I decided to catch up with Nodame Cantabile again, probably because I was watching (and weeping over) Immortal Beloved yesterday. Beethoven is without a doubt one of my favorite composers ever. Despite being extremely incompetent at the actual delivery of a lot of these pieces, playing through the passion and the feeling in many of his sonatas when I was in middle/high really turned music into a big part of my life; something I came to depend on and cling to.
…placeholder for something profound
Archives for category: Manga
I have a higher quality version of this scan saved, but I just really liked the caption 
Because man, these characters are seriously some of the most tortured out of CLAMP’s whole repertoire. After the whole reveal with Syaoran I tried to mentally prepare myself for a huge bummer in Fay’s past. Still killed me when I got there, it was so freaking disturbing/depressing. But now Fay is definitely one of my favorite characters ever xD
(Courtesy of onemanga.com)
Since I’ve more or less caught up with my current anime episodes and am just waiting for the final subs of the final episodes, I decided to indulge in some manga and dived into Tsubasa. I had gotten up to volume 11 or so back when I was last in Taiwan, but haven’t read anything since. Picking it up this time I actually started a loong ways back at volume 4. And things were moving along quite happily with the worlds-hopping, feathers-collecting, budding romance between Syaoran and Sakura “formula” if you will. Until chapter 120 onwards that is, and then it was like WAM. CLAMP fucking kicked in and went, oh wait, we’re CLAMP, we freaking love messing with and messing up our characters, indulging in some pretty-boy violence and making people bleed bucket-loads. TIME TO THROW IN THE DOUBLE-WHAMMY!
Here’s a Nodame Cantabile playlist… some of my favorite pieces from Lesson 106 to Lesson 118 
Lesson 106 – The second half of Nodame’s salon concert
Liszt – Legendes, “St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds”
Lesson 112 – Tanya’s first preliminary performances for the Canton International Competition
Bach – Well-tempered Clavier, Book 1: Prelude and Fugue no. 22 in B flat minor
Lesson 118 – One of Nodame’s lesson pieces for Auclair sensei
Beethoven – Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat, op.110 1st movement
I did a bit of internal screaming when Vampire Knight ended at episode 13. I’m not sure if the anime ended as strongly as it started, but I was still hooked enough to hunt down the manga and marathon it until about 4AM on a workday. I couldn’t believe they broke the anime up into two seasons Dx I guess it’s mainly because the manga hadn’t finished yet. The manga definitely grew on me a lot more than when I first flipped through vol. 1 at Borders; I also really enjoyed the big twist-reveal about Yuuki and am dying to find out about what happens next.
So with Vampire Knight temporarily done I was at a bit of a loss about what to watch/read next. Not to say that I don’t have a full watch/readlist right now, but I wanted to pick up something that can really hold my attention like Vampire Knight did. So I picked up Nodame Cantabile manga from where I dropped off, and it’s STILL AWESOME. Most people who know me knows that I freaking love this series to death, having watched anime, manga, and live action – I just can’t get enough of this series, it’s definitely an absolute favorite. I’ve forgotten some of the finer details of the story since I took a pretty long hiatus from the manga, but the plot is still going strong with quite a few threads creeping in with the appearance of Chiaki’s father. I’ve had so many laugh-out-loud moments reading the manga… usually whenever characters go into blank-eyed angsty/moody mode… or when Chiaki (fondly) imagines Nodame in weirdo forest mode… seriously FTW stuff.