Nodame Cantabile & Venus versus Virus
Two shows from the new season that I recently watched are Nodame Cantabile and v3. Overall, the first episodes of both shows weren’t bad, but there was really nothing to grab me either. One thing I liked about both shows was the artwork. I just hope that the characters develop to where I can care somewhat about them.
I’ve been watching the live-action version of Nodame on the only station in the air that airs TV shows from various Asian countries, so I have a basic idea of what’s going on. Unfortunately, the show isn’t subbed, so I’m missing a lot. This was one of the reasons why I was looking forward to watching Nodame Cantabile. The drawback is, that I’ve already formed opinions based on the live-action show.
So far, I prefer the live-action characterization of Nodame and Chiaki. Hiroshi Tamaki, who plays Chiaki in the live-action brings the right arrogance to the role while Juri Ueno brings the right wackiness to Nodame. Granted, this is all based on watching just one episode of the anime and several episodes of the live-action. Despite this, I’m pretty sure that I’ll continue watching the show. I think it has a lot of offer. As I mentioned earlier, one thing I really like about the anime is the artwork. Another thing I liked about the show was the OP and ED. The music seems to work here. The OP and ED on the live-action show bores me, probably because I’ve heard the songs before over the years. I’m looking forward to seeing the characters of Ryutaro, Stresemann, and the rest.
V3 is the second show that I recently watched. Its not bad, so far. As with Nodame, I liked the artwork. I also liked the fact that the production company didn’t try to make shows “atmosphere” moody by using dark, bleak settings and backgrounds (so far). Everything else about the show is basically familiar. I hope the show doesn’t rely on Sumire running from school only to get to the office late.
As I mentioned, I like the artwork, the non-bleak settings. I’ll admit that the opening scene of v3 that has Lucia squaring off against Sumire is interesting. It looks like an interesting result/side effect of Sumire’s abilities. Basically any show that can take a moe character and turn her into a weapon of mass destruction. And the twin-tails, eye patch look isn’t too bad either. With Nodame, I’m fairly sure that I’ll stick with it. With v3, I’m not so sure yet. School girls fighting monsters doesn’t sound to bad.
Hey, shouldn’t Lucia be in school too. That’d could make it more interesting. Nah, then we’d wind up with the duo fighting viruses…(virii?) in school all the time. We’d eventually find out that Lucia could heal people when she was a kid and that she had a friend who moved away and that the viruses/virii/evil-bad-dudes were created by her.
2 Comments so far
Those were two shows that I wasn’t planning to start on soon, but the last batch of screen caps make “v3” look interesting. I’ve read Nodame referred to as “Honey and Clover III.”
Plus, that’s the first time I’ve seen a show turn an eye-patch into a moe-totic device (I copyright that).
“Moe-totic“, XD that’s a good one. v3 has potential to be an enjoyable show for me. I liked Honey and Clover and that’s probably why I’ll stick with it. If I remember, JC Staff did H&C also.