Nana v5 p81

I’ve already written about this title in this manga series, but I really wanted to talk more about one short sequence, covering two-thirds of page 81 of volume 5 of Ai Yazawa’s Nana. Obviously there are huge problems in talking about four panels over 1,000 pages into a long story, but I love this sequence so much that I can’t resist taking a shot at it.

Yazawa studied fashion illustration at college (and college fashion is the subject of her excellent other series, Paradise Kiss), which I mention in case you think Nana Osaki, in the foreground of the first panel, looks absurdly skinny – pretty much everyone in her work tends towards this elongated shape. It is worth mentioning that her new exercise regime is prompted by an agonistic impulse towards the singer in her ex’s new band: Nana wants to increase her lung capacity to make her own singing more powerful.

NB: Read right to left, and that includes the order of word balloons (but not the words in them, obviously). And sorry the scan isn’t very good – it’s a bit better if you click for a larger version.

Flatmate Nana Komatsu stands in the doorway, blankly watching Nana O do sit-ups with arms obscuring her eyes, as she is not noticing Nana K at this point: the ellipsis word balloon is a major device in manga, indicating a pause in a way that no word balloon would, controlling timing, although here you couldn’t help but notice Nana K’s stillness. The next panel starts with another such ellipsis, this from Nana O as she watches Nana K’s rather ugly and totally unsuccessful attempt to copy her, inhuman strain showing in her stiff body and hideously distorted face. Frowning, Nana O says “You don’t have to do this,” and you know the tones are very cynical, with a dash of amusement, maybe even a touch of fondness – I admit that knowing the characters informs this, but I’m not convinced it is readable, even within this tiny fragment of context, any other way.

Nana K flops back as if exhausted from her one failed attempt, saying “I wanna be hot when I snag a new boyfriend” with a little heart at the end of her words. Nana K is an immensely upbeat young woman, and while we see romantic, happy feelings in that, we also see her insecurity in the word “snag”, an implication of her needing to contrive her way to a boyfriend, to trick and trap someone into liking her. She is seeing emulating Nana O as a way towards this – she sees her flatmate as exciting, glamorous, sexy, in a way that she isn’t.

Nana O’s “All right… Well, get going, then,” caps this moment of physical comedy perfectly, unmistakeably blending her sardonic style with some gently mocking humour. For the final panel in this short excerpt, we switch back to a more realistic mode of drawing, as Nana K imagines she might entice Yasu, the cool and mature drummer in Nana O’s band, to like her. I confess that, given the changes the characters and their relationships had gone through since (we have 21 volumes now, over 4,000 pages of story, and counting), I had forgotten that she was at this point interested in him. (There’s actually another major moment (one you could arguably select as the most significant in the whole series) just seven pages after this that completely changes all that, another of my favourite moments in the comic, which ends with Nana K thinking, about Nana O, “I felt your love more than a million ‘thank you’s. You made my day, my year, my life.” This sequence, with so much extreme emotion going through Nana K’s mind in a moment, almost brings tears to my eyes every time I look at it.)

The switches in mood are typical of Yazawa’s brilliant artwork in this series: start in a realistic mode, kind of glamorous-sexy, flip to comedic cartoony exaggeration for a couple of panels, then to a romantic image. She’s as comfortable and confident in romance comic mode as Tezukaesque cartooning or gig scenes that strongly evoke Jaime Hernandez. Her layouts never seem to be repeated, and I can’t think of a single case where I thought she might have misjudged a page design, a storytelling flow, a panel size or composition or a stylistic switch.

I find this a hugely funny scene, bringing out an awful lot about both characters and their relationship in just four panels, showing her artistic range and unerring judgement, even virtuosity. What is important to get across here is that while this is a favourite page of mine, she is ALWAYS this good, and it’s why Nana is by now probably my favourite comic book series ever.

Rereading this page and the few after it that I mention above makes me feel like embarking on a reread of the whole series – except as of #21 it very much feels as if we are approaching a major breaking point (I fear she may even end the series soon, though I hope that isn’t the case), and I think I will make myself resist until then.