Guy's Books and Thoughts

My impression is the heroine is a perky cute, but not necessarily
overly beautiful young lady. Her rival is oftentimes prettier, richer
or of a higher class than her. In CHURASAN, the rival is an aspiring
doctor, while the heroine is a nurse. Both the nurse and the doctor
are interested in the same man who is a doctor. But somehow the nurse
ends up marrying the doctor. In NODAME CANTABILE, the heroine is a
slob, nicknamed Nodame, who has a talent for piano. She makes Oscar
Madison look like a neat freak. She is interested in Chiaki, a
pianist who aspires to be a conductor. Chiaki had just been dumped by
his girlfriend, Saiko, who is an aspiring opera star. Nodame is
frustrated and heartbroken that Chiaki won�t return her affections.
Someone points out that the lady who dumped Chiaki is better looking
than Nodame. Nodame is considered a �Plain Jane� and doesn�t have a
chance. But things aren�t so simple. Chiaki was apparently hurt by
being dumped by Saiko. She wouldn�t let him cry on her shoulder when
he was depressed. So when Saiko is depressed about losing out to
another student over the role of queen of the night in the Mozart
opera, THE MAGIC FLUTE, Chiaki gives Saiko the same brush off line,
she gave him. (As an aside, I wonder if the author is making a play
on words? Saiko does sound a bit like psycho. And Saiko does have a
bit of an attitude. ).

I wonder if the heroine of Japanese television is sort of
the �everywoman� that others can identify with? One knows of the
stories of the pauper winning the hand of the princess. Maybe this is
a mirror image story of the peasant girl winning the hand of the
prince. Sort of like Cinderella. I believe that is why the heroine is
not the beautiful model type, but more of the �Plain Jane� type. No,
not totally plain, but definitely not supermodel class. Beautiful
model types are the type with a beauty which most women would find
unattainable. I suspect the average woman would identify and
sympathize more with the �Plain Jane� type than the model.

I don�t know if this is true of all Japanese heroines, but in the
NODAME, the heroine has a free spirit quality about her. She comes
into Chiaki�s life when he is thinking of giving up music. She
revives in him a love of music. In a way, I would say she�s a bit of
a �magical girl� reviving Chiaki�s morale. This theme of a
disillusioned teacher or elder coming back to life is not unique to
NODAME. It can be found in other works such as the movie SHALL WE
DANCE?, where the disillusioned dance instructor, Mai, regains her
love of ballroom dancing, by the example of her student.

There also seems to be a beauty and the beast quality in NODAME. My
impression is she gets Chiaki to show compassion or understanding to
the students in the orchestra. She gets him to intervene on the
struggling contrabass student. And she uses a children�s anime to
point out Chiaki�s bullying of Ryutaro, the concert master. In other
words, she smooth�s out Chiaki�s rough around the edges persona. My
guess is that this beauty and the beast story does get repeated in
other Japanese dramas. I suspect the beauty and the beast story is
not simply found in France, but in other countries and cultures.