This is probably one of those “the less said the better” situations to be honest.  But it’s a finale, and I’ve been covering Piano no Mori for 24 episodes so I feel as if I have to at least say something.  I hate to end a series with a really negative post, which is why this really feels like a no-win situation to me.  To be blunt, I would be really hard-pressed to come up with any positive impressions about this final episode.  I guess the most positive thing I can say is I still care enough to be disappointed.

I guess what really irritates me the most is that I feel as if I’ve been bait and switched by this series to an extent.  I thought this was a story of a friendship, of two different types of talent trying to find their voice, of affectionate rivals.  But Shuuhei turned out to be completely vestigial to the story, a prop.  Indeed, every half-serious prediction I made about what could go wrong in the final arc was pretty much an understatement.  Shuuhei was almost completely absent, his personal struggle got no resolution whatsoever, and the narrative dissolved into an orgy of hero-worship and preposterous intrigue.

Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

I really don’t care about Ajino’s hand, though I do think any doctor who’d handle Kai’s request the way he did is a royal prick.  I do care that the Chopin Competition was made a mockery of as it was, though that may be deserved to at least an extent (not this extent, though).  I care most that the story elements that were set up very well in the early arcs were almost all dead ends, cast aside in the service of the author’s adoration of Kai and Kai’s adoration of Ajino.  I have dipped into the manga a bit to see if things were handled in more or less the same way there, and it seems as if they were, so I’m really not blaming Gaina for this.  Though they sure as hell didn’t do anything to fix it.

So… buttons.  I mean, there’s really not much more to add, is there?  I do think the music in Piano no Mori was for the most part rather good, and it deserves credit for that.  The individual “piano actors” did a good job communicating both the talent and personality of their characters,  I thought.  But ultimately the series falls into the same traps that manga and anime about classical music almost always fall into, and really does a disservice to its own characters to boot.  That’s a shame, but at least the soundtrack was good.