Nobuta wo Produce

Well this dorama has been one of j-dee lovers’ favorites even the romance scenes, if I may say, are almost none. I just finished watching it a month ago and I can deny that I love this dorama. The friendship between Shuji, Nobuta, and Kusano are very heartwarming. What I learn from the dorama is that friendship is something equal or even more worthy than just a love story between two lovers.

The story of producing Nobuta

Briefly, the story is about two highschool boys, who assign themselves as two producers whose aim is to makeover the most gloomy unattractive female transfer student to be the most popular girl at school. During the accomplishment of the project, the three start developing a solid friendship ring. From other’s point of view it is actually quite hard to believe that three different persons with totally opposite characteristics can build a good relationship. One is very social, cool and popular type of person, the other is over confident, outgoing, and tends to consider himself as a socially active and attractive person, and one super gloomy, unattractive, and yet anti-social person.

Nobuta powaaa membaaa….(members of Nobuta)

The first one is the guy who I call the male version “himono onna”, Kiritani Shuji (Kamenashi Kazuya, I saw him at the first time in Gokusen 2 together with YamaP). At school, he is known as the most outgoing and cool person. Moreover, there is a rumor that he is dating the most beautiful girl at school, Uehara Mariko-chan (Toda Erika). However, none knows that those attitudes are just acting in order to hide his fear of being hate and being left alone. Only when Shuji is at home or when he’s with Nobuta and Kusano, he can be himself. Together with Kusano, he is aiming to make Nobuta to be the most popular girl at school without realizing that later on the project will change his popular life at school.

Shuji’s favorite sentence: kon nichi getsu ka sui moku kin doooouuu…ououo..(actually here he is saying konnichiwa but with some improvisations by prolonging it with days name in Japanese).

In contrast, Kotani Nobuko (Horita Maki who is also famous because of her role in Hanakimi as Ashiya Mizuki) is a girl in her teenage age who can be called as a weirdo; prefers being left alone and no one will ever notice that she exists. Because of this, she has been an easy target for any kind of bullies that most of time are done by Bando gang, a group of four bad girls. Nobuko who is later on called Nobuta (because of a pig ornament sewed by Shuji on her tie, in Japanese buta means pig) is someone who does not want to get closer to anyone or even to believe in friendship until she meets Shuji and Kusano who are trying their best to reproduce her. Since then Nobuta’s aim is to change herself to be acceptable in society while on the other hand also to practice smiling normally she can because Shuji comments that her smile is scary and more like someone who is having a stomachache.

Nobuta’s fav sentence: “Nobuta powaaa…chunyuu” (Nobuta power…enter!) that she always does before doing things that need her to be braver. This was taught by Kusano when she asked him why Kusano has so much power and spirit.

At last, the third member has a full name Kusano Akira Shocku (played by YamaPi aka Yamashita Tomohisa, first time I saw YamaP when he was playing as Ken-ken in Stand Up). Akira is more often called by Kusano, his family name while Nobuta and Shuji are always called by their first name. This has made him feel being treated unfairly…Even worse, there is an episode neither Shuji nor Nobuta really knows what his first name is. Kusano always appears as easy-going person and yet clumsy in a way that he hits his own legs frequently towards tables. Among the three, I would say that Kusano is the only one who is comfortable as himself and never tries to be someone he doesn’t. Even he is a son of rich businessman father, he lives as he likes at a tofu store whose belongs to his father’s close friend. Few knows that he is actually martial art master. Once Shuji is also threatened by Kusano by showing off his ability breaking a thick stack of bricks if Shuji really pulls the bucket with water instead of the flower one on Nobuko during 114 day (read: ii yo no hi-day to confess love to someone in front of public).

Akira’s fav sentence: Akira shocku!! and Kon!! (by mimicking the dog form with his right hand).

Finally I can’t say no more except “happy watching!!” This should be on your dorama watchlist especially for YamaP’s fans.