And Then Came Nana: A Very Teary-Eyed-With-Emotion post

Have you ever read manga? Manga is a comic that you read backwards. *people may want to kill me after that comment*

So, I’ve recently learned how to read manga. *That made me sound stupid, I guess* What I mean is I couldn’t read it before ’cause I would get very nauseous and couldn’t go very further, so I would lose interest and completely stop trying. I didn’t read Sailor Moon, Furuba, Kare Kano, Love Hina… I have watched those though, some are pretty good… But I could never read the manga.

And then came Nana… Nana

The first person that told me I should read Nana was this girl from college. We were taking a class together and *it was SUCH A NICE CLASS that* we would talk about anything during it. So I mentioned I was watching an anime called BECK *pretty cool anime about a band * and she told me I should check another band anime: Nana . I wasn’t really excited about it, but I asked her if she had it. She said she did, but I could never borrow it. *she didn’t say I couldn’t borrow it, it just never happened… Poor thing, made her look bad here.. She’s a really nice girl!!!*

Anyway, I went to my source of manga and anime info *kkx <3* and he said his friend *gai – Gai’s fotolog* really liked it and told me to talk to him about it. His friend wasn’t THE most accessible person at the time, so it took me quite a while to talk to him… And this is what happened when I finally did:

me – Gai, do you know this manga/anime called Nana?
Gai – Nana
me – *wtf does that mean?*
Gai – Ahhh it’s soooo coooool Nana

*Dialog may have been altered due to translation and memory matters… But hey, you’re a smart person, you’ve definitely get the picture*

And he told me about a friend of his that made Nana cosplay *she dresses up like one of the characters* and passed me her fotolog. I did some browsing around the it and I decided the manga was worth a chance *also decided that Gai’s Nana makes a great Nana, but she makes a wicked Corky… That’s a whole other post though*.

As there is no Brazilian publication for Nana, I had to google and find it somewhere… You can read English scanlations for Nana here. As far as I know, Portuguese scanlations stopped around volume 4 (there are almost 20)… I know nothing about Spanish scanlations. I also don’t know about German scanlations *you see, I DO want to understand more than their names perhaps in a few months I’ll know more about it*

What I found out reading Nana is:
1 – One can really get used to the reading backwards thingy;
2 – My nausea came from the smelly paper *it’s like the same as newspaper*, not the messed up reading style;
3 – One can LOAO *laugh one’s ass off* and COHO *cry one’s heart out* with manga;
4 – Mexican soap operas sometimes inspire Manga stories.

Well, I’m preparing a post *4 actually* about Nana There will be (1) an intro to the story, (2) some comments by me and (3) pics *’nough said, you now have three great reasons to read those posts*

The thing is, Nana has opened me to online manga world. I’m curretly reading 3 manga: Naruto (by Masashi Kishimoto) *do not judge me… Title character is annoying, but inner Sakura makes it worth it*, Kagen No Tsuki *a.k.a. Last Quarter, the one that was made into a movie and had L’arc~en~Ciel j-rocker Hyde as member of the cast* (by Ai Yazawa) *I have actually finished this one by now, it’s quite short* and Nana (by Ai Yazawa). Both Naruto and Nana are ongoing, Kagen no Tsuki has been completed.

So, do you read manga? Which ones? If you have an indication, leave it on the comments, I’ll check it out and share my thoughts on following posts!

I guess that’s it… Go check Nana out and be happy! Nana

–

Oh, as he reminded me, special thanks to Perdido’s friend Juuli *she introduced him to Autodrone* and her excellent taste in music

*Edit: I wrote this ages ago!! But never got the images I wanted, so I didn’t post it… Well, I’m through with that… So here it is… And, since I wrote this, Brazilian editor JBC has published a Portuguese version for Nana*