No, I didn’t forget about Piano no Mori this time.  It’s just that the subbed version for Episode 7 was late, and this season is so crazy busy for me that my schedule is balanced on a knife’s edge – if I can’t watch a show when I’m slated to watch it, it’s going to have to wait.  At some point it just makes more sense to watch both episodes together and do a double-post.

As I suspected, this was indeed the timeskip episode – though I was surprised to learn that this show is slated for two cours.  Knowing that, it having devoted 6 episodes to the childhood arc makes a lot more sense.  As it stands, we pick things up something like five years later (which I believe is how it happened in the manga, but it’s been a long time).  Shuuhei (now played by Hanae Natsuki) has been in Europe that entire time, but his playing has gone totally off the rails – basically, because he’s still as obsessed with Kai as ever.  He’s returned to find Kai, who he saw playing while dressed as a clown  in a Youtube video, and hopefully in the process find himself.

As for Kai  (now played by Saitou Souma), he’s now attending a prestigious high school – which means he has to keep his family history a secret.  Also a secret is that he’s playing in some sort of hostess clubs while dressed as a woman named “Maria“, which is what he’s doing when Shuuhei finally catches up to him.  Ajino is acting as his guardian but Kai is living alone – in some sort of derelict bar called “Party Club” which I can only assume Ajino arranged for him.  He has a piano, soundproof walls, and all the concrete he wants to scribble frantically on – which he apparently does a lot.  Also entering the mix is Daiki (Kobayashi Yumiko), a bullied boy who Kai has taken on as a student.  But I have to ask – how did Shuuhei know Daiki’s name without having been told?  Was that a continuity error or what?

The second of these episodes is pretty much all Kai.  Shuuhei takes his leave, having mustered enough martial spirit from his reunion with Kai to return to the fray, and returns to Europe.  Kai, meanwhile, rededicates himself – quitting his job as Maria, much t0 the dismay of Saga-sensei (who if I read the situation right, seems not to have known who “she” was).  Takako makes her reappearance, too.  She’s been sidetracked by tendonitis in her right hand, but her teacher (Saga’s old sidekick) takes her to see Kai perform in a regional competition to boost her spirits.

That competition is an interesting one, in that Kai actually breaks a string during his performance of the “Moonlight Sonata”.  I never actually thought about that but sure, it could happen – and it would really suck for the person involved.  Kai manages to “compose” his own arrangement on the fly to compensate (which I suppose only a natural freak like him could have any hope of doing) but once again confounds the judges in the process.  Eventually he gets a special “Soloist Award” – which grants him the honor of playing with the NHK MHK Orchestra, to be conducted by a famous old friend of Ajino’s named Jean-Jaques Theroux (Shimada Bin).

All of this is building up, of course, to an eventual showdown in the Chopin Competition – the legendary competition held every five years in Warsaw (the next is due in 2020).  With Theroux’s letter of recommendation in his hip pocket Kai is a shoo-in – as for Shuuhei letters of recommendation are not the problem for him.  Kai’s entry gives him the final spur to enter himself – giving himself a year to try and find the missing piece that’s eluded him as a pianist for his entire life.

The symmetry in all this is rather neat – Ajino was to Shuuhei’s father what Kai is to him, and now each of them seem to be living out the endgame of their mentor’s rivalry.  We all know where the manga comes down on this – it’s Kai who’s the genius and Shuuhei the mechanic, the artist vs. the craftsman.  I’ve expressed my displeasure with this one-sided view that pervades classic music-themed fiction, but hey – the freedom that Kai is able to bring to his playing truly is something rare and precious.  As always, though, the more interesting story for me is how the workmanlike player is going to find a way to earn the respect he deserves – not least from himself.