First Impressions / Nodame Cantabile

OP:

OP: 「Sky High」 by ゴスペラーズ (Gospellers)
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Stream

Summary:

Having arrived in Paris, Nodame and Chiaki head to his mother’s family’s apartment building and move into adjoining rooms. After seeing the place, Nodame starts playing Ravel‘s Miroirs on the piano in Chiaki’s room, and all the other residents of the apartment building hear it. This includes two students named Tanya and Frank, and Nodame recognizes the latter because they had already met at the Conservatoire entrance exam. That night, Chiaki and Nodame go to a concert being conducted by Vieira, and although Chiaki is quite touched by the performance, he doesn’t go to see Vieira afterward because he wants to first test himself by taking part in a conducting competition. He and Nodame also go out to dinner, but Nodame has hard time with the French menu and language, so she screws up ordering and says some embarrassing things. She gets depressed, and her frustrations boil over in a drunken outburst about how Paris is like Chiaki’s hometown. After bringing her home, Chiaki watches Nodame sleep and reflects on how she didn’t have time to learn language because she worked so hard in her piano studies to get here.

The next morning, Nodame is back to her normal self and wants to go sightseeing. Chiaki, however, needs to practice for the competition and refuses to accompany her. In lieu of this, Nodame pays a visit to Frank’s room and finds him and Tanya arguing over how he’s an otaku and how she has no luck with men. When Nodame notices that Frank has her favorite Puri Gorota anime playing, she immediately sits herself in front of the TV and starts reciting the episode’s script in Japanese. Since what’s playing is in French, she’s able to use this to learn the language. Tanya meanwhile pays a visit to Chiaki and gets him to connect her laptop to the Internet. While he’s working, Tanya tells him about how Nodame and Frank are busy talking about anime, but Chiaki denies that Nodame is his girlfriend. Tanya sees an opportunity in this and starts telling Chiaki about how she came from Russia and about her failed relationship. Thinking about how Tanya has been alone since she was young, Chiaki asks to hear her play the piano. Unfortunately, Tanya isn’t very good, and Chiaki spends most of the afternoon yelling at her and making her practice. To Chiaki’s surprise, Nodame later shows up at his door and uses her newly learned French on him, and he makes her dinner.

ED:

ED: 「東京 et 巴里 」 (Tokyo et Paris) by 宮本笑里xSolita (Miyamoto Emiri x Solita)
Watch the ED! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Stream

The new OP and ED are alright, but I really prefer the ones from the original series, especially the CRYSTAL KAY song. Of these two though, I like the ED a little better. I thought the OP was rather disappointing all around, and it made me unsure of how good the series would be.

Despite the OP, I was actually pretty happy with how the first episode of the Paris chapter turned out. It might be nostalgia talking, but I was rather charmed with the series and enjoyed all the jokes, especially the scene where Nodame says in French that she was raped. And despite following the manga fairly closely (albeit with some jumping around), they even threw in a few Shana references as part of Frank’s otakuness. The only thing that was detracting from the episode was the fact that the animation felt a bit different compared to the first series. I’m not sure if that’s because of the influence of the new director or just a change in the animation staff – the backgrounds maintained the same watercolor-esque flavor as the first series, but character faces and other little stuff just weren’t as detailed.

If this were airing in a different season, I’d probably commit to blogging it from just the first episode, but since this season’s Thursdays are so overloaded with good shows, I can’t quite do that yet. Hopefully, episode two of the other shows will help me decide.

42 Comments

  9. ALRIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Can’t wait… I’m so excited, reading the manga is definitely not as satisfying as watching the show seeing as I can’t hear anything for some odd reason o_o… can’t wait for the ending :3…. [no manga is not over (I think) just I have a feeling where they might end it and if they don’t end it there I’ll be doing more Fanboy roars]

    Putang
    Reply

  17. I just hope all the budget they saved from making a more elaborate opening got used in making better animation. One of my -unfair- peeves about the Nodame anime is that when they are supposed to be playing, they just show tons of static images and rarely anyone is seeing “playing”.

    yaku
    Reply

  18. So, Mukyaa is back. I’m quite happy to hear that again.
    As for the animation quality, I think it is decent and after all, the “season 1” was not THAT good either.

    The manga is still ongoing, although the author Ninomiya Tomoko has stopped writing for a while because she is pregnant. It is not known exactly when she will be back to her business, but it might be early next year I guess. The season 1 covered 9 volumes and a little bit of the 10th of the manga in 6 months, and this 2nd one goes just for 3 months(Asaki Yume Mishi is scheduled to come out for noitaminA early next year) while the manga has 21 volumes already. Therefore, they certainly don’t have any shortage of the original story for this season 2, and I have very little doubt there will the season 3, or even 4.

    Anyways, with “Index”, “Tora Dora” and “Nodame”…I guess JC Staff is quite busy this fall season, and I’m planning to keep watching with all the 3 shows.

    calde
    Reply

  19. What’s that horrifying screeching sound? I think it’s the sound of the French Language screaming in incomprehensible mortal agony.

    Man, and I thought English got butchered in anime. XD

    Other than that, fun show as usual.

    sarcastic_weasel
    Reply

  30. Well this was by far the funniest first episode of the season, although I have to agree that 1) the OP really sucks 2) they horribly butchered the French. I am not looking forward to Chiaki meeting Viera sensei now lol (I am Italian).

    Steelman
    Reply

  33. Awesome, Nodame is back!

    As for you not liking the OP, it is supposed to be some kind of adaptation of Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto, and while it may not be a very good song, it works for the series very well.

    Ausdoerrt
    Reply

  34. Indeed the French was soooooo bad. It’s ok that the Japanese cast has Japanese accent when speaking French, but for the other characters, c’mon… maybe it’s very expensive to get French voice actors for small roles in Japan…

    The exception: the ending theme, which is sung by a (real this time) French girl.

    Nazo no hito ;)
    Reply

  36. Nazo no hito: I’m really not sure that the END is sung by a French girl…granted, her accent is really good and unexercised ears could believe this way, but I’m French and I can say that’s not the case.
    Her way of singing is really too regular and, on (very) few words, I can recognise the Japanese accent.
    I would add the lyrics are really in basic French and some sentences are really weirdly put together. But that’s not the fault of the singer 😉

    Songs in 1st season where really better overall and by far…

    xinyingho
    Reply

  37. Album art ftw! http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-49-en-70-3029.html
    I can’t find anything on Solita, but I’ll just hope that she’s originally a French singer. She has a really nice voice regardless of where she comes from and what language she really speaks.
    To be honest, I’m not very fond of the Crystal Kay song. I preferred Sagittarius (so beautiful!) and Allegro Cantabile. WOO SUEMITSU!
    In the episode, I loved Frank’s reactions, Chiaki blushing at Nodame’s cute French and Nodame’s “SUPERB!” 😀

    Fiddlestix
    Reply

  38. I really liked season 1, but so far season 2 especially episode 2 has been disappointing. They skipped some important scenes from the manga and rushed a lot of key plot development. Not sure why they’re rushing it so much…

    jho
    Reply

  39. After hearing again the ED on ep 2, the singer may actually be French after all. I was so focused on the poor lyrics that I just though “a French can’t sing this kind of lyrics”…and the Japanese accent I thought to have heard are just the result of the occasional merging of 2 sentences, where you can’t here clearly what she’s saying, particularly at 2 o’clock in the morning ^^.
    I may add that she has a cute voice but, by French standard, she’s nevertheless a bad singer 😛

    xinyingho
    Reply

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