After holding out for nearly a year, waiting for its completion, I finally sat down and marathoned my way through NANA. I believe the wait was well justified as the further I got into the series, the more I couldn’t help but think how agonizing it would have been to wait weeks between episodes. While it was far from perfect, NANA was a great series which I’d recommend to any fans of melodrama.

Series Rating: 9/10

At the very base of things, NANA is about the lives of two women whose lives were rammed together by what many would consider fate (though I detest the idea of fate and prefer to call it coincidence). One snowy winter day, both Komatsu Nana and Osaki Nana happen to be making a one way trip to Tokyo towards a new start in their lives. The two end up sitting together and find that their circumstances have a lot in common. At first glance the two seem like polar opposites, Osaki Nana is a vocalist in a punk band and has a strong sense of individuality and pride, Komatsu Nana (hereby referred to as Hachiko, a nickname given to her by Osaki) is a happy go lucky naive girl who is quick to rely on others and even quicker to fall in love (read:slut).

However, the Nana’s are merely the foundation of the anime and don’t do the immersive story that results from their encounter much justice. The plot evolves into something so much more, as Nana dives into the music industry with her band, Blast, a complex story of the member’s pasts and futures branches out in parallel with their musical rivals, Trapnest. But rather than a story focusing on the music, like the BECK anime, focus is shifted onto the interaction between the band’s respective members and the friendships and romances they’ve forged in the past, struggle to keep in the present, and move to into the future.

At the same time, Hachiko, who was a simple country girl before meeting Nana, follows her new friend into this world, largely an outsider, yet at the same time becomes an increasingly important existence to many of the members of the bands through friendship, lust, romance and heartbreak.

The story behind NANA is far too involved to summarize into a couple paragraphs so I’ll leave it at that. Only by watching it can one appreciate the intricate (albeit sometimes cliche) relationships built by the large cast over the course of NANA’s 47 episodes.

Thoughts

More than plot or concept, it’s the characters in NANA that drew me in and kept me interested for the duration of the series. Each character had a distinct personality and a story to tell which resulted in great interaction between the cast.

Hachiko is one of the most naive characters I’ve ever seen, her innocence in matters of the heart make her an easy target and her ability to fall in love at first often gets her in trouble, especially when you realize how selfish she can be. Her numerous love affairs throughout the duration of the series were interesting to watch, it was obvious from the beginning that Hachiko was a promiscuous girl, but the number of times she fell in and out of love still shocks me.

Nana was another fun character to watch develop, it was interesting seeing her pride and independence crumble in the presence of Ren. Nana’s character is an exaggeration of the type of person many people in this world are, myself included, she puts up a strong front of independence but deep down is really just longing for someone to depend on, someone to confide in (although I tend to rely more on sarcasm than pride, lol).

The writers did a great job in emphasizing how dependent these two were on each other and how they saw the other as a hero in their lives. Hachiko relied on Nana to get her through the hard times, when yet another boyfriend had abandoned her and she needed consoling, Nana was there to offer Hachiko a shoulder to cry on. Nana’s reliance on Hachiko was a lot more subtle, Hachiko being supportive merely in her presence. No matter how bleak Nana’s outlook on life came to be, all it took was a good talk with the lively and energetic Hachiko to replenish her spirits and gather the strength to continue fighting. That being said, it was a great twist when the two were suddenly pulled apart. The initial fear that the two of them felt when they were separated and the process of learning to continue on without each other was both painful and encouraging to watch.

Aside from Nana and Hachiko, the development of the other characters was also well done. From the failed love pairings between Yasu/Nana, Reira/Yasu, Reira/Takumi, Nobu/Hachiko, Shoji/Hachiko and the ’successful’ pairings between Shin/Reira, Takumi/Hachiko, Ren/Nana, there certainly wasn’t a shortage of ‘One True Pairing’ couples for NANA fans to push for.

However, I’m not all praise for NANA, it certainly had its faults. Like many other series, NANA had a really strong beginning, but proceeded to fall apart towards its end. At the start it was a down to earth story about a couple of girls hopelessly falling in love and struggling to deal with the consequences as well as the startup of an indie band struggling to make it big. If I had to describe it in terms of other anime, it was like a meshing of BECK and Honey and Clover.

But as the story progressed and went further into the unfamiliar world of the music industry, the easy to relate to plot started to become more and more foreign. Even the characters degraded as they became less able to maintain a steady relationship and started whoring out their love to anyone who was present and willing. I became especially annoyed with Hachiko and her Nobu vs Takumi dilemma. While I realize it’s not easy to choose between two people who you think you may love, it became frustrating to see her make a decision with a strong conviction, only to break down in tears and uncertainty soon after at something as trivial as a short text message or an missed phone call.

The ending itself was left incredibly open ended. NONE of the relationships built over the course of the anime were given any sort of closure. While Hachiko seemed happy after all was said and done, the fate of Takumi and his competence as a father was not addressed in the slightest, and with Nobu present at the reunion, I can’t help but think she’s still not completely over him. Nothing further was said about Ren’s sudden proposal to Nana and whether they ended up getting married or not (even if it was heavily implied). And what about Reira, did she ever get over her obsession with Takumi and settle down with Shin, or is she as confused as ever while Shin continues to be a manwhore. And worst of all, the fate of Hachiko and Nana’s relationship was left open to speculation. Hachiko noted that Ren was going to be coming to the fireworks reunion, suggesting that Nana would show up as well, if the two managed to stick it out together. But after that Hachiko goes on a depressing monologue about how she’ll wait ten, twenty, fifty years for the summer they longed for.

A second season was hinted at during the epilogue of the last episode, I hope that materializes and we’re given a continuation of what happens because as it stands now, things ended far too abruptly and with little explanation.

The technical aspects of NANA weren’t anything spectacular, but they got the job done and managed to be quite fitting. The character designs took a little getting used to with the oddly proportioned faced and relatively scrawny bodies. I was impressed at how often the characters changed clothes though, more often than not, animators will be lazy and reuse the same template for characters through the whole series but NANA continually made it a point to emphasize the changing fashion of the characters, impressive considering its length. As for the faces, they were certainly more realistic than gigantic moeblob eyes, but the proportioning was still weird, I loved the expressions that popped up from time to time though, like Nana’s cat eyes, Hachiko’s dog ears and Reira “Beehhhhh =P” to name a few.

With music being a central point in NANA, I expected a lot from its soundtrack, and while the OPs and EDs delivered, the music in the actual show lacked variety. If memory serves be correct, both Blast and Trapnest played only a couple songs over and over again throughout the entire 47 episodes. Compare this to say…BECK, which had a huge arsenal of songs over the span of its 26 episodes. But I will admit that the few songs that NANA did have were quite catchy and I’ll probably download the OST to hear their full versions.

tl;dr: NANA is a great series with well developed characters that weaved an intriguing and immersive tale about the lives of two girls who shared more in common than they would have ever thought, brought together by circumstance and kept together by a force that many will argue can only be called destiny (perhaps the Demon Lord’s ultimate plan). And although the ending wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been, it was still an excellent series overall and one I’d definitely recommend to anyone who loves drama.

Oh, and a warning to yuri fans, it may look promising in the beginning, but sadly nothing materializes ;_;

~ Shirukii ~