Moé Moé Rabu

With the Maradona piano competition continuing, Nodame’s rival Segawa Yuuto does extremely well and impresses the judges. Back at school, Takahashi is giving a demonstration of his skills to Chiaki and everyone. Kiyora recognises his skills, but the problem is that Takahashi wants to take over as concertmaster. Mine then accepts him as concertmaster much to Kiyora’s shock, but Mine believes that Kiyora should focus on going back to Vienna and come back even better than Takahashi and take back the role.

Nodame in the meantime is struggling with the Schumann piece, but Etou returns to find that she has mastered the pieces for the competition. Etou doesn’t know what to do since he’s never had a student like her before, but then suddenly Nodame faints from having a fever. Being placed to bed, Nodame has a dream where she remembers a bit of her past of the classroom door with a man holding a spiked club. When she wakes up, her mind dwells on what Yuuto said.

The day of the finals, Etou has Nodame listen to the Petrushka piece, but before she could listen to it again, Kaori comes in saying it’s time to go. On the train ride there, Nodame is trying to memorise the piece but her concentration is broken by a cellphone ringing. Sitting backstage, she continues on memorising until she gets a visit by Yuuto who claims that he is surprised to see her in the competition. He also mentions that Hanazakura-sensei has come to watch as well and this leaves Nodame stunned. But Kaori turns up to drag her away to get changed. Upon walking onto the stage, she surprises the audience as she is dressed like Scarlett O’Hara. Chiaki and his mother have come to watch Nodame play and Chiaki is impressed by how well Nodame played her first two pieces - Mozart’s Piano Sonata No.8 in A minor k.310(300d) and Schumann’s Piano Sonata No.2 in G minor Op.22.

The audience is much pleased with her performance with the first two pieces and Etou is proud of Nodame, but he wants her to exit now since she hasn’t mastered her final piece. However Nodame continues on with her final piece, Stravinsky’s Three Movements of Petrushka, and she starts off well. But partway through the first movement, Nodame suddenly stops as all she can remember is the cellphone ringtone from earlier.

Preview:

Impressions

Now we’re definitely plowing through the competition with Nodame’s turn. I am still amazed at how she can learn such pieces in a short span of time and play so well at it, especially with her hearing ability. But that hearing ability has gotten her into trouble now as she can only remember the ringtone and it won’t do her good from this point. Also I liked how as she was playing the notes were flowing in front of her as it shows that she has improved in her piano skills and be able to play by remember the music sheets. And I thought Nodame dressing up as Scarlett O’Hara was pretty cool.

This time we get more hints at what happened with Nodame’s past and that Yuuto is a part of this memory of her’s. From hearing the voice yelling at her and the man with the spiked club probably shows that she was hit for not playing as instructed and it has let a scarred memory for her. But it seems that it also implies Yuuto was a part of this trauma as well. Also I find the image of the man with a spiked club a little extreme but it probably emphasizes how much this has influenced Nodame as a child.

Mine’s decision to accept Takahashi as concertmaster was pretty manly of him, as he wants the best for Kiyora. But with him saying that he’ll stay and keep the orchestra running, does that mean he doesn’t have plans of going overseas? I find it rather odd how he doesn’t think beyond that but he probably thinks that his skills aren’t upto the point where he can travel overseas.

With only two episodes left I can’t help but feel that we’re going to get a very rushed ending, unless we’re going to be seeing DVD episodes, which is more than likely since 23 is an odd number to finish off. But then again, Ergo Proxy finished at 23 episodes. Can’t wait for the last two episodes!