First off, Haruhi season 2 was announced! Unfortunately, the animation will be handled by C&S, the same studio responsible for Gundo Musashi, and directed by Mitsuo Fukuda, with character designs by Hisashi Hirai. Kadokawa officials were unavailable for comments.

In other news, JAM Project will be signing the opening and endings to the new, hot-blooded Kyo-Ani epic “Lucky Star”. Lead signer Hironobu Kageyama reported that it will be their “most hot-blooded, intense, song ever!”

Speaking of Kyo-ani, after the series “Lucky Star” is completed, Kyo-Ani will go out of business. Anecdotal reports from Japan say that the OVA quality animation cost so much that they needed more revenue, but due to American fansubers, they lost every yen they had, and couldn’t feed their children. In bloging news, Impz has renounced his hatred of Mech and Shonen anime. He reported that he has already amassed a collection of Gundam models worth $2000, and has Naruto’s portrait plastered around his house.

So I decided to watch the first two episodes of Nodame Cantabile tonight. I hadn’t previously been exposed to any of the other parts of the franchise, so this was an surprise on the scale that Haruhi was for me.

I enjoyed every second of these two episodes. Almost everything about it was perfect. The animation was near flawless, with the exception of a few shortcuts the animation studio took on the scenes with characters playing music. The voice acting was delightful, especially Nodame’s voice. The story also seems to be progressing at a nice pace as well. Though, to me it doesn’t matter, as I just enjoy the interactions between the characters so much.

There really isn’t anything negative to be said about this series so far. It’s very well made. The ending credits and next time segment are merged together just like in H&C, which is somewhat unique. I highly recommend this, and I will cover the rest of this series as well.