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Nodame Cantabile is mega-awesome
I remember when I first started watching the anime version of Nodame Cantabile and had these skyhigh expectations on the show for some reason. I hadn’t heard of the manga at the time and didn’t know anything about the characters but I had visions of a story filled with sweet romance and college life. After a few episodes my disappointment matched my previous expectations in magnitude and I was quickly losing interest in the show. Then somehow my brain managed to wrap its proverbial head around the fact that it wasn’t going to get any romance and changed gears for a more relaxed viewing and suddenly I was enjoying the show tremendously.
When I started reading the manga a while back I already knew what to expect and was able to enjoy it from the get go without being bogged down by any weird and unrelated expectations. And enjoy it I did, enough to catch up to the current volume during a weekend of marathoning. About halfway through I stopped to think why I was so completely mesmerized with the story and characters when the premise of it all, classical music, is completely foreign to me. I knew nothing about the supposedly big names they were dropping and they could have left the musical lingo in kanji for all I cared.
Then it struck me; there was no conflicts. There was no melodrama, no stupid misunderstandings, and no evil rivals. It was just through and through pleasant reading about one very driven guy and a goofy but talented girl. Believe me when I say it was a refreshing break from the previous shoujo manga race I was on. Hell, this is one of very few manga/anime where the protagonists face little to no obstacles to overcome that I’ve read/seen and still the story is far from unexciting. It has that “everyday excitement” going for it, where a single encounter might not be very amazing but the many encounters and happenings that build up the big picture are.
Anothing thing that kept me glued to the pages was the fact that the story seems fully plausible. Chiaki isn’t some superkid that came from nowhere, instead music had been a big part of his life even as a child and his family had all the right connections. He also don’t take giant leaps into the world famous musicians’ world, instead he’s slowly working his way upwards and I think this is a big part of why I enjoy it so much. It makes his rather extraordinary world somewhat relatable when you can see that he put effort into his work instead of moving forward by unbelievable chance.
I find it quite amazing that even after 20 volumes I do not find the story stale at all and I hope it’ll continue for 20 more volumes of awesomeness.
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Friday, June 6th 2008 at 6:28 pm
Aha, I should check this out soon
Friday, June 6th 2008 at 9:03 pm
oh yeah, i’ve been on this band wagon for awhile. glad to see you are into it as well.
Friday, June 6th 2008 at 11:31 pm
It’s not to say that Nodame doesn’t have it’s own dramas, it’s just they’re smaller and more personal dramas than the stuff you normally see in shoujo manga. (I think Nodame counts as josei though). It’s all a much more, dare I say it, realistic setting. The characters, even Nodame, are a lot more grounded.
If anything I’d call the drama subtle. Take Rui for example. She wouldn’t classify as a big evil rival of the shoujo tradition, as she’s not out to make anyone miserable or whatnot. She’s just following her own path in life. And yet when she shows up you can’t help but feel a little thrill at the potential gear in the works in Chiaki and Nodame’s relationship that she represents. There aren’t any big, evil schemes to make them break up, but she and her actions rock the boat enough.
Saturday, June 7th 2008 at 9:59 am
You’re right Nodame is josei, I only mentioned shoujo to give some background on the stuff I had been reading before to give you an idea what I was roughly comparing it to. I think I expressed myself rather clumsily when I said there’s no conflicts and saying it’s subtle drama is indeed more fitting.
The point I was trying to make was that so many other manga focus on this one obstacle that the characters need to overcome while Nodame is nothing like this. The typical format is to throw one problem at the characters per volume where Nodame instead flows smoothly from volume to volume with no real closure at the end of each of them. I think this gives the story a whole lot more coherence.
Sunday, June 8th 2008 at 5:38 am
Huh? Nodame was shoujo? I think I must’ve started watching under that assumption, but that totally left my mind since all the pointless shoujo cliches you pointed out were hardly present if at all. Now I’m hoping that the awesomeness doesn’t only stay in the source material, but in the upcoming anime second season as well!
Sunday, June 8th 2008 at 8:29 pm
I love this series.. well I never read the manga though, so I mostly started from the live action and then jumped to the anime.. mostly the music chokes me up. Although I am quite excited for the next season of Nodame in anime format.. I think it’s going to be an OVA or short series… following the Paris Arc.
Monday, June 16th 2008 at 5:35 am
I am reading the manga as well. It keeps me delirious and constantly on the edge of my seat with its exciting dynamics. The flow of the story is not forced and that was what makes me capable of enjoying it.
Monday, June 16th 2008 at 8:13 pm
Yeah this is seriously the first manga I’ve read where the story hasn’t felt forced even a single time. Quite amazing.
Monday, June 30th 2008 at 12:06 am
love this manga and dorama, in manga you can see how they working really hard to get the best, and in dorama you can see all the character is matching with the manga….love them
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