Character from Nodame Cantabile really exists

Date: 2006 December 20 05:04

Posted by Davie

There is interesting article on Mainichi Daily News about the real-life drama/manga Nodame Cantabile which is airing currently in Japan. Apparently Megumi Noda, the main character of the anime and manga is based on a real person.

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Nodame Cantabile is about the meeting between Shinichi Chiaki, an elite student of Momogaoka Music Academy whose father was a famous pianist, and Megumi Noda, a hopeless piano student going by the nickname Nodame, who lives in a messy apartment.

After drinking too much Chiaki ends up staying at Nodame's place. As he wakes up to the sound of a beautiful piano melody, he sees Nodame heading toward the piano in her messy room. Chiaki instructs Nodame, who hates piano practice, and as he tries to draw out her talent, he learns about the real fun and difficulty of music, and realizes his own dream of wanting to become a conductor.

The successful series consists of 16 volumes by Tomoko Ninomiya which was a great success selling more then 15 million copies and also a real-life drama has been created since November.

"The idea for Nodame, who is regarded as a strange person because she continues to live in a messy room and often makes strange noises, was conceived in 2001. A female fan posted a photograph of a piano being played in a messy room on the bulletin board of a Web site operated by Ninomiya, saying, "Look at this interesting photo I took." The woman was a music college student named Megumi Noda.

At the time, Ninomiya, who was looking for ideas for a new serial publication, gained inspiration from the photograph, and decided to produce a musical comedy with a sloppy main character. Editors at Kodansha, the publisher of the magazine Kiss, gave the work the thumbs-up, saying the gap between classical music and a hopeless girl was interesting. This led to the serialization of Nodame Cantabile.

Ninomiya reportedly continues to phone Noda, who has since graduated from the music college and is teaching piano in Fukuoka, to get ideas for the manga series. Nodame's episode in the manga of creating a song called Mojamoja Taiso, for example, came after Noda played a piece through the telephone to create an image for the song.

At the end of each comic book, the phrase, "Special Thanks Megumi Noda" always appears."