Your Lie In April

Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso (Your Lie in April) was a great manga and anime series. It mixed classical music and drama into one really emotional package. (If you didn't feel anything during episode 22, you have a heart of stone.) Recently, a live action adaptation was released in Japan, subsequently making its way over here. The result is a bittersweet, serviceable adaptation of the source material.

The film is about Kousei Arima (Kento Yamazaki), a piano prodigy who suddenly quit the music scene a few years back. He's content living a monotone life until a free-spirited young violinist, Kaori Miyazono (Suzu Hirose) who helps him break out of his shell. While it sounds like your cookie cutter Manic Pixie Dream Girl story, the whole thing turns on its head during the last sequence, making you re-evaluate the film all over again.

As many adaptations are wont to do, Your Lie in April trims out a lot of the sidestories and extra fat (see below for a list of all the things I noticed) and focuses solely on Kousei and Kaori's relationship. The transition from anime to live action also makes the finished product a lot more grounded and sober and a lot less whimsical and epic. It's a whole different treatment of the story that still works in a certain way, though in my opinion I enjoyed the anime a whole lot more, since it had time to flesh out the characters.

Kento Yamazaki and Suzu Hirose deserve props for their respective performances. Yamazaki nails his portrayal of Kousei, with all the insecurities and turmoil the character had. On the other hand, Hirose does her usual cutesy routine but cranks it up to eleven, which in hindsight is actually quite brilliant. If you're a fan of either actor it's really fun seeing these two interact.

The classical music aspect of the film (one of the anime's biggest selling points for me) is decent enough, though clever editing could have made it stand out - at times the execution is a bit flat. The absence of Masaru Yokoyama (who scored the anime series) is missed here as well - his rousing scores could have underlined some of the more emotional scenes. And finally the film's grounded treatment dilutes the drama a bit for me, although the poignant last sequence is no less effective.

As far as anime adaptations go, Your Lie in April is thoroughly enjoyable - but it does come with the limitations of the live action format. If viewed as a standalone feature, its a very decent, at times bittersweet, drama.

------SPOILERS BELOW---------

The anime and the live action movie differ from each other in the following ways, namely:

• The ages of the characters have been shifted from middle school (age 14) to highschool (age 17).
• All of the sidestories have been cut - ALL of them - meaning no Emi Igawa and Takeshi Aiza, no Kousei tutoring Takeshi's sister.
• Kousei's mom is far less brutal in the live action series - in the anime she's borderline crazy. This is an understandable decision since it would take less time for Kousei to gain closure in the live action; in contrast it took Kousei more than half of the anime to do the same thing.
• The classical music performances are treated more realistically whereas in the anime you'd see balls of light floating around. Not to mention the completely epic final duet (seen in in Episode 22 of the anime) doesn't take place in a different dimension or something.
• Hiroko is present in the story early on, and it's implied that she's Kousei's foster mom (or something to that effect) in the live action film. She's older in the film (instead of being a twentysomething badass in the anime.) Hiroko's guilt over having Kousei's mom train Kousei in the piano is gone as well.
• Kaori's parents don't have much of a backstory in the live action film. 
• The bridge jump sequence has a different backstory that has nothing to do with Tsubaki, though the live action version pulls it off thanks to the two actors.

As for the specific classical performances:

• Kaori's first piece in the violin concours is a different piece: it doesn't sound like the Kreutzer sonata (or it might be a different movement of the same sonata, I don't recall clearly.)
• Since the sidestories are gone, the film omits Kousei's first concours performance (where he performs Chopin's Etude in E Minor Op. 5 no. 25,) and his piano duet with Takeshi's sister (where he plays the Waltz from Sleeping Beauty). The second song would have demonstrated Kousei's growth as a pianist, while the first song is one of the major events in the anime, where he first truly realizes he loves Kaori and expresses it through song. Indirectly because of that, the scene where he catches Kaori asleep as he practices with the piano is changed - it's taken at night instead of day, and he's practicing a different song (Liebeslied, which occurs a bit later in the anime.)
• Speaking of Liebeslied (Love's Sorrow,) the performance is a bit different because of the changed dynamic between Kousei and his mom. 
• The dramatic final performance where Kousei plays Chopin's Ballade in G Minor Op. 23 is, as stated before, a lot more realistic, and the finale has far fewer flourishes compared to the epic anime goodbye. On the other hand, Kaori's entrance in the live action version of the  duet is much more of a surprise (In this case, I prefer the live action version) and she exits the piece far later.