Welcome all, to a late post on Nana! Sorry about that, I’ve been rather sick since Wednesday and have only just recovered. Doesn’t help that this was a rather dull week, giving me little motivation to write about it. Nana has some interesting characters, interesting ideas, but it feels like it isn’t doing a lot with it just yet and we’re about 15% through. Friends keep telling me it’s great, so maybe it’s just taking its time to set everything up and kick off. I don’t know. Whatever Nana is doing though, I hope it starts to liven up a bit soon. Anyways, feeling better, able to write, now onto the episodes!
First up is episode 7, “Yasu Appears! Room No. 707”. All about introducing Nana and Ozaki to each others friend groups, as well as some Nana insecurities, this was easily the more disappointing of the two we’re going to cover this week. The core idea is fine, Ozaki and Nana get to meat each others friends, they start to intermingle and our cast slowly comes together. And when that’s happening it’s good! I enjoyed seeing Jun and Shoji’s reactions to Ozaki and Yasu, seeing who Yasu has become in the past two years and finally progressing things a bit. The issue though is that basically the entire episode was either Nana making up her own issues with Shoji or them standing in the doorway of Nana’s new apartment and then leaving. It was like a first-impressions mixer, where neither side really engaged with each other beyond the surface level. A real missed opportunity if you ask me.
Diving into details, the first half of the episode was mostly about the reaction of Nana’s friend group to her getting a new place, and this felt pretty bad to me. These people have been pushing Nana to do things for herself for years now, telling her to get her own place, get her own dream or goal, to stop just following them around and latching onto them. Yet the moment she does, the moment she gets a new place and makes new friends, they start questioning and pulling her back in. I understand being concerned for her, she’s not the smartest nor most reliable of people. But it feels like instead of helping her succeed, instead of trying to support her, they are doubting her and resigning themselves to looking after her. As if, despite telling her to branch out, they don’t trust her to actually do it.
Contrast this with Yasu, Ozaki’s friend who has similar reservations about her going off on her own. He’s clearly just as concerned, the dude came all the way down to help her out and is double checking everything. But where Junko and Shoji doubt Nana can do this at all, Yasu is purely supportive. He asks what’s been done, checks what hasn’t, then either tells Ozaki how to do them or goes and does them himself while keeping Ozaki in the loop, as we see with him calling to get their electricity setup. He’s even signed on to be Ozaki’s guarantor for the apartment. And he does all of this on top of his regular job of being a Lawyer! Yasu is a chad, who clearly trusts Ozaki to figure her shit out while making it clear he will be there if she needs help.
The other side of the episode was Nana overreacting to Shoji not being home right away, as if she doesn’t trust him. This felt to me like she was projecting her own issues onto him, like she herself finds it difficult to be faithful and so assumes others wont either. This is only compounded in episode 8, which we will talk about later, all of it feeling overall rather shitty. Even their conversation about their issues was kind of just tiptoeing around the issue, neither of them really engaging on the topic instead getting caught up in this make believe second woman. All around rather boring if you ask me.
And… that’s basically the entire episode. We go from Nana’s friend group to meeting Yasu in the door and that’s about it. A very light episode if you ask me, where not much happens. I suppose a lot of this could be important, the intermingling of friend groups could go a long way if Ozaki/Yasu and Nana’s group end up interacting a lot. We also seem some concerning signs from Kyosuke as he comments on Ozaki being his type, I could see a bit of drama arising from that if Nana goes that route. Overall though, not a lot happened, which kind of sucks since this followed up what was basically a recap episode which itself followed a bunch of flashbacks. We’re 7 episodes in and still haven’t left this damn apartment. Good thing episode 8 changes that.
Moving on to episode 8, “Strawberry Glass and Ren-Lotus Flower”, this was much more engaging for me. We finally get to see Nana and Ozaki interact and do things together as they go out on the town and start furnishing their apartment. To see how unconcerned Ozaki is with material shit, not really caring what they get so long as it does the job, while Nana wants everything they have to match, to be unified, like she’s still clinging onto someone else in a way. It’s a nice sort of side-by-side analogy for the different ways the two of them are broken, and how they can help each other get closer to that healthy spot in the middle. Combine that with Nana unknowingly being a fan of Ren’s music, forcing Ozaki to see and hear him wherever she goes, and it’s a solid episode premise.
Speaking of Ozaki and Ren, I quite liked her moments thinking about him this week. How she puts up a front of not being bothered by his success, holding onto the hope that he hasn’t forgotten her, but the moment she’s left alone she plugs his music in and falls asleep on the floor listening to it. It’s clear for all that she acts detached and aloof, she’s holding onto him with everything she’s got. It’s still different than Nana, Ozaki isn’t blindly or desperately chasing him, but there’s some definite desire there. Enough at least that she left home with nothing but her guitar, where as Nana is having all of her stuff shipped to her here. Like I said, a good first outing of the two together to see how they interact as just the two of them.
About the only part of this episode I found odd was Nana herself, both her attitude in the furniture store and with Shoji. The flirting with the manager, Mizukoshi, was odd but I’m willing to chalk that up to Nana just being Nana. The following conversation with Shoji however, pushing back and using Ozaki as an excuse to not spend time with him afterwards, it felt like she was pulling away from him. Like she had possibly found someone new and was pivoting? I really hope that’s not the case, I wouldn’t like it if Nana ended up being that shallow, especially after all that Shoji has done for her. I assume Nana has some other plan here, that maybe she’s trying to rely on him less and is communicating it poorly, I don’t know. For now though, it’s definitely leaving me a bit confused.
So yeah, all in all a middling week for Nana. One episode was rather dull, with very little happening, while the other was solid and raised a couple of interesting questions. Not all of them good questions, I’m concerned about Nana’s fidelity, but I’m going to give the series the benefit of the doubt there. Not because it’s earned it, Nana hasn’t yet, but because I’m hoping for her to stay true. And that’s kind of where I’m at with Nana as a whole right now. It hasn’t earned much faith from me, we’re 8 episodes in and very little has really happened, but I’ve heard so much about it that I want to believe it will work out. Please work out. This is going to be a very awkward review if it doesn’t.
