NANA

Original title: girl Characters: Nana Osaki, Nana "Hachi" Komatsu, Ren Honjo, Yasushi "Yasu" Takagi, Nobuo Terashima, Shinichi "Shin" Okazaki, Takumi Ichinose, Layla "Reira" Serizawa, Naoki Fujieda, Junko "Jun" Saotome, Mai "Misato" Tsuzuki Author: Ai Yazawa Production: Madhouse Directed by: Morio Asaka

Country: Japan Year: 5 April 2006 Broadcast in Italy: January 23, 2007 Gender: Comedy Episodes: 47 mm Duration: 23 minutes Recommended age: Teenagers aged 13 to 19

The Japanese cartoon (anime) Nana is based on the manga comic of Ai Yazawa, which in his country has achieved such incredible success that it has become the biggest media phenomenon of the last 10 years. Published in Japan in 1999 in the Cookie magazine, in Italy it became famous in 2002, after its publication on Planet Manga. Now the DVD release is expected, scheduled for March 28, 2007 by Dynamic Italia and a boom in sales is expected, since the DVD has sold over 150.000 copies only with its first international release. Due to its themes, the cartoon is aimed at an adult audience.

The story tells the life of two girls sharing the same name Nana (which in Japanese means "seven"), of the same age and the same melancholy, albeit with decidedly different personalities.
Nana Komatsu is a 20-year-old girl, cheerful, romantic and dreamer who has had some bad sentimental experiences, as she was engaged to Asano, a man already married and much older than her. Later Nana (nicknamed Hachi), enrolled in the Postgraduate School of Fine Arts, meets Shoji, a boy who is introduced to him by his friend Junko, with whom he establishes a beautiful friendship. With the passage of time in Shoji, a feeling of love arises towards Nana, but she seems to ignore it. Meanwhile Junko gets engaged to Kyosuke, Shoji's friend and both decide to leave for Tokyo in order to participate in the admission exam to the Academy of Fine Arts. Shoji also decides to leave and Nana, feeling suddenly alone, decides to join him. .

Nana Osaki is instead a girl with a tough and rebellious character as her mother abandoned her at the age of 7, to follow a man. Nana Osaki then lived with her grandmother, who represented everything to her, until the day she died. This created a huge void in her, which led her to interrupt her studies and change her life. Together with his schoolmates Nobu, Ren Honjo and Yasushi Takagi they found a rock band called Black Stones, better known as Blast and Nana becomes the lead singer. The group performs in the nightclubs of the city, where it obtains some success and Nana falls in love with Ren, the bassist of the group, also abandoned by his parents and raised in a boarding school. After a short but intense cohabitation relationship, Ren decides to move to Tokyo as he has been hired by the Trapnest musical group. The two are then forced to break up, as Nana decides to continue singing with Blast. Ren is replaced by guitarist Shinichi Okazaki and in this period of great suffering, Nana is supported by the friendship that binds her to Yasushi Takagi and Nobuo Terashima. Later, however, she too decides to leave for Tokyo to start a new life.

Nana Komatsu and Nana Osaki meet in the same compartment of the train that will take them to Tokyo and due to the snow that creates slowdowns, the girls begin to talk and discover all the things they have in common starting from the same name. As soon as they arrive in Tokyo, the girls lose sight of each other as Hachi meets Shoji, who runs to meet her, who has passed the entrance exam for the Academy. Ironically, the two girls meet again just as they are about to rent the same apartment, but they both don't want to give it up, so they decide to live together. Initially the coexistence of the two girls is not the best, as all the diversity of their suffering and melancholy characters emerge, but in the end it will be precisely these difficulties that will make them become inseparable friends and help each other in the course of their life experiences

All the characters and images of Nana are copyright Madhouse / Ai Yazawa / Shueisha and are used here for cognitive and informative purposes.