nobuta wo produce, a highly pooular school life japanese drama which originated from a book, was aired in the year 2005. and up till this date, it is still considered one of the best dramas by some. well, i didnt read the book, so i don't know about the difference.

anyway, this post is partly about the drama, and mostly like all the other random posts that i wrote.

just a short introduction, nobuta wo produce is about a girl, nobuko, who always got bullied. 2 guys, 1 of them a weirdo and another the most popular guy in school, could not take it and decided to make her popular. the series showed how they make nobuko (nobuta is her nickname) into a highly popular person from a person no one wants to have anything to do with.

i guess, one reason why nobuta struck at the hearts of many people, and why it was so captivating, was because it was the ideal life most of us want. the most important thing in the drama that was highlighted subtlely over and over again (don't worry they did it so subtlely you won't get sick of it) was the strength of the bonds of the 3 friends.

friendship. most of us have friends. some have more, some have lesser. just that, our surface friends, our normal friends, our close friends, probably even our best friends, may not even match up to that kind of level as shown in the drama.

the drama shows the many kind of realistic and practical (although to some extent there were some exaggerations) situations which all of us would face (though it might not be all of them) at one point of time or another.

being misunderstood by people, being disliked by people, being sabotaged by people, having no one to trust you, realizing that your friend betrayed you, having unreciprocated love, thinking about the future... etc. these are all situations which most of us are familiar with.

yet, our lives seemed so boring. because not many of us really went all out to try the various things. not all of us went out to make wonderful memories. not all of us dared to try something new. most of us, just passed through the motion, following the crowd, and doing the same things over and over again. even if we went out and played and tried different things, it still seemed somehow the same. because the experiences in the drama, are so special that it is nearly impossible to get that kind of life in real life.

like i said just now, the drama was about friendship too, which i believe is the main theme of the story. friends that will believe you even when the whole world doesn't. friends that will sacrifice their own important things to help you. friends that care for you even when no one else does. friends who understand your feeling without you having to say anything. friends that are always with you.

granted most of us have friends who would do that. and i do have friends like that too. i have friends i know will believe me, i have friends who understand me very well to the extent i could not lie (hahahhaha), friends who care for me and would give up certain things for me. but for some obscure reason which up till now i cannot identify, there is just some difference between their level and my level, which is also the level most of us are at. and it is because of the level difference which attracts me to it so much. as if, i want to find the factor that would raise my level.

and every episode of the drama, in a way, teaches you something. not giving up, cherishing yourself, believing in your friends, having fun, planning for the future, sacrifice, unfulfilled dreams, separation... i find that every episode also contains some lesson which we all can learn from. yet of course, knowing and applying it in real life are totally 2 different things.

in a way, most of us really really want our lives to be like that. humans are meant for companionship, and even though there are some of us who avoided others and have little to do with anybody, it doesn't mean that we do not desire that kind of thing, i think.

how do i end this? i wanted to end it in a cool way, but all of a sudden, when i saw how the drama situations somehow describes my life now, i can't think of any cool way to conclude. so well, it is an old drama. if you watched it, watch it again. if not, go watch it.

what an uncool conclusion to this post.

and so the long awaited nana clips 5 had finally came out. and yes, the news is old. darn old. because i was super lazy to blog about anything these few days and ended up dragging and dragging. i haven't even update the nana section at my main site for months. zzz

anyway, nana clips, as we all know, is a compilation of the music videos nana-chan had filmed for her albums. and of course, as any sane nana fan would do, this is a definite must get dvd. even though it will burn a hole in your pocket and send the money to the land of the rising sun.

there are 2 types of dvd to choose from - the standard dvd which we are all familiar with, and the high quality blu-ray dvd. surprising thing is, both actually cost the same! but well, obviously, i will take the blu-ray disc, for 2 reasons. one - it goes against my conscience policy not to take the best item i can get for my money's worth. and two - nana-chan in high quality. that is tons of explanation in itself.

well, i know there will be people who still opt for the normal dvd though. in any case, if you are a nana fan and still not know about the release, this is the time to get it. and for others, just go get it, since nana-chan is so cool and sexy and pretty and elegant and any other trait you can think of in an ideal woman. even if you are a woman, go get it. you will fall in love with her.

Nana Clips 5

Nana Mizuki

Nana Clips 5 [Blu-ray]

Nana Mizuki

well i dont really write about every single drama i watched, being a lazy person. but on and off, i will write something that really interests me. and so today i shall write about another drama that i just watched which i felt is worth it for me to write about.

流星の絆 or ryusei no kizuna (bonds of shooting stars) talks about 3 kids whose parents got murdered and how they were determined to find the murderer one day and to kill him, because the police were unable to solve the case.

the 3 main and supporting characters were 二宮和也 (Ninomiya Kazunari), 錦戸亮 (Nishikido Ryo) and my favorite, 戸田恵梨香 (toda erika). well i guess even those who are not into j-dramas and movies would have at some point or another heard of toda erika.

one part i like about the drama is when the 3 of them ganged up to cheat others of their money. it started out as a plan to cheat back the money whom the naive little sister got cheated of, then slowly proceeded to cases where they felt they had to cheat, and finally the last and biggest target is the murder suspect with the evidences of murder on the line.

the cheating process, unlike what they do on normal dramas like kurosagi, takes on a more comedic perspective with exaggerated scenarios. the eldest brother is the mastermind of all cases, the sister being the charming woman (she is indeed, very charming and pretty) and the second brother being the supporting character. the show did make a point to keep on making fun of a chief clerk in the series, whose acting was also funny.

i like the insert theme song too, by 中島美嘉 (nakashima mika), which fits the story and the mood quite well. her acting in the drama was more of a comic relief, like getting a stolen car from the black market for just 1000 yen (roughly 10usd) and jumping into the sea after she was told she may go. and she pasted money all over the outside of the shop, and taking postcards not meant for her and pretending it was.

10 episodes in total, rather than the usual 11. as always, short and sweet and straight to the point, such that every episode will definitely have something interesting and worth seeing, compared to more draggy dramas which can run to hundreds of episodes.

the ending was more of heartwarming and filled with hope as compared to the main story where it was more of grief, disappointments and regrets. well in a certain way its ending was the total opposite as that of 空から降る一億の星 (sora kara furu ichioku no hoshi), where the ending might actually be closer to reality, meaning not a happy ending. in fact sora kara's ending can be said to be intentionally exaggerated and twisted to give a 'bad end' as what visual novel players would call it. well anyway today's post is not about sora kara.

but having normal happy endings which are filled with hope is not neccessary a bad thing, as long as the scriptwriter can fit it nicely and makes it go smoothly, as opposed to some dramas which tried too hard to have a heartwarming story.

overall i would recommend anyone wanting to try jdramas to watch this. at least there is the super pretty toda erika as eye candy!

and she is one year younger than me. talk about being successful with life and doing constructive things. i am simply wasting my life away.