Birthdate: February 17th, 1981
Zodiac sign: Aquarius
Height: 181cm
Blood type: O
Chiaki is a third-year piano student at Momogaoka Music Academy when the series begins, though his skills extend to violin as well. He's talented, driven, and brutally perfectionist—the kind of person who tears into both his own playing and everyone else's. He comes from money and old-family prestige, which shapes how he sees the world; he has this somewhat patronizing view of people without means, almost like they're characters from a fairy tale rather than real people.
His real dream is to become a conductor like his mentor Sebastiano Viella and study abroad. The problem is he's terrified of flying and the ocean, which makes international ambitions pretty complicated. He eventually gets over it with some unconventional help—Nodame's hypnosis, as it turns out.
He's immediately annoyed when he realizes the weird, gifted girl Nodame is his neighbor, but something shifts as he picks up on her hidden potential as a pianist. Slowly, her presence chips away at his need for everything to be flawless. He starts actually enjoying how she plays, how others play—the way music can just be fun instead of a test you're constantly failing.
Despite all the irritation, he falls for her. When he lands a conducting position in Paris and decides to study there, she's part of why he stays tethered to home.
Chiaki's got deeper issues though. He's afraid of being left behind and being outpaced by others, especially Nodame—stuff that traces back to his father abandoning him as a kid. That fear makes him preemptively abandon people, pushing them away before they can hurt him. He runs ahead professionally while Nodame struggles to keep up, leaving her devastated. He's not always aware of how his choices affect people around him.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
