There’s no Impres­sion in regards to Nodame Cantabile at this point, one either likes it or they don’t after two whole sea­sons. Although, I find it mighty hard to appre­ci­ate the anime fully after enjoy­ing the live-action so much. The faces of all the char­ac­ters just look so… flat (=_= ). Not to men­tion how much they cut the per­for­mances down by.

In many ways, it felt like the Finale chap­ter had reset the stage once again. Lone­li­ness brought forth by genius seems to be a reoc­cur­ring theme within Nodame. For Chi­aki, his super­hu­man deter­mi­na­tion and drive, com­bined with unde­ni­able nat­ural tal­ents, are send­ing him off to the stars where none of his peers could match of being his equal. For Nodame, it’s her unique tal­ent whom few can rec­og­nize and understand.

Through­out all of Nodame sea­son one, the story drove char­ac­ter devel­op­ment to ful­fill these gaps. By its end, Chi­aki was no longer the obscure, lonely, and mis­un­der­stood prodigy. The S-Oke had first given him a sense of team­work and under­stand­ing. Then the Ris­ing Stars orches­tra had brought him peers, com­rades who sought the stars in the same fash­ion he did, whom he could treat as equals. At its end, Chi­aki was not only rec­og­nized, but also Worlds apart from the lonely indi­vid­ual he started the series with. Nodame her­self didn’t make quite the same leap in progress, but even she had finally gained some recog­ni­tion of her tal­ents through her hard work, and was pro­moted to study­ing in Paris.

But Paris Chap­ter broad­ened the gap even fur­ther. Chi­aki soars straight into the skies by win­ning his con­duc­tor com­pe­ti­tion, while Nodame con­tin­ues her improve­ment, over­com­ing yet another hur­dle and mak­ing way to the next level.

That brings us to the Finale: Chiaki’s tal­ents have fully blos­somed, bedaz­zling every­one within the World of clas­si­cal music. But the matu­rity of his career sets him apart from the rest of his peers once again (it doesn’t help that the other over­achiev­ers like Kiy­ora are miss­ing from the stage). Nodame? her tremen­dous growth is putting cau­tious­ness into the stance of her Auclair-sensei. He has a point, we all know what hap­pened the last time Nodame pushed too fast while under Harisen-sensei.

I hope that by Finale’s end, we’ll have a full con­certo once again, with all the cama­raderie of the Ris­ing Stars, Nodame included this time. Actu­ally, we all know this is going to hap­pen (shoujo manga after all), I just want to see it.

Well in the mean­time, the first episode is about…

Chi­aki astound­ing every­one with his tal­ents: Con­duct­ing while play­ing the piano.

Auclair-sensei cau­tiously hold­ing Nodame back

Nodame recharg­ing through perversion

Nodame tells Chi­aki head-on that he’s being unfair

Chi­aki sulks and recharges his energy through BL, in his lat­est out-of-closet spree

No one can blame you here (except maybe Nodame)

Nodame finally gets her Ris­ing Stars

I await my live-action finale. You bet­ter deliver Japan! I know where you live!

By the way, Chi­aki now sells cars, and I fully sup­port this d(^_^ )

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Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• 2010 Spring Anime Pre­view Thoughts
• Nodame Cantabile Live Action: the Faces that Bested the Anime

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 11:10 and is filed under Anime, Impressions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.