Moé Moé Rabu

• Ryuutarou Mine is walking along and thinking the other students around him have no talent. We find out he is the son of the owner of Uraken Chinese Restaurant near school.
• During practice, his friend reminds him of his violin jury next week. If he fails he has to repeat a semester. He had a pianist with him before, who happened to be Chiaki, but Chiaki walked out on him thinking Mine’s violin playing is terrible.
• Nodame happens to be outside and trips over the power cord. Discovering that Nodame is a pianist, he asks if she could be his partner for the violin jury.
• Chiaki is cooking dinner and Nodame comes in to join him. Apparently this has been happening for two weeks ever since Nodame tried to give him some of her cooking. Except the dish she cooked was burnt.

• After dinner, Nodame asks Chiaki if he knows Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No.5, which he recognises as “Spring”. Nodame tells him that she is a partner, so Chiaki helps her learn it.
• The next day, Mine and Nodame’s practice went well, and he compliments that her playing has soul. After wards, he takes her to his family restaurant where she is feed, but Chiaki happens to see them there.
• Chiaki is eating by himself and thinks that Nodame will go anywhere she’s fed. Feeling irritated, he listens to Sebastino Vieira conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, until the doorbell rings. Thinking its Nodame, he opens the door and starts yelling only to realise that it’s Tagaya Saiko. So he lets her in his apartment.
• Nodame happens to see Chiaki and Saiko together and assumed that she was his girlfriend. Because of this, Nodame is lifeless during her practice with Mine the next day. Nodame tells him about her love and how she saw the two leaving together this morning, meaning she stayed overnight.
• Mine finds out that Nodame’s love is Chiaki, and her rival is Saiko. Knowing that she doesn’t have a chance, he thinks she should just practice.
• Saiko actually ended up spending her time with Chiaki complaining about a part she lost to someone she doesn’t consider a rival. Just when Saiko starts to come onto Chiaki, he leaves and says that he hates losers.
• Back at Nodame’s apartment, Nodame is still depressed, so Mine suggest that she steal Chiaki away with her sex appeal. With that failing they try some makeup, but that ends up failing as well.
• Chiaki returns to hear a commotion and ends up walking in on the two. Chiaki has seen Nodame and stops her with a box before she could hug him. Chiaki asks if Mine thinks his playing is good, which he does and brags about being third place in the world junior competition. So Chiaki plays a small sample of “Spring” for him and tells him he won the same competition in Vienna. Chiaki offers his help but Mine refuses and leaves.
• Afterwards, Chiaki gets Nodame listen to how “Spring” is supposed to sound and practices with her. However Chiaki thinks its frightening on how Nodame can play so well only after hearing it on CD once.
• Nodame wonders why Mine said their playing together was good despite the two not being in sync. Chiaki tells her what he thinks. In turn, Nodame reveals to Mine the next day what Chiaki said. The reason being is that he plays like he is masturbating, in other words it’s for self-gratification. She also lists 4 other reasons.
• So thinking that he is bad, Nodame also notes that Chiaki never said that he was bad, but has interesting points about him. Upon hearing this, Nodame urges him to play “Spring” with an image of a field of flowers. But Mine thinks that is too childish and should imagine the shimmering excitement and lighting of youth.
• However on the day of the jury, Nodame ended up catching a cold. So Chiaki volunteers to play in Nodame’s place. Waiting outside, Chiaki reveals that he has been playing the violin and piano since he was three years old. He practiced the violin until he bled. Because of that, his piano’s skills weren’t that great and thus he entered the piano department of the school. But in the end, his dream is to be a conductor, so he studied different things but doesn’t feel right to him.
• When it is their turn, Chiaki tells Mine to listen to his piano, but play as freely as he wants. Hearing how Mine plays, Chiaki sees that his playing is simplistic and haphazard, similar to that of Nodame. Chiaki however, matches Mine and makes Mine feel great with how Chiaki is there where he wants him to be, and he even imagines a field of flowers.
• After the jury, Mine breaks up his band and wants to go with classical music from now on.

Preview:

Impressions

Enjoying the very first episode, I was hoping the second would be just as good, and that it does. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode as much as the first. It has the random comedic moments and they all go well with the storyline. With the introduction of a new character, I was wondering if we would see any more characters besides Chiaki and Nodame as you can only do so much with 2 characters.

With the focus on Mine, I was rather surprised to see a violinist to be playing hard rock. It just seems unnatural to me, but then with this day and age, it shouldn’t really be that much surprising. What I find interesting is how Chiaki picked up that Mine’s playing style is similar to that of Nodame, and I’m guessing we might see more characters like that in future episodes. So judging from the preview we are introduced to an afro guy.

Also to note, since I’m enjoying this series so much I’m also watching the Live Action version. Although I’ve watched the first episode, I don’t want to watch ahead of the series in case of spoilers, but my urge to watch intensifies! I guess another reason to like this is that I used to play the piano A LOT when I was little. So I guess I can appreciate it when I start hearing all the classical music playing. So with the 2nd episode done I will definitely continue blogging this.