Starring actress Aoi Miyazaki and pop star Mika Nakashima, Kentaro Otani’s 2005 movie adaption of Ai Yazawa’s manga ‘Nana’ endures as a result of it captured one thing uncommon and radical inside Japanese popular culture: feminine friendship that’s messy, intimate and life-changing. Shoujo manga (‘woman comics’) took my friends and I by storm in our childhood. Often, these had been sugary tales about highschool women falling for impossibly excellent males. However Nana was totally different. Yazawa’s sequence felt extra mature, extra sincere, and much more emotionally uncooked than its counterparts.
Sure, it had romance, however its core enchantment – each then and now – lies within the bond between its two protagonists: Nana Osaki, a punk rock singer chasing fame on her personal phrases, and Nana Komatsu (affectionately nicknamed Hachi), who is consistently looking for love, usually at her personal expense. They turn into one another’s emotional anchor as they attempt to outline themselves by means of trend, work, and each other. That is the place Nana finds its actual love story.
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Their journey in Otani’s movie begins with a probability assembly on a snowbound practice to Tokyo, the place they bond over their shared identify and low-cost beer. When Hachi naively proposes a toast to her boyfriend’s artwork college acceptance, Nana refuses, selecting as an alternative to cheers to their serendipitous assembly. This refined declaration that males shall not be the point of interest of their relationship units the tone for all the things that follows.
Hachi’s comfortable narration weaves by means of the story with the air of somebody recalling their old flame: “Hey Nana, do you bear in mind the primary time we met? I imagine in issues like destiny. So, I assume it was destiny.” The movie lingers within the quiet, wordless acts of care, scenes the place the ladies watch over one another with affection or concern: a silent embrace late within the night time; the intimate ritual of making use of make-up collectively; a heat physique to lean on within the chilly. At one level, Hachi jokes that Nana is extra like a boyfriend than a girlfriend, but Otani by no means masculinises her to justify the depth of their bond. As an alternative, Hachi is discovering the effectively of affection that may be present in platonic companionships. The digital camera usually catches them in reflection – mirrors, practice home windows, glass – as if every lady is each the opposite’s echo and escape.
Because the story unfolds, their personalities bleed into one another drip by drip. Nana’s anger softens; Hachi’s optimism hardens. Nana is a prickly, lonely determine, carrying the residue of a fractured childhood and deferred desires. Performed by Nakashima with an arresting stillness, she strikes to Tokyo out of spite, decided to succeed as a singer. In distinction, Hachi is a self-described airhead, but Miyazaki’s earnest efficiency imbues the character with heat, making her insecurities really feel painfully relatable. Earlier than assembly Nana, her life orbits round her boyfriend, Shoji. Her solely ambition is to be a housewife, and she or he tries to play the half: apron on, smile fastened, determined for his validation. However each interplay between the 2 of them leaves us with the realisation that he solely tolerates her presence and is undeserving of her devotion.
After catching Shoji embracing one other lady, Hachi’s naivety lastly breaks. The neediness that when outlined her dissolves and is changed by a flicker of Nana’s defiance. The person on the centre of her world turns into somebody she not needs in her sight. Led by Nana by means of Tokyo’s darkish, wintry streets, she stumbles into independence like a deer taking its first unsure steps.
