Anime: Nodame Cantabile: Finale 1y2t2f

My first encounter with "Nodame Cantabile" was back in 2006 in live-action TV drama series starring Ueno Juri and Tamaki Hiroshi. I commenting back then that the special effect on it really had an anime feel to it. "Nodame" being animated very soon was a pleasant news for me, and watched the previous two seasons. First season was decent for me, while the "Paris-hen" was a total disappointment. Now I watch the final season on anime, expecting something better than Paris-hen, and hoping for something as good as the first season or even the live-action series.

Animation: 6
The animation looks almost identical to the first season. Character proportions are nice, and the overall atmosphere is wonderful. The watercolor painting background at first was a very pleasant change for me in the first season, but it gets pretty old after a while, and zero advances in animation for 3 years is pretty weak even though it retains the same atmosphere of the series. Another thing that bothered me was the overuse of visual representation of sound such as flowers, water drops, and feathers. It was interesting the first time they did it, but I don't think it needed to be done EVERY time someone plays a nice tune, and takes away much of our imagination and interpretation of the songs.

Sound: 9
It would be pretty pathetic if the sound for a music anime sucked. "Nodame" series have no problems here, music for all the performance scenes are played by a real orchestra, and great piano solo and orchestrated music for BGM. I'm not a classical music critic, so I can't really judge the quality of the actual performances, but they sounded nice for me, and pretty inspirational when they intended it to.
Voice acting for Nodame is pretty unique and sounded almost identical to Ueno Juri in the drama series, which worked perfectly for me.
This is a personal opinion, but I hate the 'magical audio translation', where foreign characters speak Japanese. I have no problems with it when the cast is all non-asian as it was in "Baccano!" or "Claymore", but it just feels unnatural when main characters are Japanese in modern time setting. I guess the seiyuu voices don't seem to fit the foreign characters since their voices have the same quality as those of Japanese characters in the series. Only Milch (Stresemann) really felt natural.
OP/ED was average once again. The OP is catchy and captures the atmosphere of the show, but comes with really dumb lyrics, and ED is a very forgettable one.

Story 6/10
The first 2/3 of the season is exactly like Paris-hen, it didn't feel like much happened. Everything that occurred had already occurred in the first season. Main characters face very little obstacles, and overcame those very easily. The last 3 episodes were very strong, a nice way to conclude the entire series, but too little too late.

Character Development 6/10
Even though Paris characters appeared in almost same number of episodes as the first season, I didn't connect with those student in Conservatoire as much as I did with side characters in Japan. It might be the fact that not many of them actually performed with Nodame and Chiaki, but it felt like Son Rui and the two professors were was the only side characters who made an impact to the main story. Other side characters did their things, but they seemed like fillers with no contribution to development of the two protagonists.


Value/Enjoyment 6.5/10
Yes, it was a good end to the series, but "Nodame Cantabile Finale" lacked magic and inspiration of the first season. In fact, none of the previous two anime seasons were able to match the live-action series broadcasted prior to the anime, and given the high budget of movies compared to live-action drama, I don't believe this season will match it either. Direction and presentation were way too corny for my tastes, and the main problem was that it failed to provide anything more to the live-action series, unlike the "Death Note" series did for its films. Somewhat enjoyable, but not really worth watching if you've seen the live-action version already.

Intro
I have just finished watching the final episode! What a great show. I am not a massive fan of classical music or anything but I really enjoyed watching Nodame Cantabile and the Finale was the icing on the cake. Having been disappointed a few times by the endings of anime which I really enjoyed, I am happy to say that I was not disappointed at all, even after getting my hopes up quite a bit!

Animation
Much the same as the previous seasons and staying very true to the drawing in the manga I have no complaints about the animation at all. In fact thinking back, I would say this has slightly more animation when people are playing vs season 1 where there were a lot more still shots with panning etc. While not the best animation in the world, this style is very easy on the eyes and enjoyable to watch!

Music
Well lots of classical music was to be expected of course. As I said I am not a massive fan of it but this series really made me have at least a ing interest in it for the first time. This season was closer to season 1 with longer pieces of music played vs the shorter peices played in season 2 and I believe this was an improvement.

I of the opening and ending themes, the opening and the ending theme from the first season are probably my best still. I think this seasons opening was better than Paris Hen and I really liked the ending theme.

Story
I am not sure I could have dreamed up a better ending for the characters. At times during the 3 seasons it has felt like it was a show about Chiaki but the title is Nodame afterall and this was really Nodame's coming out!

I have read the Paris Hen section of the manga and will be reading the Finale section soon, however I understand some small items may have been left out. Given how well the narrative flowed in the final season I do not believe these omissions will have had any affect at all.

Summary
I am so glad I decided to watch this anime. And the final chapter really did cap it off for me. This was a thoroughly enjoyable show, with a very well rounded ending that left you feeling both fulfilled and longing for more comic adventures of Nodame and Chiaki at the same time.

Two thumbs way up!

My review is going to include many references to the manga, so if you haven't read it or don't want it to be spoiled. You may not want to read this review

Short Review

The last and final season of Nodame! Like sonata form the series, came in 3 parts and well, this season was quite appropriately named "finale". In of plot this season progresses even more quickly then paris-hen and covers the growth of the main character's music careers very quickly. On the other hand personal development for the characters is a bit weak and repetitive this time around.

After the first two episodes of finale came out, I went and read the entire nodame manga. For better or worse, my knowledge from the manga really changed my opinion and view of this entire series. Thus as a warning, if you DO plan on reading the manga, then watch the series first. The manga includes much more depth and development, it also has extra characters that never appear in the series.

Overall the series was a nice finish. It wasn't as amazing for me as the first season, but it did top the second. They brought the series more back to the roots and had a much larger focus on music. I had quite a bit of fun listening to the various songs they played. This goes without saying that anyone who has seen s1 and s2 should see this season too. I wouldn't recommend to anyone who hasn't seen them.

Ratings

Animation
The animation follows the exact same style as before. I don't want to go too much in detail about this. So basically, they use the same colorful bright painting ish backgrounds from before. The same 3d Musicians playing instruments. The same character sets and facial expressions... etc.etc. Really nothing new, the same quality as before.

Sound
The sound also follows the same style as before, and is by far the best part of this season.

OP/ED
I didn't like the OP this time around, it was too pop and not enough classical. The ending was much better though.

VA
They use the same voice actors EXCEPT for changing Elise. I'm not sure why they changed her, but it really doesn't matter she is a minor character and only has a few lines max in a few episodes. Otherwise everyone else did a good job as always.

OST
The music they include is wonderful, they also include much longer clips which was lacking in s2. Thus I was very satisfied with the OST this time around.

Story
It is a good story, and has a great sense of end when you finish it. It feels as though MANY things happen, but at the same time it feels very familiar regardless of the change. I do have some things to say about the story though...

Main story
Regardless of if you read the manga or watch the anime the main events regarding Chiaki and Nodame all exist and happen. They might not always happen in the same order, but they happen. Thus the plot doesn't stray and plays out quite nicely. If you look at just these two characters then yeah it was a great story.

Side/MIA stories
However, if you DO read the manga you will notice many things in the anime.

Character
For the most part the development follows the same sort of stuff they were going through before. Its good and all but, at some points it gets a bit repetitive and old. I don't really want to talk about the main characters so I will mention the minor ones..

Minor Characters
They have a good variety of them, and most of them get really nice screen time. Although at the end, some mixing and matching happens quite suddenly, and for no good reason too. Anyways it makes sense for the most part. But then you have the "master" who lives upstairs. He shows up in the anime a few times, but never gets a proper introduction. Honestly the anime still worked without these two characters, but for me it just felt weird.

Value and Enjoyment
This time around other then trying to continue spreading the love for music, well classical music to be more specific I can't find much other value in the series. The first season already made most of the points and this kind of reiterated it. I still did enjoy the series and may re-watch the entire thing at some point in my life. Hopefully, other people also liked it, MORE so then me and not think about what they missed out on :P. For those of you who haven't seen it give it a run, then go read the manga if you want to know more!