Hey so I literally JUST added a couple super cool backing tracks to the Instant Piano Guide, so go get that and check them out, it's free so why not have a great time thank you enjoy ok bye: cornell.academy/instant-piano-guide-YLIA

as a violinist, I can say yes the animations for the violin playing is also spot on! This anime was actually one of the first ones I watched that made me get into the anime world :)

I got my orchestra conductor friend to watch this with me, and he kept gushing about the context of the pieces chosen for each part of the show. He explained how certain pieces were “odd” or “interesting” choices for a competition, but in the context of what’s happening in the show… the back story of the composer, like Chopin, and how and when he composed it played as EXTRA backstory to what was happening in the anime. He said it was such a treat for music history nerds as well.

The thing I love about YLIA is not necessarily the drama or the accuracy of the playing, but the combination of the two. The backbreaking practicing, the anxiety in the back rooms before the ultimate zone you get into on stage, all of it was spot on. It definitely reached me 🙏

Glad he’s finally checking this out

You wouldn't regret watching this one. Really good story and it's not very long either. The music is AMAZING!

The finger animation is actually rotoscoped. Meaning that there is a real life piano reference they used to make it look so accurate. If you want to see another well done musical rotoscope scene, check out the "God Knows" music scene from "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya".

The anime is really good. I think the MC has some trauma‐induced pitch deafness. When he's relaxed, he can play extremely complex arrangements with ease and naturality, but when there are some of his triggers involved, or in particularly stressing situations, he stops hearing the notes. The animators did a brilliant move on the visualization of his symptoms: when it starts, the piano gets submerged, and suddenly, he's playing underwater, with muffled, dampened notes and bubbles rising from between keys. I remember crying a lot when I watched it.

As I remember the animation uses a technique called Rotoscoping where real piano and player is used then animated over , if its done well you cant tell which are which. The Pianist is Yuta Matsumura. So you are already familiar with Yoko Kanno would be good to see more of her catalogue to react to, however another favorite is Kenji Kawai

I cried so hard watching this anime... a really beautiful story. The fact that the animation was accurate here just helped keep me immersed. I find when music performance imagery is off I suddenly realize "oh, I'm watching a cartoon" so I think the extra effort was worth it... for sure

This is the ONLY anime that my hubby has ever been able to get me to watch lol. I actually loved it.

This show is immaculate in almost every way. It has a lot of that anime drama, sure, but in context of the plot it really draws you into the pain the kids need to go through to become this good at playing

With this anime it definitely matters that it is correct! There's so much emotional importance to the piano playing and the fact you can clearly see him play immerses you into the story so much you won't stop crying. One of the best anime series in my opinion.

FINALLY. Been waiting for this one for YEARS. This series helped me cope with the death of my college piano professor (who passed away suddenly at the age of 54 from a massive heart attack while doing yoga, of all things). He lived an extremely healthy lifestyle so it was completely unexpected. We became so close that I began to view him as the father that I never had. I didn’t touch the piano for four years after he passed away. This series taught me that I’m not alone.

Fun fact: The people who played for piano and violin are actually professionals and have competed before. All violin are played by Yuna Shinohara and most of piano pieces are played by Tomoki Sakata and other pianists are Eriko Kawachi and Taiji Koga.

I love when this anime get’s some recognition. The story was interesting and the ending emotional. But the way it brought light to some amazing classical pieces was a joy. I would never have known of Chopin’s Ballad in G minor which is one of my favourite piano pieces to date. And as a terrible self-taught piano player, it’s so hard to learn and play!

trying.. not.. to cry!... Thank you for reviewing the music in this one! it's a stunning anime that really had an impact on me. Without giving too much away, the blonde girl (Kaori Miyazono) helps black-haired boy (Kousei Arima) through emotional trauma that made him stop playing piano. it's a deep and emotional story that is beautiful and sad. Captivating and devastating. For me, it's a masterpiece that made me love music even more.

This is one of the reasons why i love this anime. The animation, the story, the voice acting, everything about it is so wonderful. Glad you shared your take on this, Charles. 🥰

Honestly, this show got me into classical music 7-8 years ago, this was my 2nd ever anime. I didn't really have a piano or violin back then, so i self taught myself the guitar. Classical pieces are hard to play, but they are so worth it the moment you learn to play them correctly, then later play them in your style! For me YLIA is one of the best animes to exist. Thank you for reviewing the musical accuracy of this masterpiece, hope you watch it!

I love this anime so much. The story goes really deep and gets a dark turn. But yes it exaggerates everything including some silly moments that are weird for non anime fans :p but you'll get used to it and it'll suck you in, as if you can almost feel the emotion the pianist is going through ♡

Not piano-centric, but 'Sound Euphonium' has some of the most accurate depictions of a brass band playing, and it's a great anime too.

“Anticipation” is one of the principles of animation. Those keys moving before the fingers hit them will help keep things from feeling more rigid especially at the frames per second that animation uses. If you were going to film this you would probably go 60fps or more and then manipulate the motion blur for a similar effect.

Your lie in april is one of the animes I recommend to anyone that hasn't watched anime. Its incredible even to non musicians, but even better if youre in the scene, and have experience with performing!

Your lie in april is such a great story and only 24 episodes, no spoilers but it makes you feel so much, i still tear up when i hear the opening theme, words aren't enough, 10/10 would recommend

great vid as always! Quick note about the "frames blending into each other". That's not how it looks like in the original uncrompressed video of the animation 😄 to me that looks like a very common video framerate conversion error from the original 23.976fps to probably something like 30fps ✨ oh and frame blending is rarely an intentional choice in 2D animation. If at all, it's mainly due either the animator wants to make things more smooth with the easiest and worst looking method or it's used as an intentional dramatic effect like slomotion and simulation of a high shutter speed of real cameras.

Tomoki Sakata did the recordings for this piece, along with Yuna Shinohara on violin. Sakata got to the finals of the Queen Elizabeth competition in 2021! What I find most amazing about this anime is how the OST recordings differ from the ones used in the anime. For instance, there are moments when the main character is shown to be rushing (due to his inability to hear his own notes) and that's reflected in the music itself, it literally speeds up and is more clunky. The direction on these recordings were very attentive to detail as well, not just the animation!

In todays episode, Charles discovers the powers of motion capture animation

Why did you remind me about this anime I don't wanna cry

To answer your question, the pianists for the show are Tomoki Sakata and Eriko Kawachi. I don't know anything beyond their names and I'm not sure if there are any recordings of them playing for the OST, but since I know you talked about Kids on the Slope as well, there's definitely footage of the pianist and drummers recording for the show floating around somewhere online. I used to have the blu-ray for the show and it came with a behind-the-scenes video of the recording and rotoscoping process so maybe someone's uploaded it.

One of my all time favourites. I loved this series. Its touching, inspiring and detailed. It actually got me back into playing the piano after a long break that I took because of my grieving process.

This is exactly why I love sports anime. And while this isn't sports, it has the same accuracy and beautiful animations. How light their hands are while playing, the bounce of the keys, it's all so beautiful 😭😭😭

As an animator, my assumptions is that they had a 3D model of the piano that would play the song (with the little piano keys bouncing included). Then they recorded someone actually playing the song at different camera angles to the music, matched the camera angles to the 3D model, and then they drew each hand frame on top of that (also known as rotoscoping). The truth is that, with traditional hand-drawn 2D animation, a piano and the innerworkings of the piano are incredibly difficult to draw let alone animate. It's simply too complicated and would require a lot of people and/or time to animate it frame-by-frame. Perhaps it may be possible with a high-budget movie, but the camerawork of this TV series is so complex with such a detailed piano that it looks to be 3D-animated to me, and I'm pretty sure the hands are rotoscoped. You'll notice in things like the Tom and Jerry piano cartoon (which is all hand-drawn) that they use angles that can reuse animations of the piano keys falling down (or sometimes they don't show the piano keys at all). They don't have the camera move dynamically on purpose because that would be so difficult to animate by hand. As for the frames looking strange, that's likely the result of video interpolation, which was probably by the person who uploaded the video onto KZfaq or KZfaq itself. Usually the frames of an animation runs at 24 frames per second (and this depends on region and country, of course), but when the video codec is at 30 fps or 60 fps, it can cause wonky stuff to happen. Also, the video itself may be running at 24 fps while the animation is running at 12 fps, or on twos. What's likely is that they had both the background (piano) and the foreground (hand) run at 12 fps but on different frames, so when the background moves on Frame 1, for example, it will pause for two frames until Frame 3. Then they would have the foreground moving on Frame 2 and pause until Frame 4. This gives an illusion of running at 24 fps while simultaneously taking half the work to draw or half the time to render. With the complexity of the 24 fps running on opposing frames, interpolating the footage in any way would cause it to be very wonky. That being said, this scene has a lot of attention to detail to have a 3D model of a piano simulated to play the exact notes played by the musician. Pretty cool stuff!

It is impresive. I mean, even in movies they just tell the actor to press keys randomly and they put the music over it. To take the time (and in animation it is TIME) to accurately show the right notes is amazing.

Getting pushed to watch this show in high school literally pushed me into getting into pianos with how great it does to show the emotion that goes into playing instruments. Still my favourite musical animes.

Loved this anime before but you have made really appreciate it on a whole other level. Thank you and thank you to everyone involved in making this anime

I love the curiosity and amazement you portray in every video, you’re definitely an inspiring learner/teacher 🎶💯

What’s really crazy is that everything is drawn by hand, that - along with the direction - just gives you another perspective on the talent and effort it takes to make such a masterpiece.

so awesome to see you check this out, amazing amazing animation

I love how this is as much a review of the animation as it is the music!

This anime is just perfection the plot itself is heartbreaking and they give every character some development also the animation is correct as someone who plays both the violin and piano they animated every single part correctly

So glad you covered this. The animation is just as good as the music

This anime is one of the main reasons why I love classical so much, they always had great peices that went well with the plot and it really immersed me into the anime and music. This isnt an anime I have watched recently but it is my number one favorite show and i have watched it countless times. There are not many things I suggest watching but this is something I'll suggest until watched.

This is a perfect example of why so many get really into anime, and even more into certain studios or directors etc. etc. for the shear dedication to the fine minute details

Charles doing his best not to laugh out loud at the melodrama of this show (and anime) LOL, this show definitely is thick on the drama but i enjoy it. All good, definitely out of context it's really silly (and in context it can be funny how serious it is) lololol

Even just watching these few clips from the show the tears started to well up… damn this show!

This stpry is so rich and beautiful. Made me fall in love with orchestral music. Also, not really Piano related, but Oshi no Ko has a phenomenal opening and ending song.

When looking at anime as an outsider who hasn’t really dove in and given it a chance it DEFINITELY seems OVERLY dramatic and melodramatic and well… that’s because it IS. The strange part is that, after watching a few different shows (in Japanese dub, in particular, so you can avoid the mostly cringe English VO) you come to completely accept the drama of it and even love it. It becomes completely normal to you. I truly think there’s an anime out there for everyone. “A Silent Voice” is probably the first one I would show any non-anime watching adult. I’m 33 and have been watching anime since Pokémon was first airing in the US lol (for context).

The series is definitely worth a watch, one of my favourite series

This some is definitely one of my favorites, and the accuracy of the instruments is probably a big reason why.

You should also break down the instrument fingering animations in Hibike! Euphonium. They are ALL spot-on, every instrument, every time. It's insane, and it's my favorite anime of all time, being a band geek.

the concerts were what got me to sit through the painful and sad moments of this anime. its pretty much like oh god these people are getting so heartbroken...but its ok, theres gonna be an incredible concert after this!

Hey! is good to see that you are reviewing my favorite Anime, literally this Anime made me find out that I wanted to dedicate my life to music. The music of this Anime is incredible, and I'm not talking only about the classical music, I'm also talking about its original score, which pushed me to wanting to become a composer. I would really like if you could review it as well.

2:25 that's probably just an interpolated frame from the original animation being compressed and uncompressed onto KZfaq. Not an actual frame of the animation

I feel like they hired a real pianist as a reference for the animation, I really appreciate the amount of effort they put into this and I really mind if instruments plays the right note in anime as someone who knows musical instruments too. And also great review! Thanks for putting up a video like this ^_^

Hot damn that rebound on the piano keys is amazing!!!

I'm watching this right now, and it's a phenomenal anime. Glad he's looking into it.

Merci to the musicians and the graphic artists for this masterpiece.

The love and attention that went into this show is what elevated. And I agree I watched more for the beautiful piano section than the actual story. Though dont get me wrong the story its self though simple is fantastically told. Heartbreaking. Lastly such a shame you only teased us with the Twinkle Twinkle little star part. One of my favorite pieces to listen to.

I loved watching your reaction to these scenes!! This anime is really something special and it’s more of an experience than anything. I just finished Trigun Stampede and there’s a couple scenes I’d love to see your reaction to when it comes to the piano! A beautiful piece is played in that show a couple times and I think you’d really enjoy it!

So glad that you finally checked this out. This anime brought me back to piano, along with *many* friends =)

Seeing this man be so happy about one of my favorite animes made my day! Also the show is good, and I definitely reccomend it if you're willing to cry from an anime

I've watched this anime already, but after seeing how much work has been put in to make everything accurate, I'm going to binge watch it again!

That shot of the internals of the Steinway looks like a top-down shot of an actual performance of the piece (at least that section) but warped and stylized in a way that you can merge it into a scene and its not too jarring but you retain the accuracy of the visuals. Also I wonder what their arrangement was with Steinway to have so much product placement lol

Your Lie In April might be my favorite series, since it reverberates so deep in my soul.. Please allow yourself to watch this show; it is simply beautiful and a heart-wrenching story.. it won't leave you untouched.. trust us on this one

Never heard of this but so tempted to find it

YESSSSSSS IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR 2 YEARS

I started watching this after seeing this video. You would enjoy the hell out of it being a musician. For me, it feels like home

This was one of the first few anime that I ever watched over a decade ago, and I really need to rewatch it now that I've seen many more anime and have a deeper understanding of the music that it showcased.

I think a few of the quirks here aren't necessarily intentional, but are an artifact of compositing hand-drawn frames with 3D-rendered frames.

Carole and Tuesday has very beautiful soundtracks with piano def worth a check!

Great now I can cry at the accuracy and the plot

LOVE THIS😭😭😭GONNA START CRYING

I’m just here to comment on how excited Charles is getting over one of my favorite anime (Your Lie In April) And to hear him describe music the exact same way I do (“itching that part of your brain”)

I have a habit of looking at the fingers of pianists in movies, animations, etc. to see if they are playing to see if they are playing the correct notes. Super impressed at the level of accuracy and detail of the pianists in this anime.

The studio Kyoto Animation has always been like this in their works, matching animation to actual proper instrument usage.

One of the best single season shows of all time!

Didn’t realize the animation was accurate but that’s amazing! Gives me even more appreciation for the show

In the past, there have been a surge of Volleyball Players/Coaches reacting to the anime "Haikyuu" and it was ALWAYS a hit. Now a days reactions in shows like those are extremely saturated. However, I've yet to see a pianist react to the full show of Your Lie In April episode by episode. Now ofcourse this isn't a demand, but I believe everyone would enjoy a thorough reaction

Good one - as a pianist i got hooked onto this show so hard that i watched it in one sitting. Watch out for the die hards though because apparently theres another show that this one mimics and folks love to tell you how “ThAtS nOt ThE oRiGiNaL”.

First of all, I love the music in this anime! I also love how the hands are animated. Now, knowing they're spot-on, makes it even more wonderful. As for the animation, I'm fairly convinced they didn't animate all those hand movements manually, figuring out each note individually. That would be very tedious and time consuming. That said, two possible techniques to animate them come to mind: 1) Rotoscoping. That's how the original animations, especially Fleischer cartoons, were done. A real person was filmed doing something intricate, say, a dance. Then each frame would be projected onto a board, where the animator would draw on top of it, to capture precise movement, but with whatever character was desired. If this were used here, the hands playing the piece would have had to be filmed at the angle of the animation, and the animation done on top of it. HOWEVER - I think the next technique is more likely: 2) CGI. In particular, the performer would have been using a MIDI keyboard, which digitized each note and time as they were played. Normally this is done to let a computer control the playback, or sync other instruments, but, in theory, someone could create a program to link a CGI piano to the MIDI playback. This would be perfectly synced, and the keys could be rendered to depress on the virtual piano just as the playback was done. Then, the piano could be rendered from any angle, any camera movement, in the animation program, with a filter which made it look like 2D animation. Then the hands and arms could be drawn in on top, to match the keys as they're being depressed. Frankly, the piano looks like it's likely a 3D rendered piano with a 2D animation effect applied. So this one is what I think is happening. Either way, it's a great result, and I loved this anime, the story, and its music!

Oh there's definitely context for why it's all so dramatic and emotional lol. You should watch the series, it's all one season so easy to binge, and you will feel all the emotions 😅

I WAS WAITING FOR THIS

Your lie in April is an animation master class. emotionally and artistically speaking it is a price of art work.

I'm so glad your checking out this gem!

I noticed and i cared its just that as a piano player its nice to see accurate depiction

Salute to the production team

gotta say, this is the first time i've heard someone describe your lie in april as "kinda hilarious"

Hey Charles, I highly recommend the choral music by Christopher Tin for his Civilization games and some of his other work. Its really great and I think you would find it really interesting. I recommend the pieces: Sogno di Volare, Baba Yetu and Waloyo Yamoni. they are all amazing and I'm sure there are other amazing pieces as well.

Always count on YLIA for the most dramatic dialogue

when i first watched Your Lie In April, i was blown away by the instrument animations. i can't say what my impression was on my second viewing, because despite being absolute trash for tragedy, i have been unable to rewatch YLIA due to absolute breath-shattering heartache. i would highly recommend actually watching it for the context of The Drama because the character work in this puts the instrument animation to shame and tears your heart straight outta your chest and then chucks it in a woodchipper to boot 😭😭😭

I highly recommended the whole anime !! The context here is emotional. Everyone there has something to overcame, and something that they wanna show to others. A feeling that they wanna share with the world. The overreactions feel surprisingly immerisive while you're actually watching the whole show

I'm not Violonist but Animator and I can tell that this animation of the violon is absolutely stunning, even more impressive than the Piano ! It's incredibly hard to animate and those guys just gave us a lesson.

I also strongly recommend "the Forrest of Piano" -- it has really interesting and unique piano animations and the story is incredible

Forest of Piano was my first piano animation anime reference and i was blown away

The 3D artists modeled a simulation-ready piano, and probably worked with a technical artist to automate converting any midi 88 key song into a simulated animation. Lay the audio on top and sync the animation to it.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COVERING MY FAVORITE ANIME OF ALL TIME, CHARLES!!! ❤❤❤❤❤ Edit: Also, I watched some of the behind the scenes footage of how they were able to recreate perfect piano (and all instruments played) in the anime. Put simply, they put musicians into mocap suits and tracked their movements and fingerings as they played, and the animators did the rest. It’s beautiful!

I loved this 😍

There's a few anime that I feel the the animation studio loves the source material. When they show their love in the anime, it really shines. This is just one example

This show was so freaking good! I straight up ugly cried, I mean sobbing like my whole family and the dogs too just died at the end!

One of the things I enjoy the most about anime is the general attention to detail. There are lots of examples of this in the genre.