カロリーメイト | 夢の背中 | 2016
In This Case, the Target Must Be the Parents / CALORIEMATE "Yume no Senaka" (The Back of Dreams)
This CALORIEMATE commercial cheering on students taking entrance exams follows a year in the life of a son grinding through a second attempt at university entrance exams, from the mother's point of view—from the day he decides to repeat the year to the day of the exam itself. Niiro Murakami, who shaved off his long hair for the role, plays the son, while Misuzu Kanno plays the mother who watches over him with quiet warmth. The soundtrack features Ryota Fujimaki's own cover of Remioromen's song "March 9th."
The problem
"Yume no Senaka" (The Back of Dreams) was released in 2016 as the third installment in the series, and it's one of the emotional, tear-jerker entries that have become a staple of CALORIEMATE's commercials cheering on exam-takers. It depicts, from the mother's perspective, a year in the life of a son working hard at his studies after deciding to repeat the exam year, from that very moment all the way to exam day. Because the mother can't actually do anything to help directly and can only watch over him, nearly every scene of the son shows only his back—his face isn't revealed until the very last scene. This marked a return to the brand's "usual" emotional style, after the previous year's more experimental "Little Nutritionist" approach.
The insight
The heart of this commercial is that it focuses not on the student taking the exam, but on the parent's point of view. It captures the anxiety and impatience leading up to exam day that anyone who's been through exam prep—whether repeating a year or pushing through on the first try—can relate to. And for those who are parents, it portrays the strength and tenderness of quietly watching over your child. The choice to convey all that churning emotion using only the back of a person is a sharp, true reflection of exam season reality: parents often spend more time looking at their child's back than their face. The idea that the target here must be the parents really rings true—there's a clear sense that the aim is to make the parents cry, not the students themselves, deepening their bond with the product.
The idea
Ryota Fujimaki has said that when he added brass to "March 9th," he felt it brought out a youthful feeling, that blue, nostalgic sense of those years, and also the kind of encouraging, cheering-you-on feeling you get from a brass band pushing you forward—which is what led to this brass arrangement for the commercial. Working with Tabuzombie (of SOIL&"PIMP"SESSIONS), the song was given this brass arrangement specifically for the ad, and paired with the visuals, it's genuinely moving. The concept—a mother who watches over her striving son from closest by, who knows exactly how hard he's working, and precisely because of that never says "do your best" but simply keeps believing in him and watching over him—is distilled into the scene at the front door where she hands him a box of CALORIEMATE with "You've got this" written on it. The casting of Niiro Murakami and Misuzu Kanno was also wonderful. Pairing Niiro Murakami with Remioromen—or rather, with Ryota Fujimaki—was an inspired choice.
What happened
The tweet that spread the video has gathered around 50,000 likes so far, and the view count has surpassed 4 million. Viewers who watched the commercial shared comments like, "Whenever I lost motivation, I'd watch this over and over for fuel," reflecting back on their own experience repeating exam years, while others responded from the mother's perspective, saying things like, "I have two daughters taking exams. All the feelings I'd been holding back came pouring out and I burst into tears." Either way, comments expressing that they cried or were moved were common, with people writing things like "I can't take it, I'm sobbing" and "I cried buckets." Because the story spans such a sweeping scope—a full year in a student's life—the production carefully changed costumes, hairstyles, and scenery to match the seasons, and filming took four days on a minute-by-minute schedule from early morning until late at night. That careful craftsmanship contributed to the results. The exam-season campaign itself reportedly became a long-running series because the public response after the commercial aired, along with the real voices of middle and high schoolers heard through social media, turned out to be far bigger than anyone had expected.
Afterthought
The truth is, it came right back to being "the usual" in no time at all. But it's also true that this "usual" is exactly what gives CALORIEMATE's exam-season commercials their staying power. The fact that even in 2023 it's still getting shared on Twitter and racking up tens of thousands of likes says it all. The decision to tell the story from the parent's point of view was genuinely sharp—the students themselves hardly have time to watch something like this, but their parents end up crying while watching TV in the living room. And then they think, "I should buy some CALORIEMATE for my kid too." As a strategy, it's almost too perfect.
