Nobuta wo
Produce
is like one of the fairytales you read when you are a little kid, and years
later you look back and realise that in some minute way they have changed your
life: even as an adult, some secret small part of you still wants to climb the
Faraway Tree. I have not felt that way about a story since I was ten or eleven
years old, but curled up in bed with my laptop as a 21 year old university
student, I felt that same secret longing blooming in my heart; I was like a
child again, and these characters my imaginary new friends. Nobuta wo
Produce feels like something secret and special, something I had forgotten
in my haste to grow up.
The
series is based around a pretty generic premise: two boys decide to give an
awkward, unpopular girl a makeover and make her the most popular girl in
school. This is the premise that initially drew me towards the series; I
remember sending an excited email to my best friend, shrieking in capital
letters about finding a drama where jpopstars give a
girl a makeover. I love makeover
movies. I love montages where a girl is forcibly dragged to the salon and then
to the boutique and appears in a series of increasingly elaborate outfits until
the final moment when she takes off her glasses and her beautiful new self is
revealed to an expectant crowd, and then the quarterback falls in love with
her. I can admit it, I’m a girl. I love that stuff. The prospect of a makeover
montage was incredibly appealing to me. Despite my excitement the series was
not really what I expected at all; more Breakfast
Club than She’s All That,
the series is more invested in the self discovery and friendship of the three
main characters, all hopeless misfits in their own ways than in the
transformation of its heroine from lonely, awkward child to confident and
alluring young woman. The series does not want to change Kotani
‘Nobuta’ Nobuko (Horikita Maki); it just wants for her to be happy.
The
central character and the one who is arguably the most transformed by the
unfolding story is Kiritani Shuuji,
played by boy band star Kamenashi Kazuya, who subsequently became my favourite
celebrity in the universe. I am a thirteen year old girl for Kame. That sounds
creepy, but what I mean is, I spend hours on YouTube looking up KAT-TUN performances and skits in
which he features. I have a folder on my computer with an embarrassing number
of pictures of him. When my best friend went to
But
that’s a side issue.
Kiritani Shuuji is one of the most
popular kids in his school, though it must be understood that this label does
not have any of the snotty, elitist connotations that accompany a Westernised
idea of the ‘popular’; if anything, Shuuji
leads and influences his class through kindness. Shuuji
is charming and helpful, but it becomes clear in the early stages of the series
that he is alienated from his classmates, feeling so much pressure to perform
to their expectations of him that he does not even really know how to be
himself. While the series is purportedly about all the ways in which Shuuji will change Nobuta, it ends up being Nobuta and Shuuji’s co-producer Kusano
Akira who change Shuuji’s life; through the
bond they form he learns that it is okay to be flawed and drop the ball
sometimes, that it is okay to be human.
One
cannot accurately describe Kusano Akira (Yamashita Tomohisa of jpop band NewS) with words. Before watching the series I had read
that Akira was easily one of the most annoying sidekick characters in a drama
ever, and while I vehemently disagree, I can see how others may feel this way.
Akira is weird. He’s just a
really weird kid. The viewers are first introduced to him in an early scene in
the first episode when Akira corners Shuuji in a
school stairwell. He is skipping down the stairs waving his arms like a bird
and drinking from a juice box. “Found you!” he says happily, as to Shuuji’s horror he has inexplicably decided that he
and Shuuji are best friends; that he is Shuuji’s only true friend. He is the type of guy that
talks about weird things and invades your personal space, throws his arms
around your neck and speaks in your ear. He has little quirks and mannerisms
like an anime character, trademark moves and wacky voices. He drives Shuuji nuts; Akira is the one person he can be openly
hostile towards. For this reason that Akira can see Shuuji more clearly than anybody and the two begin a
strange, reluctant friendship. While it sounds like Akira is a one
dimensional wacky sidekick stereotype, in fact he is imbued with a wisdom and
kindness but also a type of pouting youthful frustration that make him one of
the most interesting and complex adolescent characters on television.
It
is the characters and relationships that are Nobuta wo
Produce’s strength; the three central characters’ lives are
populated by well drawn teachers, friends, and families. There are few
‘blank’ characters; even those who only have a few lines in the
series have established personalities and their own relationships within the
series’ community. Their class feels like a real class, the kind I
remember from my own school. The kids are marked by noisy confusion and gossip,
cruelty and kindness and indifference all mixed together. I am impressed how
well the young actors effect the atmosphere and
chemistry of a group of kids who have known one another for several years
without necessarily being friends. More specifically, there is Shuuji’s neglected sort-of-girlfriend Mariko (Toda Erika), who would usually
be emotionally sidelined or villainised but who
actually emerges as a pillar of emotional intelligence and strength. There is Shuuji’s family, including his little brother Koji (Nakajima Yuuto)
who is probably the cutest little kid I have ever seen on television; within
the small space of Shuuji’s home we are not
only introduced to his family but to another side of Shuuji,
one who is dorky and inelegant and sews animal patches onto his brother’s
torn clothes in his mother’s absence. Nobuta and Akira’s home lives
similarly contextualise and enhance their characters, creating a series cast
with whom the audience can truly identify.
It
is this ease of identification that pulls the audience through what are
otherwise some pretty weird plot lines; the series has a penchant for the
supernatural, with appearances from ‘youth spirits’ (like ghosts,
but of living people) and dream sharing, and beyond the explicitly supernatural
there is a tone of magical realism woven throughout the drama. Nobuta possesses
a doll that looks exactly like her; Akira meets a ‘truth man’ who
runs around harassing strangers until they tell him the truth; the school vice
principal does acrobatics and can leap tall buildings
in a single bound. While all these things sound kind of ridiculous and
irritating, the strong
characterisations and strangely understated air of the narration make these
events seem simultaneously normal and magical; an every day kind of fairytale.
I
don’t think I have ever written such a glowing review of a piece of
fiction in my life, so I must admit that Nobuta
wo Produce is probably my all time favourite
television show, if not my all time favourite story. It is not that it does not
have its flaws: there are what the hell
moments throughout the story including an extensive chunk of the first episode
in which Shuuji feels a compulsive need to touch a
willow tree every day before school. The first episode in general is easily the
series’ weakest, though it has glorious moments which still elevate it
beyond most other series – including Shuuji and
Akira’s first scene together and Shuuji’s
early interactions with Mariko and Nobuta. Sometimes the series’ dialogue
falters or the camera work becomes excessively strange, but these flaws are all
forgivable in the face of the overwhelming warmth and spirit that the program
exudes. The strong performances from the three young leads often seem
refreshingly spontaneous, with extensive obvious adlibbing, particularly from
the frequently scene-stealing Yamashita Tomohisa. For
me, it is impossible to dislike this series or hold any of its shaky moments
against it, if only because of my love for and admiration of its characters.
Best show ever.