Recap

Before Kousei gets his time to shine, Takeshi and Emi take the floor and raise the bar. Both of them channel their rivalry with Kousei through their music, and see it bring them success. With these years of emotion building up, will Kousei be able to live up to their expectations?

Apologies for the lateness of this post, I had struggled to come up with much to write about for this episode. It’s not that it was a bad episode by any means, we got to see our two new characters fleshed out a little, and we got to hear some fantastic performances. The problem is, both of them seem to have such a single minded bent in their pursuit of Kousei, so with the information we have there really isn’t anything more than what we could have inferred by their very introduction. I’m a bit disappointed at how little we learn of Takeshi as compared to Emi. The guy is shown as the big favorite, but the only reason he’s even there in the first place is Kousei. We’re given this really shounen explanation of his drive to compete with his rival, but what else other than that and his weird spiky hair define him at this point?

Comparably, I really liked Emi’s treatment. You could tell a lot of effort went into her costume design for these episodes too. The dress she wears is animated beautifully, folding and casting small shadows the way a real dress would. Despite that, I still find it pretty weird that the adults are like WOW SHE’S PRETTY considering shes still fifteen at best. I liked the reaction from Watari because we expect him to be a massive perv at this point, but having random stage hands gawk at her and adults make comments is just kinda gross. Her bit of backstory worked really well to help endear her character. Last episode just made her seem like a vengeful weirdo, but now we get some context to back it up. When your entire life goal is jumpstarted by someone, it’s hard not to have strong ties to them, even if you never knew them well. I can definitely relate to that feeling, so hearing her initial inspiration instantly made her jump up in notability for me.

The performances were also absolutely beautiful. Nodame Cantabile knew it could be at its best when it just let the music speak for itself, and the same concept works to a T here. I admit the major draw of music shows for me is simply seeing how they’re able to combine the emotion of music into an existing plot thread. There really is nothing quite like hearing the results of Chiaki and his friends finally clicking as he directs the Symphony #3, or watching Twelve disarm bombs while listening to an Icelander. Even games know this technique can be pretty successful. I often find this works the best with classical music, as its lack of lyrics can allow for different performances to emphasize different emotions. There are a few more things I want to say about this episode, but they’re fears or questions answered by the next one, so stay tuned and that will be coming soon.