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Plot Synopsis

Nodame Cantabile is a shoujo romance comedy set at a music university. When Chiaki was little, he traveled the great stages of Europe with his father, absorbing classical music. Although he learned to play piano and violin, his ambition was to one day become a world famous conductor like his mentor, Sebastien Viera. Now a piano student at Momogaoka University, Chiaki still harbors ambitions of returning to Europe to study conducting under Viera, except for his fear of flying (and traveling by ship.) He turns his frustration into his music. Every at the school is awful, he thinks, until he meets a strange girl named Noda Megumi (Nodame), who is incredibly skilled at piano - and who turns out to be his very messy neighbor. The two don't hit it off, but are forced to take a piano lesson together anyway. Meanwhile, the clandestine arrival of famous German conductor Franz Streselmann sends the school into disarray as Streselmann decides to create his own orchestra consisting of what the school assumes are its misfit students -- and Streselmann taps Chiaki to conduct. Through a series of lessons, mishaps, performances, and trials, Chiaki, Nodame, the students of Streselmann's orchestra and the rest of the school learn more about the classical music they're studying as well as themselves.

Story & Characters

First off: This is a review of the 11-episode Nodame Cantabile drama series, with only some minor comparisons to the manga and anime. Since the drama did show in TV, I checked the TV box.

Nodame Cantabile is another entry in the shoujo 'slice of life/university life' romance genre, and is most akin to another show about university students, Honey and Clover. Wheras H&C focuses on students in an art university, Nodame Cantabile focuses on students in a music university.

Like most shoujo romances, the plot follows the typical shoujo timeline:
1) Boy meets girl.
2) Boy and girl find they have almost nothing in common and are constantly butting heads.
3) Outside forces continuously conspire to make boy and girl work together, no matter how much the parties protest.
4) Boy and girl finally realize they like each other.

Also like most shoujo romances, the story features the following typical personalites:
- Lead male is exceptionally talented, somewhat arrogant, aloof/above others, highly driven, and of course, insanely handsome and hence a chick magnet. (Chiaki)
- Lead female is lead male's absolute opposite in almost every way, being ditzy, naiive, odd-ball, and not considered cute by most guys. (Nodame)
- Lead male's ex-girlfriend, who knows they're not together but is still unwilling to give him up. (Saiko)
- A person who is dreadfully in love with lead male despite having absolutely no chance of hooking up with lead male (Masumi)
- The punk rocker, I'll-do-things-my-way type of personality (Mine)
- The rational female whose exceptional talent and cool head means she can be friends with lead male without anyone ever thinking they're a couple (Kiyora)
- The girl whom no one can believe is actually a college student because she looks like she's in middle school (Sakura)
- A straight-laced guy who somehow falls in love with lead female (Kuroki)
- Lead male's competition in terms of school work/praise/ability (Okouchi)
There are also the typical teacher-personalities:
- The really strict/demanding professor with a hot head (Eto, aka Halisen for his habit of smacking his pupils with his fan)
- The laid-back, let anything go professor (Tanioka)
The loose canon in this set of personalities is the German conductor Streselmann, who mysteriously appears at the school and wants to create his own orchestra. He's a womanizer and highly competitive and totally insane, but he is also incredibly talented and knows how to bring the students to the fullest of their potential.

But really, shoujo romances follow the same formula. The beauty is in the execution of the formula, and Nodame Cantabile delights in taking these personalities and shaking them all together with convenient plot devices, slowly bringing the trajectory of Chiaki and Nodame together. When in doubt, Nodame errs on the side of slapstick humor instead of tears and drama, making it silly and enjoyable, even if ultimately predictable. Streselmann's presense is what drives most of the plot, whether directly through his actions or indirectly through those actions' consequences, helping all the characters to grow and develop, and reach their potentials.

Compared to the manga (and what little I've seen of the anime), the drama's storyline is much more fast-paced and intense. While the manga tends to have each plot arc in sequential order, the drama seems just want to get everything done with at once, so instead of Tanioka taking over Nodame and Chiaki's lessons, Masumi's competition with Nodame for Chiaki's affection, Mine's violin re-examination and the appearence of Streselmann happening one at a time, these things all happen concurrently, making the drama packed with events in every scene. There's a lot of material to cover in 11 episodes (although the drama episodes are ~1 hour each), and it doesn't waste its time on a lot of the filler and fluff the manga delightly meanders through just to see what sort of silly things it can make the characters do. I like the drama's pacing a lot, although you have to pay attention or you might miss a lot!

In the end, Nodame Cantabile is relatively predictable, but still enjoyable due to the wide variety of characters and plot devices it employs. Most of the characters are immediately likable, and you're sure to find someone whose story you like.

Rating

8 (good)

Art

The look of the Nodame drama stays remarkable true to the manga. Most of the actors look a lot like their manga counterparts, so it's easy to know who is who even before their formal introduction to the story. However, like most manga, Nodame tends to exaggerate specific features of a character to emphasize their personality, and this was also translated to the drama - with not-so-stellar results. Although Mine's punk rocker look transferred well, Masumi's "I just got off the set of 'That 70's Show'!" look is just, well, bizarre. Also, while Streselmann in the manga looks like a slightly off-skelter but otherwise nice elderly fellow, Streselmann in the drama is just plain creepy, with his dark skin and curly, long white hair.
The scenery of the manga, being mostly set at a university, was easily reproducible in the drama, nothing exceptionally good or bad with that, although the degree of similarity of Nodame's messy room in the manga and the drama was a nice touch. There's not a lot of variance in the scenery - people are either at home, or on campus.
One thing about the look of the Nodame drama is that it really tries to match the manga's exagerrated slapstick humor. When Halisen smacks Chiaki with his fan, he doesn't just bop him on the side of his head, he slams it into Chiaki's head and sends him flying off the stool in slow motion. And so forth. It's disconcerting since I'm not used to live-action stories trying to ape the style of an anime, but eventually you sort of get used to it. I guess.

Rating

6 (average)

Sound

The best part about the Nodame drama, and the one true failing of the manga, is the music. Of course, that's a limitation of the medium itself, but it's what makes the drama rewarding to watch. You get to listen to the music that plays WHILE the characters are playing it, and you get to see them playing it (although for the most part the characters look more like they're going through the motions of playing except for Nodame and Chiaki's piano scenes.) It helps the scene gain its full impact.
Nodame draws on a lot of different sources, from Beethoven and Mozart to Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Handel and more. The classics aren't used just for lessons and performances, but also as background music, so we hear a lot of Flight of the Bumblebee or Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and more. I'm translating a list of the pieces used in the show here.
The opening theme is a part of the first movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony while the ending is a part of Gerswhin's Rhapsody in Blue, both songs playing prominent roles in the series itself (the former being Chiaki's first role as conductor, the latter being S-orchestra and Nodame's stellar performance in the Momogaoka music festival.)
Another great part about the music used in the story is that you get to see how the characters interpret each piece. For example, Chiaki's rendering of Rachaminoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 18 is skillful and technically excellent, but Nodame's interpretation is faster, looser, and quite different, yet just as satisfying as Chiaki's.
All in all, this is a show about music - classical music - and it's great for that.

Rating

9 (very good)

Presentation

The Nodame Cantabile drama is a good show. It's not a great show nor is it a groundbreaking show, or a show that will change your outlook on life. It's just something that's fun to watch. The characters all have wacky quirks that make them interesting and amusing, and their development both musically and emotionally is both accessible and compelling. The plot has a good, rapid pacing that never lags, and doesn't waste time on fillers.
The best part of the presentation is being able to see the characters perform the pieces. It really makes a difference compared to the manga. To hear the piece is to understand what Nodame means by 'imaginging a field of flowers' for Mozart's "Spring" violin sonata, or Chiaki's comments that Rachaminoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 is supposed to start out soft and then build in intensity instead of Nodame's method, which is to start off strong and maintain the fortissimo. It also makes you appreciate the difficulty in playing classical music. Most pieces are demanding, especially at the level these students are performing at, but to watch someone play a song at such a rapid tempo, or to play scales all over the piano is quite awe-inspiring.
The drama is not without its faults, the main one being its dedication to matching the manga as closely as possible, especially in the over-the-top exaggerations of character appearance and slapstick humor. While such things work fine in a manga or anime medium, it's hard to imagine real people acting as they sometimes do in a live-action drama.
This show is recommended to anyone who enjoys comedic shoujo romances and slice-of-life stories. If you like Honey and Clover, this series is similar in style, although with far less drama. If you like classicsal music, you'll have fun naming all the pieces they play in the background.
If you've read the manga or watched the anime, you should definately give the drama a try. Just don't try to watch the anime and drama at the same time. The difference in voices and look make it a confusing affair. (I tried, and stopped watching the anime after the second episode to focus just on the drama, since it was complete.)

Rating

7 (above average)

Final Verdict

7.50 (good)

Reviewed by Tama-Neko, 1y 10wk ago