A decade has passed since the debut of Your Lie in April, a soul-consuming tale of young love told through animated TV, and I think that the tears of those who watched it on those first few days may finally begin to dry. 

I was blessed to celebrate the birthday of the show by experiencing it for the very first time, and I was rocked to my core by the brazen vulnerability of the 22 episode series. Your Lie in April is about a young boy, a young girl, and an old, tragic story. 

The lens of the audience is Kosei: an overly sentimental old-soul of a teen who has lost his love of music after suffering a mental breakdown during a prestigious piano competition. Due to the unique powers of anime, his emotions color the scenes, and his breakdowns take the audience deep underwater just like his thoughts drag him down when he suffers an episode. The lifeline to his dissociations is the beautiful and always-smiling violinist, Kaori. She is also the girl who Kosei believes is in love with his best friend. Kosei, of course, is head-over-heels for her. 

Conflict comes when Kaori convinces Kosei to accompany her onstage at a performance (which he can barely handle) and she faints with her final note. The anime weaves love, loss, guilt, and grief into a masterful symphony of the soul throughout 22 20-minute episodes. The show tells its story with every ounce of sincerity that it could possibly afford. While some scenes feel so simple and raw, they grip the heart of what it means to be young and full of emotion. Other scenes left me walking about my house, simply trying to understand the profundity of the colorful show that was much less two-dimensional than it appeared on a screen. 

In one scene, a lovestruck Kosei and apparently oblivious Kaori are walking home from practice as the sun goes down and find themselves surrounded by lightning bugs on a footbridge. The pure artistic indulgence of this scene alone should have distracted from the story and the characters, but rather I felt myself slipping more and more comfortably into Kosei’s shoes, wracked by the same sentimentality that plagued his character. 

In scenes where Kosei and his friends are joking around and acting immature, the art style would be suddenly tweaked to make heads bigger and thoughts on bright display above the character’s heads. Such a juvenile decision on behalf of the animators, and yet! I had never felt such youthful mirth on behalf of someone else. 

Your Lie in April managed to take thoughtful, sentimental messages, and implant them in an immature and colorful art form. Wildly contrasting characters and messages from moment to moment made watching the show a truly enjoyable experience- whether I was giggling or crying. I could not recommend it more. Happy Anniversary Your Lie in April.