Piano - my take ( no spoilers )

Well, I finally got a chance to see an episode of 'Piano', the new Kids Station 'slice-of-life' anime about a school girl, her friends, and her piano lessons. And although I didn't care for the show at all, I'm not going to do a sarcastic number on it as I recently did with 'Saikano'. That's because 'Piano' is unpretentious and earnest, but never-the-less still unbearably bland.

This is a show where the characters are all very familiar stereotypes. The heroine is meek, quiet and looks like a little kid. There are the loud-mouthed boy classmates, there is the close friend who needs encouragement, there are the parents who are wise and understanding. But no one has any sort of personality. While watching some scenes I had to remind myself that this wasn't a show about the mentally disabled.

I know, there are legions of fans for this sort of series out there, all willing to point out that there are no mechas, no spaceships, no magicians, no babes in skimpy clothes, no violence and so on. But at the same time, there is no drama, no suspense, no mystery, no wonder, and no surprises. This is the 'vanilla ice cream' of drama, with a 'message' in every episode, but no 'means' of delivering it.

In addition, strangely enough for a story about a budding piano player, there is very little piano music in the show, or much background music at all. The one short Chopin waltz in the episode I saw was adequately performed, but the overall effect of the music is quite weak. One would have thought that the creators of the series would have used piano pieces, both well known and original, to add to the overall feel of the show, as 'Princess Tutu' does so spectacularly well with its use of ballet themes to orchestrate the mood of every episode.

Let me ask all you fans of these 'quiet', 'laid back', 'trip down memory lane' sorts of shows - is it really necessary to make these 'slice-of-life' series so downright boring? Life isn't boring. Life isn't a series of dull cliches. Life isn't a group of people with vacant stares. But life is too short to waste time watching series like 'Piano'.

Dave Baranyi

Actually slices of life are boring to people outside of those lives. Very few people out there live lives that are a thrill a minute. We get up. We go to school/work. We come home and try to snatch some moments of excitement and entertainment before we go to bed and start the cycle all over again. What makes excitement exciting is that is comes in small quick doses.

This is not to say that Piano is the greatest anime since Nausicaa. For those who like this genre is more of the same. Not my cup of tea but it seems to have its admirers. Personally I prefer Azumanga Daiou though I doubt real people are living the Azu Girls' lives either.

From what I've seen of Piano which admittedly isn't very much the heroine is living the very normal life of a Japanese schoolgirl. Which is to say it is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

This is why I find that anime fans do not cross over with indie comix and zine fans much. It's really a matter of aesthetics. Often one finds beauty in the plain subtlty of what could be said to be a mundane existence. A certain type of mono no aware, to coin an overused phrase. Certainly if you think Piano is dull, you'd find the works of Adrian Tomine monotonously boring and precious. My favorite series is Cowboy Bebop, which is undoubtedly a show heavy on action, yet the part of Cowboy Bebop that makes it so wonderful to me isn't just the masterfully choreographed fist and dog fights or the wonderful score, it's the split second look on Spike or Faye or Jet's face in a moment of quiet dialogue. For example the scene where Faye is sitting in the resturant calling the Bebop in 'Speak Like a Child', her face and body language in the split second shot after she learns they went to earth without her before it cuts to another scene is priceless to me. I find I can watch something like Piano over and over again because my personal tastes run towards the understated. To me it's one of those things you can watch over and over again and catch new meanings all the time, like Angel's Egg. An odd comparasion but that's how it works for me. I'm not saying that it's better or more intellectual or crap like that, because it's not really about that sort of pretention. It's very much a matter of taste, and comparing apples and oranges. After all 'My Dinner with Andre' is an excellent movie, as is 'Dirty Harry' or 'Fight Club'. It's just very different in the ways they are good. Had Alexandria triumphed and not Rome, the extravagant and muddled stories that I have summarized here would be coherent, majestic, and perfectly ordinary. -Jorge Luis Borges

'My Dinner With Andre' was an interesting film, because it attempted to do something very different with film as a medium. Yet it still had subtlety, surprises, conflict and resolution. But it also was unique, which is a key factor, because one wouldn't want to watch a similar attempt in the hands of weaker writers or directors.

My complaint with the 'Pianos', 'Too Hearts', and other 'slow life' anime series is that they don't attempt to bring anything new to the audience, nor any surprises, nor any risk, nor any subtlety. These are concepts that could be done so much better, but suffer from a lack of effort on the part of the creators. It's not the pace that makes a film boring, it's the writing and directing, regardless of the pace.

Dave Baranyi

The thing is, Dave, that's 100% your opinion. To Heart is extremely popular in Japan. Just because you don't like it, doesn't make it objectively bad.

I for one liked To Heart quite a bit. It was a much more interesting and 'realistic' look at slice-of-life romance than most anime, which show extremely cliched, predictable and unbelievable romances.

Blade

( snipping to the latest comments )

Blade -

Jerry Lewis films are very popular in France, and he is considered a serious artist there. That still doesn't make the bulk of his films any good.

It's been quite a while since I watched 'Too Heart', so I can't make too detailed a critique, but some things in it still stand out as templets for cliches in many of the subsequent 'slow life' anime. For example, we have the heroine who 'loves' the hero because he happened to pick up her books one rainy day when they were little kids. We have date-sim-style characters who could be interchanged in numerous other series without blinking. We have really no indication why the hero should eventually develop an interest in the heroine at all. But most characteristic of this style of show is that the 'realism' of the characters is depicted by their lack of imagination, humor or sense of irony.

Is it too much to ask that the writers of such shows try to bring some additional detail to the characters than what you might find in a late '90's date-sim game? These sorts of shows are not so much 'bad', but disappointing, because they don't attempt to bring more to the audience.

Blade said

I like To Heart too. It had some weird magical stuff, but it didn't let that stuff take over. But I don't think Dave is trying to say anything otherwise, I mean, we all know that he is just saying his opnion.

Wouldn't know...never watched a Jerry Lewis film.

I'd like to know on what OBJECTIVE grounds you can say anything is good or not, though.

Well, one mistake right there.

Akari likes the hero because he, while laid-back, is consistantly a thoroughly nice guy who goes out of his way to help out anybody who needs it. Something that gets demonstrated repeatedly in the first few episodes.

I call bullshit. How are they any more interchangable than any other characters, in any anime, anywhere?

She has a crush on him, and he has hormones?

I call bullshit, twice. Remy, Shiho...hell, even the main character clearly all have all three. You're projecting a false impression on them because you don't like the show.

Dave, I'll repeat again: just because YOU don't like the show doesn't mean it's bad.

Blade

Oh, -I- know that. But I'm not so sure Dave does.

Blade

Paraphrasing- 'But the Ranma fight thread analyses are all rationally based in FACT I tell you, FACT!'

Jonathan Fisher wondering if he needs to run and hide now...

Yeah, you're joking, but...

To an extent they are. When we see that Ranma can lift 60 tons (or so) with one hand, and that Akane nearly broke HER hand smashing a concrete wall, you can make a pretty objective analysis on which one is stronger. And so it goes.

Blade