Title: Nodame Cantabile: The Final Score - Part 2
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Directors: Takeuchi Hideki
Format: Movie; 123 minutes.
Dates: 17 Apr 2010

Synopsis: As Chiaki Shinichi forges ahead with his new career as resident conductor of the Roux-Marlet Orchestra, the distance between him and Nodame grows as he moves to a new place to concentrate on his music, leaving her behind. The increasing contrast between Chiaki’s rapid ascent to new heights in his career, and Nodame’s continual struggle for progress as a “mere” Conservatoire student only makes the strain in their relationship even more apparent. With their romance fraying at the seams even as it is getting more intimate, it will take a crisis for them to reevaluate what is most important, and music to realize what they mean to each other.

The Highlights
Pacing: Choppy and disjointed; the restrictions of a two hour format seem to be beyond director Takeuchi’s ability for once.
Story: More dramatic than its predecessors, but rather underwhelming in that regard.
Characters: So brilliant in slapstick comedy, but Tamaki Hiroshi’s and Ueno Juri’s weaknesses in drama are exposed for the first time.
Music: Still excellent, but the concert scenes lack the punch of previous ones.
Ending: Serviceable, but could have been better overall.

It will not take long into the second movie sequel of the live-action Nodame Cantabile franchise for one to get the feeling that a great number of scenes must have ended up on the cutting room floor, or stashed away for future inclusion into the extras section of the DVD/BD release. That might well be the most reasonable conclusion for how The Final Score - Part 2 could feel so rough and disjointed despite spanning a full couple of hours.

In hindsight, the opening moments of Part 2 being a segment where several beloved supporting characters of the TV drama were brought back for a nostalgia-fest, and then swept away just as quickly to make way for the main storyline, should have been a sign as to the direction that Part 2 was going to take. Indeed, despite the decent job he did with Part 1 of the same movie, it was as if the humongous amount of story material still waiting to be adapted was beyond Takeuchi Hideki’s directorial skills for once, given how the entire movie was rushing through the scenes with minimal transition, as if trying to cram in as much material as possible while dropping what just couldn’t be fitted within the limited time. If anything else, it seems to prove that the material Nodame Cantabile would have worked best as a serial like the first TV drama, instead of trying to shunt itself into the limits of a movie like in this case.

A consequence of this need to rush through the remaining material, was the dilution of much of the dramatic tension in the story; especially unfortunate, given that Part 2 was more focused on the dramatic aspect of the storyline than its predecessors. It is, after all, not easy to gauge just how much events in the story affected Nodame and Chiaki, when said events seem to come one after another. This is not helped by the fact that Ueno and Tamaki, so comfortable pulling off the slapstick gags which made the drama serial and Part 1 such fun to watch, appear to be rather less so handling extended periods of the more sombre dramatic scenes; Tamaki’s Chiaki was wooden for the most part, while Ueno’s Nodame didn’t quite capture the weird, but heartfelt vibe that Kawasumi Ayako’s anime Nodame displays in their portrayals of the titular character’s working out of her emotions.

The one thing that Part 2 remains good at is the music; the live-action franchise has never skimped on the portrayal of the many classical pieces that has graced the story, and it doesn’t disappoint here, with a critical concert scene featuring Chopin’s “Piano Concerto No. 1″. However, even then the execution didn’t seem to live up to the standard of previous concert scenes, not quite contributing as much to the story as previous concert scenes did; probably because of the overfast pacing in the first place.

All in all, Part 2 of The Final Score was something of an underwhelming experience, and far from the explosive finale promised by the ending of Part 1. While it is a servicable finale, a passable swansong to the live-action iteration of the beloved Nodame Cantabile franchise, this is probably the one time I would put the anime version over the live-action.

The Rating: 6

Reviewed by: Ascaloth