Nodame Cantabile Anime review

Type: TV

Episodes: 23+11+1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jan 12, 2007 to Jun 15, 2007

Producers: J.C. Staff, Genco, Kodansha

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Music, Romance, Slice of Life, Josei

Duration: 22 min. per episode

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

This is the best Musical anime I have seen so far!!!!

Though the romance part is little disappointing but if you like classical music, then you will love this anime. If not, this anime is not for U.

There are some best pieces of music in the anime that you can enjoy to the core.

If you have a feel for the music then you can feel the whole anime.

Shinichi Chiaki is a first class musician whose dream is to play among the elites in Europe. Coming from a distinguished family, he is an infamous perfectionist; not only is he highly critical of himself, but of others as well. The only thing stopping Chiaki from leaving for Europe is his fear of flying. As a result, he's grounded in Japan. During his 4th year at Japan's top music university, Chiaki happens to meet Noda Megumi; or as she refers to herself, Nodame. On the surface, she seems to be an unkempt girl with no direction in life. However, when Chiaki hears Nodame play the piano for the first time, he is in awe at the kind of music she plays. To Chiaki's dismay, Nodame moves into the apartment next to his and finds out that she is head over heels in love with him. Nodame Cantabile tells the story of Chiaki and Nodame, as they not only learn to deal with each other, but learn lessons from one another as they strive for the top of the musical world.

The story focuses its gaze on two characters Chiaki and Nodame, two students in a musical academy, and their lives for about 3 years. All in all, the story mainly focuses on the challenges the music college brings up. Nodame Cantabile was a good anime for the simple fact that it’s very light and carefree. More importantly, it felt as if the anime had no desire to do anything other than permit the listeners to discover and enjoy classical music while watching the anime. For that part, it succeeds to make us discover classical since it shows some of the numerous colors of classical by presenting some of the great artist of that movement (Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, and Shubert for example). The main problem for the audience would be that if one would not appreciate classical music, the anime would probably fail to reach them since it focuses almost solely on music, making us listen to some classical for up to 7 minutes in almost every episode. It’s a great anime for anyone trying to discover the classical genre, but for those who take no pleasure in listening to the genre, it’s not for you. 

 Other than that the anime is very predictable, it brings no surprises or no real plot twists, it goes almost always how you could think it would. The plot still did lived up to my expectations and did indeed bring up a very sweet crescendo of emotions, but the fact it’s almost too predictable strongly jeopardised the entertainment factor. It also gets its long moments where you can question yourself about where the anime is actually going, but apart from that, it was a good story and very sweet anime in general, the ending being particularly enjoyable.

One thing I had difficulty with was the humour, it was either funny or really lame, but there was no middle, no intermediate, so it was either very funny or profoundly boring at times. That’s something Nodame Cantabile could have done better, it was too often lame, and when it was funny, not present enough.

The characters in Nodame Cantabile where pretty much like the humour, although some of them were great, the majority of them were simply annoying or clichéd. I can say with certainty that the only characters I truly appreciated where the two mains (even if I did have a problem with the annoying sounds coming out of nodame’s mouth in the beginning) and a few others from the side character cast. Even if most of them are the pure representation of a cliché, their mix still gives us a good cast that can support the main characters, but too much of them are presented and almost none of them are developed. One thing I can admire in this anime would be the fact that the characters evolve a lot, it really gives us the feeling that 3 years have passed since they change gradually. Something that amazed me as well was the fact that even the music in the anime has progression, as the music gets more and more elaborate and the sound seems to get better and better. But I digress, in the end, even if some of the characters were at times blatantly annoying or simply a copy of a popular trope, their union and cohesion was great, so it gave us a solid cast, at least solid enough to carry the main cast.

The music was without a doubt, the best thing in the anime; it was also sadly one of the only reasons someone would fully want to watch this anime since the rest of the anime doesn’t excel particularly. The music does excel, it’s great and covers almost every field of classical and a lot of different styles. Only downside: if you don’t like classical, you will have trouble with this anime. One thing I loved was the fact they always placed a little ‘’info tag’’ to indicate what music was being played in concerts

The art was pretty bland; I suppose the animation part was less of a focus for the producers. It’s not bad per say, but it could have gotten more budget since it needed some improvement.

Eithey was Nodame cantabile was a good anime, but It had its flaws. Even if the romance was one of the less focused part of the anime, it was present and enjoyable, as was the music, but some of the things that were around the music and romance lacked.

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