Nodame Cantabile – 13

Summary:

Seeing everyone in the S Orchestra performing well on their exams, Nodame regrets that the group is breaking up soon. Mine suggests to Chiaki that they start their own orchestra, but Chiaki shoots down the idea and doesn’t answer Mine when he asks what Chiaki is going to do from now on. When they go to the supermarket, Nodame notices that Chiaki is buying canned food again, so she offers to treat him to dinner. They head to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where, much to Nodame’s dismay, Chiaki starts taking all the expensive plates and eats only the fish. On the way home, he realizes that she treating him because she was worried about him. Because of this, he tells her about his plans to convince the new conductor of the A Orchestra to let him help out in conducting. Chiaki’s actual opportunity, however, comes when a familiar face suddenly reappears the next day at school. He recognizes this person as Miki Kiyora, the concert master from the Nina Lutz music festival. It seems that she will be studying at this school because her teacher is going to be instructing here, and the one thing she wants to do is play in an orchestra with Chiaki again. Kiyora thus proposes starting a new orchestra together with him, and Chiaki immediately agrees to do it. He’s even more excited when she tells him that she can get some of the same musicians from the festival to come join them, especially since Chiaki is now well-known because of the magazine article. Having overheard the conversation, Mine asks Chiaki to let him join this new orchestra. Chiaki consents, but it’s on the condition that Mine is able to make it into the A Orchestra too.

A few days later, Masumi is getting ready for his graduation exam when he finds out that his accompanist is sick. The only person who can help him on such short notice is Chiaki. Empowered by his feelings for and memories with Chiaki, Masumi gives it his all in his performance of a André Jolivet percussion piece. Afterwards, Chiaki invites Masumi to play in the new orchestra, and Masumi gladly accepts. When Chiaki’s own performance comes, and Mine notices that Chiaki actually appears to be enjoying it. Once all the exams are finally over, the entire S Orchestra heads out to celebrate with plenty of drinking and partying. Two of Chiaki’s old S Orchestra nemeses plot one last time to make him look bad through a Taiko Drum Master game and then through karaoke, but neither plan works because Chiaki gets saved by his friends. At the karaoke place, a drunk Nodame stumbles into the bathroom and runs into Saiko. As Saiko attempts to sober Nodame up, she notices that Nodame has big hands and concludes that this is the type of girl that Chiaki likes. By the time all the celebration ends and everyone heads home, it’s already early the next morning. Chiaki feels that everyone hates him and reveals that he had to reject some people who wanted to be in his new orchestra. The reason for this is because he doesn’t want the new orchestra to be an extension of the old one. Nodame then asks him to teach her the Liszt piece that he performed for his graduation exam. She starts dancing the waltz on the street, and seeing that she’s doing it wrong, Chiaki shows her how it’s supposed to be done.

ED Sequence

ED2: 「Sagittarius」 by SUEMITSU & THE NODAME ORCHESTRA
Watch the ED!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2
Ah, more spinning imagery. I can remember back to all the spinning stuff from Honey and Clover – this director really seems to like it. Anyway, Sagittarius starts as a good song, but the chorus parts come off sounding a bit too much like the opening song (which is still the same). I miss the first ED already, especially since an instrumental version of it played near the end of this episode.

Preview:

I always thought that Chiaki and Kiyora would have made a great couple, much better than he and Saiko were (Nodame of course is a completely different story). The two of them just click so well together, and Chiaki seems so happy with her, though of course a lot of it was because she was proposing the orchestra idea. It was thus quite a surprise when I saw what happened in volume eight of the manga (which we’ll reach in a few episodes at this rate). In any case, next week’s episode will involve Chiaki returning home and his extended family.