[Your Lie in April] Kaori feels like a plot device, not a person
I just finished the series, and while I get why people love the animation and the soundtrack, I honestly didn't feel the emotional devastation everyone promised. The rating feels inflated because the show relies on the *aesthetic* of sadness rather than earning it.
My main issue is that Kaori isn't fleshed out enough to make her death hit hard. She falls squarely into the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope. For 22 episodes, she exists almost exclusively to fix Kousei, to drag him out of depression and make him play piano. She’s a catalyst for his development, not a standalone human being with her own complex internal world.
When the ending hits, the show treats it like a massive emotional focal point. The direction and music scream "You should be crying now!" But it felt hollow to me.
For a tragedy to work, you have to mourn the specific person. Because Kaori was so idealized and lacked rough edges or a life outside of the protagonist, I wasn't mourning *her*. I was just watching a sad mechanic play out. It felt like the writers relied on the cheap shortcut of "young girl dying" to do the heavy lifting, rather than writing a character deep enough to actually miss.
My main issue is that Kaori isn't fleshed out enough to make her death hit hard. She falls squarely into the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope. For 22 episodes, she exists almost exclusively to fix Kousei, to drag him out of depression and make him play piano. She’s a catalyst for his development, not a standalone human being with her own complex internal world.
When the ending hits, the show treats it like a massive emotional focal point. The direction and music scream "You should be crying now!" But it felt hollow to me.
For a tragedy to work, you have to mourn the specific person. Because Kaori was so idealized and lacked rough edges or a life outside of the protagonist, I wasn't mourning *her*. I was just watching a sad mechanic play out. It felt like the writers relied on the cheap shortcut of "young girl dying" to do the heavy lifting, rather than writing a character deep enough to actually miss.
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Edit: literally being downvoted for no reason. That was the whole point of her lie. Instead of just confessing her love she got closer by saying she loved his best friend (which was less suspicious because his friend was a popular kid in school and had a new girl every few weeks). She wanted to be as close as possible without getting close, just so she could have that duet and spend time with him. It was literally not in her books for him to become so enamored. Was she definitely trying a little tho? Absolutely, girl is dying and wanted to be a little selfish. U may not like her but its no less human
I agree with OP as in she was a plot device. But that is in juxtaposition to his mother, who was shown to be selfless in her wishes to make Arima succeed. Yet it was the selfish Kaori who helped him out of the misery. Perhaps this selfishness helped him understand his own self worth in reflection
She saw greatness in him that inspired her, she was awfully shy so she was never able to get close, then she got her diagnosis and wanted to finally be close to the person that made such an impact in her when she was a child, and she wanted to play with him and she wanted him, who she saw as someone who was going to be great, to remember her forever.
I think that shows agency and choice, she would've wanted different and she says so, but those are her circumstances and she's accomplishing something in spite of those. She's also trying to overcome her disease as well, it just doesn't happen.
I don't know, I think it's an unkind reading of a character, but we all have opinions.
In attack on titan Armin was a main character and we learned nothing about him whatsoever. His parents were mentioned in one line. He was a plot device to forward strategies for the other main characters.
Kaori is definitely manic pixie dream girl and I’m ok with that. Kousei is the main character, and it’s ok to have a male as a main character. Some people like dramas with tropes. YLIA had that but also more, exploring difficult themes of trauma and healing.
For the ending it would be difficult to make it work if there was more of Kaori’s narration. Some of Kaori had to be hidden to keep the lies secret.
The ratings speak for themselves. If you didn’t enjoy it that’s ok.
That being said I would love to see a novelization with Kaoris perspective. But I think the current narrative is perfect.
The closest we have is a chapter in the Two-Person Etude Light Novel.
While the first half of the series is Kaori trying to do what you've described, as her body starts to gradually fail, she starts to give up even on that. On my first watch, the scene where her legs gave out genuinely horrified me. On my second, more involved watch, seeing her so scared of dying towards the end was heartbreaking.
But because she, perhaps even without knowing it fully, already changed Arima's life forever, now HE's the one who decides to step up and be her manic pixie dream boy and show her she should not to give up on her treatment. The tragedy is that life doesn't always respect fighting till the end.
Kaori's manic pixie dream girl comparisons make sense on the first watch without the full context and knowing what happens, but once you find out what she's dealing with, you start to notice things, that help piece together exactly what she's thinking throughout the series. If I remember correctly, the first time I binged it, I don't think I even fully processed how much Kaori changed in the second half, where her attempts to hide how upset and scared she was start to fail more and more. Even her colors faded.
Have you seen the Redeemer?
EDIT: Would like to point out, this applies to a lot of older Disney movies as well.
A similar quote from a certain Vietnamese author:
>Live first before picking up the pen, and immerse yourself within the glorious lives of the people.
What I expected to happen the whole time did happen although my recollection is her final message to him made you rethink the character and the nature of their relationship which I appreciated.
I cried for a few days
Devastating, and I started to play the violin because I loved Kaori’s character.
I agree. I think it would've been better if she lived. I adored the anime, and it definitely moved me in a lot of ways. But the ending felt... I dunno. Forced?
The whole series is about Kousei overcoming his grief and moving on from his mother's death (and abuse). So it just felt like they were trying a little too hard with the ending, as if to say "see? He's fixed. Now he's lost the girl that literally dragged him out of that grief but she was so successful in fixing him that he legit accepts and gets over her death so easily."
But that seemed... very unlikely. Losing the girl that helped him start to move on would've absolutely devastated him for years to come. Kousei's growth would've quickly unraveled, and instead he'd double down on his previous outlook. Which wouldn't have been a very good ending, so yeah, having her live would've been more interesting.
I remember watching it for the first time and feeling "pity" for the characters. As when you meet them they are already in a bad place and you don't know much about them until the story progresses. There is a melodramatic element that can feel forced.
I can't say it's a 10/10 anime but it's one people will remember for a long time and is a defining anime of the mid 2010s. Might be biased as a piano player myself though. That Ballade no 1 with violin is insanely impressive.
Kaori knows she's dying. That kind of knowledge completely changes a person. She's young, and she sees all of her peers with so much ahead of them, a future she cannot have.
Facing death is also a time of reflection and introspection. How will she be remembered? Who will remember her? What events in her short life have inspired her?
Kaori remembers being inspired by a young boy, a pianist, whose music brought a moment of joy into her life. And she sees Kousei now, a heartbroken shadow divorced from his music, and is determined to help him to feel the same joy that he showed her those years past.
Yes, literally everything Kaori does is about helping Kousei. Because that's how she wants to be remembered. She's not invested in her own future, because she doesn't have one. She invests everything she has left in Kousei, and enjoying herself along the way. And before she passes, Kaori has the comfort of knowing that it was worth it. That she will be remembered with love.
She has a terminal death sentence… her entire backstory is absolutely fleshed out.. Kousei inspires her to play music as a child and before she dies she wants to help him find love for music again and leave an impact and legacy with the world. It’s beautiful actually, not sure how you didn’t feel like there was any character development there. She even turns a leaf and wants to live at the end..
op was a banger though i have to say
There are different shows I have watched since then that straight up punched me in the gut. Violet Evergarden did—but specifically the episode about parents losing their child. I’d just seen a family go through that in real life.
Wolf Children hit hard because of other life experiences that made me relate to it.
So you know, there’s no way you HAVE to feel.
My favorite gut punch anime is A Place Further Than The Universe. That's one of the most genuine heart breakers I've ever watched. It felt too real in some ways.
Let's use violet evergarden as an example. She was a war orphan turned child soldier suffering from ptsd, unrequited love, being a crippled amputee, abuse, and was emotionally and mentally stunted. None of these heavy topics were given the time and attention they deserved but were instead used as cheap bait to invoke undeserved sympathy. Any single one of these would have been enough. And don't get me started on that fairy tale finale that was antithetical to the previous constantly repeated themes of loss, acceptance, and moving on.
As you said it's fine to enjoy it as even I myself think VE has unmatched visuals and music despite it's critical shortcomings. But it seems like most people here seem to be unable to see any flaws in something they like, which just leads to echo chambers and loss of critical thinking.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I think we **are** veering into the subjective territory. And that’s kind of my point.
And Kaori is the "manic pixie dream girl" trope as suggested while there is literally a short haired tomboy childhood friend who tries to be near the MC aleays, which he and the watchers never cared as usual.
Lmao.
Anime that i have given 7/10 are: the girl that leaped trough time, your lie in april (it's good, just not a s good as people say), cencoroll, noragami, saekano, assassination classroom season 1, charlotte, saga of tanya the evil, demon slayer and many others.
All because it’s a “male fantasy”, which that drives people mad against the trope, like it really pisses people off.
Either I don’t understand the trope enough but it seems overall yeah, its a trope of the woman wanting to help or mentally help the male character, so it always seemed extremely petty with how people speak of that as solely a bad thing, especially when they negetivly attach gender to it.
The trope seems cliche or centers another character, but it’s like, so does every other trope or fantasy romance trope sometimes, or side characters who mainly support the main, but this one gets really hated on the most for being a “male fantasy” or because the female character wants to helps the male.
Naruto is even one of the shows where I’ve started it, and I’ve heard the critsism of the female characters before, but once I actually watched it, outside of Sakura, most of the female characters are fine or even good, but because a character like Hinata are motivated or like another male character, people dismiss those characters for that, and call all of the women badly written and dismiss the show off of that.
The only difference is that Kaori planned it while the other didnt. Interestingly, Kaori's letter and THE line at the end of the CSM arc also mirror each other like this: we thought Kaori's approach was spontaneous but turns out it was planned, while the CSM one was planned to be a quick job but turned into something spontaneous. (I'll give the better execution of this to Fujimotor though because he managed to pack the same punch into a single sentence versus and Kaori's was a letter.)
As you mentioned Kaori's whole characterisation is centered around her helping Kousei (or harassing him when the writers wanted some poor taste comedy) and there is little else developed about her. If the story had been more of a balance showing both Kaori trying to help Kousei play again and Kousei trying to support Kaori during her remaining time, it would have had the potential to be a much more wholesome bittersweet story in my opinion.
And the ending, even with all the flags, really felt like a "fuck you for trying to be happy, let's replace your trauma with some new one" moment for Kousei. I think it would have been much more powerful to have him be with her and play just for her one last time before she pass rather than have her die in the background and the story trying to tell you "yeah it's sad but look he can play piano to randoms again, isn't that great?"
Yet I don't see how it takes away from the story. She was a parallel to his mother in a lot of ways, and the resolution of it all was very apparent. She enters his life from the point she is already terminally Ill which in his mother's case was the point from where he started drifting away. Her whole year, from the season of change, spring, with him is just a conduit for his own development and to lead him into getting out of the shell.
Maybe she is only there to drive his ambition. But she was the essence of music to him. Her being a person then, also helps alleviate the various emotional baggage he carries. It also helps the case that it was not a chance rendezvous. It were the seeds of music he sowed during his childhood, whose requiem he reaped.
Sakura from i want to eat your pancreass is sooooo much better as a character. The premise of both anime is essentially the same - a dying girl helps the depressed mc fix his life. And IWTEYP managed to do much better job for half the time.
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The second half of the series clearly shows what Kaori thinks about the series. The finale episode and the letter is much more explicit about what she thinks, but even before that, glimpses of what Kaori thinks can be seen through various scenes in the anime.
I would like to think of YLIA as a two-part series. The first part is how Kousei was able to overcome his trauma, while the second part is about Kaori's demise and how Kousei reacts on it.
I agree that initially she seems to be the perfect girl anyone could ask for. Of course, she is sometimes toxic and too passionate about music that one can interpret it as being insensitive to Kousei's depression, which is perfectly valid. However, her 'manic pixie dream girl', which can be interpreted as either one of her selves or just her fake persona, a lie she told to herself, starts to break down the moment her condition became worse. In episode 16-17, she told Kousei to just forget everything about her and reset the button, because she is already in pain of losing him, and she is not okay with Kousei getting sad again when he reminds her of his mom. In another episode, she told the doctor that there is this boy who made her pursue surgery, that she want to move forward because she made a promise. In episode 21, she started breaking down in the snow scene since she is scared, somewhat envious of Tsubaki and she does not want Kousei to leave.
These examples show Kaori as a character and not just a plot device. The series is careful to show what Kaori thinks, until the last episodes, same reason that Kousei thinks she is like a cat who just wants to show up when she wants to. She is an enigma to Kousei. But well, as Kousei said in Episode 20, she is just a daughter of a baker and no more lover's suicide whatsoever.
Nonetheless, YLIA has always be, and will always be, a divisive series. Some people (like me) will absolutely love it, while others will dislike it. That's part of why it is quite nice to discuss this anime.
I watched it after i had already finished i want to eat your pancreas, a silent voice and violet evergarden. Anime that are actually sad and actually good dramas.
I want to eat your pancreass is everything YLIA wants to be
No one has been more critical of the use of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (or in this case, Manic Pixie *Dead* Girl) trope in Your Lie in April than Caitlin Moore, in her essay:
https://www.animefeminist.com/your-lie-in-april-oedipus-complex-and-manic-pixie-dream-girl-have-a-meetcute/
I mean the anime is from his POV, it is intentionally done so to make her mysterious... The only time Kaori has a POV is by the end of the anime when everything unfolds. The whole point of the anime is not that she is a well developed character, its that sometimes you dont know a person that well.
Sad to see
This was just about the MC getting back to the piano, and glorifying child abuse because it is totally OK if you can play like that.
I understood the message very well and thought it was sweet on paper. But it failed to hold my interest.
Plamemo especially. It's not just Isla fixing Tsukasa. Isla and Tsukasa both fix each other, and help each other, and as a result, they both grow through the series. As it should be.
[Plastic Memories] >!When Isla does at the end, the direction and music are both in such a way that makes it seem like "yes, you should be sad that she's gone. But you should also be happy that she had such an impact." Not just "be sad!"!<
Pancreas is a bit more light hearted (as light hearted as you can be, given this plot). Despite having humorous moments, the ending of Plamemo destroys me every time, and it will probably do the same to you.
Kousei also exists solely to be fixed, imo
The whole point of the story is the manic pixie dream girl trope, you can see how when the show tries to do anything else it just kind of becomes a generic hobby-shounen leaning on those tropes instead
but I definitely did find the writing to be unsatisfying and basic
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Music can feel manipulative in the way you described, but it can also be powerful and it's important to have it regardless, it would feel much more weird without it.
I liked it, it was a good show, but it wasn't the saddest anime I've ever seen. That award goes to Violet Evergarden (which I personally did feel that it can feel manipulative in a way, but it was just so powerful and well done IMO that I still found it to be the saddest anime I've ever seen).
For Arima, it was a normal thing and being at school wasnt anything major. He would be in school for many more years to come. For Kaori, it was a quasi mystical experience, and even the light from the moon made it more magical.
When they left the school, Kaori cried on the way back with the moon glittering on her. Arima was happy for an amazing day and didn't understand why she was crying (he said so himself). But the viewer knows, especially on rewatch, that Kaori will die and she knows she will die and that that was the last time this little girl would ever see school.
Your lie in april is a very haunting anime.
Stuff like Angel Beats! and AnoHana were way more impactful for me even though they were much shorter.
Just like a certain sub genre of YA fiction is written to be a self-insert for young women, a number of anime is written to be a self-insert for young men. Female side characters in these kind of anime aren't written to be people, they're written to be accessories or plot devices; because at best, the writer doesn't care about female characters or making it relatable to women, and at worst, the writer doesn't write them to be people because he doesn't see them as people.
She's not a person, she's a crutch. People saying "oh, but it makes sense that she's focused on [mmc - male main character] because *real* dying kids-" are missing the point. She's not a real kid. She's not even a real character. As op said, she's a manic pixie dream girl, and as such her world revolves around the main character.
I don't remember which episode, but at one point a female teacher says something like "we'll see what the great muses have in store for him" and I rolled my eyes so hard thinking "oh ok, so she's gonna die just like his mom did, and that's going to inspire him to play better than he ever has."
I was being facetious.
Yes I expected Kaori to die at that point, but I did not expect the writer to be so cliche. She dies *exactly like his mom*? His trauma is magically healed? This shit inspires him?
Like even if you said "dying children tend to void themselves of all personality so they aren't missed, so it actually checks out" it wouldn't matter, because everything she is, and every way that she's relevant to plot, is just cliche heaped upon cliche, folded into whatever the mmc needs her to be. So any parallels aligned to real life you could dig up are relegated to coincidence at best, because real people aren't just a slop of character tropes.
_
Just to be clear, I'm not shitting on the anime as an anime - it's fine in that regard, and the art is beautiful - and I'm definitely not shitting on the people who enjoy it. I'm only shitting on the writer's writing. You can dump on the way a movie is written and still enjoy it, and you can criticize a work's flaws without saying the work as a whole is bad.
The bad, silly comedy doesn't work at all.