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.
