NANA Rocks – This is How You Do Drama

It’s been nearly three weeks since I posted here. I wanted to take a break over the holidays, not only from writing about anime/manga but from reading and watching it too. Of course being the addict that I am, I couldn’t entirely stop myself from indulging.

One thing I have been reading is NANA which is so addicting that I couldn’t help going beyond Viz’s volume 13 and catching up to the latest chapter in Japan which is at about volume 20 (I will of course still be buying it in English as it comes out). In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have read all seven volumes in one day but let me tell you – it was a glorious ride. When it was all over the only thing to do was put on some black eyeliner and a leather jacket, light a cigarette and moodily strum my guitar in the rain… and by rain I mean sun because it never rains here and by leather jacket I mean t-shirt. Never mind that I don’t smoke either, it’s the thought that counts.

In all seriousness, though, what NANA does really well is angst. That seems like a negative word nowadays, perhaps because it conjures up images of Youtube video bloggers reading poetry about how at 15 years old it’s already too late to live. Trust me, NANA is nothing like that. A better comparison would be to teen television dramas in the way that all the characters’ relationships, break-ups and feelings are so incredibly dramatic. As if their entire lives are hanging in the balance. Yet where these shows often become nearly indistinguishable from soap operas, NANA always remains classy. 

But I may be getting ahead of myself here. If you haven’t heard of it, NANA is a shoujo manga by Paradise Kiss author Ai Yazawa. It revolves around two girls named Nana who happen to meet on a train ride to Tokyo. One is Nana Komatsu, a flighty and quick to fall in love girl who is moving to Tokyo to be with her boyfriend. The other is the tough Nana Osaki, a singer who wants to make it big with her punk band Black Stones or BLAST for short. The two end up sharing an apartment and living together in room 707 (“nana” means “seven” in Japanese).

NANA is the story of the Nana’s close friendship, of the increasingly convoluted relationship between BLAST and their rival band Trapnest and of both bands’ musical careers and ambitions. In the hands of a less skilled author the story of young people becoming big rock stars could easily be cliché and unbelievable. It works here because Yazawa creates complicated, three-dimensional characters. It’s not hard to really care about them even when, or maybe because, they show their weaknesses to the reader. 

I mentioned earlier that the character’s have a lot of angst. Well, there’s certainly humor as well but NANA is best when it’s tugging at the heart strings. Such as whenever one of the Nanas narrates the beginning or end of a chapter it often hints at something tragic that will occur in the future. This lends a bittersweet feeling and a sense of transience to everything, as if the characters are fragile and may very well break in an instant. In essence, NANA is beautiful people in beautifully heartbreaking and sometimes heartwarming situations. And I can’t get enough.

For more on NANA, I recommend reading Melinda’s excellent post: Why you should read NANA.