Tag Archives: Nana

Nana #22

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The last issue of Ai Yazawa’s Nana in English is volume #21. The series stopped publishing in 2010, when Yazawa contracted an unknown illness. She hasn’t been able to work since.

Nana could not have picked a worse moment to come to an abrupt end. In Volume #20, Ren, the lead guitarist of Trapnest and the boyfriend of Nana Osaki, dies in a car crash. Volume #21 is an extended, painful depiction of grief, in all its overwhelming, banal detail. At this point in the series, after hundreds and hundreds of pages, we know all of Yazawa’s characters intimately, and their every characteristic and uncharacteristic action as they learn of their loss takes on an almost unbearable weight.
 

 
For example, it seems like the most natural thing in the world for a husband to grab his wife’s hand for support — except that distant, assholish, controlling Takumi hardly ever reaches out to anyone for anything. Nana Komatsu (or Hachi) knows her husband shouldn’t be behaving like this; she looks down at her hand as if she’s afraid it’s going to fall off. Ironically, soon after this, when Takumi views Ren’s body, he sees that the only part of Ren not badly damaged in the accident were his hands, which, a guitarist to the end, he protected during the crash. Ren’s fingers, carefully preserved, hold nothing, while Takumi and Hachi’s, unnaturally, hold, and are held by, his death. It’s not just that there’s space where there should be presence, but that there’s presence where there should be space. Ren can’t hold anything except those he leaves behind.

In another sequence, Yasu, Ren’s childhood friend who has an intense long term platonic relationship with Nana, goes to tell her that Ren has died. She’s a rockstar in her own right, and is on tour. Yasu has to fly out to get her and then they drive all night to get back home to see Ren’s body. When they come out of the car, Yasu carries Nana, who is draped over him helplessly. Yasu’s girlfriend, Myu, takes one look at them and flees:
 

 
Whereas Takumi’s reaction resonates because it’s not normal, Myu’s is touching because it is. Like Yasu, she’s level-headed and thoughtful. For him, that means being there for Nana when no one else will or can. For her, it means knowing when to get herself out of the way.

The scene that most affected me, though, occurs a couple pages earlier, when Nana’s car pulls up. Earlier in the series, Nana and Ren’s relationship became a gigantic tabloid news story; in fact, Ren’s car crash was caused in part because he was fleeing the papparazzi. Naturally, then, there’s a scrum of reporters waiting for Nana when she arrives, ready to ask her about Ren’s death. Hachi, Nana’s former roommate and one of her closest friends, intervenes:
 

 
Again, the sequence gets its power because we’ve known Hachi so long. She’s a strikingly hapless and needy airhead. She spends the series desperately glomming onto a series of men (and arguably women too) in an effort to get somebody else to provide the backbone and rational decision making functions that she so spectacularly lacks.

And yet, while Hachi is exasperating, she’s also very sympathetic…and this sequence helps to get at why. Over the course of the manga, Hachi develops a huge, somewhat ridiculous hero-worshipping crush on rock-star Nana. This seems like it should be another sign of Hachi’s puppyish infantilism — the nickname “Hachi” is in fact a dog’s name given to her by Nana. But instead of cementing her helplessness, Hachi’s clinging to Nana blurs into a kind of mothering, with Nana, estranged from her own mother, turning increasingly, semi-secretly, and desperately to her friend.

And so, in this sequence, when the worst ha happened, Hachi does what mothers often do, and sacrifices herself for her baby. It reminds me a little of my mother-in-law, who, like Hachi, is in many ways, infuriatingly flighty, and who, like Hachi, married too young. Yet, when my father-in-law (that man she married) was dying of brain cancer, she fed him and cleaned him and struggled tirelessly with a series of indifferent doctors and hospitals to get him the best possible care. Watching her was more than a little awe-inspiring.

Hachi here is awe-inspiring too…but there’s also something heart-breakingly futile about her attempted bargain with the reporters. Nobody takes her up on her interview offer…and indeed, Nana is swept out of the car too quickly for anyone to really get at her, it seems like. Hachi’s sacrifice ends up being superfluous; the story wouldn’t be changed at all without those two pages. Her love and her strength don’t really matter…just like, for all my mother-in-law’s efforts and care, her husband died just the same.

Life is filled with such blind alleys, of course, where the narratives sputter and stall and then go on; where the storyteller seems to have abandoned her work. Genre fiction, on the other hand, always know where it’s going — what’s the point of genre after all if you don’t have a blueprint? Nana, certainly, is as insistently artificial as any soap opera melodrama, packed with tell-tale and impossible coincidences. On the micro level, the two protagonists have the same name; on the macro level, everybody in the manga either becomes a rock star or marries one. That’s the inevitable teleology of fiction, not the stuttering uncertainty of fact.

Yet Nana‘s extended discursive format, and the way Yazawa privileges the characters and their emotions over the steady churn of events, often give the series a feeling of being weirdly aimless and fragile. In Nana #9, for example, Yazawa includes a short story purportedly about Naoki, Trapnest’s drummer. It starts with him dying his hair daringly blond, and then proclaiming to his parents, “It’s the real me, maman!”

That could be the start of a tale about discovering one’s true inner rebel rock star. But instead, Yazawa goes in the opposite direction; Naoki narrates, but what he narrates is almost entirely about other characters — or more precisely, about his misinterpretations of the other characters. He thinks Takumi and Yasu are gangsters, he misinterprets Takumi’s relationship with Reira (the Trapnest singer); he fails to recognize Yasu when the later changes his hair. The story isn’t about Naoki finding his real self, instead, it’s about how he fails to discover everyone else’s.

Finally, towards the end of the piece, we learn that there is a center to Naoki’s life — his relationship with his hometown sweetheart, Haruko.

Or, then again…
 

 
Haruko may be real, or she may not; her drawn image is either the the core of Naoki, or a meaningless surface. Moreoever, the meditation on truth and lies in the pages above is contrasted, not with pictures of Naoki, but with pictures of Nana and Ren. Haruko isn’t real, Naoki isn’t real…and of course, Nana and Ren aren’t real either. They’re just a dream. In the context of a serialized soap opera, this meta moment, where the headlong narrative collapses into itself, is unsettlingly disorienting. These people we know as friends are just visual illusions; line drawings on the top of nothing. The effect is not so much to knock us out of this story, as to knock us out of any story, including our own. Instead of images arranging themselves into a sequence, they seem to hang still, unorganized bits and pieces that refuse to make a whole. Genre falls apart, as ungraspable as life, or as death.

There’s a similar effect in the latter part of the series, when Yazawa begins to let us see glimpses into the future of her characters. But these futures are less a terminus, giving finality and shape to the whole, than a way to extend and double the narrative’s irresolution. Nana-to-come has run away and is living incognito…but perhaps she’ll return. Takumi-to-come and Hachi-to-come are estranged. But that’s not the end of their relationship. It’s simply another stage in it, as subject to change and vacillation as the past. There is no happily ever after, not because there isn’t a happily, but because there’s no ever. The characters keep falling out of the genre narrative, or else the genre narrative falls from around them, like snow dissolving. “After your death, the future we all hoped for was wiped clean,” future Hachi says to the long- passed Ren. “I still can’t imagine my future. I can’t begin again unless Nana is with me.” But while she’s saying that, the future goes on; her daughter plays with Yasu, the waves go in and out, the snow comes down. The plot is gone, but she’s still there, lamenting the fact that death is an end, and also lamenting the fact that it’s not.

Those are the last pages in Nana #21. The series hangs there still, waiting for Yazawa to come back, or never to come back, just as Hachi is waiting for Nana. We’re stuck with grief and a future that won’t tell us what it means. Maybe that’s why sometimes the worst comic book is the one that was never written — the page that you can’t turn, and can’t stop turning.
 
 
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Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.
 

Voices from the Archive: Melinda Beasi on the Bechdel Test and Nana

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Erica Friedman did a post way back when on the Bechdel test. It prompted a fun comment thread, including a lengthy discussion by Melinda Beasi, which is reproduced below.

I’m glad you brought this topic back here after the conversation on Twitter. I think, in retrospect, why I reacted negatively to Mo’s personal taste being included as a criteria for the test, is that suddenly a test that I personally looked to as a guide for helping me find works I might enjoy (lists of manga, books, movies, etc. that fulfilled the letter of the test were popular when I was a regular on LJ) had essentially shut me out. Because while I always prefer stories containing strong female friendships and a significant female presence–the kind likely to emerge from following the letter of the test–by adding in Mo’s taste, nearly all the work I liked best was eliminated or at least deeply in question. So where was my list now? If the women I most identified with and most enjoyed reading about suddenly weren’t interesting enough for Mo, I felt thrown out along with them. It was as though after all the youthful years I spent being viewed by my peers as “not feminine enough” to be an acceptable girl were being followed up on with years in which I would be viewed as too girly to be an interesting woman.

Obviously, that’s an extreme (and inappropriate) reaction. Why should I care what Mo thinks of my books? I know why I like them and, whether she would read them or not, I gain strength and insight from the women within their pages. And it may be that I was simply mistaken to interpret the test as a guide for finding stories about women that might interest women. Perhaps it really is just intended to identify stories of interest just to women like Mo. So maybe what I’m really looking for is a different list. I, too, am interested in books where female characters are engaged with each other on issues other than the men in their lives. I think, though, that because the reality of my life differs so much from Mo’s, I’m looking for something a little different in my fiction.

I actually don’t think you’re wrong at all when you suggest that women are still socialized to be needy and that our fantasies are influenced by the expectations set up for us. This is our reality. This is my reality. So when I’m looking for characters I can identify with in manga, I’m going to find that in women who struggle with exactly those things.

For instance, one of the characters I identify with most is Nana Komatsu (aka “Hachi”) in Ai Yazawa’s NANA. While I’ve got a career drive that better resembles her friend Nana Osaki’s, like Hachi, I can measure my past in increments of ex-boyfriends. I’ve struggled, as she does, with being hung up on men, with needing to feel loved (even when it’s false), with needing to keep my real thoughts and feelings secret for fear of losing that love, and so on. I’ve come further than she has (*maybe*, that’s probably more appropriately discussed over beer) but while she’s a woman Mo might find tiresome, she’s one *I need to read about*. She’s relevant to my life. Not the life I maybe wish I had, but my actual life. What I love about NANA is that while Hachi struggles with these things, what the real story is about is how, ultimately, the relationship that Hachi and Nana have with each other is more real and more satisfying than their tumultuous relationships with men. Do they talk to each other about the men in their lives? Certainly. They also talk about their careers, their personal hopes and fears, each other, and everything else under the sun. These women reflect myself back to me, but they also provide a blueprint for female friendship in which I can find hope and inspiration. I can’t undo the person I am or the broken things in my own past. I can’t erase the way I was socialized or what that made me. So for me, seeing that addressed on paper is important. It’s what makes something more than fantasy for me as a reader. And because so many women still struggle with these things daily, I think these stories are important as stories for women, if not perhaps as stories for women like Mo. In my world, these women are heroic.

All that said (and perhaps to get around to your actual point), Blindmouse’s recent Top 12 Fictional Female Friendships inspired me to try to put together my own list focusing exclusively on manga. But when I sat down to write it, I had trouble coming up with more than five. Though I could think of many, many strong, inspiring, heroic women in manga, I could think of just a handful who actually appeared together in the same story. Perhaps that should not have surprised me, but it really did.

Nana #15

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Just read through the 15th volume of Ai Yazawa’s Nana, and yes, I am still in love with the series. A few more or less random thoughts…some of which I may have said before, but what the hell:

1. One of the things I like most about the series is the way that it manages to be a soap opera and use lots of soap opera cliches — and yet, the way the series uses them is never, or rarely cliched. For example, volume 14 ended with Nana being confronted by a picture of Ren, her finacé hugging another woman (Reira). We know that nothing happened between Ren and Reira, but Nana doens’t..so, totally predictable set-up, right? Nana should go ballistic and be horribly upset and betrayed and there should be all this drama because of miscommunication. Except that isn’t what happens at all; Nana immediately realizes that the picture isn’t all that incriminating and that Ren wouldn’t cheat on her. She is upset, and there is some drama with Ren, but it’s more about the fissures that already exist in their relationship than it is with the photograph per se…and, in any case, their reconciliation occurs fairly quickly.

Basically, the point is that Yazawa seems to trust her characters to be interesting on their own terms. She certainly provides plenty of drama, but she never sacrifices her protagonists to the exigencies of plot. Nana doesn’t become stupid just because the story would be more conventionally exciting if she did. It’s pretty much the opposite of the way that Brian K. Vaughn proceeded in Y; The Last Man, in which the integrity of the characters is gleefully chucked over every available cliff-hanger.

2. I love the way that Yazawa let’s the focus of the story drift from character to character over the course of the story. Nana and Hachi are always more or less the most important characters. But as their lives alter and evolve, the most important supporting characters change a lot. In this volume, I was just noticing how central Takumi (Hachi’s fiance) has become, while Nobu (her former flame) has been pushed off to the sidelines. Meanwhile, Jun, Hachi’s friend, and a central character early on, has a walk-on appearance, and though it’s a very brief scene, you can feel the weight of their past — there’s a close-up where you can see Jun realize that Hachi has become a much stronger and more mature person — and seeing it through Jun’s eyes allows the reader (for whom the transformation has been more gradual) to recognize it too.

Again, the point here is Yazawa’s faith in her work and in her readers. She trusts that even if she drops characters or adds characters, the reader will stay with her. And, perhaps more importantly, she trusts that the story can change gradually and organically, without exclamation points. It’s just incredibly mature and confident story-telling.

3. On another note: this isn’t exactly a criticism, but…today I was talking to a friend who has toured with an act which started small, and then got quite big. And one of the big problems he encountered was with money. That is, when you start out small, nobody thinks much about how you’re going to split the dough, because there is none. But when you suddenly get big, the money becomes a huge issue — one that can sew a lot of bitterness, wreck friendships, and just generally create a lot of drama.

Nana is, of course, about two bands that make it big. And it’s a soap opera, so it thrives on drama. But…there’s virtually never any drama about money. The characters don’t argue about money. There’s no discussion of how they’ll split their takes. There’s an acknowledgment that they are earning money, certainly, but there’s never fighting about it. It’s weird.

A while back I talked about the odd way Nana deals with the band’s drug use and publicity. Most of that strangeness had to do with cultural differences, I think; Japanese bands have to be a lot more careful of their public image, especially around issues like drug use. It seems unlikely that cultural difference explains the problem here, though; I mean, I doubt that Japanese rock stars never quibble over money. Probably Yazawa just doesn’t think that money troubles are romantic or interesting — and possibly she thinks such mundane concerns are beneath her characters, who are all fairly self-consciously presented as artists. I don’t know…anyone out there have any insights? It doesn’t really bother me per se…it just seems odd.

Nana 13-14: Economic Catastrophe Edition

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I originally wrote this for another publication, which went belly up before they released an issue. Sad but true….
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Nana, Ai Yazawa’s rock-and-roll manga soap-opera , has a fairly simple premise — two young women, both named Nana, head to Tokyo to seek their fortunes. The narrative quickly accelerates, though, with an ever-expanding cast of characters, all portrayed with a dizzying intensity and depth.

Which is to say that, though you definitely don’t want to start reading Nana with volume #13, you definitely do want to start reading now now now so you can get to #13. This far into the series, every relationship has layer upon layer of meaning, with every new detail causing the committed fan to flap and sputter spasmodically. For example, in #14, we learn that rock-solid, reliable Yasu engages in the occasional indiscretion — and we know him so well that we (like his bandmates) are left (literally, in my case) with our jaws hanging open. Yasu…it can’t be! There…there must be some explanation! Surely, surely, it will all be explained in the next volume….!

Or, a little more subtly: it’s been clear for some time that Nana Osaki, the tough rock star, has an intense (albeit nominally platonic) crush on the ditzy Nana (“Hachi”) Komatsu. And it’s also been clear that Hachi’s often-cruel-but-never-heartless fiancé Takumi treats Nana O. as, to some extent, a rival. But in issue #13, for the first time, we see, in a flashback, that Takumi actually consciously knows how Nana feels about Hachi — a revelation which makes him seem both sweeter (he touchingly reassures Hachi that she and Nana will remain friends) and more cold-hearted (because if he knows how much the two women mean to each other, why is he such a dick to Nana?)

Did I mention that the art is amazing? Stylish clothes, beautiful poses, and faces so expressive they’ll tear your heart out. Nana’s stricken expression at the end of volume #14, her body stiffened in shock, contrasting pitifully with her cheery giant-heart-over-the-bustier jacket, while Yasu sits beside her his face drawn in sympathy…. That — that — right there! is reason enough to start reading at #1, and keep reading until the sad, sad day when Yazawa decides to stop writing them.

Nana 2

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I very much liked the first Nana movie, so I imperiously ordered Netflix to send me the second. And I wasn’t disappointed; Nana 2 is, if anything, better than Nana 1. Again, the cuts here are smart and done with a sensitivity to the manga. The Shin-Reira relationship is axed, and Shin’s whole unwanted-child-turned-gigolo backstory is axed, which is kind of sad, but definitely necessary if the movie wasn’t to be kept under 4 hours or so. We also lose Hachi’s emotional confrontation with her friend Junko probably my single favorite scene in the entire series. That definitely hurts…but, again, it’s certainly a reasonable choice given the time constraints.

In any case, the acting and casting remain excellent. Hachi is played by a different actor, Yui Ichikawa, but she’s every bit as good as her predecessor. An especial stand-out is Takumi, played by the extremely attractive Tetsuji Tamayama. Takumi was only glimpsed in the first film, but here he plays a central role. ????? captures him perfectly. Just as in the manga, he’s an insensitive control freak with surprising flashes of thoughtfulness, who loves Hachi in his way — a stupid, callous way,, maybe, but decidedly different from not loving her. Nobu (Hiroki Narimiya) gets to do more as well, and he is also wonderful; the actor has an extremely mobile face, which records every nuance of Nobu’s torment as he tries to tell Hachi he loves her. The gradual revelation of Nana’s intense attachment to Hachi is nicely done as well; and the painful central twist, which breaks everyone’s heart, hurts almost as much here as in the manga. Indeed, I was almost ready to rate this equally with the manga at a couple of points…but the ending sort of wanders off down a blind alley or two, dissipating the tension and starting to feel slightly exploitive in its assiduous tear-jerking. Still, this is absolutely top-notch slice-of-life melodrama. Unfortunately, it bombed at the box office apparently, so I’m not sure there will be a third.

Nana Note

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A couple of regular blog readers have threatened to go try out the first volume of Nana on my recommendation. That’s super…but I do want to warn y’all that the first book is probably the weakest of the series. I think Yazawa was originally considering using it as a stand-alone story, rather than turning it into a series…anyway, it’s pretty different, and somewhat weaker, than what follows. Not that it’s bad or anything (especially the third part) but I’d hate to have anyone pick it up and then decide not to go any further.

If you’re just starting, you should really commit to reading at least the first two — or even beginning with the second one if reading two whole volumes seems too much of a commitment.
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In other news; if you follow the blog, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been posting a lot over the past two weeks. That is going to have to slow, I think…I’ll try posting a couple of times a week still, but the everyday thing is just not sustainable, I fear.

I do have a blog event which should definitely be debuting in the next few weeks…and I’ve got a couple of other ideas as well, which aren’t quite fully thought through yet. And I’m hoping to have at least one more blogger added to HU early next year.

So…thanks to all the new readers who have stopped by this week, and to all the old hands too. If you’d like, leave a comment and let me know how you think we’re doing in general, or what you’d like to see more or less of. Thanks again.

Nana of Stage and Screen

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So I saw the first live-action Nana movie (based on the manga by Ai Yazawa.) For those who haven’t heard me natter on endlessly about this series already, the story focuses on two young women, both named Nana, who move to Tokyo. One Nana is brooding, tough and streetwise; she’s trying to make it as a punk-rock singer. The other Nana (nicknamed Hachi) is sweet, ditzy, and often shallow and aimless; she comes to the city to be with her boyfriend. The two women become roommates and best friends, and the story follows their efforts to find true happiness and the travails of an ever-expanding circle of friends and acquaintances. It’s one of my favorite comics of any genre, and one of the best soap-operas in any medium.

There are definitely some glitches in translating the manga to screen. Most notably, when you read the manga, you don’t have to hear, or much think about, what the music of Trapnest and Blast actually sounds like. In the movie, alas, you have a soundtrack…and are thereby forced to realize that the supposedly amazing, original rock music actually sounds, way, way too much like Whitney Houston fronting the Foo Fighters. J-pop…erk.

It’s also simply impossible to fit six or so volumes of manga into two hours of running time; you have to cut something, which means that Yazawa’s finely balanced characterizations must, of necessity, go out of whack. The major casualty here is Shoji, Hachi’s boyfriend. He simply doesn’t get enough screentime, and so he ends up much less sympathetic, and much more callous, than he seems in the manga. It’s not entirely flubbed; the actor who portrays him seems genuinely distraught when he hurts Hachi, for instance, and there is a scene where Jun (Hachi’s friend) points out to her that Shouji had some legitimate grievances. But you don’t get to feel or see quite as clearly how selfish Hachi can be as you do in the manga.

Finally, of course, you lose Yazawa’s mavelous art. The movie is certainly competently, and even nicely, shot — the scenes with Nana and Ren in various bathtubs are especially sensual and romantic — but in terms of technical mastery, nothing in the movie really matches Yazawa’s impeccable design or beautiful drawing.

Still, overall, these are pretty minor quibbles. In fact, the extent to which the movie captures the spirit of the manga is pretty miraculous. Whoever wrote the script (and from some of Yazawa’s comments, I don’t think Yazawa was that closely involved) obviously read the manga with great care. The cuts are overall very smart, and the weaving in of the complicated backstory thorugh flashbacks and exposition is remarkably well done. For example, cutting out Hachi’s pre-Shoji boyfriend is a fine idea; it was one of the least involving parts of the story, and dumping it is a good way to shelve a bunch of useless plot all at once. On the other hand, the writers transpose but are careful to keep a quick kiss between Nana and Hachi — a moment that is, I think, an important, if not obvious, emotional touchstone for the series. Indeed, if anything, the romantic, platonic-but-only-just nature of the love between the Nanas is even more foregrounded in the movie than in the book. I’m sure it’s in the manga, but I completely didn’t remember that Hachi actually tells Nana that she sees her as a boyfriend…and I love in the movie, as in the book, the scene where Hachi falls asleep with her head on Nana’s shoulder while the two wait for Shoji to finish work. (And there are two separate scenes in the movies where a scarf is exchanged; once between Nana and her boyfriend Ren; once between Nana and Hachi — and these are clearly meant to be parallel.)

As for the casting…it’s fantastic. Mika Nakashima as Nana is stunningly sexy — the film opens with her talking, um, tongue-in-cheek about orgasms, and…well, it’s definitely a fan-yourself moment. Throughout the film she’s alternately cool and vulnerable; chewing Hachi out for being a dope one minute and letting her rest her head on her shoulder the next. (Also, Nakashima is very nearly as skinny as Ai Yazawa’s drawing of the character, which is sort of a wonder in itself). Aoi Miyazaki as Hachi is perfect too; all bubbly and self-absorbed, but considerate and sweet too if you can just get her to notice you. Ren (Ryuhei Matsuda) is great as well; he seems tough and swaggering, but you look a little closer and you realize that he’s actually a bit doughy — not really all that. He is obviously in no way worthy of Nana . This is true in the manga as well, and in some ways makes him more sympathetic; especially as he seems to realize it himself. Other characters are around less, but they all are well played; a burbly, air-headed, frequently intoxicated Nobu is particularly good.

So as far as live-action comics adaptations go this has to be the best I’ve seen (always excepting the 60s Adam West Batman movie, of course.) If you like the manga, I’d absolutely recommend seeing this…and if you’re wondering whether to start in on the series, renting this would be a good, cheap way to figure out whether you’d be likely to enjoy it. There’s a second movie already out that I’m looking forward to seeing as well.