”Why would anyone want to enter a competition just to lose?”
Creative Staff
Story & Art: Tomoko Ninomiya
Translation & Adaptor: David & Eriko Walsh
What They Say
THE FUTURE IS CALLING
It’s showtime for Shinichi’s new Rising Star Orchestra. Renowned critics and famous musicians have gathered to see the debut performance. Meanwhile, Nodame is playing hypnotist on Shinichi, trying to cure him of his fear of flying. After all, she wants her true love to be able to perform abroad. But will the concert take Shinichi’s career to the next level? And if Nodame succeeds in freeing Shinichi of his panic attacks, will she be left behind? It’s anybody’s guess in this symphony of conflicted decisions, crushes, and pianos!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
A flaw of manga telling a story centered on music has always been the matter of large, climactic moments. Due to the inherent nature of the medium, music just wasn’t destined to translate well to manga. This isn’t to say that stories with a large focus on music haven’t been able to work in manga (on the contrary, there are still tons of music manga that work despite those flaws). But for this particular case, Nodame Cantabile just doesn’t deliver.
Throughout the entirety of volume 7, Nodame Cantabile did a fantastic job of laying out the foundation for where its current arc is going; we were efficiently introduced to new characters, older characters were given larger roles, and everything just felt like it had something to say. Upon finishing volume 8, however, it feels like all that effort was squandered. Or at least used so inefficiently that you don’t really feel much when a supposedly “big” moment happens.
From the get-go, things already feel weird this volume just in how haphazardly author Ninomiya enters the fray that are her major story beats. At the moment, there are two main arcs going on—Chiaki wrangling together a new orchestra, and Nodame learning to play the piano in a more professional setting. And yet both stories feel like a huge middle portion was skipped entirely for the sake of immediately seeing a conclusion. We’re met with Chiaki’s orchestra nailing another performance, and the moment is treated like this enormous event even though the road it took to get there was relatively short. There’s a lot of celebration and people talking about how big a deal their accomplishment is, and yet you haven’t seen much of the work done, so it’s hard to say that any of their efforts felt completely earned.
Nodame’s ventures into figuring out how to simultaneously reign in her uniquely hectic piano-playing, yet still keep to her true self just long enough for judges to look her way during performances is similarly rushed. This is in part due to how strongly her story ties into Chiaki’s and the orchestra. We see her gain confidence and learn more about herself through her watching the orchestra perform. And it’s in those viewings that she’s able to tweak how she performs. But when the time comes, what results is a quick succession of exhibitions before the volume ends.
It’s nothing bad by any stretch. But the contrast between the previous volume’s set-up and this volume’s delivery is just too large to ignore.
In Summary:
Like its titular character, Nodame Cantabile volume 8 has a strange sense of what’s considered important. Key scenes that were built up so well from the previous volume feel like tacked on afterthoughts, treated with little to no sense of grandiose flair. That’s not to say that the character development that springs from these moments are any less solid, especially in terms of story progression. But it does make me question how the series will continue onwards from this point.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: Older Teen
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: August 16, 2016
MSRP: $10.99
