Your Lie in April Characters

A 14-year-old in his third year of junior high and a former child prodigy, nicknamed the 'Human Metronome' for the mechanical precision of his playing, and taught by his mother, Saki. He won competition after competition until she died when he was eleven; since then he cannot hear his own playing, sees the world in monotone and touches the piano only to check sheet music for a part-time job. Kaori Miyazono makes him her accompanist and pushes him back into competitions, Hiroko Seto becomes his teacher and guardian, and he takes on his first student, Nagi Aiza. Along the way he falls in love with Kaori, who seems to like his friend Watari.

A violinist in Kousei's year and Tsubaki's classmate: free-spirited, unpredictable and short-tempered. She plays music her own way instead of as the score is written, which gets her criticised by judges but wins over audiences. She asks Tsubaki to set her up with Ryota Watari, meets Kousei that day, makes him her accompanist and refuses to let him give up the piano. She loves canelés, and her parents run a pastry shop. Kaori has a medical condition that keeps her in and out of hospital; she chooses a risky operation in the hope of playing with Kousei once more, and dies during it. The letter she leaves him explains the lie of the title.

Kousei's childhood friend and next-door neighbour, a third-year on the school softball team who has always treated him like a little brother. She wants him to play the piano again, but as Kaori draws him back into music she feels shut out of a musicians' world she can never enter. She starts dating an older student, Saito, before slowly realising that she loves Kousei herself, and she is shaken when he plans to move away to a high school with a music course. She confesses to him in episode 20, and at the very end promises that she will stay by his side.

Kousei and Tsubaki's childhood friend, the captain of the school soccer team and very popular with the girls, a playboy who is happy that Kaori has a crush on him but is not ready to settle on one girl. He can seem frivolous, yet his offhand comments are often exactly to the point. When Kousei admits that he likes Kaori, Watari accepts it and encourages him; he also pulls Kousei out of the school pool and lets Kaori hear Kousei's festival duet over the phone from her hospital bed.

A top-class pianist of Kousei's age who always lost to him at competitions as a child and has practised relentlessly ever since to play as well as the boy he thinks of as his hero. Now the favourite to win, he turns down an invitation to an international competition because he believes Kousei will return. Jealous when Kousei performs with his younger sister Nagi, he challenges him to their next competition, where he finally plays to say goodbye to his hero and move on from the rivalry.

A top-class pianist of Kousei's age who decided to become a pianist after hearing him play when she was five. She gives off a cool, mature air, but her playing is temperamental: when Kousei vanished from competitions she lost her motivation and her results became erratic. Reunited with him at the Maihou Competition, she pours her anger and loneliness into Chopin's 'Winter Wind' Étude and gives the performance of her life, hoping her music will reach him.

Takeshi's younger sister, a seventh-grader majoring in music at Kurumigaoka Junior High, a renowned music school. She turns up asking Hiroko Seto for lessons, secretly to size up her brother's rival, and is put in Kousei's charge instead, becoming his first student. They clash at first, then bond over chasing someone they cannot catch up with, and at her school's culture festival they play a waltz from Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty together, four hands on one piano.

A renowned pianist, described as Japan's leading pianist, and Saki Arima's close friend from college. It was Hiroko who discovered Kousei's talent and suggested that Saki train him; blaming herself for how much he later suffered, she kept her distance after Saki died. When she hears him play again she offers to teach him, becomes his guardian as well as his mentor, and agrees to take on Nagi before handing her lessons to Kousei. She has a young daughter, Koharu.

Kousei's mother, a former pianist who became his first teacher. She had not meant to make him a pianist, but after Hiroko spotted his talent and Saki learned that she was terminally ill, she set out to give him a foundation that would let him make a living after she was gone, and she was a strict and demanding teacher. Her death, when Kousei was eleven, left him unable to hear his own playing. Kreisler's 'Love's Sorrow', a piece she often played, is the one through which he finally comes to terms with her memory.

Hiroko Seto's young daughter, a cheerful little girl who usually clings to her mother's side and is adored by both her mother and Kousei. She is with Hiroko when they meet Kousei again after his first competition in two years, and she is shy around him at first because she has not seen him for so long.

One of Tsubaki's good friends, who often gives her advice. She notices that Tsubaki has feelings for Kousei long before Tsubaki will admit them, tells her to let go of her jealousy of music and cheer Kousei on before his last competition, and after Kaori's death encourages Tsubaki to go to him. It is Nao who finally persuades Tsubaki to face her feelings.

An older student whom Tsubaki has long admired. Feeling left out as Kousei and Kaori grow closer, Tsubaki asks him to be her boyfriend and the two start dating, but Saito can see how much Kousei means to her, and in episode 15 he is the one who ends it.