-02.15.2024-
"No, you can never catch up with him nor catch music - If you don't face music properly."
---- Franz Von Stresemann, In Nodame Cantabile
I started to watch the anime Nodame Cantabile around the beginning of my winter holiday and finished all three seasons recently. While I haven't had a chance to take a look at the original manga and catch up with the latest news of Nodame and Chiaki in their music and emotional life, it has become my favorite anime at this point - even beyond EVA.
To my confession, I picked it as one of my holiday recreation activities merely due to its Chinese title, which means "Symphonic dream of lovers." I was expecting a story of maudlin emotions in simply a context of music that I could probably find some resonance within. However, I was totally caught off guard. Yes, I did find much resonance - not in the lover story but in music, more specifically, facing music.
Both Nodame and Chiaki are geniuses - genius enough but facing barriers in front of music. Chiaki comes from a lineage of music and possesses undeniable talents in violin, piano, and especially conducting. Although he once lived in the world musical center Prague (a made-up city in Europe) in his early years, he was unable to unleash his talents beyond the Japan island as he suffered from phobias of airplanes and the ocean due to PTSD unfortunately developed in his childhood. Unlike the physical barrier Chiaki faced, the dilemma Nodame was trapped in is intangible yet, in my opinion, much more "severe." Compared to the talents of versatility on Chiaki that he hones days and nights, Nodame is more like a "traditional prodigy" - who is gifted with a perfect pitch and can play the music only by listening to it for once. On the other hand, she never paid actual attention to "seriously studying music" and had a dream profession as a kindergarten teacher. It was not because she had no passion for music. On the contrary, she is the one who can instantly immerse herself in music at any moment. It was the conflict between her hidden desire to sheerly enjoy music itself and externally oriented reasons, such as chasing Chiaki.
Essentially, the similarity between Nodame's dilemma and my own brought me much joy and many tears. From season one to season three, Nodame always seems to be pushed by others - whether it's Chiaki, who fell first only for her music and then realized his affection for the girl, or Auclair, who discovered her talent and invited her to music college in Paris, and she could easily get "satisfied" with music in the course - from simply playing a piano duet with Chiaki, instead of persisting on staging a concerto, to the sudden retreating from people after a successful performance. This ambivalent attitude of hers reminds me of my own process of getting along with music. Gladly, Nodame recollects her faith in music at the end of the third season, and I am now facing music by all means.
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