Piano

When Miu was young, she was fascinated by the piano and took up lessons.

When the show opens, Miu is in middle school. She is shy, a soft-spoken girl who doesn't have a lot of confidence in herself. Her friends would describe her as "sweet" and "quiet." At this point, Miu has been taking piano lessons for some time and while people have told her that she's gotten very good over the years, Miu herself feels she's not really good at anything—including the piano. Her teacher, Mr. Shirakawa, is often frustrated with her playing. Although she plays every note exactly correct, her heart just isn't in it...

Meanwhile, Miu's come of the age when she's noticing boys and this shy young lady has noticed the handsome Kazuya Takahashi—even if he hasn't noticed her.

This is Miu's story. The story of a young girl who is on a journey to discover the melody within her own heart and the courage to express it.

(Source: RightStuf)

Nomura, Miu Main

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Nomura, Akiko Supporting

Neya, Michiko Japanese

Nomura, Seiji Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Shirakawa-sensei Supporting

Miyamoto, Mitsuru Japanese

Nomura, Hitomi Supporting

Sasaki, Yuuko Japanese

Takahashi, Kazuya Supporting

Fukuyama, Jun Japanese

Takizawa Supporting

Hoshi, Souichirou Japanese

Matsubara, Yuuki Supporting

Kawakami, Tomoko Japanese

Yamada, Yuuko Producer

Sudou, Norihiko Director

Watanabe, Jun Sound Director

Egami, Kiyoshi Episode Director

Reviews

Feb 11, 2010

JustJuice

Recommended

Piano -The Melody of a Young Girl’s Heart: Reviewed.
Original Run: 11/11/2002 – 01/13/2003
Genre: Drama, Romance.
Anime Director: Norihiko Sudo

Plot:
Music has many distinguished sounds, sounds of joy sounds of pain, but it also sheds a new light to a path so serene that it’s captivating. Miu Nomura (our heroin) has walked this path from a wee tot to her adolescent stage. She had incredible talents ever since she was young, and playing the piano was her specialty. She was blessed and her talents were at their peak when she shared what she loved doing best with an audience. As Miu reached her preteens, she began to struggle ... like all musicians do as they try to find their muse. The path she once walked was shrouded with darkness, and her talents had come to a screeching halt. To struggle is to survive, and reinventing oneself is a hard task than it appears to be. Through the pain, and social struggles, Miu continues to march down that black painted path in hopes of rediscovering her former self.

Characters:
Miu Nomura.
Voiced by: Ayako Kawasumi (Japanese), Rebecca Soler (English)

Miu Nomura was born a prodigy; she had an unbelievable talent for playing the piano and found it to be the rhythm of her life. Playing the piano was her way of expressing herself and a way of connecting her emotions with those around her. The urge to share the wonderful feeling that music instilled in her heart with her beloved ones, is what fueled her ambitions and allowed her to excel at her forte. With such feelings, puddles of nerving emotions begin to develop, and Miu’s heart was enveloped with unfamiliar feelings, feelings of love, friendship and despair, that she struggles with immensely as she tries to lead a normal life. Despite this enormous weight that she caries on her shoulders, she continues to strive forward in hopes of grasping the emotions that once filled her heart with immeasurable joy.

Yuuki Matsubara.
Voiced by: Voiced by: Tomoko Kawakami (Japanese), Zoe Martin (English)

Yuuki is a wonderful person; she’s friendly and enjoys helping others. She is energetic and full of life and is always putting others ahead of her own needs. Yuuki’s Miu’s best friend in the series and they share a warm and sensational relationship in the series. Through out the entire aspect of the story telling, we find Yuuki always keeping a watchful eye on her best friend, as she tries to help her deal with the daily struggles of a preteen’s life. Together they embrace their surroundings and march towards a resolution to the crippling problems that befell them. Amidst the misery, Yuuki’s determination to help her friend never once wavered, and this quickly becomes one of her strongest traits in the series.

Kazuya Takahashi.
Voiced by: Voiced by: Jun Fukuyama (Japanese), Michael Sinterniklaas (English)

There comes a time in every boy’s life when he has to decide between his future and love life, and Takahashi is no stranger to this moral dilemma. Takahashi is a hard working teenager that’s devoted to his studies and his school life. In the series, he serves as Miu’s serene crush and one of the reasons that hindered Miu’s talents. Although this is somewhat true, Takahashi is not entirely to blame, as it was Miu’s uncontrolled emotions towards him that caused her severe disillusions.

Summation:
Music has powerful affects, effects that can heal, sadden or spring forth an astounding surge of energy to the human vessel. Piano is a series that embodies all of these affects that music produces, and it does this through a young maiden named, Miu Nomura. The viewer is immersed in all what music has to offer through Miu’s struggles in the series. Miu’s struggles are portrayed wonderfully via a terrific script and rich character, that the majority of the viewers are likely to be familiar with. Piano is a powerful series that offers a sensible insight on teenagers in their adolescent stage, and how they contend to deal with internal uncertainty.

Theme:
The show does well to establish a moral theme that everyone can familiarize with. Through powerful characters and a beautiful story line, Piano dictates the pace on how humans struggle with love, friendship and change. The series solely focus on how change can affect us all, but it also depicts how love and friendship can have such tremendous effects in our everyday life. The message is spectacularly delivered through solid actors and self-conscious characters. The viewer is sure to be enthralled as he is taking on a journey of struggle, despair and salvation.

Media Related:
Although it’s not the originator of its genre, piano does well to deliver a solid story line that is sure to appease the mass audience of the genre. Through elegantly designed characters and breath taking scenery, piano amasses all the necessary traits of a magnificent drama filled, and romance inspiring series. Not often are we blessed with extraordinary story telling and memorable characters, and only a few series have succeeded in this beloved field, but Piano quickly erases all doubts from the viewer’s mind from the get go to the preclusion of the series, and in doing so it distinguishes itself and establishes a solid foundation for itself as one of the greats.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 31, 2007

jet2r0cks

Mixed Feelings

I’m usually into slice-of-life anime, but Piano was just too real. Usually, slice-of-life anime isn’t really close to life, because if that happened, it wouldn’t be that interesting. Everything that happened in Piano had a high probability of happening in real life, so I wasn’t really interested. I’m not saying it’s bad, but I don’t think it’ll ever be one of my favorites.

One thing I noticed about Piano is that the story focused more on the lives of Miu’s family and friends. It was only in the last 4 episodes that the focus shifted to Miu. I guess it was better that way, because Miu ... was kind of uninteresting. Her friend Yuki was more interesting. So was her piano teacher, Shirakawa-sensei. I also love the fact that most of her family loved to drink and be merry.

I did like the voice actors for this anime. Ayako Kawasumi played the role of Miu. I don’t think it was Miu was one of her best roles, but she’s great nonetheless. Jun Fukuyama, one of my recent favorites with roles such as Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass and Kimihiro Watanuki from xxxHOLiC, was great as Takahashi.

I noticed the character designs right away, because the design is very similar to Ah! My Goddess’. That’s mostly because Kousuke Fujishima, who did the original manga of Ah! My Goddess, was the one who did the original story and character designs for Piano. All in all visuals were okay, although there wasn’t really anything special about it. Simplicity was the key feature of the visuals, and if you prefer simple over extravagant, then you’ll like Piano.

The music, as expected, consisted of a lot of classically-influenced piano music. I was really impressed when I found out that Ayako Kawasumi played the piano for the opening song. She’s certainly very talented. The ending theme, “Kokoro no Oto” by Yoko Ueno, was also very nice – I memorized it right away.

Since it was very close to real life, one good point to add about it is that it’s very easy to watch. If you want to watch something that’s not so complicated like most anime these days, or if you want to watch something that’ll relax you, then Piano is for you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 13, 2008

xxmbmxx

Not Recommended

I was drawn to watch this anime by the teasers promoting it as a "slice of life" story about a young girl. I normally like those kinds of shows, but Piano turned out to be too much "slice of life" and not much else.

The story is about a young girl who plays the piano and her quest to get better to the point of performing in a big concert. The problem is that there just isn't much going on to hold your interest. I don't need science fiction in every show I watch, but there has to be SOME kind of drama ... to hold my interest. There is a little, but NOT MUCH!!

I can only quote Gertrude Stein to summarize this show: "There is no there there".

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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by Gino99

50 Entries · 79 Restacks

One Main Character (3)

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