Mindblowing performances by the three lead actors - Kazuya Kamenashi(Shuji),Tomohisa Yamashita(Akira) and Maki Horikita(Nobuko/Nobuta). The young actors have so much understanding of their characters.Can't think,at their age,I was so intelligent and understanding. Kudos to them.Out of the three my favorite is Kazuya Kamenashi. He looks so handsome. He shows his three dimensional side too well.
Kazuya Kamenashi plays the role of Shuji who is the most popular guy in the school. He wants to make everyone happy and keep up his popularity.
Tomohisa Yamashita plays a eccentric guy Akira who wants to be friends with Shuji. Though he is rich,he likes to live like dime on street.
One fine day he meets a shy and introvert girl Nubiko who gets contantly bullied in school.Though Shuji acts cool in front of his classmates,he and his friend Akira try to build Nobuko's confidence and make her a popular girl so that no one bullies her. After several persuasion and inspiration from these two guys,she starts putting effort in changing herself.
A deep friendship starts building between these three and they do lots of activities to promote her popularity.
This drama is about friendship between three people.There is no melodrama or over the top scenes. Everything seems natural. The girl Nobuko(named as Nobuta) doesn't undergo any dramatic change. The change seems gradual and realistic. There is no heavy-duty romance and love triangle as such. The school premises are set realistically and change that happens in the three people's life is gradual. You can understand and feel all the three characters.
Its a rare gem. Very few stories are written so well.Acting is top notch. Though the support cast is good,the lead three actors shine in their roles.
Also,it needs to be mentioned that the theme song "Seishun Amigo" is sung by the two male leads who are also pop idols. The song is great and it is picturised with two cute pigs(anime).
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My favourite character - Shuji. Definitely.
Music - Seishun Amigo is one of my favourite OST tracks. I especially loved the ending piggie version.
I don't know why I love Shuji more. I just took an immediate liking to him. I think he is wayy underrated. I only see Akira being a favourite among dramalovers. Shuji is such a complex character; caring and helpful at heart and struggles to find his true self. He puts his family and friends before himself and I found that admirable. I could relate to his situations and liked his monologue. I didn't hate him for being fake friendly to others in the beginning. In the end, he learned a life lesson(me too!)
I loved their friendship to bits and cried in the last episode. Made me miss my friends. I love the special touches to each character. Nobuta Power!! Kon kon! And Shuji's tied up hair! so damn cute..:D
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Now, I'm not gonna lie and say this is my absolute favorite friendship drama, because it's definitely not. I've seen much better ones that have left me fully satisfied and with warm fuzzy feelings. I was not satisfied by the ending of this drama at all, but it wasn't terrible, just meh. However, my issue with this drama lies with the fact that we never got a definite reason to why Nobuta's bully hates her so much. This really leaves me frustrated. But still, I'm going to recommend this drama. It's not long, only 10 eps (I marathoned it and just finished), and it's got Yamapi and Horikita Maki.
I don't think this is a must-see, but it's good enough, and it's definitely one of the better dramas out there. If you love dramas about friendship, watch this.
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As long as someones there for you, if you go to a place that you regret, you can come back
Regardless what year you watch this show, this one truly stands the test of time. What seems like your ordinary school youth story, unravels into so much more with each passing episode. It definitely isn't your typical storytelling but it still effectively emulates some realism of young teens going to school and the true meaning and value of friendship.We are first introduced to one of the mains Shuji, who is considered the "popular kid" in school. On the outside, he's a social butterfly loved by all but on the contrary, he hides his true self in order to be liked and accepted by everyone. He always puts others first instead of himself and never dares to express his inner thoughts. He believes if he does this, he'll get through school easily without any problems. But his "easy going life" all changes when he meets the clumsy "outcast" goofball Akira, and the new transfer student Nobuko (who doesn't have a pleasant start in school). In an effort to help Nobuko enjoy her school life more, Shuji and Akira form a pact with Nobuko to make her "popular" and thus, Nobuta Produce begins!
One aspect that I really loved about this series is that even though the goal of Nobuta Produce was to make the FL be more "popular" and well liked amongst her classmates, the 2 ML never steered her away from her true essence. They solely guided her along in making some adjustments in her daily life to make herself more confident and approachable. They never forced her into anything she was uncomfortable with. This could've easily turned into one of those glow up makeover situations by changing everything about her to please the general public, but instead they strayed away from that which I think as a result is much more impactful. Throughout the episodes, we can see the FL slowly growing and blooming into a more confident version of herself. True friendship helps shape you into being a better version of yourself, NOT change you into someone completely different and unrecognizable. With our iconic trio, we are given all the cute & wholesome scenes of loyalty and friendship. We can see how much of an impact they had on each others life, Shuji & Akira helped Nobuko out of her shell, to trust and enjoy others company while she taught Shuji what it means to have a true friend. He was surrounded by people all the time but for the first time he understood what it means to be happy around company, to get excited seeing friends and have fun doing things together. AND THE BROMANCE WAS TOP NOTCH HAHA. No matter what they went through, they believed in each other and were each other's strengths through thick and thin. A journey about friendship and a journey about finding & understanding themselves (even if its only bits and pieces of it) Truly such a precious series to watch!
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This review may contain spoilers
Everyone should watch this drama!!!
What a heart-warming j-drama! If you have been contemplating on whether to watch it or not, you should!As in the description, there are 3 main characters: Shuji Kiritani, who is one of the most popular guys in school, Akira Kusano, who is a bit eccentric at times ( but that make him a very interesting character) and Nobuko Kotani, who is a new girl in school, but for her gloomy looks and super shy personality, get bullied.
Now, at first, you may wonder how they came together because it just seems impossible, but I like to call it "destiny" as two characters in this drama keep calling every coincidence. (hehe)
Moving on, the story, the acting/cast, the music were super good! I mostly liked Horikita Maki, because she displayed the character very well, and how over a period of time she overcame herself and finally started smiling! It was just super adorable!!!!
I recommend this drama to literally anyone, because I myself, a person who only watches romance dramas, was able to enjoy the simplicity of the friendship which was displayed among the 3 characters. Seriously, as I said in the beginning, just watch it, you won't regret it!
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The drama follows the story of Shuuji (Kamenashi Kazuya) a popular guy that lives deceiving everyone around him just to be popular, Akira (Yamashita Tomohisa) a strange guy that wants to befriend Shuuji and Nobuko (Horikita Maki) a new girl student that pretty much acts as a zombie.
These two guys join forces and decide to transform Nobuko into a popular girl, giving her the nickname of "Nobuta".
This drama it’s about friendship and about being oneself. I was hoping for the love line story to develop but at the end it did not. The ending is a little bit weird and it want’ what I was expecting. Even though I had lots of fun watching this drama.
Overall it’s a fun drama and you get to see Yamapi acting weird and “baka” instead of cool.
You’ll be very entertained through out the story and will laugh out loud with some of the “happenings”. Give it a try and watch it for a light hearted drama.
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I did like the message of this drama. It's a touching story about friendship. I recently lost my closest childhood friend to cancer and this show really triggered an avalanche of emotions for me. I didn't expect this because of how the beginning was written. I am glad I watched it, though.
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The story was kinda clichéd, but still well done. The second half of the drama is slightly better than the first one, it has some supernatural elements even though it's supposed to be realistic, but nothing too negative; other than that, there's not really much to say about it.
The acting was overall good. Some side characters were bad but some others were good. The three main actors were just perfectly in their role.
Although, the characters weren't really well-developed. Except the main characters, the others were really lacking a good development and the antagonist was just disappointing. Even though this is personal, Akira's character was unpleasant during a lot of episodes; in the end I still managed to accept it and even like his role.
The music can actually be the best part of it. The ending is very good and the main themes are actually awesome. But the over-usage of the main theme and the mediocre ones lower the score.
If you like simple school dramas and have no problem (or like) the bullying theme, then Nobuta wo Produce is a good choice.
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This review may contain spoilers
This was one of the rare times that I had to stop myself from binge watching every single episode. I try my best to make it last as long as possible but today, I just couldn't put it off anymore. Once I started, I couldn't stop.I love this show so freaking much, I admit when I first started it though, I was mad because it seemed to be one of those "no one cares unless you're pretty" type of things -- but in the end I'm shocked and in awe that yeah they always *talked* about how to make her popular, and tried to at one point, but by the end of it, none of them really cared at all. Lol They were all friends and that's really all that mattered to them.
This had a few firsts for me as well. It's weird to see a show that has love interests but they never actually go anywhere. Lol Don't get me wrong, I really wish Nobuta and Akira would have ended up together. I feel like they would have made a great couple.... Or even Nobuta and Shittaka. Given, his character seemed to pop up out of the blue and honestly I thought his "I like you" thing was him just playing a mean trick, but I can see he really did like her. They would have made a adorable couple.
Can we talk about Bando for a second though and her character development? Holy hell. I really really hated her character at first but as time goes on, she doesn't exactly become likable, but you don't hate her as much either. Either way, seeing her go from a mean bitch to how she acts later was pretty nice to see.
I think my favorite characters though were Kyoko and the Goyokudang Owner. lol I can't even explain why but I just love their off the wall characters. lol
I really loved this show and part of me wishes I had stretched it out longer, the other half wishes I had watched it faster. LOL
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I hate the word "expectation" because it has the rather high potential of being destructive. Many times expectations set us up for unnecessary downfalls. I watched Nobuta wo Produce with rather large expectations. Rather than crashing down on itself, the show scaled up the "wall of expectation" with incredible ease -- a popular show proved itself worthy of my tears.
Nobuta wo Produce attacked almost every one of my soft points. For example, one of the best characters, Uehara Mariko (played by Toda Erika, who did a fabulous job of being hot), despite her hanging relationship having been blown away by truthful words, realized how important that truth was and continued to care for her crush as much as she used to. It takes incredible strength of character to do that. I believe this is part of what makes this drama so special -- the fact that each character learns and grows from their high school experiences.
I found myself tearing up at certain points at almost every episode, many times dabbing my eyes at points that don't even make much sense to shed a tear at (I do this often). I was sorta disappointed at how formulaic each episode was with the blatant "theme" having to be solved by the three main characters, but the writing was done so well and the acting every bit as good as the writing that for the most part I didn't care. Every episode had me at attention and ready to face the next thing it was going to dish out. Near the middle of the series it had my complete trust that it was going to move me by the end of each episode.
This was my second exposure to Kamenashi Kazuya, as I started (and finished) this series after watching the first three episodes of Sapuri. Watching Sapuri, I wasn't too interested in this actor, but in Nobuta wo Produce, he did a good job of being the loner wearing the popular guy mask. Yamashita Tomohisa did particularly well acting as the eccentric self-proclaimed friend; after watching the episode 0 special and ending special you get a clear view of how abstractly different his character and real persona is. And like many people, I first saw Horikita Maki in Densha Otoko with an obviously tiny role as the sister. I felt she didn't really get a chance to spread her wings in Nobuta wo Produce. She did a great job being the one who gave up on the world, her dark, brooding personality screaming for help. I know her role required this, but besides frowns and tearing frowns, topped with several half-assed smiles, it didn't really allow her to cover a decent emotional expanse. Still, her character here was extraordinarily different than Densha's, so that warrants some merit.
Nobuta wo Produce was a great series and knowing full well that it would never get a second season like most other good dramas, I bet you 20 bucks that they could easily come up with another season of material for this. And that is a great thing for a show to have: potential. Excellent drama!
(Originally posted August 1st, 2006.)
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