YMMV / Your Lie in April

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Kaori says "Want to commit double suicide with me?" in one episode. Sure, she was quoting a book, but it's not unknown for terminally ill people to feel suicidal.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Kaori. One group believes that her bratty, selfish, and manipulative attitude toward Kousei can't be tolerated, while another group views all her actions as justified since the purpose is for Kousei's own sake: to get him playing the piano again, especially since he's her idol all along and she doesn't have much time left to do it.
  • Tsubaki. Her character was initially well-liked as the tomboyish Girl Next Door and childhood friend who was trying to get Kousei to play piano again. As the series progressed, a good part of fans started to dislike her, thinking she had became way too selfish and whiny once she realized her feelings for Kousei and started wishing Kousei would stop playing piano so he can pay attention to her. The way she discouraged Kousei's feelings for Kaori, outright told him that he didn't have a chance with Kaori and wished him to suffer for not reciprocating her feelings doesn't help.
  • Kousei's mother was abusive and deeply traumatized him. However, her reasons for being how she was stemmed from fears of how he would be without her, almost certainly helped along by what the stress of terminal illness did to her psyche. Whether she's a monster unworthy of any pity or an all-around tragic and damaged character one can't help feel a little sorry for varies greatly depending on who you ask.
• Broken Base: The Mood Whiplash between comedy and serious drama is one of the things that gets disagreement over. Do the slapstick moments bring some much-needed levity, especially in the heavier latter half of the story, or are they just disruptive? It doesn't help that the slapstick is at the expense of somebody whose mother used to violently beat him, which comes off as very tone deaf.
• Catharsis Factor: Kousei telling his mom, Saki Arima, that he wishes she was dead is seen as this by many fans, due to how cruel she was to Kousei. Hiroko in turn sharply calls her a terrible mother straight afterwards. Saki dying in despair can also be seen as this too for the same reasons.
• Character Perception Evolution: Kaori Miyazono was pretty well-liked by viewers for her upbeat personality, her earnest efforts to help Kousei through his trauma, and for having a notorious Tear Jerker of a death. However, as awareness of mental health has increased over the years, her approach in helping Kousei has been harshly criticized as an example of Toxic Positivity, she at times came off as emotionally manipulative, and her tendency to inflict Amusing Injuries on Kousei was looked at as incredibly tone deaf due to his past as a child abuse victim. As a result, she has become more of a Base-Breaking Character.
• Designated Hero: Kaori is built up by the narrative as the story's heroine, someone who leads Kousei back to his musical passion and helps him through his trauma, all the while bravely dealing with her own impending demise. However, her actions throughout the story are largely built around serving her own dreams and aspirations with little regard for those who stand in her way, or even why they stand in her way. Not only does she pressure Kousei into returning into the world of music despite his very evident trauma revolving around music (and his unresolved familial issues), she lies to him by never once admitting that she crushed on him, all the way to her death, saddling him with a whole 'nother round of emotional trauma.
• Designated Monkey: Kousei can be seen as one. Most of the comedic and funny moments of the manga and anime come from him suffering several Amusing Injuries (usually at hands of Kaori and Tsubaki). However, given that he is a Nice Guy and he has a very sad and traumatic backstory which involves getting beaten by his mother, most of these moments seem only to add more pain in his life and it's dubious whether they can be considered funny actions.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: While Kousei's mother's and Kaori's disease is unnamed, it's explained that she will lose control of her legs and her limbs and suffer from seizures that will lead to heart failure. Most fans have suspected that due to the symptoms, she could be dealing with ALS. However, there is no surgery for ALS, so it could also be a carcinoma which metastasised to the spinal cord/cerebellum. Other possible diseases include multiple sclerosis and Friedreich's ataxia.
• Glurge: Kaori's overly saccharine actions towards Kousei can come across as less heartwarming and more manipulative. Despite having understandable reasons for being actually, invoking a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, her more forceful behavior towards Kousei (especially in the beginning, where she relentlessly coerces Kousei into returning to music despite knowing his issues with playing the piano in the first place) has come across to certain viewers as unjustified and, at worst, horrendously selfish.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Every moment where Kaori says that her chances of becoming a bride/having a successful marriage are ruined due to Kousei (and in one moment, Watari) seeing her private parts (accidentally, of course) were supposed to be comedic.^note Episode 1, 5, and 12 However, it becomes sad when you realize that she indeed will never be anyone's bride because of her terminal illness that leads to her death. Even worse, she was aware the entire time she wasn't gonna live long.
  • A lot of the comedic Slapstick that Kousei is put through early in the series, and the Running Gag of him neglecting his eating habits to the point of passing out, becomes considerably less funny once the audience learns that he was the victim of child abuse.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Charlie Brown quote becomes funnier when you remember they made a special where it too focused on the romance (well, friendship) between a guy and an ill girl. Even funnier/sadder when you remember that the girl in that special is a survivor.
• Hype Backlash: While the show has a large fanbase, it also has garnered not an insignificant amount of contention for its inconsistent tone, as well as Kaori's character coming off as too manipulative and selfish for her to be likeable.
• It Was His Sled: The ending quickly became this. Kaori's death spread like wildfire.
• Misaimed Fandom: There are actually some fans who defend Saki's treatment of Kousei, thinking that she was justified in what she did. They ignore the fact that her abuse towards Kousei caused him serious mental trauma and prevented him from playing the piano for a long time, until he met Kaori - which goes precisely counter to Saki's plan of having Kousei earn his living by being a professional musician.
• Spiritual Successor: Of Nodame Cantabile. Both are musical series featuring a prodigious yet cynical male pianist whose life changes when he meets a talented and wild female musician.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Kousei's misery is the foundation for this series. When it's not being Played for Drama, it's being Played for Laughs. Even when things seem to be going well for Kousei, like him overcoming the trauma of his abuse to play piano again, the story punches him square in the balls with Kaori's death. That combined with everybody besides Kousei being huge jerkasses is enough to utter the Eight Deadly Words.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Many who've watched the show understandably refuse to forgive Kousei's mom for her horrific abuse of him, and see her justification as just too flimsy compared to the cruelty she showed. It doesn't help that the abuse is front and center for almost half the series, with the justification only coming in well after the abuse is firmly cemented in viewers/readers' minds. Also the fact that there were other options available instead of abusing Kousei into making him good at piano playing (like getting someone else to teach him to play the piano or just help him find another career) only makes her treatment of him even more unjustified.
  • Likewise, Kaori herself has received some backlash for being generally insensitive and manipulative towards Kousei and practically forcing him back into the world of music...when his whole traumatic backstory is centered around being made to play music. It doesn't help that her reasons for doing so come off as entirely selfish and like Kaori is deciding "I know best" when it comes to what's for Kousei's own good. On top of all that she lied to Kousei in their first meetings on many different levels, such as telling him she's in love with Watari rather than him, not telling him that she knows who he is and how long she's been inspired by him, and even neglecting to mention the fact that she has a Terminal Illness that will very likely end up killing her! Kousei only learns the full truth in a letter from her he reads after she's already dead.
  • It says something that so much of either's characters are revolved around their treatment of Kousei that their parting words are pretty much just lamenting what awful people they were to him. Making them aware of their flaws without actually doing anything about them doesn't make their actions tragic. It just makes them even more awful.
  • Tsubaki gets this when Kousei rejects her. While it's understandable that she has been there for Kousei since they were kids, her reaction to it boils down to her acting like An Entitled "Nice Girl."
• The Un-Twist: The show spends a couple of episodes after Nagi's introduction trying to pretend it's not obvious that she's Takeshi's little sister.
• The Woobie:
  • Kousei Arima is a former Child Prodigy piano player who was abused by his mother into perfecting his craft and driven into further depression when she died and gave up playing the piano out of sadness. Meeting violin player Kaori Miyazono, Kousei rekindles his passion for playing with her and even falls in love with the latter, though his hope for any future with her is shattered when Kaori dies during surgery done in an attempt to prolong her life to play music with him one more time.
  • The aforementioned Kaori Miyazono is a hopeful girl with a terminal illness. Despite her awful condition, she refuses to let life bring her down and introduces herself to her love Kousei through a friend for the chance to play music with him. As her body grows frailer, Kaori determines to undergo a dangerous medical procedure in the hopes it will buy her a little more time to play with Kousei, only to die during the surgery. Though some would argue she falls into Jerkass Woobie territory due to her treatment of Kousei in order to get back into piano playing.

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