bit of poetic license.  But it’s necessary to drive the story to where it needs to go – Kai entering the same piano competition as Shuuhei (one which Shuuhei’s mother had been trying to get Ajino-sensei to judge, so as to hear her son at his best).

The other crucial element at this stage of the story is the painful relationship between Kai and his mother, Reiko.  While it’s not getting as much oxygen as the friendship element, it didn’t in the movie or manga either – which is a shame since the great Sakamoto Maaya is playing Reiko.  There are some very dark elements to this subplot (as indeed there are in much of Isshiki’s original material), and I’ll be interested in seeing how deep this version wades into those waters.  Music will always be center stage in this series, though – and even if the performance sequences leave something to be desired visually, the music itself is superb.