zerowires

I'm not a fan of this style of anime. THAT SAID!! I am a, to use an over used line from the anime, "I am a musician". This was very familiar to me in many ways with some of the behind the scenes at the competition and it was semi real. There are gory rivalries and crushes that happen because you speak the same language of the music.

Arima has some serious PTSD from his stage mom beating the ever loving hell out of him, his childhood friend is tsundere as hell and both supports his love of music and resents it because she can't relate being a jock. Arima's PTSD block him from hearing the notes, so he quits until another musician comes into his life and helps get him back on track.

Calling this anime "cliché" is very cliché. While I would never rank it within my top favorite anime series, it's a beautifully bitter story of passion, growing up and everything that comes with reality. You can dream of the stars, but illness doesn't care. Life comes for us all, real or not to help us grow stronger and find a purpose.

As for the music, I'm trained in classics so I felt myself soar despite not being a fan of certain compositions. They went with a lot of "over used" artists like Bach and Chopin. But those are some of the shining stars in concerto music, thus being the obvious choices. The anime was worth it for the music alone for me.