Nana

A very oblique Policy Police influence this... Though I put snow in the current story because of Nana. I thought coldness was important for this story, chill winds and all that.

I've been reading the manga Nana since the Spring, then got a Region-free DVD of the anime series. I came to Nana by a roundabout route as I normally wouldn't have sought out Shojo (girls') manga. It's a story of the friendship between two young women, both called Nana, set against a background of sex and drugs and rock-and-roll.

I'm really fond of this manga cuz everybody's flawed in really human ways. It's something I try to bring into Policy Police, but this really shows how it should be done. The artist and writer of Nana, Ai Yazawa, was taken ill about a year ago and spent several months in hospital, so the manga has "paused" at quite a critical moment.

Anyway. Cuz I was in need of more Nana, I hacked my DVD player to make it Region-free, so I can watch Region 1 stuff now. So I got the first Nana (live action) movie and watched it last night. I was really impressed with the casting - I could watch these people and convince myself that they really were the 2 Nanas and the band, that the manga was drawn with them as models. Because the story had to be cut down for the movie, it focused more on Nana Osaki's back story than on Nana (Hachi) Komatsu's, so perhaps we understand Hachi's motivation a little less. But nice movie, so I'm Nana'd out for a bit and can delay getting the second movie for a while and keep fingers crossed for Yazawa sensei's recovery.