Movie Review: NANA (2005)

by Mike Tiongson

One of the most famed movies from Japan over the past couple of years finally came to Stony Brook University. The Wang Center’s November 29 movie special featured a screening of the movie NANA (2005), starring actress Aoi Miyazaki, and singer/actress Mika Nakashima. The story was originally based on a girl’s manga (Japanese comic book series) created by artist/writer Ai Yazawa and was later turned into a very successful live-action movie, which captured the hearts of adolescent girls (and maybe boys?) across the globe.

The movie NANA is a story about two young girls who travel to Tokyo in hopes of realizing their dreams. One of the girls, Nana Komatsu, journeys to the big city to chase her boyfriend who attends an art university. The other girl, whose first name also being Nana (full name Nana Osaki), goes to Tokyo aspiring to become a great rock star. These two girls with a similar name, but polar opposite personalities, happen to meet each other on a train, and after a series of events, end up living together in the same apartment. The two eventually become great friends despite their differences and are able to give each other the type of friendship, love, and emotional support that guys cannot begin to understand, let alone provide, for a girl.

Nana Komatsu is the seemingly innocent girl of the duo. She is naïve, constantly cheerful, and an all around nice girl. However, she has a bad habit of falling in love at first sight and becoming too attached too quickly to a guy who she is in a relationship with. Even with that much said, her greatest flaw is that she in incapable of being independent and always finds herself in need of help from others. Nana Osaki, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. She is a strong-willed girl with a badass attitude who is the type that could never be pushed around by anyone. Unlike Komatsu, she is even willing to sacrifice her seemingly perfect relationship with her boyfriend, Ren, in order to pursue her singing career. With this type of persona, she compliments Nana Komatsu almost perfectly. While Komatsu is seen as the helpless puppy dog, Osaki is portrayed as the responsible caretaker.

Throughout the movie, the two girls reveal the beauty of true friendship. They are able to portray a love in some ways that is even deeper than romantic love. The girls support each other through the good times and the bad, be it losing a job, finding a place to live, coping with a ruined romantic relationship, or attempting to mend one. Under no circumstances does one girl abandon the other. The two girls portray a bond that many people nowadays can only dream to have- a true friendship that lasts a lifetime.