Nana 21
Posted: July 10, 2010 Filed under: Nana 3 Comments »Ai Yazawa – Viz – 2010 – 21+ volumes
Unfortunately, Ai Yazawa went on an extended hiatus for unspecified health reasons a little over a year ago… and was actually in the hospital for about ten months, apparently, and doesn’t know when or if she’ll be able to draw again. That’s most heartbreaking, and I do hope she is well again.
This volume… I don’t know if it’s a terrible place to leave Nana, or one of the best. Words fail me when it comes to the content. When I saw what happened at the end of the last volume, I was sure it was bad, since this series takes its drama very seriously, but I didn’t think it was going to be nearly as bad as it looks. It was.
I’ve got no commentary to offer here. For such an event, this is one of the most raw and human takes I’ve ever seen of it. Nothing is glossed over or honored, we just get the very rough aftermath. It’s how me or anyone else would react in this situation, and for realism, as always, Ai Yazawa is the absolute best. But all the same. Not only do I not want to spoil it, I just have nothing to say that would inform this. It’s heartbreaking. Sad. One of the saddest volumes of manga I’ve ever read, and there’s nothing else.
But what if this was the last volume? As far as loose threads go, Nana is still gone in the present, but we’ve found out what the gathering is for. There are some insights from the characters that ring as true as anything else, and it feels like a good, if absolutely bleak and sad, place to leave things. Actually, there are lots of loose threads, because Nana hasn’t left in the past yet, although we can assume why she does at this point. I think most of the unfinished business was stuff I could fill in without being told, other than the reunion in the present, and all the final thoughts the characters offered at the end here… felt right. As did the unfinished business. Because, if nothing else, Nana has always been very reality-based, and how often do you get a happy ending with all the loose threads tied up?
This is the most crushing emotional low for the characters yet. That it was still 100% more worth reading than almost anything else in my to-read pile is an absolute testament to the strength of both Nana and Ai Yazawa.
What an awesome series.
Yes, Nano O is a tragic figure. There are few works which manage to be so wrenching and yet so wonderfully articulated. Without reserve I would put it a level of a contemporary Tess of the d’Urbervilles or similar literary tragic vision.
But I see a mega meta-tragedy if the Nana cycle is not continued. This is a transcendent work. Not merely a pop cultural phenomenon that was inspirational to an entire generation of young women who dreamed of striking out on their own in the metropolis. Rather, millions of readers have made an intellectual investment in the characters of Nana. The members of Trapnest and Blast live beyond the page. To leave it incomplete is something unnecessarily cruel.
Let’s pray for Yazawa-san to return to full health and creative generation!
I was very glad to have the exercise room to myself for this volume, so I could cry without reservation as I used the stair machine until I just couldn’t anymore . . .
I agree: Yazawa’s handling of the drama was raw and honest and gentle and sympathetic and shock-y and all the more impressive for it. It really took me back to the sudden death I was closest to; very evocative but not manipulative. The lack of hysteria made the gut punches all the more powerful. Whew.
I think I need some Hayate the Combat Butler or Yakitate Japan now, or I’ll want to obsessively go back through and read out only the “present” bits of Nana (or possibly the whole series), and I don’t have time for that at the moment.
Something that just occurred to me – if Ai Yazawa ever recovers from her hospitalization and resumes the series, Viz could conveniently resurrect the Shojo Beat line online, like the Shonen Sunday and Ikki Manga. It could fill in the gap left from the dissolution of the Shojo Beat magazine.
Just a thought.