Cut for spoilers.

From the back cover:
With the tabloids still out for blood, Nana and her Blast bandmates move into a weird dorm building run by their agency. But they’ve barely got enough time to settle into their new digs beacuse their crammed schedule has them running from music studio to TV interview. The stress of band life and dealing with a disintegrating Ren have started to take their toll on Nana. If she collapses now, will she ever get back up?

Review:
Although this volume isn’t light-hearted by any means, it is still far less painful to read than some recent ones have been. Time heals all wounds, as they say, and keeping busy helps, too. Nana and the other members of Blast are working hard on their album as well as doing interviews and live shows, and she’s feeling so good that at one point she thinks she could handle talking with Hachi about Takumi and the baby. In a similar “moving forward” vein, Nobu meets a girl he might like and is forgiven by his parents for not wanting to inherit their inn, and Hachi introduces Takumi to her family.

One of the things I really like about NANA is the way that it shifts focus between the leads. For a while there, we were all worried about Hachi, but it really seems that she’s at peace with her situation. Yes, she has regrets, but, as Jun says, she has her feet on the ground more than before. Hachi has palpably matured and she actually has a career goal in mind now. I’m left wondering if perhaps this pregnancy wasn’t ultimately a really good thing to happen to her, despite that it meant the end of her relationship with Nobu.

Now it’s Nana that I’m really worried about. She’d had this idea in her head that Blast becoming successful would somehow bring Hachi back and that Nobu would fight to get back together with her. When she learns that he has no intention of doing that, she begins to hyperventilate and ends up at the hospital. It’s like she has no faith in her own ability to keep Hachi near her—going back to motherly abandonment issues, perhaps—and so is depending on Nobu to do it for her.

She also feels like she’s “drowning helplessly in Ren,” and several times seems to be expecting Yasu to declare his feelings for her and rescue her from Ren’s pull. When she realizes at last that Yasu will never do that because of how close he and Ren are, she gives in to some extent and reconnects with Ren, who proposes. Trouble is waiting, though, because Ren has been using drugs, and a paparazzi guy also seems to’ve located her mother. Poor Nana.

This volume’s full of the drama, but I’m relieved that it wasn’t quite the kind to make me cry.

NANA is a series I vow never to spoil.

From the back cover:
Being engaged isn’t as wonderful as Hachi thought it would be. She has a trendy new apartment, but she’s isolated from all her friends and Takumi is hardly ever home. When scandal hits hard, Trapnest (and her fiancé) flee to Europe, and Hachi is left to watch Blast suffer in the scandal rags and tabloid shows.

Review:
So much happens in a volume of NANA that I feel like I should keep a scorecard or something! There are important revelations (Nobu still seems to have feelings for Hachi, Yasu’s feelings for Nana become known both to her and Ren), realizations (Blast must sacrifice some of their ideals about how they want to become successful in order to seize the chance they’ve been given), and reconciliations (even though Nana and Hachi have not met face to face due to the paparazzi frenzy surrounding Blast and Trapnest, Nana takes advantage of a microphone thrust in her face to declare that she’s still working to make Hachi’s dreams come true).

The most fascinating part of the story for me right now is the Nana-Yasu-Ren triangle. Although Nana and Ren both have moments where they think that their love for the other hasn’t diminished, things still aren’t the same as they used to be. Nana feels that her bond with Yasu may be even stronger than hers with Ren, and Ren’s commitment to Trapnest leads him to decide not to defend Nana from reporters. Instead, that role falls to Yasu who does it without a second thought. It also becomes clear that Yasu has completely abandoned his ambitions to practice law in order to pursue a musical career, something he had told Reira long ago that he wasn’t willing to do. I personally am really rooting for Nana and Yasu to get together.

Less successful to me is the Hachi plotline: I’m confused, though I think that may be because Hachi is confused. She tells Jun that she “really, really” loves Takumi, and laments that she can’t seem to fall in love with nice guys like Shoji or Nobu. Later on, though, it seems like she’s talking about Nobu when she says, “I’ll never be fulfilled by happiness like that again, the kind with no shadows.” Were her earlier comments just an attempt to make the best of an imperfect situation? She likes him enough to derive some happiness from their life together, even while mourning what might’ve been?

On the whole, I love how complex all of these characters and their circumstances are. I still profess a desire for some big, unambiguously positive event for these beloved characters—something like that would surely merit an A+ from me—even while I recognize that such untainted triumph rarely happens in life, and appreciate that Ai Yazawa recognizes it, too.