Welcome to OP/ED Op-Eds where members of the fine Glorio crew will be making terrible puns- I mean reminiscing about our favorite openings and endings and talking about what we thought made them tick.

While many of the musical intricacies at the core of Nodame Cantabile may be lost on a normal person, it’s still one of the most fantastic romantic comedies I have ever had the pleasure of watching. And watching. And watching again in English. It’s just that good. A major part of the success of the anime is the way any musically themed manga is improved by an anime. Namely, by bringing its implied music to life. Consequentially, I would say I am not in saying that Nodame Cantabile, both its first season and the Paris Chapter and Finale seasons, have some of the greatest mood-setting op/eds of all time. No greater an example is there of this than its first ending song, Konna Ni Chikaku De, or This Close.

(A better quality version of the song can be found here, sans animation.)

Purely on a musical standpoint, I love the mix of strings and synth at the beginning, its a perfect lead in for this modern orchestral tale. While the lyrics lean more to the melancholy, what I love about this song the most is that its melody can simultaneously fit either a triumphant or somber ending to an episode. With too many shows I feel the ending goes on without any regard for the preceding events. I never felt that with Nodame Cantabile, every time this ending came on all the thoughts in my head about what happened really came together.

The lyrics also fit the titular airheaded Nodame pretty well. While the expression her love is readily apparent, she spends much of the show trying to appeal to the cynical Chiaki, a disenfranchised piano player with dreams of conducting, to no avail. This romance is at the centerpiece of a really smart tale of college life in an art school. While it’s never the true focal point, it ties much of the narrative together and Konna Ni Chikaku De really is the perfect song to show that. While it doesn’t stay for the entirety of the first season, it made a lasting impression on me

This ending, along with the rest of Nodame Cantabile’s fantastic first season can be found on Sony’s oft neglected Hulu clone, Crackle, but unfortunately there was no physical release in America. Oddly enough, unlike Hulu where you can usually find both dubs and subs of old shows, Crackle only has the dubbed version, but it is still very competent and honors the feel I got from the characters when I first watched the subbed version.