Disclaimer: This review does not contain spoilers.
Do you want an action packed series that will make any shounen fan cry from excitement? Are you looking for a comedy that will make you piss your pants laughing? Well NANA is none of those things. But if you are looking for a realistic romance drama series with rock music vibes, NANA is your jam. Forget all your 13 ep school romcoms with the love triangles and a kiss on the cheek or handholding as the peak of the series. Forget all your predictable drama shows that build up towards an ending that you can guess from the first 3-4 episodes. This show closely follows the life of all the characters for prolonged periods of time so you can see all their happy moments and them succeeding but also their dark and sad ones.
The basic synopsis is simple (and you can find it in any anime page or wikipedia so i'll be short about it), 2 girls named NANA happen to meet on a train, one of them is a talented musician (vocalist) and she is cool,calm and collected and the other one is childish and wants to leave a rose coloured life with her fiance in Tokyo. Eventually the 2 girls grow pretty close and Nana Osaki (the vocalist) forms a rock band with other lovable characters you meet throughout the show
Let's break the show into the basic interesting things that make it different to other shows and state their pros and cons:
Music: Classic J-rock with a female vocalist and some english lyrics, borderline hard rock (i'm not that well educated on music to explain it better than that but i can give you an example):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYtLk2GwLLs
The comments on the youtube video are disabled so no spoilers from there.
Personally it's my favorite type of music so it's a big plus for me but it's not the only thing this show has to offer.
Drama: There are a lot of heavy dramatic moments spread evenly throughout the anime so it's not the classic format of everything setting for a dramatic ending to get the viewer's high rating cause of feels at the end
Romance: Now we enter the most interesting and unique aspect of NANA for me. The adult cast makes for a show that isn't afraid of breaking taboos and the classic mold of romance anime, meaning it's not afraid to show sexual relationships without being 'ecchi' (a thing i found surprisingly uncommon in most of the anime i watched, even when the cast was age appropriate and it differs a lot to most American TV-shows). The romance feels very realistic cause it shows a lot and the bad aspects of romantic relationships too.
Characters: Now we are getting to a very divided subject among the NANA watchers. Be warned, the show isn't afraid to make its characters take wrong decisions sometimes or not be a "perfect" person. You may or will most likely dislike some of the characters in the proccess, but that's life. If you can't handle the realism and want 'Mary Sue' and 'Gary Stu' characters NANA is definitely not for you.
Arstyle: Classic shoujo artsyle with big eyes and eyelashes and skinny af bodies that might not be everyone's taste. It's unique but i wouldn't say there are ugly frames or bad animation in any part of the show especially for a show that isn't that recent. I personally loved the artstyle and though it fit some of the 'more bubbly' moments of the show without ruining the impact of the sad moments
TL;DR (cause this is getting long)
NANA is one of my favorite anime and that becomes especially apparent when i watch anime that are supposed to be of similar type/genres
Pros: realistic romance, banger music, a breath of fresh air for romance in anime, one of the best shows about realistic friendship through easy and tough times
Possible cons (also consulting non-fans of the show too) : length (not the length of One piece but for a romance show 47 eps are not a few), some stupid character decisions, shoujo artstyle that isn't the most mainstream one. |
