More Nodame Cantabile fangirl spasms!
I just finished the last available NCIS scan at One Manga for Nodame Cantabile, and I have to say, bitin pare, I can’t believe I’ve been left hanging like that (injured little puppy whimpers here.)
At this point in the manga, it’s almost impossible to ship Chiaki and Nodame with other people, and the only way for them not to end up with each other is for their careers to be so successful they are pulled apart by conflicting concert schedules. It’s already happening - Nodame almost didn’t make it to his last concert, almost missing him play the piano and conduct at the same time (do conductors actually do this? It seems so… egotistical, but obviously the stunt would secretly appeal to Chiaki’s professional vanity.) On the flip side, at least it gives Chiaki a way to keep his vague promise to Nodame - if another pianist had been on stage with him for that Bach concerto, most likely she would have disrupted the performance out of sheer jealousy.
The problem with Chiaki right now is that he’s got to make time for Nodame and he doesn’t want to admit this to himself. Granted, he already took the leap of faith into the Weirdo Forest, and he’s confessed to this in such an offhand manner to one of his rival conductors!
Yeah, it’s kind of impossible for Chiaki to admit he doesn’t feel anything for Nodame, especially after this… and this:
Oh… and he even does her laundry! Can I smother him in my bosom? Please, pretty please?
I mean, come on. What kind of guy doesn’t dig a girl if he drives her to her first recital out of town, agrees to stay in the same bedroom with her, sleeps beside her and then later kisses her in one of the most romantic set-ups I’ve seen so far in comics for mature readers - American and Japanese?
Yeah, they still fight - but it’s not as if it’s going to reach this level again:
Ah. I loved it when Nodame finally kicked Chiaki's ass. That page is payback for all the times he was nasty to her. Her impassioned dialogue - she’s so nutty when she refers to herself in the third person - “Nodame is always serious!” - ah, pure love. Chiaki needed to get it through his thick skull that while she may be playful, she’s not playing him. There he was, feeling all neglected and sorry for himself, thinking that he was waiting for her for hours... while Nodame's been waiting for him, for years.
After seeing that scene, for some reason I knew that they had major sexual chemistry (not just romantic) because it meant that Nodame could stand up to Chiaki. (Not to mention they reminded me of another violent couple, Ichigo and Rukia.) Granted, their first kiss was a spectacular failure - I chalk it up to Chiaki’s horrible timing - but the second time around was just perfect:
Even her cosplaying Mozart during her recital made it perfect. I don't know why. Nodame looks quite fetching in a powdered wig.
Despite the kiss, Chiaki has yet to say I love you, granted; but just like another guy with a bad temper I ship, I doubt he’s going to say it until the end of the series (or never at all). Guys. (Eye-rolling.) Some of them are just so predictable.
Finally, I just have to say that I’m glad I claimed Kuroki over at Bleach Asylum. I was worried about claiming a character, especially if he became an asshole later on in the series, but Kuroki seems impossible of major wrong-doing. He's such a nice addition to my imaginary harem of losers and psychos. Look at him get all embarrassed here:
I adore Kuroki more than ever, he’s actually much sweeter and good-natured than Chiaki, and makes ideal husband fodder. :P (Ohh… such a bad word.) Anyway, I’m glad among all the Rising Star Orchestra members, he’s the one who followed Chiaki and Nodame to Paris for his studies. The tentative development of his friendship with Tanya is amusing, since they are almost as different in temperament as Chiaki and Nodame themselves. (I thought, at first, Kuroki was going to be paired off with Rui, the Chinese pianist, but she seems to have fallen off the radar of Tomiya.)
Also, I love the continual reference to Kuroki’s gloomy, bluish-green nature. The use of colors in relation to composers and Kuroki is fantastic, it reminds me of this snippet from Diane Ackerman’s The Natural History of the Senses:
Why synthesia drives some people to distraction, it drives distractions away from others. While it is a small plague to the person who doesn't want all that sensory overload, it invigorates those who are indelibly creative. Some of the most famous synesthetes have been artists. Composers Aleksandr Scriabin and Nikolai Rimski- Korsakov both freely associated colors with music when they wrote. To Rimski-Korsakov, C major was white; to Scriabin it was green. To Rimski-Korsakov, A major was rosy, to Scriabin it was green. More surprising is how closely their music-color synesthesias matched. Both associated E major with blue (for Rimski-Korsakov, it was sapphire-blue, for Scriabin blue-white), A-flat major with purple (for Rimski-Korsakov it was grayish-violet, for Scriabin purple-violet), D major with yellow, etc.
So there’s a pretty good reason for Nodame to refer to Mozart as pink, Chopin as white… and Kuroki to be bluish-green, but sometimes silver tinged with pink. ♥
Edit:
One of the things I love about NC is its weird sense of humor, like in this instance: Tanya's freaking out when Kuroki Yunlong has a moment of gender confusion...
How can a reader like me not adore that? This initial moment becomes a running gag later on... I love it whenever Yunlong tries coax Chiaki to take him out again... and Chiaki just gives him this WTF look. Mwahahahaha! Freeloader.
Now the long wait for more chapters begin. Hmm. What will I read now? (Checks long list of recommended manga...) Maybe some shonen now to balance things out again. Hmm.
Written over two days, while baking in the kitchen and listening to old reggae & ska CDs - Bob Marley / Sublime / Tungaw