Furu Anime Panikku

After hearing the hilarious tale of how The Sojourner was forced into playing the piano after his parents watched the Nodame Cantabile drama, it sparked my interest and I soon found myself watching the anime. After all, K-ON! alone isn’t enough to satisfy my appetite for music-themed anime since it seems to be focusing more on snacks rather than the music.

I’m almost done with the first season of the anime, and I’ve come to realise how similar Nodame and Yui are. Yui’s just like a guitar playing version of Nodame with loads of Moe implants. It’s as though Yui’s character was based on Nodame.

Both equally greedy when it comes to food. Nodame steals from her friends’ lunchboxes and rushes to where food is, while Yui would prefer snacking and sipping tea over guitar practice. Both of them are equally musically talented, relying on the ears to play with instruments. Also, they are weird beings. Nodame is a heck of strange character, ranging from the weird sounds she produces, to her obsession with the anime and her disorganised habits. Yui isn’t that weird as she doesn’t seem to avoid the bath and doesn’t have a room full of garbage. Still, her traits of being able to concentrate only on a single thing at any point of time and excel in it, together with her temporary memory that disappears in a flash, places her slightly in the domain of weird.

Despite how the girls are like 2 set in a Venn diagram that have more than 90% overlapping, the audience they are presented to is of a vast difference.

Yui’s character receives the girl idol groups treatment, similar to groups such as AKB48 and Morning Musume. The rule of no boyfriends prevents the “image of innocence” from being tainted, which would in turn lead to the rage of fans, namely the hardcore otaku crowd. That applies for the rest of the K-ON! cast too, which explains the lack of male hormones in the series. Everyone’s playing safe after the otaku rage bomb exploded due to the Kannagi boyfriend incident.

Nodame, on the other hand, is openly expressing her love for her Prince Chiaki Charming Shinichi, and no one gives a damn because she’s not to be presented to the audience as a Moeblob, but rather as a character with real character. In fact, her character makes it so that the viewers would actually be rooting for her romance, for it allows more development for her as a character, as well as an enhancement for the plot.

The main and obvious line drawn between the two girls would be character depth. Nodame is just like a living breathing character with a proper depth in her background. We actually understand her past, her love for piano, and her reasons as the plot develops. It’s like actually knowing the character as a person and sharing her joy and sorrows.

Yui, however, is just flat. We’re not talking about DFC here, it’s about how she is as a character. All we know about her is that she played the castanet in kindergarden, and that she joined the club with her misconception of light music. That’s as thin as a piece of paper. She’s just like one of those mascot characters that do nothing but look nice by as a flower vase.

As you can see, despite having so much in common between the duo, it’s always Moe that steals the win by a large margin. The conclusion?

Moe 1, Character Depth 0.

And before anyone states that I have some major issues going on against Moe when it comes to stuff such as the quality of the plot and characters, I’ll admit that I do. I’m expecting comments stating how stale I am any moment now.

Well then, it’s time to complete the last episode and specials of season 1 and move on to season 2.