“my hand hurts, and my feet can’t keep up - but this is such a beautiful view.”

shoutouts john for putting me on this one; this is my second anime directed by watanabe, first being samurai champloo (please watch that) and he’s 2/2 man its crazy. im surprised this anime doesnt get talked about as much as samurai champloo or cowboy bebop since i legit have never heard of it until a couple months ago. the whole ost has like 500k+ views on youtube and the best scenes in the show have like 2m+ views, but as a guy who lives under a rock in regards to anime terms, that shit was never mainstream ever. anyways just like in samurai champloo watanabe is crazy in how he utilizes not just visual but also audio in order to create a full experience when watching. the fact that jazz is a main focal point in the story is a massive bonus. even with the ladybug tier1 love square, the music and the other themes of the story such as sense of belonging, forgiveness of self, and the fuckin SLOPE of life are so powerful that it still might be a 10 from me anyway. i will obviously not forget to credit yoko kanno, matsunaga takashi, and ishiwaka shun for being amazing musicians; kanno as the composer, takashi and shun being kaoru’s piano playing and sen’s drumming respectively. after i finished the anime i immediately downloaded the whole ost and then read the whole manga in a 5 hour sitting. i think that was the most optimal play i cant even lie to you. if you dont really know jazz then you probably dont know the main songs that the characters play during the climax of certain arcs and it kinda falls flat. theres only so much you can convey with purely visual art after all. however, hearing the audio really makes it come to life as you read. you would think the animation would do that but honestly i really loved reading the internal thoughts that kaoru had while hearing him play. i asked this in my discord a few weeks ago and i got outed for being WEIRD but i forgot to give the context of the manga literally showing music notes for the speech bubbles. like surely people prefer to hear some music than read a half note. RIGHT? anyways this is probably gonna be a joint writeup about both the anime and the manga because i think both are great but if you combine them then its fucking elite and awesome. also the manga had an additional 5 chapters to flesh out more of the ending + a really cute journal2 from kodama yuki herself detailing the creation of the anime.

like imagine this with the ost in your ear would it not be 10000x better

some spoilers from here on out; i dont want to rehash the whole story but i do want to touch on the theme of belonging and family. most of what ive watched is insanely curated and i think like three quarters of my rated catalog involves something with coming of age (THE SLOPE!!!!!!!!), and not of lot of it is about the struggle of fitting in. this story has damn near the whole cast not having that sense of belonging due to a lot of factors mostly involving family. an orphaned kid, a farmer that marries into a rich family, a princess who doesn’t like to be royalty, a prince that gets his family’s legacy pushed onto him, a smooth talker pushed into a political movement. its a lot of different circumstances that are amplified by the setting of the story. this time period is something i fuck with a lot because ive never really read stories or watched anime that lands in the 1960-1970s. really goes hand in hand with kaoru being converted into a jazz pianist when the genre was becoming accepted in a post-war japan. speaking of post-war japan, i gotta talk about junichi and his arc because honestly that whole thing was soooo well done. he got thrust into being a political speaker, his jazz friend gets slowly radicialized from his own speeches, and then the same jazz friend then gets his hands fucked up from a riot but wants to continue the movement anyways like holy shit. the amount of guilt piled up is something else, and the slow recovery really shakes up the main cast. its a really compelling side story to put next to a regular love square triangle rhombus and music story lol. in a different vein, i think the arc with kaoru’s mother was insanely good, as it coincides with kaoru getting freaking rejected and dying of heartbreak. can you imagine finally meeting your mother after so long and sharing a meal but it derails into your mom laughing at you because she knows frame 1 that you got your heart broken? i think its a really fucking good scene. the fact that kaoru gifted her lullaby of birdland3, a jazz record, is just the cherry on top.

when it comes to the actual music this anime might have one of the best osts of all time man im just so bastard serious. its for sure the one thing it has going for it if everything else flops. it also doesnt play around with the actual animation of the characters playing either, its legit all rotoscoped and is fucking awesome to watch. along with samurai champloo and cowboy bebop, most of the ost is solely focused around the musical theme of the anime. in this case, in the jazz vein. sometimes they got a badass harp or a badass guitar or they combine the two instruments for the track that plays while you fucking cry and shit your pants and also a whole choir. i was listening to the whole ost directly after finishing the anime and theres some fucking gems that don’t even appear in the anime for more than like 10 seconds, and it has the best sax solo ever like 2 minutes in. like what the hell dude how are both versions of YURIKA4 this fire like WTF. dont even get me started on the school festival scene and the final church scene. i got convinced to watch the anime because of the latter but im so glad i watched that instead of the festival scene because i don’t think ive ever gotten chills like that ever. maybe the final scene of samurai champloo when same ol’ thing5 starts playing i mightve gotten stirred the same amount but like uh… i think my jaw dropped bro that scene will forever be a favorite. its fucking perfect in the context of the show and then the actual playing is so fucking insane man i cannot stop glazing the actual musicians behind the piano and drums. genuinely so fucking awesome man. its so awesome and chungus inspirational that i bought sheet music for one of the solo piano pieces6 and started playing again. side note im washed as hell and jazz voicing is so fucking hard but its really nice to play something that isnt classical. i did play red velvet last year but this one is different because its a legit jazz standard instead of like video game music lol.

i put off this write up for a lil because half of it was procrasination (shoutouts to this one almost falling into the idea graveyard) and half of it was because i wanted it to sit for a bit. im kinda bad at digesting media so when i found this and instantly loved it, i wanted to let it sit to see if i truly liked it or not. the love hexagon and the kinda rushed anime ending stopped me from giving this higher than a 9, but i think it deserves all the praise when all of its parts moved me so much that it made me start playing piano again. maybe i can also appreciate this upward slope of life just a bit more.

top picks that arent prominent tracks: nichijo3, kumori, hope, Run

  1. yes the love square is no comms and lowkey kinda ass but WHATEVER ↩

  2. mangadex link lolol ↩

  3. i wish she sang this in the anime ↩

  4. idk why this doesn’t play in the show but i think this one does though ↩

  5. JUN KILLS A MOFO ↩

  6. someday my prince will come ↩