Nodame Cantabile – 08

Summary:

It’s been one month since the S Orchestra’s performance, and it’s now so rainy and humid that the group can’t practice very well. When Stresemann interrupts Chiaki’s conducting to suggest that the group have goukon instead, everyone meets him with skepticism because of how he treated them before. Stresemann eventually gets the girls to go by offering up Chiaki, leaving the boys no choice but to follow too. Nodame also wants to come, but she trips on a puddle and ruins her dress. Stresemann promises to buy her a new one, but he ends up getting her a swimsuit. Watching Stresemann convince Nodame to play Yakyuuken (the strip version of rock-paper-scissors), Mine and Masumi wonder if the Maestro is the real thing given how he acts. Chiaki is sure that Stresemann is genuine, but he’s curious enough to do a little online research later at home. A quick search turns up a report that Stresemann has been missing since a London performance and that there are people searching for him.

The next day, Stresemann is trying to convince Chiaki and Nodame to go out with him when a helicopter lands on the school roof. From it appears a woman who Stresemann recognizes as Elise and promptly runs away from. After Elise sends one of her men to chase after the running Maestro, Chiaki questions her and finds out that she’s Stresemann’s manager. She tells him that the reason Stresemann came here was because of the beautiful director of the university Minako Momodaira whom he always kept a picture of. In any case, Elise manages to get back Stresemann and takes him away in the helicopter. Chiaki starts to miss Stresemann later because there was so much he wanted to learn. Mine knows that the director has been sick in the hospital for a long time, and Mine’s father produces another picture of her, except that it shows she’s gained a lot of weight. Long ago though, she had been a beautiful pianist who was known as the Oriental Jewel.

Surprisingly enough, Stresemann returns two days later and claims that he hijacked his own jet. Chiaki and friends still aren’t sure why he’s here because if he really wanted to see the director, he could have already gone to the hospital. Things slowly become clearer after a passionate Stresemann suddenly appears to help Chiaki conduct the S Orchestra. A frail and very thin director Minako Momodaira shows up to applaud the practice, and it is there that she gets reunited with the Maestro. In the days that follow, Stresemann works hard in teaching the students and even helps clean the campus, all under the director’s watch. It’s clear to Mine that Stresemann is just doing all this to impress her, but Masumi thinks that it’s good for Stresemann to be pursuing this love. Chiaki gets affected when Stresemann fully takes over conducting the S Orchestra and assigns him to practice Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 instead.

When Elise sees how frustrated Chiaki is, she tells him about how Stresemann used to be a piano student who wasn’t that interested in piano. One day, the top piano player at the school Minako had complimented him suggested he be a conductor. Because she was such a talented pianist, she was almost out of his reach, and so he wanted to keep up with her. Stresemann started studying music really hard to become a conductor, but soon Minako developed a disease in her fingers and had to stop playing piano. She then returned to Japan where she got married, though she’s divorced now. Despite all this, Elise doesn’t believe that Stresemann is still in love with Minako. She thinks that instead, Minako asked him to come here as an instructor. In fact, she’s amazed that Stresemann took on Chiaki as a pupil since he’s never done it before. While Chiaki is learning all this, Stresemann is listening to Nodame play the piano in a practice room. Afterwards, he asks her what her future plans are, and Nodame reveals that she wants to marry Chiaki and be a preschool teacher. Stresemann, however, tells Nodame that she can’t be with Chiaki with the way she is now.

Talking with Stresemann later, the director Minako is commenting on how she didn’t think Stresemann would come to Japan and how he already found his student. Stresemann notes that he can’t return home yet, but he also mentions that there’s another student he has to take care of, someone who reminds him of himself when he was younger. Sometime later, Stresemann suggests that Chiaki and friends come with him to a summer music festival in Nagano where he’ll be instructing a seminar.

Preview:

I always found it interesting that Stresemann compares himself with Nodame at the end there (the other student he refers to), but it makes sense since Stresemann back then and Nodame now are both chasing after someone who’s getting out of their league in terms of musical talent. If it wasn’t apparent before, this would seem to make it clear that Stresemann actually cares about what happens to Nodame and Chiaki, so he isn’t just the dirty old man type that they know him as.
They followed the manga very closely this week, almost word for word with nothing cut out or changed. Since the preview shows Nodame practicing in the moonlight, I would assume that next week will cover all the rest of volume four since that scene doesn’t happen until near the end. I have a sneaking suspicion that they’ll be skipping over all the beach stuff, but we’ll see what happens.