Unlike the US where virtually all of the comics are aimed at males, Japan has a booming industry in shojo manga, comics for girls.  There's also a good number of shojo anime, though only a few of them have made their way across the Pacific.  While Sailor Moon is probably the most famous example of this genre, that show is aimed at children and there are many shows that are for an older audience such as X and Fushigi Yugi.  I've enjoyed a lot of shojo anime in the past, they often have more characterization than their male counterparts, and have more deliberately paced stories.  When the first volume of Piano turned up in my mailbox, I thought it might be an enjoyable series.  How wrong I was.  The tone and conflicts in this series are too low key and subdued that nothing really happens.

Miu is an average girl in her second year of middle school.  She has been taking piano lessons for six years, and is doing pretty well.  Her best friend is Yuuiki, a girl who's on the school track team.  They both work hard on their respective hobbies and are just starting to notice boys.  Together, the two friends go to school and....well, that's about it.

The problem with this show is that the plots are so low key that just about nothing happens.  The first episode gives a good example of what one can expect from the other episodes on this disc.  As the program opens, Miu is worried about her piano lesson.  She has one after school, but she's left her music at home.  (This is a major dramatic point mind you.)  Miu is sure her mean demanding instructor will berate her for being forgetful.  Yuuiki convinces her to skip piano this once and go shopping with her.  After buying a CD, Miu feels so guilty that she turns up at her lessons even though she's late.  The instructor says that he can work her in at the end if she's willing to wait.

A couple of hours later, she has her lesson and her teacher doesn't yell at her, then she goes home.  On her way she gets caught in the rain, and realizes that she left her umbrella on the train.  Miu makes it home in any case, and when she gets there (another major plot point coming up) she drops her backpack in her room and the contents spill out.  This seems to be a major trauma for the girl, she stares at the pile and sighs a couple of times, and then notices that she did have her piano music in her back pack after all!  What riveting drama.

The other episodes are similarly action packed, and some of the situations are laughably absurd.  In the second show Miu's cat runs out of the house and gets lost.  Miu and her mother look all over for the animal.  Finally Miu's piano teacher meets her on the street and he's carring her cat.  He said that he saw it and thought that it might be her's based on her description (!) and thought he'd try to find her house to return it.  What, does this guy go around picking up strange cats all the time?  He thought it might be Miu's because it was grey???  This is easily the worst writing I've seen in an anime show in a long, long time.

I often enjoy slow and deliberately paced movies.  Check out my review to Gerry, where two guys walk through the desert for nearly two hours.  It was great.  Piano, on the other hand, just didn't give me anything to like.  There is no characterization and no conflicts.  The writing is bad and the show is deathly boring.  This is one to pass by.

Audio:

This disc comes with the original Japanese soundtrack, as well as an English dub, both in stereo. I alternated tracks while I was viewing the disc, and enjoyed the Japanese track more, as usual, but the English dub didn't have anything wrong with it. Both tracks sounded nice, with no distortion or dropouts. The dialog was easy to hear and the musical accompaniment was clear. A solid sounding disc.

Video:

The full frame video looked good.  The colors were solid and the lines were strong.  Digital defects were at a minimum, with just the slightest amount of aliasing in the background.  Overall a nice looking DVD.

Extras:

This disc has a good selection of extras.  Special Epilogue 1 is a ten minute monolog where Ayako Kawasumi, who voices Miu in the series, talks about what the show meant to her.  She is joined half way through by her co-star Tomoko Kawakami who voices Yuuki.

There are text bios of the characters, original character sketches, a line art gallery and a textless opening in addition to a selection of trailers.

Final Thoughts:

An abysmally boring show, Piano forgot to put any content into the anime.  There is no conflict, no characterization and no plot.  A slice of life piece with no life to it.  I kept telling myself that the next episode would be better, but it wasn't.  Literally nothing happens in the three episodes on this disc.  About the best I can say is that it wasn't as bad as Birth.  Pass this one by without a second though.  Skip it.