野ブタ。をプロデュース

by Gen Shiraiwa, 白岩玄

舞台は教室。プロデューサーは俺。イジメられっ子は、人気者になれるのか?!　テレビドラマでも話題になった、あの学校青春小説。六八万部の大ベストセラーの第四一回文藝賞受賞作。

Genres: Japanese Literature, Fiction

192 pages, 単行本

First published November 17, 2004

Reviews

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

懐かしい。
確か、珍しくドラマも見たし、劇中音楽も気に入ってCDも買ったし、エンディングソングは歌えるはず。
そして多分、本書も読んだはずなのに、殆ど覚えていない。
なので、読みながら、ついついドラマ版を連想してしまった。

けれど、考えてみれば、ドラマで山Pが演じていたキャラはいないし、小谷は女生徒。
そして、ドラマではどちらかというと、小谷への虐めとその黒幕の女子、そして、そのイジメに立ち向かうトリオとクラスメイト達の団結、みたいな分かりやすい物語だった気がする。

原作の本書はもうちょっと男子生徒寄り。
というか、主人公桐谷修二の一人称なので、彼がなにを考えているか、彼がどのように仮面をかぶっているか、いかに他人に心を開いていないか、が分かる。
そして、共感する。
読みやすい口調で書かれているのに、根底に感じられる、人生への諦め。太宰治の「人間失格」に通じるものを感じる。けれど、「人間失格」ほど絶望していないし、ダメダメでもない。
全てをそつなくこなし、上っ面だけで生きていく、現代の高校生(そして、ひいては現代人)を好意的に描いていると感じる。
しかも、物語の最後には修二は転校することになるけれど、そこでまた新しく「ショー」を始めようする修二の決意で終わってる。よくある、「無二の親友にであって、仮面をかぶるのをやめ、自分のありのままの姿で真っ向勝負する美しさ」的、説教がなく、主人公の修二が特になにも学習していないのもいい。
絶望する終わり方ではないけれど、特に希望もない。でも悪い読後感でもない。

著者が20くらいの時に出版されたらしく、著者近影は、まさに「修二がもう少し大人になったらこうなりそう」という雰囲気だった。
きっと修二は著者の事でもあるんだろう。

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, wow. This book is seriously awesome. I'm almost afraid to watch the drama now, knowing how different it is.

I zoomed through this book, finishing it in only two days, which is really quick for me, but even though I would do my usual "read a bit and put it down to do something else", it was really hard to stay away for long. I so, so, so wish I could recommend this to everyone, but er...it's not in English. But I do highly recommend it if you can read Japanese!

If you're familiar with the drama, the plot is...really not at all the same. There's a high school boy named Kiritani Shuji, and he takes it upon himself to "produce" a kid who's being bullied and make them popular, but that is really the only connection. Characters in the drama are made up for the drama, including Akira, the other main character in the drama, and characters in the book don't show up at all, except for Shuji, of course. The kid being bullied in the drama is a girl, but in the book it's a boy. I haven't watched the drama yet, but from what I know of it, it's pretty much a totally different story.

So this story. Shuji's life is all an act. He keeps himself at a distance from everyone and, frankly, is kind of sociopathic. During the middle of his second year of high school, they get a new student in their class, a fat, nerdy boy called Kotani Shinta. He writes his name on the chalkboard, 信太, and Shuji at first reads it as Nobuta. Nobuta (野ブタ) can also mean wild pig, so Shuji takes to calling him that (first in his head, then getting everyone to call him that). From the first moment, everyone hates Nobuta. After a while, Nobuta, seeing how popular Shuji is, asks him if he can be his apprentice. Shuji turns him down, but then gets an idea, what if he could be Nobuta's producer, and turn him into someone popular?

Nobuta agrees and most of the book is spent detailing how Shuji makes Nobuta popular. His plans work and he's really pleased with himself for being able to control everyone this way. However, as Nobuta gets more popular, things start falling apart for Shuji. In the end, he pushes away even Mariko, his fake girlfriend, and Nobuta, the only two people who still believe in him. At the end of the book, he transfers to a new school and it's implied that he'll start all over again with his fake personality.

So basically, instead of the feel-good happy ending where everyone learns a lesson, he hasn't learned anything, or rather, the experience just reinforced his belief that he shouldn't let anyone get too close.

(After writing this, I did finally see the drama, and yeah. The drama was total crap compared to the awesomeness of this book. They are pretty much the same in name only.)

[Saima☪ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonderful and very interesting story. Really like it. Even at some point I got so attache with the writings that my cheek got wet