This is a short review of a short anime series titled Piano, that has some bizzare moments in it.
Story:-
A teenage middle schooler with a bizzare hairstyle is in a middle-age crisis when her piano recital tournament approached, as she has to deal with her bizarre lovestruck best friend (imagine Kagura in Azumanga Daioh falling in love), her families (not so bizarre), her bizarre piano teacher and her crush on a senior in the school track team. 10 episodes is more than enough to end the storyline.
The story is not that bad actually, and not really tedious unlike what I expected when I started to watch the series. This maybe because the main protagonist reminds me of Ayumu “Osaka” Kasuga in Azumanga Daioh, minus the humour. The way she makes the ‘blank look’ faces almost all the time when she is in her dilemma just like Osaka also helps quite a bit.
And that haircut…… will be etched into my mind FOREVER!
Character design:-
In this section, I will again want to comment about the haircut of the main protagonist. It was so bizarre that in fact it is somewhat hard for me to focus on the anime without taking a hard look at her hair. That kind of hair definitely does not belong outside fantasy anime series such as Ah! My Goddess. For real life anime titles with no magic, no alternate dimensions or no devil to stop from taking over the world, that kind of hairstyle is indeed bizarre.
Apart from that the general character design of all characters are decent. Some still has big eyes though, like the protagonist.
Voice acting:-
Not exactly outstanding. With limited episodes, only the protagonist and her best friend has most of the dialogues, and they are not bad. And not really good either.
Music:-
Ermmmm…. let just say that they suck overall. Only the piano recitals are good.
Animation/Direction:-
The animation is decent, and nothing to complain about. Meanwhile, the direction can be very good at times, or it just suck big time. At the first episode for example, the main protagonist and her father takes a taxi from the train station because it is raining. As they arrived, both of them runs toward the door of their house WITHOUT CLOSING THE TAXI DOOR BEHIND. Let just say that I was totally shocked when I first see this f**k-up in directing, and started to take notes about this because I want to complain strongly in this section. But later in the series, when the main protagonist tells her best friend that she will go ahead and participates in the recital, the director managed to portray the reaction of her best friend in such a great manner that it really impressed me greatly. This anime has quite some of this highs and lows of directing scattered all over the series.
Conclusion:-
6 out of 10. Still a decent score don’t you think?
