Nodame Cantabile

Information of Anime

Shinichi Chiaki, the best piano player in the music academy in Japan, dreams of being a conductor.  However, his arrogant attitude got him demoted to the lower level students.  Megumi "Nodame" Noda, a piano player in the same class as him, is impressed with his skills that she starts proclaiming to be his girlfriend.  To make matters worse for Chiaki, Nodame is his next door neighbour in the apartment he lives in.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

After being demoted, Chiaki's goal in becoming a conductor gets thinner.  Aside from the fact that he can't get on a plane due to his fear, he is stuck in Japan with almost no room to grow on his skills.  However, he tries to find ways to fulfill his dream.  Nodame supports him, but at the same time wants to be with him even though Chiaki doesn't like the fact that she's stick around with him.  Although with other lower level students, he tries to change his world with his own ways.  It's not until he finally gets the chance to be a conductor when a famous German conductor creates an orchestral containing the worst & weirdest students.  After the conductor left him & challenges him to a duel with another orchestral in an upcoming recital, Chiaki uses his skills to make his bad orchestra into a good one.

After making a group of poor music students into a successful orchestra, Chiaki is nearing his graduation exams.  However, he doesn't know what to do next. He doesn't want to go overseas & doesn't know what to do in Japan.  He would later come across the idea from some people about making his own orchestra.  Initially he didn't want to do it, but now he wants to since it was fun.  The orchestra, which has a lot of highly talent students, draws a lot of attention from highly acclaimed critics & musicians.  Plus, he has a goal as his fear of flying is somewhat lessen & wishes to accomplish a lot of things in Japan first before heading to Europe.  Watching his performance, Nodame starts to get serious & enters a competition.  Surprised about this, Chiaki supports her.  However, her motive is different than what he expected.

During the competition, we slowly learn about Nodame's past.  Also, the truth about her participation is revealed as getting the prize money.  When she returns home, more of her past is revealled as she had a rough childhood past with pianos.  As she gets depressed, Chiaki continues to finish his tasks in Japan with one final orchestra concert which comes as a success.  However, he feels uneasy without Nodame as he packs up to go to Vienna.  He decides to go to her place after discovering that he doesn't have her home number.  As he travels to the Northern part of Japan, Nodame regains herself & discovers that she has an application sent to Paris to go to a music school.  However, she needs to pass a exam first.  When Chiaki finds Nodame & discovers this, he feels relieved.

The show ends with some manga strips during the credit roll where Chiaki decides to go with his second choice for his music school at Paris.  Included are him visiting Nodame's family & some secrets & mysterious revealled that wasn't solved during the show.  After the credits, Chiaki learns about Nodame's piano past.  But he feels happy to see that Nodame is still playing the piano after what she faced in the past.

My Personal Review

Nodame Cantabile is surprising a really good series to watch.  Even if you aren't into classical music like me, the story & humour is more than enough to watch this.  This series spawned into a TV drama first before becoming an anime show.

Animation

The character designs are quite unique.  It's like how they would be drawn in a manga.  Although I never read the manga, it gave me that impression.  However, it has some of the anime style to it with the character having strange faces.  A lot of them come from Nodame being shocked or getting abused.

The colours were very dull.  It looked quite natural to the anime actually.  Aside of matching it's manga-like character designs, it gave a warm feeling.  The show looked like in was made in the 90s though.  It's almost like cell animation.

In terms of the animation movement, the flow was quite nice & natural.  Although there were scenes that had silly situations, it was well made.  They are a lot of times where the animation would be missing some frames as one action moves into another instantly.  One problem I did have a bit was the timing of instrument playing.  Some times it's on cue or it's off.

Another thing about the animation movement is how the show uses 3D animation for close ups of the instrument playing.  Although they are performed on cue with the music, the drawings itself is a bit freaky.  When you see a piano player playing from a bird's eye view, the arms look too long & the front body part is narrow.  It's out of proportion.

Sound       

The sound effects weren't bad.  The things sounded like what they are in real life.  Even the musical instruments sound very good.  But as mentioned before, the sounds may be off cue at times.

The seiyuus here are very good.  An excellent cast lineup.  They matched their characters very well.  Nodame is surprisingly well done.  It may be a little too much for some people as she does a lot of screaming like a hype high school girl.

The music is mainly classical music.  Some of it is live remix variations of classical pieces.  By remix, I don't mean upbeat.  It's more like different playing styles from person to person.  Although the theme songs are more modern music, they have some slight classical elements to them.

Story

It's about Chiaki reaching his goal in being conductor.  Stuck with students that have lower level skills in a low level class, he tries to adapt to these students.  Even though they are weird, Chiaki starts to become more comfortable with them as friends.  He makes some switches in-between such as being a piano student.  During this process, you see some character development not only from him but people around him as well. 

The character development is quite nice.  It's the typical type of where a student enters a school & thinks about what to do next after he/she graduates to the real world.  Music isn't a strong field of choice, so this show makes the situation a bit more harder.  Chiaki's character improves as well as Nodame.  But little of it happens a little too late.  Her character is revealled too close to the end of the show.  Just as Chiaki is improving, her story kicks in a bit.

The ending wasn't too bad.  It managed to come to a conclusion for Chiaki's goal & Nodame as well.  However, I felt Nodame was a bit rush & easy.  But the show kind of gets away from it since her character is weird at the start.

Overall Conclusion

Nodame Cantabile has a great character lineup with a great seiyuu cast supporting them.  It's interesting to see how Chiaki reached his dreams while he works with some of the academy's great & weird students & professors.  I strongly recommend watching this.

Nodame Cantabile gets a grade of 8.5/10.  The interesting cast draws you into the show.  Its got great humour that will have you laugh.  The storyline is pretty good & the ending wraps the show nicely.  However, I still have some problems with Nodame's story as it seems rushed as a last minute effort.

Last updated on February 26, 2008