From the back cover:
Things are slowly coming together for Nana Osaki. The guitarist and drummer from her old band have joined her in Tokyo and she’s finally found a ripping new bass player to replace Ren Honjo. The Black Stones are back and they’re ready to kick some ass.
Nana Komatsu, however, can’t shake her old nemesis, the Demon Lord. She’s stuck in a dead-end job and there’s trouble brewing with her boyfriend, Shoji. He’s been working late and hasn’t exactly been the most attentive lover. Poor Nana. Life in Tokyo is turning out to be a total bummer.
Review:
Okay, now I get why everyone is so crazy for this series. It’s really hooked me for good with this volume—let me count the ways!
1. Realism. It may sound silly to say that a manga achieves this, but NANA does it probably the best I’ve seen. The relationships feel real, particularly between Nana K. and Shoji, and so do the challenges faced—job woes, learning to conserve funds, etc. Even the impromptu concert from the last volume has repercussions in the form of complaining neighbors. Come to think of it, this is probably why so many class this series as josei.
2. Nana Komatsu has finally won me over. Sure, she can still be kind of ditzy, but I really like how much she gets into helping Nana O. find bandmates. Last volume, she mentioned that her life was still missing something, and here she implies that Nana O. supplied it—a dream. Nana K. still doesn’t know what she wants to do with herself, so she’s devoting her energies to helping Nana O.’s dream come true and doesn’t notice that Shoji’s feeling neglected.
3. The narration. Is this new with this volume? I didn’t notice it before. In any case, I am a big fan of devices like this. An older (and seemingly wiser) Nana K. looks back fondly upon this time in her life and hints, too, that she might still be living in that apartment, but that Nana O. no longer is. So now I’m left wondering what happened to her—did she make it big? Did something else happen? Suggestions that the author does have a goal in mind will always be something I appreciate.
About the only complaint I could make is that the slang is still pervasive. It makes me sigh to read a line like “Don’t your ‘rents hook you up, dude?” in something so otherwise excellent.
I really enjoyed your reviews of the first three volumes here. Heh, reading this one in particular, I feel like it could have been written in my own brain while reading. Everything makes me go, “Yes, exactly.” 😀
Thanks!
I enjoy writing NANA reviews because there’s always so much going on in each volume that I have no shortage of things to comment on. Sometimes it can be a struggle. “Well, they fought that guy and that other guy and they still didn’t find that thing. But it was a fun volume anyway!” 🙂