Le Piano dans la forêt

Me and my wife couldnt stop watching it until the final episode. It is a beautiful and simple story enriched by the excellent soundtrack you would expect when exploring such a theme - the main character has a sad familiar background but mastered compositions from Chopin in his magic piano.

But the animation here is so poor, there is so many frozen images that I feel embarassed to recommend it to someone else who enjoys animation-style series. It looks like a perfect script lost for the low budged project. I hope some other team work in this script in the future with the proper technical resources it needs, specially because one of hardest things to do in animation is to synchronize and put weight in movements of someone playing an instrument.

Forest of Piano or Piano no Mori is based on a 2007 animation film also called Piano no Mori. I haven't watched the film but, based on the images I saw, I can tell the first season of the anime covers the story in the movie and the second season expands it. In the first part we watch Kai Ichinose difficult childhood, his connection with the piano in the forest and the beginning of his relashionship with Shuhei Amamiya. It's a simple yet captivating coming-of-age story, with a nice character development and a good narrative. Kai is very likeable and I couldn't help but be curious to know what was going to happen in his life, so I went straight to season 2. There are some differences regarding the two parts. The second has much more music and more characters. If you like piano and erudite music, then you are gonna enjoy this part a lot. It's delightful to watch and, essentialy, to hear the pianists through the 12 episodes of the season, the same amount of season 1. I can't say much about the second phase, cause it would be a spoiler so I'll just say it focuses on a very famous pianist from the romantic era and it's lovely to see the amount of love people from the country where he was born still gives him, through events. Like I said before, there are more characters in this season, what adds a lot to the narrative, that becomes more complex, with more conflicts. There is just one negative thing I gotta highlight in this review: the animation. The drawing is beautiful, but it lacks in motion. In the first season the animators used techniques to give motion to the characters while playing the piano, so it's delightful to watch and hear the piano. But, regarding season 2, there is almost no movement at all, therefore, it relies totally in the beautiful soundtrack. Like I said in the trivia, professional pianists were hired to play for the studio. I don't know so much about music yet I could totally notice the difference in the way each character plays the piano. It's a masterful job. That's why it's crucial to like erudite music to watch this anime, because it's what stands out in it. I loved the music, the landscapes and the energy about the city so much that it became a dream of mine to go there someday and pay homage to the brilliant composer the anime honors.

I not only loved this for the Classical Piano but also how it draws you into the minds of both pianist and audience. Maybe piano competitions and concerts aren't your thing but that's ok because I loved it. I was hoping for a season 3 but no such luck.

I'm a huge classical music fan. I play the piano a lot and I love doing so which is why I thought this series will be perfect for me, but I was sadly mistaken.

First of all, I would give the first season 8/10 The good: Fast paced storytelling, heartwarming storys and a likeable protagonist and antagonist (if you can even call him that). Beautiful music and it makes one want to play the piano.

The bad: You can't really enjoy a piece of music since it will be cut of at any second. On the other hand, sometimes they go on for a minute even though you've heard it a lot already just to "show the reactions". This is a big point, in a Manga you can write how it makes people feel but in animation, you should be able to feel that as well. which of course is very difficult, and they didn't really succeed.

The cringe-worthy: The animation. It's a 2D animation with 3D when they play the piano. The movement of the hands is very pleasant and rarely seen in animation, but when the whole body is shown, it looks creepy and unpleasant. But after a season, I got used to it.

Season 2: This season discarded almost everything good about the first and tried to better the cringe-worthiness by removing the 3D. But, they made it worse. Now there are juist still shots shown of them playing the piano. Sometimes they are clearly playing with both hands and the still shows them with one hand in the air.

The fast paced story comes to a halt because the entire season is just one big competition and the animation gets so lazy they use still shots about 50% of the time. Did the budget run out? What happend?

The good: The protagonist is still likeable and the music still good (except that it's now exclusively Chopin, which get's a bit boring after a few hours)

4/10

Overall 6/10 First season is recommendable, the second season not so much.

This is the best series I have ever watched. It is not just about classical music, it teaches you many life lessons. They thing is that you need a warm, soft, light soul to go beyond what your eyes see and what your ears listen. Love it!!!