Nodame Cantabile Finale

Nodame Cantabile Finale is the third and final season of the series. This review assumes everyone reading has watched or is at least aware of seasons 1 and 2.

Finale picks up right after season 2, and carries on the plot in the same fast-paced style. The atmosphere changes dramatically, as the series shifts drastically from a music anime with career-focused protagonists to basically a drama anime with occasional short bursts of music.

Honestly, Finale was a massive disappointment for me. The major reason for that was the thrust of Nodame into the sole leading role, to the point of pushing Chiaki to secondary status. ... That means that Nodame gets a lot more screentime, and a lot more time to shine; or not. All seeing even more of Nodame does is accentuate her flaws, which never get resolved throughout the series, and bug the hell out of us with a 'gyabon' or a 'mukya' on every third goddamn word of speech. That was cute character trait when used sparingly, but now that is spammed so much it is just nerve-wracking.

Nodame makes for a terrible protagonist. Her issues with music are not resolved throughout most of the series. Even now, almost 40 episodes later, she still faces the same issue with her playstyle. Mainly, that she is not respecting the score or the people she's playing with, and instead goes off and does her own thing. It's an issue she's known and had highlighted for her since early season 1, but it's still there.

Even her massively successful debut was, in reality, a failure of Nodame's, since she disregarded every rehearsal she'd done with the orchestra so far (in which she kept asking for everyone to move at her own pace) and went off to do her own thing. It was only Stresemann's superb conducting skills that saved the concerto from total disaster, which by rights it should have been. No one will ever hire Nodame. Even assuming they do have someone of Stresemann's caliber on call to save the show after she fucks everything over, why would anyone risk that?

Not to mention, Nodame in season 3 (and 2, to a lesser extent) is a selfish, irresponsible person who's being a dick to everyone around her for no good reason and then cries about her lot in life. Vanishes without a trace for days and weeks, communicates with absolutely no one, making everyone worried sick, gets the best result she could have possibly hoped for, and then is still not satisfied and acts like a dick to Chiaki and even Stresemann.

No, her behavior towards Chiaki in particular has been irritating me during this and even the previous season. In an ironic turn from season 1, it is Nodame that is being thoughtless and ungrateful rather than the other way around. Never answering phones, showing up only when she likes and making it impossible for him to reach her even when he's worried. Hell, making him worried on many occasions when she could have avoided that with a simple message.
That's not the sort of behavior you have towards the man you've been claiming to love for years. That behavior is reserved for people for whose feelings you don't care.
Hell, her friends are asking her direct questions about the same concerns I expressed, and she outright ignores them. Nodame has her head so far down in the sand that only her toes stick out. It's pretty heartbreaking to see this deconstruction of Nodame, especially since season 3 Chiaki is so hopelessly in love with her. Of course, there are no repercussions or even a mention for this, because Nodame is a female anime protagonist and no one holds their dickish behavior against them. This kind of behavior is not okay in real life, especially among significant others.

"I've changed since then," Nodame says. And the hard, painful truth is that no, she hasn't. Never, at any point in either season of the series, has she had a shred of change or character development. Every time she makes progress in any direction, she consciously destroys it not long after. Doubly the shame and the frustration, because Chiaki has come so goddamn far as a character that the comparison is just sad to make.

I liked season 1 Nodame. I tolerated season 2 Nodame because at least half the time we followed Chiaki and he was enjoyable to watch, but season 3 was just terrible in that regard.

With the shift in focus away from music, the sound score itself has gone down, lacking the variety and sheer number of musical pieces from earlier seasons.

Conversely the animation quality keeps getting better, and is certainly a far cry from season 1 when wed only get frames during concerts.

The third season did this weird thing with the secondary cast, where they were prominently featuring in several episodes, but outright absent from the rest of them. It was a bit jarring, and a shame because I liked most of them.

The ending resolved nothing, showed nothing, just a curtain call with typical philosophical poetic with little actual significance.

I can't really say that I enjoyed season 3 of Nodame Cantabile, which a big shame. It was well-made on most of its aspects, but it made me so mad that giving it such a high score annoys me.

*SPOILER FREE*

If there's one thing I've learned throughout the viewing of Nodame, it's that everyone would hate me within the orchestra. But then again, most people hate me as I am, so it isn't really a surprise.

Contrary to my score, I loved the series. I binge watched it within 2 days, and didn't regret it one bit. Yet, unfortunately, I felt a massive drop in quality during the 3rd season that relates to three major problems: story, character(s) and ending. I gave first season 9 without flinching, and will probably re-watch it again soon, but when I compare the finale to the 1st season, ... it all kind of falls apart. Why? Let's dive in.

Story continues right where Paris Hen ended and we're, once again, thrown into the ensemble of beautiful music and diverging paths our characters take. What drew me into this anime, personally, were the orchestral pieces, and occasional solo pieces by Nodame. Third season, however, shifts this about and focuses almost exclusively on personal competitions of side characters and the progress of Nodame, both as person and as a musician. I would be fine with that, but it was poorly executed. Unlike previous two seasons, pacing is all over the place; first 2-3 episodes seem to setting up the whole thing nicely, then suddenly it slows down and picks up in last two episodes where it ends abruptly, without major cause. It kind of felt spread thin and a lot of time was spent covering same subjects multiple times.

Cantabile's story was never its strong suite - far from it. It didn't really have that much depth or complexity, but that's where its charm lay. Due to its simplicity and ease of following, it allowed its other aspects to shine brightly. It was used as somewhat of a background supporting character, and it fit perfectly into the whole thing. The entire structure of the first season, and majority of second, felt natural and it had its flow. Yet, Finale brings forth a set of unnecessary plot pieces and overused tropes, and it soon turns into somewhat of a convoluted mess, and even ends in such. Several characters are used as plot devices, some are given way too much screen time, some way too little. As an example, we have Shinichi's original sensei, who was introduced to us as pivotal point in Shinichi's life, because he's the reason Shinichi wanted to conduct. Yet, he has about 2 minutes of screen time throughout the entire thing, and for the most part is in the background/used as a cheap plot device. That's just an example of bad storytelling at its finest. I have absolutely no idea who this guy is or his importance within the world of classical music or how he helps Shinichi once they reunite.

Overall though, there are still some parts of the story that worked well. and as a finale it did its job ... kind of. Before the end, there were some parts that really did bring out emotion, and did show the progress of story and I liked that. However, I absolutely need to rant about the ending for a moment: it's bad. It's really, really, bad. What's worse is that the events leading up to it are also bad. All in all, ending leaves a bad aftertaste in your mouth, and it really forces you to look back at the series and think 'Wait, wait. That's ... it?' - ending is not only abrupt but it makes no sense. A lot of things are left hanging in the air, bunch of questions still unanswered, and it seemingly ends in the middle of telling the actual ending. Unfortunately, it's definitely the low-point of the entire series, and that's not the way you wish to end your series. Not in a long shot.

All in all, story is definitely above average, but you wouldn't go wrong in rating it anywhere from 4-6, depending on your personal taste. It fits into each part for a number of reasons, and that's quite unfortunate.

Next up with have production: animation is definitely the best its ever been, and there are far less stiff shots accompanied by awesome music from first season. It's still not that great though, and the "age" kind of shows, but it does what it's set out to do well enough. Art is still crisp and colorful, comedic expressions are done well, and there are some vibrant scenes (mostly involving reflections on water) here and there that I still remember. Easy on the eyes, but nothing spectacular.

As for the sound, I really have no need to touch on this: music is still here, in all its glory. Absolute 10 without a doubt. Could give even more if I could - definitely the high point of the entire show, the way it was meant to be.

The reason I wanted to skip through production is because it's the thing that works in this anime - and I want to discuss things that don't, because I'm anal like that. Characters. Ugh. Looking back at season 1, I really should have expected this, but it still hurts.

I have this love-hate relationship with airheads if I'm being honest - I always end up being their fan at the beginning, but end up hating them by the end. Why? Because, most of the time, that's who they stay as. At first it's cute and funny, but if you drag it over 40 episodes, than it's annoying and distracting and, honestly, plain insulting. Nodame starts out as a great character - your typical, talented, overly-cheerful airhead. And through the first season she mostly remains the same, with a few changes here and there, but that was fine because the focus wasn't really on her. However, they drag out her natural klutz personality to hell and back, and drive it through and through for forever. Another trait of hers was a lack of motivation and indecisiveness - which comes into play this season, and holy hell does it overstay its welcome. It's used as nothing but a plot device, and it's as obvious as well. It's used to create drama. At one point, here actions just stop making sense, and, just the same, you stop caring. She becomes a walking bore and annoyance, and I really didn't want it to end up this way - but I should have figured out it would. You can make your audience laugh because your character is an unaware airhead only so many times, after all ...

The set of supporting characters from Paris Hen returns this time around as well, and are given ... way too much space, if you ask me. I understand the need to flesh out your side-characters, but we already knew that they were never supposed to be the focus because writer literally abandoned everyone from season 1 aside from Oldy-Pervy. Yet, their problems and struggles come into focus here and take way too much time to resolve, sidelining main story and the progress of main characters. Yes, there are some nice moments here and there, it felt nice knowing more about who these people are, but ultimately they're still just a fodder. They barely interact with the main story - I'd go so far as to say that they have no actual impact on it. And this was supposed to be a finale - thing that wraps up the entire series - not a season that sets up your side-characters. This also ties in to the pacing problems I talked about before, and overall leaves a bitter taste. A few more pairings bear fruition, and there's an introduction of a random Japanese girl midway through that had even less point that the original sensei. I have absolutely no idea what was that girl doing there, and I'm happy she stayed only for about 10 minutes.

Overall, Shinichi is still the best character in my opinion. Unfortunately, he's given less and less focus as the series progresses. He's often thrown into random journeys across Europe just to get him out of the picture for a while, so that we can focus on Nodame. For me, it backfired, as he was always the one leading the show, and Nodame was the one following. They reversed the roles and it didn't work. Too bad.

It'd be a lie if I said I didn't enjoy Nodame Cantabile as whole, because I did. I love this series, and will probably re-watch it more than once. However, if I compare my enjoyment from 1st season to Finale, they're worlds apart. Here, instead of enjoying things, I spent far more time questioning motives, actions, characters and story, and trying to understand what the hell was with that ending.

I still wholeheartedly recommend Nodame Cantabile - it's definitely the best anime about music that I've seen to date, and whether you're a fan of classical music or not, it has some outstanding pieces. From the familiar Bach and Mozart tunes, to some that your average Joe would have never heard of. First season was definitely its high point, but the entire 3 are worth watching without a doubt.

*If you wish to discuss the review, feel free to leave me a comment. Thanks for reading.