Kono Oto Tomare! Sounds of Life - Part 1

So what do we have here? There is a scruffy, bespectacled kid with self-esteem issues who is supposed to be the club captain. There is a tough delinquent with a heart of gold and a tragic and complicated past. There is a likable and charming girl again with a complicated past. There is another girl with confidence and self-esteem issues. There is a professor (who supervises the club) who has a complicated relationship with music. There are the delinquent's friends, at least one of whom (a blond) also has self-esteem issues. In other words, what looks like a collection of case studies for a school psychologist is stuffed with a bunch of (way too many) clichés and tropes in the narrative typical for this genre, and yet, is surprisingly a relatively well-oiled machine and a likable anime series. In fact, most of the clichés and tropes work quite well, the dramatic scenes are suitably tense, the characters can be both cool and understanding at the right moments, and so Jeoffrey, as a viewer, found them believable most of the time, and they actually complemented each other perfectly in the most important moments. I, therefore, found a lot of the characters quite likable and I also found their fears believable. I was rooting for them as they struggled to get as good as possible at playing the Koto. Unfortunately, the further I got into the narrative, the number of clichés coming up were becoming more and more obvious to me. Even the handling of those key moments in the Koto Nationals competition itself (where everything was supposed to look as epic as possible) was a bit jarring for me. Plus, for example, the big performance at the end of the thirteenth episode, which was supposed to be, in some part, the best of what the group had played so far, did not really leave me feeling like it was anything spectacular, unlike the audience in the show, and the drama around Kudo and his hand (which is another great narrative cliché) was also not as dramatic as I was used to. In conclusion, at one point Kono Oto Tomare! Sounds of Life was the BEST of anime season Spring 2019 releases, however, unfortunately, my interest is rather slightly waning, which may be a big problem when the second season drops in October 2019. The first one narrowly came away with 8/10 in the end. (06/30/2019)