This special is the continuation of the Nodame Cantabile JDrama, and has two episodes. Previously, Jia Hao has done a review on the special. The two episodes are 2 hours each, and they are continuous episodes and not stand alone, unlike Densha Otoko’s Alternate Ending Sp and Indiana Jones Sp.

And so begins the spoilers:

The story takes place in Europe now, when Chiaki has managed to be able to sit on an aeroplane and fly there with Nodame (Noda Megumi). The main story is about Chiaki deciding to only contact Viera Sensei when he has won a prestigious conducting competition. Chiaki meets another person who’s Viera’s pupil, as well as another Japanese, and together they enter the competition. At the same time Nodame is alone with 2 other house-mates (live in the same “house”) and trying to learn french. Nodame found herself to be weaker than the rest of the students in terms of analysing the background of the music.

Chiaki finds himself getting the perfect score along with Viera’s other pupil, and in the 3rd round, they are both going to perform the same song. Chiaki is performing after the guy, and he became stressed out when he discovers that the guy performed well. During his own performance, he screws up by making the orchestra dislike him, and the orchestra played the piece without even looking at the conductor. Despite that, Chiaki managed to enter the fourth and final round.

Chiaki enters the Nodame depressing mode, where he has a whole hair full of “flies” blabla to signify he didn’t really have the heart to even bathe. Nodame arrives to cheer him up and because of certain events, he cheers up and gears himself for the final round where he corrects his mistake. He reminded himself to respect music and hence then will the orchestra respect him too. With his superb performance in the final round, he emerged the winner. It is also declared that Chiaki intends to contact Viera and possibly enter his performance tour. However..

Stresseman, henceforth knows as the DOM (Dirty Old Man), is doing something behind Chaki’s back. Chaki gets kidnapped by Oliver, a bodyguard I think, and subjected to cruel torture of tickling, of which Chaki succumbs by signing the dreaded contract, of which he will immediately go with DOM for DOM’s performance tour. Chaki actually doesn’t mind, because it’s a great opportunity, and he leaves Nodame alone for about 3 months.

During which the DOM sent Nodame photos of Chiaki in bed with skimpily clad woman, whom Nodame Cantabile’s watchers should know that they belong to DOM, and Chiaki is probably there in the wrong place at the wrong time.

DOM got sick in the Tokyo leg of the tour and Chiaki takes over and leads the orchestra with a piano performance by this young girl whom I forgot the name. Nodame got jealous and her piano playing got screwed up. Her own tutor asks her, “What do you come here for?”, and she cannot answer that questions.

Chiaki came back for a short half day and caught Nodame in a jealous and bad mood. He didn’t have time to do anything and continued with his tour.

When the 3 months ended, Chiaki came back and had a fight with Nodame. They patched back after some manga style fighting, and everything goes well. Nodame does her first piano recital to great success, and Chiaki did his Europe debut with success too. They share their first kiss and things go happily ever after (unless they do a 2nd SP and break them up).

Heartwarming story. Do watch it.

Nodame Cantabile is a romantic comedy and I really recommend people to watch it. For starters, this is one of the rare times in which I remember the lead character’s names. In certain cases like Galileo, I seem to not be able to recall the character’s names.

There are two leading characters, the first being Nodame, which is short for her real name, Noda Megumi. (See I remember even the full name). Nodame’s ambition is to be a kindergarten teacher and she is in the piano division in the music academy. She composed a “fart song” for her future students. Who the hell wants their kids to learn a fart song, I don’t really know.

The second is Chiaki-senpai, where senpai just means senior. Nodame is Chiaki’s junior, so she calls him Chiaki-senpai. Chiaki’s dream is to go to Europe to be a professional conductor. However when he returned from Vienna when he was young, there had been an emergency landing and he has an aeroplane phobia since then. Hence he is unable to fulfil his dreams because he can only stay in Japan.

The whole drama is a manga adaptation, so be prepared for manga style things happening like Nodame getting whacked and flying a huge distance before hitting a big rock.

The whole drama is about Nodame’s love for Chiaki and how he eventually “accepted” her love for him. It shows how Nodame helped Chiaki overcome his fear of planes, and eventually Chiaki is able to fly to Paris to further his studies as a conductor. It also shows how strong Nodame’s love for Chiaki is, because Nodame decided to immerse herself in music more and even attended competitions for him, something she said she will never do. In a way, she is giving up on her kindergarten teacher dream by working hard. (She has natural talent at piano also).

There is this character called Stresseman (Hope I spelled it correctly), who’s got to be one horny ah pek. But he is actually the Maestro, one of the superb conductors around the world. He’s super lame because he keeps going to parties and immense himself in the company of female escorts. He also likes reading Japan’s Magazines, the kind where skimpy clothing rule.

There are two episodes of SP to be watched after you complete the 11 episode drama. But that’s for another post. I give this drama 8.5/10. I enjoyed laughing at it. Seriously.

Galileo, isn’t about the real Galileo. Galileo is more of a nickname for a brilliant professor in one of Japan’s universities. His name is Yukawa Manabu and he has been helping his ex classmate with police work. After his ex classmate got promoted, a rookie who took over him, Utsumi Kaoru continued bugging Yukawa for his help.

Galileo is super smart, and he can scientifically solve many different crimes and understand how things work in a scientific manner. One of the episodes even show resonance when the water gushing through the pipe has a frequency that matches the natural frequency of the house, creating large vibrational motion.

One thing I don’t understand is how can he always find something to calculate and write equations on? I distinctively saw a dx/dt in one of the episodes.

The episodes are mainly standalone, so you can watch them alone. Only episodes 9 and 10 are linked, and it’s because its the finale so there is a bigger case. In the last case, Galileo is faced with a Nuclear Ticking Bomb that is set to explode in 3 hours. In that 3 hours, he can actually do many things that fascinates me and convinced me that it is truly a remarkable work of fiction. I mean, how can you solve something faster than the computer. Especially when you have to type things like fprintf();.

This JDrama has many scientific elements inside, though I cannot confirm that they are true, though that of the resonance is true in a way that I’ve learnt it before, from JC and now in University. I suppose they have some element of truth.

Maki had a cameo in Episode 6, but the amount of screen time is zentei ni little. Not that it’s a must to have her act, but if there is eye candy, why not? Jiahao also informed me that some famous actress also acted in the series, in particular in Episode 7 as the beautiful wife.

If you have time, perhaps you should watch Galileo? However, some people may think it’s boring. That, I cannot guarantee. That’s amusing though. ^_^

Kanzaki Nao is a really honest and innocent citizen. She is probably the most innocent character ever in all of Drama-world. I mean, at the start, they show how innocent she is by showing her returning a 100 yen coin she found to the police station, and making a police report for it. A 100 yen is probably about 1 US dollar? However the best nonsense got to be her receiving a prank call about her brother having some trouble, and she actually believed it till she realized she’s an only child. -_-"

All the troubles begin when Nao receives a package containing a letter and a 100 million yen (equivalent to a million USD). The moment she opened the letter, it is deemed that she is voluntarily participating in this game called the Liar Game .

In the first round, she has to cheat her opponent of as much money as possible. At the end of 30 days, the Liar Game team will return to collect a 100 million yen from both participants, and any money left over will be the prize money. Hence, the cheated victim will have to get a loan to pay back the money.

She gets cheated immediately because her opponent was her former teacher, and she actually handed over a 100 million yen to him to put in the bank "later". With the help of a convicted swindler Akiyama Shinichi, she manages to get the 100 million yen back, as well as successfully win another 100 million yen as prize money. But due to her innocent nature, she saves her former teacher by giving him back the 100 million yen.

That, is the first round of the liar game. Nao actually ends up in a few more rounds. She proceeded to the 2nd round because she couldn’t pay the opt out fee (she returned it to the teacher) and by some turn of events, Akiyama took over another participant to end up with Nao again. There is a reason why Akiyama helps Nao so much, and is in the sub-plot I won’t reveal.

Basically the second round is Minority Voting. As long as one votes in the minority, he/she is safe. Else, he/she will leave and incur a 100 million yen debt. It sounds disgustingly dangerous, but by Akiyama’s strategy it seems actually easy. It’s all mathematics and trying to find a way to last till the end.

Nao finishes and manages to exit from Liar Game. Some events lead her to go to the resurrection round, which is the restructuring game. By voting who to keep in the game, the person with the least number of votes will be restructured, and won’t have a chance to pay back the 100million yen incurred in the former round.

Nao eventually ends up in round 3, a smuggling game which I don’t know how to describe. Eventually Nao manages to create a win-win situation, and wins over certain selfish people to get a harmonious result for everyone to draw.

Liar Game is exciting and you may get irritated because the people there are so bad to innocent Nao. The main moral of the story is, if everyone works together and not backstab each other for selfish reasons, everyone can be saved. It’s those selfish people that spoils everyone’s chances by wanting to earn more money.

I watched this JDrama initially because my favourite Jap actress was inside, but actually she only played a very minor role. However from the first episode onwards I was hooked, and I must admit, this is a good touching drama that anyone should watch when they have time. However, there are certain points in time when it’s getting too draggy and slow.

The entire drama is 11 episodes, with two more separate episodes, the first being the “Another Ending” where they show the love stories of the supporting casts, as well as the Guitar Otoko, who is actually Densha Otoko’s Otaku friend aka as Sea Turtle. The second is the SP (Special), where Densha Otoko is hunted by a company and at the same time, he wants to prove his love to Saori. The special is quite touching in my own opinion.

The main story is like this. Densha Otoko is a nickname for Yamada-san, who is an Otaku. An Otaku is someone who’s obsessed with anime blabla and has many figurines at home. In short, being an Otaku is rather “derogatory” in nature because people think you are weird and somehow you will feel that Otaku’s are a lower caste.

Yamada-san, on his way home, saw a pretty lady, Saori-san. A drunk came to disturb her, and he plucked up the courage to voice out and stop the drunk. As a result, Saori asks for Yamada’s address and sent him a present of two Hermes Cups.

Yamada, who’s like any normal guy who feels inferior, wants help and turns to a message board or forum and the participants there helped him with many things, like the Densha Otoko remodeling project, where he changes his image before meeting Saori-san for the first date, as well as giving him courage to call Saori-san.

Through the 11 episodes, there are many ups and downs, and Yamada-san proves his love and concern in many different touching ways. In fact, I understand why Saori-san will fall in love with an Otaku, because he is really sincere. I’m sure he puts many men to shame. I know it’s a drama, but it’s based on a real story. Densha Otoko happened in Japan and they made it into a drama. Furthermore, the things he did, (other than the SP which is purely fiction) are not those out of the world kind, but simple actions that really touch people. He gives hope because it doesn’t matter how tall you are, or how handsome you look, you can always win the heart of the fair maiden.

I’m really touched after watching the whole series including the SP, and I think people should watch it too. So watch it, and feel.