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Nodame Cantabile's 3rd TV Anime to Be Its Finale (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
The third television anime series adaptation of Tomoko Ninomiya's Nodame Cantabile romantic comedy manga will be the final one in the anime franchise. Appropriately enough, the third series, which will premiere in January, will be titled Nodame Cantabile: Finale. Like the second series (pictured at right), Finale will be set in Paris. The third series was originally slated to premiere in the fall. It will air in the same late-night Noitamina timeslot on Fuji TV as its two highly rated predecessors have. Kazuki Nakashima (Gurren Lagann) will be the third anime project's series script supervisor.
The manga, the anime, and a separate live-action version all center around two music students who find themselves on parallel paths in Japan and later Europe. The 2006 live-action television version already spawned a two-part Cantabile Shinshun Special in Europe television special and two movies slated for next year. The original manga is on hold due to Ninomiya's recent appendicitis. Del Rey is publishing the 16th volume of the original manga in North America this month.
Kodansha serializes the manga in Kiss magazine and has published 29.5 million copies of the 21 current volumes. The previous anime series both had average ratings above 4% — about twice what even successful late-night television series normally get.
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web
Update: More background information added.
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