The post at Karmaburn is written from the position of someone who liked the Paris-hen, and I did not (I dropped it after the ugly brawl on the bridge, IIRC), but on the merits I have nothing with which to quarrel in this:

I wanted to write about the end of Nodame Cantabile: Finale, but what can I say about a show like this? Finale is basically the second half of Nodame Cantabile: Paris, so nobody should watch Finale if they haven't already seen Paris. And if they've seen Paris, they'll already know whether or not they want to watch Finale no matter what anyone says about it.

One complaint about the post-Japan Nodame arcs is that the supporting cast is not as interesting. I don't know that I agree necessarily, as I never found any of the supporting characters in Nodame Cantabile especially endearing. The Japan-centric cast may be more eccentric, but that doesn't mean I care more about them than Frank, Tanya, and company. Comparing Paris with Finale, however, I can say the supporting cast in Finale is not there to drive its own stories. The stories belong more to Nodame and Chiaki; the rest of them are just along for the ride.

Unfortunately, the above also means that if the supporting ensemble was meaningful to you in the original Nodame, there is a good reason to rage about their mistreatment in the sequel. Milch was a delightful enigma, who helped Chiaki a lot either by design or accident; Kuroki was just too cool for words. But in the initial episodes Milch is a dumb boob-grabber and Kuroki is a walking cartoon who stalks Nodame. Oh, well.