On October 7, an announcement landed that made us sit up. Kuzushiro's manga Amayo no Tsuki (serialized on Kodansha's Comic DAYS) is getting a TV anime, and its score will be handled by Kyoto instrumental band jizue. On October 11 the cast and the first promotional video followed. The series is slated for 2027, and it is also taking part in Machi Asobi vol.31 in Tokushima, which starts today, October 17.
Why does this matter so much? Because this is a story about the piano and about not being able to hear. Saki Kindaichi has played piano since she was a child; Kanade Oikawa lost her hearing to an acquired condition and gave up the piano. The two meet in high school, and the series follows how the distance between them slowly changes. The manga runs to 12 volumes so far. Sound sits at the very center of the story, yet one of its heroines can no longer hear it — few premises are as difficult, or as fascinating, for a score.
"How do you express music in a world without sound?"
The members' comments released with the announcement put that difficulty into words. Bassist Tsuyoshi Yamada spoke of "how to express music in a world without sound, and how to stay close to the characters' emotions and the distance between them." Pianist Kie Katagi said, "Because the piano, and 'sound' itself, play such an important role in the story, we naturally ended up with many piano pieces." Guitarist Norimasa Inoue added that he is "truly honored to be part of such a wonderful work."
This is the key point for us. jizue is built around piano, guitar and bass — there is a pianist in the band. That means the piano Saki plays on screen and the piano in the underscore could come from the same band and the same touch. Plenty of works blur the line between diegetic music and score, but a band whose very "voice" is the piano taking on this subject is a rare pairing.
From "Stars Align," through TV drama scores, back to anime
jizue formed in Kyoto in 2006 and has fans at home and abroad for instrumentals that move between jazz, post-rock and classical. Their scoring résumé is solid: in anime they wrote the soundtrack for Stars Align (2019), and since then they have grown their presence in TV drama with TBS's Sunday Theater Gekokujo Kyuji (2023) and TBS's Friday drama 9 Border (2024).
Stars Align depicted the pain and frustration of boys in a soft tennis club, and jizue's music there tended to stand quietly beside the characters rather than whip up emotion. The phrase "stay close to the characters' emotions and the distance between them" sounds like a direct extension of that. How will the restraint they honed in drama — music that never steps on the dialogue — work between a girl who cannot hear and a girl who keeps on playing?
The "first notes" in PV No.1
The first PV already uses jizue's score, showing Saki and Kanade's first meeting and their reunion. Subtitles are available in 17 languages and regions, a sign the team wants to reach overseas fans from day one. Iori Saeki voices Saki Kindaichi and Sora Amamiya voices Kanade Oikawa.
The staff includes director Makino (牧野友映), series composer and scriptwriter Shogo Yasukawa, and sound director Nobuyuki Abe, with animation by CompTown. In a work about sound, how the sound director and composer design "silence" is one of the big things to look forward to before broadcast.
- Title: TV anime Amayo no Tsuki (scheduled for 2027)
- Music: jizue (Tsuyoshi Yamada, Kie Katagi, Norimasa Inoue)
- Original work: Kuzushiro (serialized on Kodansha's Comic DAYS, 12 volumes so far)
- Animation production: CompTown
Many anime depict musical talent, but few tell the story from the side of someone music can no longer reach. That is exactly why we want to listen hardest not when the score plays, but when it doesn't. How jizue's piano frames that silence is reason enough to count down to 2027.
