|
|
Home
|
Manga/Magazines
|
|
Written by maehara
|
|
Saturday, 05 April 2008 16:00 |
 Nana is another new manga from Viz & Shoujo Beat, this one looking at the lives and loves of two very different girls who will eventually grow to become friends. Not yet, though, as they haven't yet met. This first volume takes a look at their individual lives and who they are - ready for more teenage romance..?
1 - Nana Komatsu
Nana Komatsu's always been unlucky with love - she's never had a male friend, just a constant string of love-at-first-sight boyfriends culminating in an affair with a 29-year-old married man whose real name she probably never knew. After graduating from high school and starting art college, though, she's determined to make a new start, and to finally find true love. If only doing that were as easy as saying it. When she meets her roommate Junko's old friend Shoji, though, it seems as though things may be looking up - until Junko decides to up sticks and move to Tokyo...
2 - Nana Osaki
Nana Osaki's life hasn't exactly been a bed of roses. Abandoned by her parents when she was younger and raised by her cold & uncaring grandmother, happiness hasn't really featured for her, but she's now out on her own and determined to make a new life for herself. Her chosen trade: punk rock. She's in a band with her live-in boyfriend Ren Honjo and they've been slowly building up a fanbase - but that's not enough for Ren. He's just been invited to join a band in Tokyo, a band with a record deal, and an opportunity like that is just too good for him to pass up. But his dream coming true marks Nana's dream beginning to turn sour. Could the answer be to join him in Tokyo..?
I've yet to hear a bad thing about Nana, and it's not from lack of trying. The manga is hugely popular in Japan, and has spun off two live-action feature films and a long-running anime adaptation - and with all that attention, it has to be good, right?
On the basis of this volume, I'm not entirely convinced. Let's start with a look at the two Nana's: Nana Komatsu, the first one we meet, is a bit of an airhead who's always been unlucky in love - although her choice in men probably doesn't help. She has a tendency to fall in love at first sight and damn the consequences, with her last "boyfriend", a secretive married man, being probably the low point. Latest boyfriend Shoji's slightly different as she at least tried to have him as a friend first, and their relationship developed from there, but she's still on autopilot where he's concerned and her need to be with him seems to override her common sense. In short, she's needy and whimsical, and may find better luck in life if she ever stopped to think about what she was doing.
Nana Osaki, on the other hand, is as different as you could get. Abandoned by her parents, raised by an uncaring grandmother, and with her teenage years being a litany of misadventure (it seems prostitution may have featured, but we don't get a lot of detail about that), she's far more grounded in the world and has a far more sensible head on her shoulders. Her introduction to the story also comes from relationship problems, though, as her long-time boyfriend ups sticks and heads to Tokyo without her. That's the one thing that the two Nana's have in trouble: a desire to go to Tokyo, home to the people they love, and make a new life for themselves, and this volume ends with both girls ready to make the move.
Artwork for the book has a typically shoujo feel to it - it's detailed, plenty of fine brushwork, and with girls that are impossibly thin. It looks good on the page, but the sheer amount of dialogue in the story means that there's a lot of text running over the top of it. That may have worked better in the original Japanese, but the English translation has the fairly major problem of simply having too much text for too little page space - a lot of the text is shrunk down to size where I found it difficult to read, even with glasses on, and having to stop, refocus and reread text panels every few pages wasn't just a distraction, it was a real problem.
The book also tries to be painfully hip & trendy - the girls don't talk about their parents, they talk about their 'rents. I suspect that's part of Viz's localisations, but as it's American hip & trendy it may not resonate with readers quite so well in the UK. Or perhaps I'm too old to appreciate 'hip' anymore - who knows.
The general story is shaping up well, though - the background that both girls are trying to escape from has been well fleshed-out, giving a good foundation for the next volume to build on, and I have to admit I'm looking forward to seeing how the meeting of the two is dealt with, and how they'll deal with the huge differences in lifestyle and attitude between them. In a way, this volume is really a prologue that may not necessarily be an accurate reflection of how the story is going to develop, but I'm curious enough to give the next few volumes a chance to see how events begin to unfold. Let's hope it doesn't turn out to be a case of curiosity killing the reviewer...
|
|
