Excellent adaptation.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

"The Perfect world of Kai", is a beautifully done Shōnen type Japanese anime with a difference. At the core of the film are two young boys who are reaching watershed moments in their lives but who are simultaneously deep friends and rivals.First there is the well-to-do boy, Shuhei Amamiya, who come from a musical background--his father was a concert pianist. Shuhei is very talented and practises all the time to achieve musical perfection. The other boy is Kai. He plays an old piano in the forest because he loves the music. His background is very different, Kai comes from a very disadvantaged situation. He lives in the slums, has no father figure and his mother is a professional prostitute. Kai has to fight his way through school but has become streetwise, suspicious and apparently cynical. The third significant person is the piano teacher, a professor of music who was once a great concert pianist. His life was shattered in a terrible car accident which killed his fiancée and ended his career hopes. It is he who once owned the abandoned piano in the forest which will play only for Kai. The Teacher {with some difficulty} manages to take Kai under his wing and attempts to instruct him in the techniques which will best inspire him to find his own voice. He gets Kai to the point where he will enter a major competition which puts him in direct competition with his best friend.That's the essence of the plot. It dramatises the dialogue between inspirational imagination and technical perfection {a similar theme is explored in "Strictly Ballroom"}. Of course the real power of the film lies in the wonderful characterisation of the three principal characters, with some adroit use of minor figures such as "The toilet girl" {watch the film if you want to know what that means}, Kai's very sympathetic mother {despite her profession}, and the mean bully in the school. Another excellent feature of Piano Forest is the skillful and vivid use of four important locales: the slum world of Kai, the upper middle class world of Shuhei, the school and the forest with the abandoned piano. Naturally, there's some pretty good piano music in the film--especially Mozart's Piano Sonata. K.310."The Perfect world of Kai" is an excellent anime which goes in various directions one doesn't often encounter in the more traditional studios and is well worth exploration.

The Animation Nation film festival has been playing for about 5 days already, and because of my recent travel, I have not been able to catch some of the goodies screened in the last few days such as Sita Sings The Blues, and Bill Plympton's latest feature Idiots and Angels. Animation Nation is one of the more highly anticipated film festivals here given its consistently stellar programme lineup over the years, with plenty of animation fans who turn up in droves to catch the latest the scene has to offer. Japanese animation has always been well-received, and in the past the festival had scored a coup with the first screening outside Japan of Satoshi Kon's Paprika, as well as Makoto Shinkai's 5 Centimeters Per Second.This year's opening film The Piano Forest was one of the nominees in the 2008 Japanese Academy for Best Animated Film. Directed by Masayuki Kojima, additional screenings had to be provided for given the overwhelming response, and after watching it today, it's easy to see why the popularity and favourable response, and has cemented it as one of my favourite Japanese animated film as well, because it has a strong story to tell.We follow Shuhei as one of the film's main protagonist in his temporary move from Tokyo to a small town, and being the new student whose interest in the piano gets ridiculed by his class, he gets thrown a challenge to play a strange piano which is found in the forest, reputed to be spoilt, but comes alive at night as the melodic strains could be heard by folks outside. But classmate Kai brings Shuhei to this piano which he lay claims to, and indeed the majestic grand piano sitting idly deep in the forest doesn't respond to Shuhei's attempt to play it, but produces beautiful music under Kai's hands.It's a perfect, mysterious premise set up to pique your interest from the onset, and of course I'll do the story and to you the reader no favours should I dwell on this mystery any longer. But suffice to say that the story is one of the friendship and bond between the two school boys, who come from different backgrounds and possess different values. To Kai, he's the typical rich city kid who gets bestowed with material privileges and a classy hobby which he intents to turn into a career, no doubt also under the pressure of being his father's son. He can be quite anal at times, and takes pride and care to maintain his assets. In Kai is a spontaneous kid who lives a carefree life, with the piano in the forest being his outlet to connect with his seff, coming from a single parent home, with his mom presumably in the world's oldest profession. Comparing the two, one plays the piano as if his life depended on it, while the other plays from memory, observation and feeling like in trance.Nonetheless the two boys make for interesting characters, and for a 2D animated film, their characters are more than three dimensional, with very real human emotions built into them, and brought to life by the superbly clean animation without any useless fanciful trappings. It's a fantastic story about the human condition of enviousness of someone deemed unworthy, and the negative feelings of frustration when they get a leg up on you with opportunities that you crave for, which were given away nonchalantly.For those who are not familiar with the piano nor with famous music composers, fear not. There are ample scenes to give you a 101 on the basics, and Mozart's Piano Sonato K.310 gets extended airtime here since it's a fundamental piece used throughout. Well placed humour was a welcome as well, celebrating the innate talents of Kai and his ability to charm and encourage others despite having his own demons to deal with. Although there were some Akeelah and The Bee-ish moments, with the set up for some head to head rivalry between the two boys, I thought that the teacher character Ajino Sosuke, a one time all- Japan piano champion, did look curiously androgynous.There's nothing supernatural to the film, but it comes with a terrific, rich story and a reminder of doing things that you enjoy, in the process yielding far better and satisfying results than doing things that you're tasked to do.

Shuhei Amamiya son of a famous concert pianist transfers with his mother to a school in the country so his mom can take care of his grandmother. He wants nothing better than to become a famous pianist like his dad. When he's threatened by some of the other boys to play a broken piano in the forest thats said to be played by ghosts or else, he's rescued by the poor as dirt Kai, who claims the piano works since its his piano. When Kai takes his new friend to see his piano, Amamiya finds that the piano does work, and his friend is a great, though completely untrained, pianist in his own right.Magical story of following your heart and finding ones "piano". This is a story for anyone who's ever tried to be good at something but found it difficult, anyone who's found it easy and the magic of friendship. When the film started I wasn't sure this was going to be anything special, then the kids began to talk like kids and the pure joy and love of music was expressed and the film started to become something special. These are real people trying to get along in life, and deal with school, friendship and a competition where one has to wonder is being technically perfect when other people feel things so much more.I don't know what to say... its a really good film. It makes you feel good. Its not perfect but you really won't care. For a good chunk of it the film didn't need to be animated until things become magic and take off..You really want to see this if for no other reason you'll find out why Kai become Wendy to the confusion of a good number of people. This film needs a wide release so lots of people can find their own piano.somewhere around 8 out of 10

A fantastic movie about piano playing and friendship. Don't get it wrong thinking you won't like it because your not interested in pianos cause i ain't and i still loved it. Mainly its about 2 boys one rich from the the capital Tokyo and one poor from what we could call the city slums of a smaller town, they become very good friends and find out that they both love the same thing "to play the piano" and they're both trying really hard to become better before a big competition which selects the best pianist in all of JapanCan't really explain it but there is something in this movie that you don't see much in movies these days something different, slightly mystic fantasy about it may be a way to put it. And then we have the Friendship and warmth which the movie is based on and if you put it together well See it and you'll know what i mean.Regards Your Hottentott