Sleep Is For the Weak

Rated M for adult situations, nudity, and fairly graphic (but not pornographic) sex; super awesome pink official website

The first volume of Nana is amazing. It consists of two self-contained short stories that introduce the two main characters before they meet. In a single volume of manga, Ai Yazawa managed to make me understand and sympathize with characters I would usually hate, showed me the way they think and the things they believe, and very clearly followed both of them through a major growing-up period in their lives. It’s really good stuff, and I’d recommend it to anyone.

The second volume of Nana is about buying furniture. I couldn’t get through it, and I ended up dropping the series for years.

About a month ago, I decided to give Nana another chance. I read all eleven volumes that are available in English, and like my impressions of the first two volumes, my opinions on the next chunk of the series are pretty mixed.

First, the good. The major characters in Nana are extremely believable. Ai Yazawa has created a cast of layered individuals who vary between sympathetic and pathetic, lovable and irritating the same way real people do. There are no heroes or villians in Nana, no bizarre one-note characters introduced to move the story along, just a bunch of messed up people hurting each other through that non-malicious, self-centered cruelty that everyone’s guilty of on occasion. It’s one of the most realistic character stories I’ve ever read, and I am really impressed by Ai Yazawa’s character building abilities.

Unfortunately, the characters that the mangaka built so realistically end up being pretty unpleasant as of a few volumes in. It might be partially the length of the series (19 volumes and counting in Japan – way longer than any of Ai Yazawa’s previous works), but the characters seem to lose sight of their respective goals pretty quickly. The longer the story goes on, the more the major characters wallow in their bad qualities and the less they try to work toward anything. I like the way Nana’s characters make more mistakes from putting themselves first or being passive than from more exaggerated character flaws, but after a while I start to wish that somebody, anybody, would come out and do something to change things – start a real confrontation, make an ultimatum, even just cut someone destructive out of his or her life. Yes, the paralysis and self-destructive inaction the characters in Nana go through is realistic, but it could be equally realistic if even a single character made a real attempt to think or act differently. The first volume of the manga is about two young women figuring out what they actually want out of life and taking the first steps to get it. So why is it that in volume 11 both Nanas are still doing the same stupid shit they swore they’d stop doing in volume 1? Girly Nana’s awful relationships just get worse and worse through her own selfishness and stupidity until she ends up trapped in the worst of them, and Punk Nana, despite her original plan to become more independent, ends up depending constantly on a small group of friends and still can’t manage to be happy without her man. Any realistic story would have to acknowledge the difficulty of changing your nature, and I like the point that deciding on a course of action and sticking to it are two very different things. But after a while neither Nana seems interested in doing anything but wallowing in her own problems and taking the path of least resistance. If the major characters don’t seem to care what kind of people they are, why should I?

As I said before, one of the things I like about Nana is that the characters and their interactions are very realistic. But now the mangaka seems bent on ruining even that. For example, here’s a quote from volume 11 that was presented as a big revelation:

“They were together since [character] was born… at the same orphanage.”

So what’s next? Characters haunted by the deaths of their pure, innocent sisters? Long-lost brothers turned evil just waiting to be revealed? I think it’s obvious from reading Nana that the mangaka wants it to be taken more seriously than your average piece of melodramatic fluff, so why is she intent on making every cynical part of my brain roll my eyes right out of my head?

Educated Impression: I’m being very harsh on Nana in part because the last few volumes in English have contained so much more bad than good. The goodwill I felt towards this series after some of the better volumes is finally wearing thin. At this point, I’m not quite frustrated enough to stop reading each volume as it comes out, but I’m getting there – all I can say is, volume 12 had better be something special. (NotHayama)

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