Moé Moé Rabu

• Okuyama Masumi is a timpanist who has difficulties staying in a practice room for a long time, and is often mistaken for a female. Having rushed out, he sees Chiaki walking by, but when Nodame comes and clings onto Chiaki, he gets infuriated. That is because Masumi is in love with Chiaki.
• Later on Nodame sees Chiaki compiling his own music for an orchestra, but he doesn’t have anyone to play it. Nodame changes the topic to dinner and suggests nabe, however Chiaki hits her but gives her a list of ingredients anyway.
• However when she gets outside, someone dumped a bucket of water (including the bucket) onto Nodame making the list wet. So when she arrives back at Chiaki’s apartment, he finds that she bought the wrong ingredients. She also gets a chain letter in her mail which says she will die if she doesn’t send 100 copies.

• The next day more bad things happen to Nodame such as slipping on a banana peel, getting firecrackers thrown at her, having a note stuck on her back etc. Though when Nodame finds her lunch has been eaten, she is determined to find out who is behind the pranks.
• So with the help of Mine, they trap the culprit behind the pranks, and Mine recognises that it’s none other than Masumi. Masumi warns Nodame to stay away from Chiaki, but Nodame points out that Chiaki is also a guy. So the two decide to have a competition with instruments, Mine suggests whoever gets a Christmas Eve date with Chiaki first wins.
• Masumi ended up getting tickets to a conductor concert but the problem is that Chiaki doesn’t know who he is. Though Mine has an idea on how to fix that. Nodame on the other hand doesn’t have much luck in getting a date with Chiaki. So she decides to make him a cake and asks him to come to her room instead. Though Chiaki, who is too engrossed in his composition, agrees.
• The next day, Chiaki discovers that the conducting student Hayakawa was accepted into a special seminar with Sebastino Vieria. This causes Chiaki to tear up his composition. Nodame decides to ring Chiaki’s doorbell asking him about what type of cake she should make, but Chiaki is not in the mood and tells her that he doesn’t remember such a promise.
• The next day, Mine drags Chiaki along to the A-Orchestra’s practice so Masumi can show off his timpani playing. Even though it is only practice, Masumi is dressed in proper attire and his playing was over-enthusiastic. This causes him to be kicked out by the conductor and Chiaki leaving, calling Masumi an idiot. However Chiaki enjoyed the orchestra.
• Later on Masumi and Nodame end up crying at Uraken over being rejected by Chiaki. Masumi thinking that he’ll be playing timpani alone, Nodame suggest they form a three-person ensemble.
• Elsewhere, Saiko is with Chiaki and tries to invite him out for Christmas Eve and mentions baking a cake. This reminds Chiaki of what Nodame wanted to do and how he agreed. So heading to Nodame’s room, he finds that she isn’t home.
• For the next three days, Chiaki doesn’t see Nodame. But walking through the school, he hears a familiar sound coming from the practice rooms. It just so happens to be the piece that Chiaki was working on and he finds the performers to be Nodame, Mine, and Masumi. Though missing parts to the piece, Chiaki decides to help, but ends up forcing them to practice through Christmas and New Years.

Preview:

Impressions

I must say, I am thoroughly enjoying Nodame Cantabile. Last week I managed to finish the Live Action TV drama and it was superb. But now that I know the basis of the storyline it doesn’t degrade my enjoyment of the anime. In fact, the three-person ensemble part wasn’t in the TV drama so it’s nice to see parts that were missing from there in the anime.

So we are introduced to Masumi-chan and he is just as weird as in the TV drama series. There’s nothing more awesome than having a gay afro musician in love with the main male character. Not to mention Fujita Yoshinori did an absolute wonderful job as Masumi, just like the rest of the characters introduced so far.

Next episode it appears that Stresemann is to make an appearance meaning the story is about to get a bit more interesting. Though I still wonder how many more characters are left to be introduced.