As a former student of music I found this to be an absolutley fantastic read. The story is realistic and has a good feel to it. The characters in multidimensional and engaging and the understanding of music and musical terms is very good. I would reccomend also listeing to the nodame cantabile CDs in accompanyment to reading the manga, it makes it a much more enriching and enjoyable experience. The only downside to this is that tje romantic development is very slow, though it does not fall into any of the typical shoujo manga cliches.