"Hi there and thanks a lot for visiting my blog. DFTBA!"

2/28/2012

Manga Tuesdays; NANA

Hello everybody!
So... I'm new here....
Yeah...
Nice...
....
Urm, let's start my first review ever!

Manga: NANA
Written by: Ai Yazawa
Genres: Shoujo, Mature, Drama, Romance, Music, Comedy, Slice of life (I personally think it's more like a tragedy though...)
Volumes:  21 (84 chapters)
Anime: Yes (it's not as good as the manga, it misses the humour), there is also a movie
own/ library/ borrowed
 (Well actually I just own 11 volumes, but I'm still collecting them. There are just 14 volumes in Dutch though. The rest of the volumes I read online via the sites: www.manga.animea.net and  http://www.mangareader.net )
completed/ ongoing, and maybe forever TT_TT, because while Ai Yazawa was writing this story she got seriously ill. Luckily she has recovered, but she still hasn't decided if she will continue NANA or not!
publisher: shueisha

Note: This was the very first manga I have ever read and I still haven't found a manga that could beat this one. (This also might be the case because I have read every volume I own like eight times.)

Summary:
NANA is the story of two different girls who share the same name, Nana. They come from completely different worlds and have unanimously different personalities. Oosaki Nana is a proud woman whose dream is to sing, and Komatsu Nana is a fickle girl whose dream is to love. Together they bump amongst the stone covered road called life; with or without each other. Like other beautifully structured Ai Yazawa works, Nana unfolds in such a beautiful breakdown of human nature that inspires the readers' minds and leaves an impression of one of the most convincing love stories ever to be written.
(from manga.animea.net)

Review:
As I already said: I really, really, really, really love this story.
It starts really happy, like every normal shoujo manga, but then something happens (I'm not going to spoil it) and everything changes.
Really, after volume seven I cried until volume 14... (I must say, I cry quite fast and I really love each and every character in NANA, I know all of their life stories and so on, so for me this was a difficult moment :(   ) and from then on the story gets a hell of a lot more serious. But Ai Yazawa still manages to add some humour to the story, so I had quite a few times that I laughed while tears were running down my face.

What I really like about Ai Yazawa's writing style is that she doesn't make the characters perfect. In most Shoujo mangas the characters are perfect, even their mistakes are perfect and I think that's super annoying. Anyway in Nana are the characters quite realistic, of course their daily life is a bit more exciting than that from most of us, but that's why there is no story written about my life -__-
The only thing that I don't like about the story, but what does make it more realistic is the fact that there doesn't really happen a lot. In all the 84 chapters just 2 major events happen, which is, as you probably know if you sometimes read shoujo manga, not really a lot (usually you get a new event every 4 chapters or so).  

Rating:
5 stars

Some things about manga for non-manga readers :P :

Manga is a Japanese cartoon or comic. There are lots of them in all kind of different genres (really from porn to manga for little girls). Of most mangas there is a new chapter released every month, so that's why some are ongoing.
If you are too lazy to read, of most mangas there is an anime to watch ;)
If you consider reading manga pay attention! Manga is written from right to left!

some terms:
Shoujo= Manga for mostly teenage girls (it can be very childish, it can be really mature)
Shounen= Manga for mostly teenage boys (example: Naruto )
Josei= Manga for older women (the manga site says: late teenage and adult audiences, this is usually because the characters in the manga are not in high school anymore, this doesn't mean it's not fun to read if you are younger)
Seinen= Manga for older men (also for late teenage and adult audiences, also usually fun to read if you're younger)
School life= is sometimes quite interesting because the japanese school life seems very different than what I am used to
Shoujoai= girls love
Shounenai= boys love
Yuri = let's just say: the more advanced version of girls love
Yaoi= the more advanced version of boys love


Love, Lua

No comments: