Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso 14-15

Some Debussy for your heartbreak

Hello and welcome back for Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso. We’ll see if the aftermath of the gala concert is what we were expecting.

I Don’t Want To Know

It’s omimai time

The other kids finally find out that Kaori’s in the hospital, and go to visit her. But there’s a lot unspoken in all the exchanges. Part is Kousei’s thoughts returning to his mother, and his visits to the hospital at that time. And part is Kaori’s intentional subterfuge in not saying what the true nature of her stay in the hospital is. The story is more ‘tests’, although Kousei knows that she was just in for tests before. But it’s a lot more than that, and the audience is clued in after Kousei, Watari, and Tsubaki leave, and the nurse asks to restart her IV. I’m surprised they’d even agree to let her go without it in the first place.

Kousei can’t actually do it

But even more than the unspoken is the unasked. And there’s a lot that Kousei won’t ask because he doesn’t really want to know the answer, and he fears he already knows the truth. Is Kaori really in for tests? Why is she there so long? And why is she hiding it? He doesn’t want to ask because she doesn’t want to tell him, although they both seem to know. It even gets to the point where he makes excuses not to see her, even turning away at her door when he hears Watari inside. And despite what we’ve seen of Kaori before, she’s not nearly as confident about herself, especially at the end of this latest episode, when finally her legs fail her, and we see her frustration at her situation, apparently deteriorating.

Kaori’s frustration

The Other Woman

Kashiwagi knows who Tsubaki likes

These two episodes did spend a lot more time on Tsubaki, which was a nice change. Maybe a little too much of it was Tsubaki not being sure about what she wants to do, or how she thinks about Kousei, but she’s starting to feel like she’s not realizing something important. And that’s despite her friend Kashiwagi who is continually dropping hints. It doesn’t matter that Tsubaki’s been ‘officially’ going out with Saitou, Kashiwagi has always known who Tsubaki has her eye on. And Saitou knows it as well, that Tsubaki’s heart doesn’t belong to him. Is it the brave thing to do, for him to dump her so that she doesn’t have to dump him? Has he really found someone else he loves? Or was he exaggerating, finally giving her the release that she needs? Either way, he breaks up with her before she can break up with him.

The end of almost nothing

But what is left for Tsubaki? She knows that Kousei is looking to leave town to go to a high school for the performing arts. But that still hasn’t galvanized her into admitting to him (or maybe even herself) that he’s not some younger brother, not someone she feels like has been her family. He’s someone that she wants to be family with. Or at least stay with (and that “I just want to stay with him” is the biggest self-deception in anime, isn’t it?). Will she be able to say to Kousei what he’s been unable to say to Kaori?

Picking up some takeout girl

And we get a new character, Nagi Aizato, who wants Hiroko to be her piano teacher. Why? I dunno. But she’s willing to pester Kousei in order to get a chance to meet Hiroko. Too bad that Hiroko’s outmaneuvered her: She assigns Kousei to teach Nagi. Interestingly, Kousei noticed that Nagi’s playing, of the same piece that he played at the piano competition, was harsh and mechanistic. Will he realize that’s the way he’s played until now? And will he use Nagi’s example as a way to push his own development forward?

One of the challenges of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso has been that the show covers a lot of the same ground over and over again, leaving you with a lot of time spent and not a lot of content or progress. We saw that in both storylines: first with Tsubaki, who broke down with Kousei in both episode 14 and 15, and yet still wasn’t able to tell him why, tell him that she cares for him, and also with Kousei who can’t bring himself to confront Kaori’s hospitalization. I do wish the show would get moving a little, but I don’t know if there will be too much to get through.