Nodame Cantabile : Capo

I like watching Japanese Drama (J-Dorama), especially the comedy ones. But the main reason i 'd prefer J-dorama to other countries' TV series (Korean, Taiwanese, or western) is because they were only consist of few episodes (mostly around 10-12 episodes). It was different with Korean or Chinese TV series that mostly had over 20 episodes, or western TV series that had continuous episodes aired in several seasons (or Indonesian TV series that will not end as long as there are TV audiences). I had watched many J-doramas and i can conclude that mainly J-dorama contains dramatic scenes, comedy, and moral of the story.

One of my favorite J-dorama is "Nodame Cantabile" . For classical music lovers or orchestra players must have been familiar and should had watched this classical music theme TV series. Even the popular Indonesian orchestra group, Twilite Orchestra conducted by Addie MS, had ever held two concert with Nodame Cantabile theme. There are many elements that this serial contains : Classical music, comical comedies, orchestra, drama, lovers, etc.
"Nodame Cantabile" originally was a manga created by Tomoko Ninomiya. This manga was then developed into a "live-action drama" aired on Japanese Television. Later, it was also developed into anime series. The most appreciation come to the manga and the "live-action drama". Maybe one of its success key is the theme as there are not many manga / TV serials come up with classical music theme.

 

The first time i heard about this series title, i did not recognize that this was a classical music TV serial.  But when i started to watch the first episode and knowing that it was mainly about classical music, my interest was about rapidly rising to follow up this dorama. I had to admit that this series is one of the best J-dorama i had ever seen, mostly because the classical theme contains and the stupid, ridiculous, comical jokes that performed in the series. 

Note : I had to explain that the "Nodame Cantabile" i mostly talked about is the "live-action" drama one. I did not read the manga, nor watching the anime series. The real-human performers made the story depiction and the characters' motion were more real and did not make sense simultaneously (ignore it if you couldn't understand the meaning, haha...)

The main characters are Shinichi Chiaki (Cast : Hiroshi Tamaki) and Noda Megumi / Nodame (Cast : Ueno Juri). I appreciate both actor and actress because they were successfully described the real characters of Chiaki and Nodame, the hard-headed Chiaki and the clumsy Nodame where at the end both of them established an interesting relationship. Another fact about the actor / actress is they had to learn about classical music and playing the piano so they would portray the characters properly. However, the instrument playing on the series / movies were performed by professional musicians, so did the orchestra performances.

Another interesting part about their relationships is that they complemented each other. Chiaki always yells, sometimes becomes rude, when Nodame's spirit is low (also when Nodame did disgusting matters). Unwittingly, he was the one who was the most willing to teach / assist Nodame for  becoming a better piano player (even at the end, he realized that Nodame had her own  distinct view about piano playing). The other way around, Nodame was also becoming influential in Chiaki's life. She tried to drive out Chiaki's aerophobia (afraid of traveling by plane) to make Chiaki's dream of going to Europe come true. She was also the first (and the most enthusiastic) one  who pushed Chiaki in realizing his dream to become an orchestra conductor. Chiaki, who formerly got annoyed by Nodame's existence, gradually admitted her as one of important pieces of his life and then the love relationship started to grow.

One of my favorite part of this dorama is the comical and ridiculous comedy (as it was adapted from a manga). Characters who are the most often doing stupid things are Nodame and Masumi (the timpani player), where they often fight because both were having special feelings for Chiaki (an exception from my interest to J-dorama is I always hate when there were 'yaoi' parts on the story ( you could browse the 'yaoi' meaning by yourself )). Those ridiculous moments such as Masumi's disgust expression every time Nodame flirts or seduces Chiaki and Masumi's embarrassment when Chiaki is nearby. He could suddenly become faint. It was also funny when Chiaki found out disgusting facts about Nodame and her room. Meanwhile, Nodame's most comical moments are the "Gyaboo..." expressions. Other characters who also sometimes become entertaining are Stresseman the conductor and Mine the violinist. All those characters become funny and did stupid things while they were on a drunk party. I often laugh when watching the "live-action" series.

Hufff... I feel that this post about Nodame had been long enough, whereas I still had some things to write about Nodame Cantabile on my draft.
So i had decided to split the post into two sections. This writing will be continued on "Nodame Cantabile : Coda".