Pigs are a running motif in this drama: from cute pigs keychains, to three-legged friendship pigs to nobuta in the title which means a pig and the animated closing credits.

It is a story about three high school kids who are completely different and therefore eventually complementary. Two boys, Shuji and Akira decide to take under their wing Nobuko, extremely shy transfer student who is being bullied, and help her become popular. What they actually gave her is self confidence.

I thought this was going to be another Cinderella makeover story but it is everything but that. The only makeover they do is cut her hair. While trying to figure out ways to make her popular, they become close friends.

This drama relies heavily on character development and as such stands out of the myriad high school dramas. Shuji is on the surface a top popular boy in school but he actually has no friends. Everyone knows his kindness and takes advantage of it but nobody knows him deep down. Except for Akira, a "devil may care" rich boy who does not take no for an answer and insists on being Shuji's friend. And then there is the girl who for the most of the drama looks and behaves like she came out of a low budget horror movie: with hair covering her face, never looking up, stilted speech and robotic movements. The boys do change her but the change is internal not superficial: slowly in their contact she emerges from her protective shell. And even though this behaviour and this attitude started to be annoying towards the end, it was a novel approach to the Cinderella story.

The background stories of these three characters are very sketchy, not to say inadequate. We know something about them and what made them how they are but it is not enough: the depth was sorely lacking here. But their friendship, how they met and created strong connections were well written: nothing was rushed.

The support characters were a mixed lot: the usual mean girls, silly boys, crazy family and weird teachers. They mostly brought humour to relieve the tension of dealing with the main subject: bullying.

This drama has aged well. It looks like it may have been made a few months ago with a couple of differences: the total absence of mobile phones glued to teens' hands and the VHS tapes. The bullying and the teens' behaviour never changes!

What I did not like here is the added fantasy, magic element: "ghosts" at school fair, magical pigs and the mysterious monk/bookshop owner/writer uttering strange/weird words of wisdom.

The ending was there. Shuji moves followed by Akira. At first I thought him selfish but it was actually the girl who asked him to follow Shuji realizing that he may be weaker than he appears to be and that he would need a friend more than she does. So they jump into the january sea in order to celebrate being together. So how come we never got a BL sequel to this? Even Nabuta saw how close they were....

Thank you @kura2ninja for this recommendation. I loved it....