Your Lie in April-5
. It did a great job of portraying her emotions both then and now.
Holy shit, this might have been the best directed episode this entire season. There are so many things that I could applaud were done well. First is the great usage of light throughout the episode to convey emotions. Yes it was somewhat heavy handed but I thought it was consistent enough and the actual emotions weren't melodramatic enough for it be negative. Instead we have the cloudy skies reflect the turmoil in all of the characters, not just Kousei and Kaori. Everybody is not sure what direction they should take their lives, and not just on a musical front. There's a sort of aimlessness that I thought the director did a fantastic job portraying. This makes the scenes at the beginning and ending all the more pointed in that Kousei and the world around him is filled with light. This emphasis on light really stands out too in the applause from the competition in that all he can see is light and Kaori. The show isn't just about the romance but rather a musician trying to find his footing again and I thought the applause scene portrayed that while Kaori is re-introducing color to him, his music is also making everything shine around him.
Another thing I liked about this episode is that everybody is seemingly aware of each other's feelings to an extent. Ryota's banner with Kousei felt very pointed in that manner and you can see the awareness in Tsubaki's eyes as she watches Kousei stare at Kaori on stage.
There were also minor scenes such as Kaori pointing out how piano is a part of Kousei like any other limb and the camera focuses specifically on his extremities such as his feet and hands(both things used to control the piano). Another great scene was Tsubaki with the ex-Captain. The show didn't have to
show her answer and it didn't bother
There were some really notable cuts throughout the episode and the motion in general seemed pretty fluid. Much more so than any of the other episodes. In fact on an animation front, this felt better than any of the other episodes even if there wasn't an actual performance. There was a lot of emphasis on body language and the animation portrayed a good amount of that, although there were some scenes that lingered a bit too long. The storyboarding too felt really strong this episode in how the shots were framed. The OST itself also was really great this episode but that's been a constant through all the episodes so far.
Fantastic fucking episode, really great stuff. It felt like everything came together into one really solid package with everything working on the same page. I have almost no complaints other than a bit too many still shots but when the rest of the episode is this damn good, it doesn't matter. Super impressed.
