La corda d'oro: primo passo

STORY (10) Hino Kahoko, a high school girl who has never played an instrument in her life, is given a magic violin. In turn, she must compete in a competition (the Concours) with several elite music students from her school. It's a story about Kaho learning to love the violin and music, while deepening her relationships with her fellow competitors. The story is not for everyone. This is a character driven series through and through. The plot loosely falls around the Concours, but the purpose of the Concours is to contribute to character development. That being said, the character development is outstanding. I barely noticed the lackof plot- simply seeing these amazing characters interact and grow had me yearning to see the next episode. The story really falls flat when it comes to romance. This is a reverse-harem at its core (based on a dating sim), so I was not surprised by how things ended up. Still, the lack of any concrete romantic development or even a hint on Kaho's part as to which guy she likes best is very frustrating. Yet, there are just enough romantic moments to make you want to see something more. This cannot be written off as a simple "friendship" series. CHARACTERS (9) Hino Kahoko is a decent, but bland lead. I liked her determined approach to the violin, and her character development was well done. During the anime, we see Kaho persevere, doubt herself, face a major setback, and ultimately triumph. While I enjoyed this, her inability to choose one guy was irritating. This flaw really shows through in the La Corda Special, where she can't even begin to make a decision as to which guy she likes best. It was very annoying to watch this. Each male has a distinct personality, because this is a harem-type show. You have all of the usual suspects- the cheerful and clumsy guy, the guy all of the girls are in love with, the cold but good-looking guy, the cute and innocent guy, etc. I found all of the boys to be interesting, enjoyable characters. To some extent, every character develops, which is refreshing. Tsukimori was definitely my favorite character. I liked how his approach to his music gradually became gentler throughout the series. All of the characters are cute, both inside and out! SOUND (10) Music is where this anime shines...which is what I expected from an anime centered around a music competition (hehe). In 25 episodes, a wide variety of classical music is introduced, which I really enjoyed. The OP and the ED songs are outstanding. In particular, the OP "Brand New Breeze" had great music, great art, and overall, it was very cute! It tells us exactly what the anime is all about. The song gives a feeling that Kaho is singing to each of the boys. The ED music is also very good- it seems like the boys are singing back to Kaho. I like the call and response format of the OP and the ED. ANIMATION (10) I loved, loved, loved the character designs. This is what attracted me to the show in the first place. Each character has a distinct, unique look, right down to face shape. All of the Bishounen are good-looking, but my favorite character designs are Tsukimori, Shimizu, and Tsuchiura. Apart from character design, animation was average. VALUE / ENJOYMENT (9) In case you didn't notice, I adore this anime. The story it told was heartwarming. I would only recommend watching it again if you really love the story. Or if you really love Bishies. The Bottom line: The music, character designs, and the characters themselves are easily the strongest components of the show. Recommended for fans of Shoujo anime. Skip this one if you dislike indecisiveness in romance. If you liked this, you may also like Aishiteruze Baby (a series that gives off the same warm and fuzzy feeling as La Corda), or even Peach Girl (a reverse harem with a more concrete romance story). (kamika:This was my first review! Feedback is appreciated. Thanks! )

La Corda d'Ora is a reverse harem story with a heavy dose of music. I first heard about it when I was really into Nodame Cantabile and Ouran High School Host Club. So I thought,"Wow, it combines two great shows -- how perfect!" Only... it wasn't, which was disappointing. It does combine music with a reverse harem, but -- in my opinion -- it doesn't do music as well as Nodame and it doesn't do romance as well as OHSHC. I guess you can't have everything at once. What it does have is great music. Ave Maria, which is oneof my favorite pieces of all time, plays a pretty prominent role in the series. And there were some other pieces that I really enjoyed -- familiar and new to me. And it also has a great collection of really, really gorgeous bishies. ;) Like, when you think of traditional hot anime guys -- this is it. They're so pretty. So pretty. ^.^ Plot wise... story wise... character wise... it's okay. It has a nice overall theme/message/moral. If you go in with average expectations, a fan of reverse harems or bishies or music-themed animes would be pretty satisfied. More satisfied if you're looking for eye or ear candy. The plot is pretty simple. The synopsis hits the nail on the head and there really isn't too much more to it. The characters are a little shallow, a little cliche... a little under-developed. The biggest problem for me was probably the conflict felt by the main character and how she reacted to it. I liked the beginning of the show; it was pretty entertaining. But in the middle, I got so frustrated and turned off by the angst and the whining that I actually dropped the show: I didn't care what happened next because I was too annoyed to watch. (The time between release of episodes probably made that worse -- I might have barreled through if I had the whole series at once.) Not everyone is going to feel that way about the main character or the show -- I just personally have low tolerance for that character type. After several months, out of boredom, I decided to go back and see if I could just finish it off since I had gotten all the way to episode 20 while it was being initially fansubbed. It was the beginning of the end so a lot of the annoying behaviors that drove me away were gone and it went back to being a nice, if somewhat predictable, story with great music and pretty bishies. To be honest, more than anything... it makes me want to watch Nodame Cantabile again. Maybe it isn't fair to compare the two, but I can't help it -- I compare everything to anything. ;) And, as a matter of personal taste, I think I prefer when things are a little bit more romance and a little less harem, so that probably skews my score too. I didn't think it was a masterpiece or a must-see, but it was cute and entertaining and watchable because I like all the genres it falls into.

I was really not going to give this series an eye, after reading a chapter of the manga it seemed lame and confusing. For some reason though, maybe because I was bored I started downloading the first few episode. This anime is so much better as an anime than a manga. Music can't be represented very well on paper. ^^ I love the way the story is cute and fresh. I don't watch very many animes based on activities, but I'm glad I watched this one. The character are just so lovable and pretty. BISHONENS!!! Nyaaaa ><. Give this a try if you atleast likemusic. Which just about everyone does.

OMG this was an incredibly boring anime...it took but sheer force of will not to drop this title! But rest assured I wasn't sitting in front of the monitor the whole time. Such a waste with all the lovely bishounen, but I guess it goes to show; "you can't put lipstick on a pig" and having all the bishounen in the world isn't a guaranteed success. But seriously, I shouldn't have to be a classical music major or aficionado to appreciate this anime. If I could enjoy an anime about baseball [Big Windup] when I dislike sports or be completely entertained by a story aboutgalactic garbage collectors [PlanetES] then I should be able to enjoy this anime. But I don't and not because of the subject matter but because of the story itself which I found to be very slow, non-existent in some parts, non-committal in others and totally indecisive. Hhmmm, the art....,I wouldn't say it was terrible, but for a 2006-2007 title, I'm pretty much underwhelmed. Barring the character designs, which were lovely, there is absolutely nothing interesting about the art. The backdrops were generic, the sceneries were boring...actually anything that went beyond the characters was boring and inconsequential. Oh and be prepared for lots and LOTS of still shots like when the characters are playing their instruments, a lot of the time you'll just see still shots of them holding their instrument of choice with some serene look on their face. It doesn't happen all the time, some of the animation is nice [it's nice to see the fingers moving on the strings] but the static images do appear very frequently. And I feel, the topic of classical music is already boring enough as it is, they could have at least put some proper effort into the animation. Also expect to see the same audience for ALL FOUR concerts, there is a lot of recycling of stock images. Not much I can say about the music either, since I'm not a fan of classical music...I might have a vague interest in Baroque and some piano works but that's as far as it goes for me. I'm sure it's all lovely but it did nothing for me. Which if anything made me like the anime even less, but before you jump down my throat and say stuff like “then why did you pick an anime about classical music if you don't like classical music???” But like I said, from my own experience, anime titles in the past have taken topics I've had zero to little interest in and made them fascinating. I hate sports, but liked Wild Striker, Prince of Tennis and totally LOVED Big Windup! I hate Westerns but loved Gun Frontier, I hate talking animals and god knows how many of those are in anime? So I expected an interesting [if at the very least informative] story about classical music, but there was none of that, so I'm still pretty much an outsider when it comes to classical music. I also have mixed feelings for the intro song “Brand New Breeze” part of me likes it but the other part of me think it sounds a little bit too much like a commercial for some kind of laundry detergent or feminine product....[just keeping it real, sorry] Story....hhhhmmmm, one word: ABYSMAL! OK so the story is about a girl who was magically chosen [for some reason or another, which is irrelevant since it's only some thinly veiled premise to get her surrounded by a bunch of hot guys] to participate in some sort of classical music playoff. But the contest is not the central theme, the actual theme is music appreciation and each character's relation to it...which, yes, may sound deep but none of this came across to the viewer. There was nothing that really drew me into being interested in classical music like I felt when I watched a baseball game with Big Windup, for example. There's no humour, there's no romance to speak of, they didn't even get into the technical aspects of classical music. In Hikaru no Go, they made moving those little game pieces on a board seem so exciting and dramatic and they also informed me about how the game of GO is played and even certain strategies and tactics. There is none of that in this series, except maybe if you want to count the fairy at the end talking about Bach and Beethoven, which I don't. This series seriously spent the better part of 24 episodes to talk about how each of them loved music or played their music [which to be honest sounded just a little more than pretentious “Ah this sonatta is so brilliant and the strings are so vibrant and so transparent”....yeah bull***t] There’s nothing else to this anime besides this and maybe some minor romantic innuendo [FAIL]. It's only after episode 20 when all the B.S. goes away, such as the magic violin and all that reverse harem kitsch that she, Kahoko, has to really deal with the fact of being a such novice violinist does the show even have any sort of merit. So Like I said before, the character designs were lovely. I can't really complain there! And to be honest, that's the only real selling point of this series: very nice character designs and a lot of time spent on character development. That being said, it's not like we're going to discover anything new with these characters, they all pretty much follow the typical anime character templates: The Femme/Bishie Heartthrob, The Sporty one, The Angelic/Loli one, The Loud Comic one, The Posh/Stuck-up one, The Glasses one, etc... It's all pretty much colour-by-number, isn't it? My Verdict: The cast is PRETTY, but the show's BORING so overall it's "pretty boring"....get it? Hey, gotta do something to entertain myself cuz god knows this anime ain't doing it for me.