Nodame Cantabile: Vol. 12

Rating T+ Genre manga Author Tomoko Ninomiya Publisher Del Rey

It’s always been my observation that when it comes to anime, people seem to either love it or hate it. Due to my late-night obsession with Adult Swim, I was convinced that I was fully versed in Japanese animation and that I belonged to the “hate it” category (this is excluding the masterpiece, Princess Mononoke, which will forever have taken my breath away). But, I’ve been wrong before, and I am yet again. Leave it to the twelfth volume in the Nodame Cantabile series of Manga to slap my assumption in the face.

Before you devout anime fans hunt me down and slaughter me in my sleep with a samurai sword or something, I’ll try to elaborate my position on the subject: The problem I have with Japanese comics/anime is not the visual presentation; the images themselves are extremely technically impressive, and often intensely beautiful. It’s the storyline that gets on my last nerve. I was never a fan of how a lot anime shows seemed to revolve the plot around ridiculously well-endowed and color-themed girls fighting crime in the mall with their high-pitched voices and cartoon backpacks and pigtails. It seemed to be either that or some intensely complicated storyline about warriors that would be cool if I actually knew what was going on, but I was usually way too far gone to even begin to get involved.

Nodame Cantabile, however, takes a more mature turn in storyline. In this series, the main character, Nodame, attends a musical conservatory where she is studying piano. She is a musical prodigy who never learned how to sight-read—so, she has quite a bit of work cut out for her. She is seemingly composed and focused in her studies until a huge force in her life (and ex-/current love interest), Chiaki, comes to her apartment in Paris to live with her. In his presence, she becomes too flustered by his hot temper and impatient comments, and tends to botch any performance she once mastered. Chiaki is a complicated character. He seems to care for Nodame, but at the same time, looks like he wants to bring her down. Or simply scream at her until he’s as hoarse as Kathleen Turner. It is clear that he is the top talent in the story, seeing as he’s already being flown all over the world to conduct varied orchestras. But his unstable relationship with Nodame keeps his mind wandering back to her.

As the story progresses, we meet an artist in Nodame’s building who eventually lends much insight into Nodame’s abilities and Chiaki’s effect on them. And Chiaki, in common Japanese character form, goes from being gentle and rational to exploding on Nodame for whatever reason he sees fit. To sum up the interesting element of their relationship, as Chiaki puts most eloquently: “This time that we spend together becomes part of each of our musical experience.” Their relationship becomes more and more stressed as Chiaki soon must leave for another performance. But with Chiaki gone, Nodame focuses on her studies again and makes brilliant progress in her own way. You know, without the “help” of a screaming madman.

All in all, the images in these books are so accomplished and impressive. It’s worth picking up a Manga if only to see the artistic capability of these authors. I even marked two pages that struck me so intensely that I wanted to be able to just go back and consider them whenever I had the urge.

This story ends a little bit confusedly, shifting the focus on another character that we don’t know too much about. That mixed with the often way-too-cheeky-and-weird dialogue led me to knock off a star in my rating. But, after reading the preview of the next volume (included at the end of the book), I have to admit—I’m totally reading the next one.