Moé Moé Rabu

• Everyone arrives at the Nina Lutz music seminar, after a car ride annoying Chiaki, with Mine, Masumi, and Nodame taking part in lessons of their respective instruments. However Nodame gets kicked out of Nina’s class due to her not being able to read the music sheet.
• By lunchtime, Mine is depressed since everyone else is better than him. Masumi explains that everyone did an audition to attend this seminar, unlike themselves who got invited by Stresemann. Although Masumi is excited and had practiced beforehand, unlike Mine. Nodame turns up and wants to see Chiaki, but he is nowhere to be found.

• Chiaki happens to be at a party with many important musicians. However Elise gives Chiaki a list of materials for him to take care of Stresemann as she is going on vacation. So throughout the party he ends up taking care of and serving Stresemann and eventually taking him back to his room. Having put the passed out Stresemann to bed, Chiaki notices a Dvořák music sheet and studies it throughout the night.
• The next day, Stresemann conducts the orchestra while being hung over. During practice, Chiaki is amazed that everyone is playing great for such a difficult piece except for one person; and that is Mine. Lunch time comes and Mine is again depressed with how poor he played compared to everyone else. Though the topic changes to how even the good players can’t find a position in a real orchestra, and this makes Mine realise that he is no good where he is now.
• Nodame finds Chiaki sitting by himself in the woods, although had to admit that she got kicked out of Nina Lutz’s class. Saying that she wants to go home, Chiaki tells her to just do that and walks off. With Stresemann still feeling sick, he wants Chiaki to take over the afternoon rehearsal as he knows he studied it last night. With Chiaki conducting the orchestra, a reporter who is watching the rehearsal finds it big news that Stresemann has taken a Japanese pupil and gets her cameraman to take photos. During rehearsal, Chiaki is enjoying the conducting and finds the female concert master particularly good. Mine however is feeling that Chiaki is getting further and further away in terms of skill level. That night, Mine is practicing non-stop, so Masumi goes out to buy juice but finds Nodame outside waving her arms around. Scaring Masumi off, Nodame returns to practicing the piece without a piano.
• The next day, Stresemann is back to normal and conducting the orchestra. Mine also surprises one of the other violinists to show that he has improved. Chiaki is walking down the hallway with one of the instructors, he thinks that Chiaki is worthy of being Stresemann’s pupil and hopes to see Chiaki with his own orchestra someday.
• Everything goes well through till the actual performance and the farewell party. The reporter from earlier is looking for Chiaki as she found out he is Chiaki Masayuki’s son and Stresemann’s pupil. Chiaki however is trying to find Nodame, but after talking to Masumi, Chiaki approaches Nina Lutz. She tells him that she excused Nodame from her class and she hasn’t turned up since. She feels that Chiaki should give up on her as she doesn’t have a passion for music.
• On the final day, just as Nina is leaving, she hears someone playing an astounding piano playing of Bartók’s music coming from one of the rooms. But by the time she gets there to see who it is, the room is empty. The person in fact was Nodame, who is now exhausted. So returning home with by car with Mine and Masumi, Chiaki however decides to take the shinkansen home with Stresemann. He tells himself that he needs to move forward and decides to learn the Rachmaninoff piece that Stresemann had assigned him earlier.

Preview:

Impressions

This episode didn’t strike me as enjoyable as there was really no progression in the story as it seems to be almost like a filler. Although it doesn’t mean there wasn’t any character development. The best ones were from both Mine and Nodame where both see that they aren’t exactly the best, but continue on trying. Despite Mine thinking his violin playing is always good, it’s nice to see that he can accept that there are others better than him but he doesn’t falter from that. Instead, he decides to improve himself after realising that Chiaki is also improving himself significantly.

Nodame also shows improvement when she decided to continue practicing. Given that she wants to stay with Chiaki, deciding to continue is the first step in her to improving, I feel that it should have been Stresemann’s words about her not being able to be with him the way she is now from the last episode that pushed her to continue. It feels somewhat wasted although they may show that again later on in next few episodes.

With Chiaki motivation to study the piece assigned to him, we’ll soon see his piano performance with Stresemann’s orchestra. Another point on this is that I see that Chiaki has realised that although he wants to become a conductor, he has to start somewhere else and that is the piano. I think Chiaki can learn a lot from Stresemann from both conducting and playing the piano as he needs to understand from both a conductor and musicians point of view.

Despite this week’s episode being slightly boring, the animation quality was really good this week and I hope it stays that way throughout the series. With next week’s episode showing the start of the School Festival, we’ll be seeing another S-Orchestra performance and Nodame in her costume.