Having to face kissing Stresemann, Nodame ends up punching him instead and knocking him out. Having spotted the urtext and remembers that today is the rehearsal for his orchestra. With the students, they realise that the orchestra is composed of students who are unskilled. Growing restless, some of the students start to leave, until Nodame arrives [...]
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Real life truly can be pain sometimes; on Wednesday, I had to deal with water pouring through the ceiling thanks to a burst pipe (thankfully there was no lasting damage), and Thursday was the day of numerous power cuts thanks to Wind’s evil brother Snow. Hopefully matters will stabilise soon, before this becomes my personal [...]
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Well, what I feared has become reality. The majority of the concert scene in this episode consist of mostly static stills of the orchestra members. I guess it was unrealistic to expect a full-on animated orchestra but I was hoping to see some hand movements at the very least. Unfortunately there was none of that in this episode. The problem with this is that it diminishes the effect of the orchestra performance. Beethoven's 7th Symphony is supposed to be grand and yet it comes across as a background music coming out of CD here. I do appreciate that I can sense some dissonance within the individual players when Chiaki was conducting the orchestra. However, the sound was very faint and unless you listen closely, it's hard to distinguish the performance which was conducted by Chiaki and the one conducted by Strezemann. On the positive side, the comedy remains enjoyable as usual and there are some creative use of animation technique.
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If you stick to the 3 episode rule, your judgement should be so after this third episode: "NODAME F-ING RULES!!!111oneone" or something to that effect. It's already won Wildarms over, the rest of the world should be following suit. Actually you should've been won over two episodes ago, but that's just me. This calls for [...]
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Rating: 9.5/10 Impressions: Ahh…so now it seems J.C. Staff is fluctuating a bit on the animation quality, with a few disproportionately drawn faces. Other than that, the quality is still pretty high, and the few badly drawn frames are really nothing to worry about. This episode isn’t as funny as the last either, but the plot moves [...]
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Nodame Cantabile has been known to have a cast of mainly weirdos, and the numbers keep on increasing. This time we are introduced to pervertedness and the first glimpse of fanservice: Nodame Cantabile 4.
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This episode introduced Stresemann, a  famous (and perverted) German conductor. He is going to be teaching at the school for a year, and starts an orchestra made up of people he hand-picked. Also, Chiaki decides to request a transfer into the conducting department. However, having a severe and irrational dislike for Chiaki’s idol, Viera, Stresemann [...]
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Just for comparison with the previous post about anime popularity in Japan, here is a rough guide to the popularity of the new season's anime outside Japan. The index I'm using is the number of posts for each title on the AnimeSuki Forums.Clearly this is very rough, especially since half the shows haven't even been subbed yet (if they ever will be). Unsubbed shows in red:Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora 556Shuffle/Shuffle Memories 367+Manabi Straight 253Nodame Cantabile 238Venus Versus Virus 205Les Miserables 95Hidamari Sketch 69Deltora Quest 65Saint October 64Getsumen To Heiki Miina 56Yes! Precure 5 20Himawari!! 18Master of Epic 7Angelique 6Here, Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora is the clear favorite, with Shuffle! Memories second, and Nodame Cantabile very close to Manabi Straight for third place. For an unsubbed show, there is a lot of interest in Les Miserables, but many of those posts came before the show started.
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Most of the new shows have been airing for about a month now. Which of this season's shows are the most popular in Japan?Well, that's really two questions: which shows have the highest TV ratings? And: which shows are the most popular with anime otaku? TV ratings are always dominated by kids' shows and some shounen shows, shows that air either in early-evening prime time, or on weekend mornings. I'll get to them in a minute.But otaku tend to watch (or record) shows that air late at night. For them, the runaway favorite show of the new season is Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight, which airs at 1:30 am Sunday nights.I'm basing this statement on the number of posts to 2channel, the most popular anime message board in Japan. It seems to represent a kind of mass-audience otaku opinion. Here is a list of the number of threads on 2channel for most of the new shows. Each thread represents about 1000 posts. When one thread fills up, a new thread is started: Manabi Straight 24 Hidamari Sketch 12 Yes! Precure 5 11 Shuffle/Shuffle Memories 9 Saint October 9 Kyoushirou to Towa no Sora 9 Nodame Cantabile 8 Master of Epic 6 Venus Versus Virus 5 Getsumen To Heiki Miina 5 Les Miserables 5 Deltora Quest 3 Himawari!! 3 Angelique 1 As you might expect, the top five shows all have moe appeal. But Manabi Straight has about twice as many posts as the next-most-popular show, Hidamari Sketch.Shoujo shows normally receive extremely short shrift on 2channel. NANA, after three seasons, still has only 12 threads. So I'm surprised how high Nodame Cantabile is ranked, it being based on a manga serialized in a shoujo magazine. The great cast and the staff of Honey & Clover seem to be giving it credibility. Angelique is closer to the normal ranking of shoujo shows on 2channel. I'm also struck by how highly anticipated the kids' magical-girl show Yes! Pretty Cure 5 was. Shows like this don't seem that popular outside Japan.Pretty Cure is also the one new show that has shown up in the top ten in TV ratings. It just began airing last week -- on Sunday mornings at 8:30 -- and debuted at #7 in the top ten, with a 7.4% share. That was even higher than its predecessor show, Pretty Cure Splash Star, which had a 6.8 for its final episode. It joins shows such as Sazae-san (21.7% rating), Crayon Shin-chan (10.9), Doraemon (9.8), Detective Conan (9.7), Kekkaishi (7.3) and One Piece (6.8) in last week's top ten.Among late-night anime, Nodame Cantabile had the highest-rated late-night first episode ever, with a 5.4% share, which went up to 5.5% the following week, but has dropped to 4.4% and 3.5% in succeeding weeks. Unfortunately, I have very partial data for other shows: Hidamari Sketch debuted with a 1.2% share, and Getsumen To Heiki Miina has varied between 1.7 and 2.3 in its first month. After Nodame, the top-rated late-night show seems to be Death Note (fall season, 1 am Tuesday nights), which varied between 2.3 and 3.3 over the month.TV ratings data for the top ten are from Video Research Ltd., and other ratings data are from a site that collates data posted on 2channel and elsewhere.
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