As a violinist for a decade I was excited to see this anime pop up in a rare genre. So far, some plot parts aside, the musical aspect is relatable, especially the parent influence. As for the animation, it’s very variable. In the beginning, the mendelssohn violin concerto is animated precisely and beautifully. Bowing follows the slurs, and fingers are in the right place. For the second episode, some small perks like tuning the violin were impressive to see. However, when it got to Canon, the fingers were still and the bowing became a seesaw. It felt like they forgot to animate it. For the3rd episode, oh man I actually saw another orchestra in an anime. I was a bit disappointed that it was visibly CGI and that the violins became robotic, but an orchestra isn’t small and it must have been hard to animate. Overall, I’m excited to see how far this anime goes in terms of plot, musicality, and animation.

Edit for 5th episode:
There are some good parts and bad parts for the animation. Let me start with the sauce. The sound and the animation was great at showing the dynamics, especially with Saeki deviating away from the original dynamics and adjusting the counting and pace, and Aono also playing fortissimo on the tremolo. The fingering was mostly correct when going over the piece Spring. Akine’s Canon playing was flat at times, but that could be attributed to her experience. I will note that her tone quality has significantly improved. For the ensemble part, it was also cool to see that the CGI was not completely robotic and that the concertmaster had more accentuated body language focused on guiding the ensemble.

As for the bad parts.
The bowing lagged behind on some parts on Spring, especially the accompanying part that Aono was playing. And for Akine, they switched to CGI. For three or four notes, Akine‘s fingers were also on the wrong string. Specifically, the A string when it was supposed to be the D string. For the ensemble, using the body language of the concertmaster to induce “Harada Magic” is certainly far from realistic, but at least it emphasizes the role of a concertmaster.

These are my animation thoughts thus far. So far, it’s not bad