Talentless Nana

[ There are going to be some massive spoilers in this review as it’s impossible to criticize this show without giving away massive plot points] Talentless Nana is a wasted potential if I ever saw one. It builds up everything in its favour in the first episode, only to discard it in the subsequent ones. Although the concept works, the execution and the characters, especially the characters, don’t. The show is a murder mystery, but not for us. We already know “whodunnit” in the first episode, but the characters don’t. It’s set in a world where some children manifest superhuman abilities, and are sent to aremote island to train their powers to perfection in order to defeat the ‘Enemies of Humanity’; but little they know, they are the very force they’re training to fight against. Yes, that’s right, the “heroes” are the “enemies”, and an assassin is sent to the island, by some government officials, to kill them off before they become aware of this fact; but little did the officials know that developing superpowers makes you dumb as fuck and all of the children would probably perish via the process of natural selection. The characters are literally dumber than kindergarteners. It’s like they left their brains at home before coming to this island. Nana, the main character and an assassin, is talentless, i.e has no superpowers and has to convince everyone that she has one using her superb deductive skills. She masquerades as a person who can read minds. The premise is interesting, really interesting, but what drags this show down is undeniably the mentally challenged characters. They just don’t care. They don’t give two shits if someone dies, or if someone goes missing. One bullshit explanation from Nana is all it takes for them to channel their inner simp and believe her instantly. Think I’m exaggerating? Consider the following scenario. A transfer student arrives at your high school. She starts hanging around a guy. The next day the guy is absent. And the day after that, and the day after that too. Turns out he’s dead. Also, in the meantime another guy dies and he was also seen hanging around the transfer student. Another one dies, and this time the transfer student is literally caught with the dead body. Now, using just 1% of your brain, who do you think is the most sus? The transfer student, right? WRONG! She couldn’t do it. Because how could she? She’s so cute and also the class leader. I just described the first 5 episodes of the show and except one guy no one even suspects her. The only guy who does suspect her, Kyoya, is my favourite character and my hero. He managed to defeat his inner simp and bonk away his horniness for justice. I kid but I really do feel like Kyoya is the only good character in the series. Nana is simply annoying at times and I’m not going to reiterate what I already said about the majority of the cast. The mysteries themselves are pretty good. I could see that the author was especially inspired by Detective Conan as the show makes many references to DC. What bothered me most about the series, besides the idiot characters, is the show’s reliance on coincidence. Nana is saved countless times by sheer luck, or should I call it plot? She accidentally leaves an incriminating picture of hers in a room, but Kyoya doesn’t find that very picture when he searches that room. Kyoya has been portrayed as a methodical and scrupulous person, but turns out when plot calls characterisation can just jump off a cliff. Michiru, the dumbest bitch to ever exist, literally sees Nana in a picture killing a guy, but does absolutely nothing about it. Some stupid explanation from Nana about “how the picture is not true” is all it takes for her to believe Nana. Seriously, when I say the characters believe in Nana, it's almost similar to how religious people believe in their God. Countless times in the series she’s not able to read minds, and even though it’s her supposed power, and no one bats an eye. She can pull some random stuff out of her ass about how “her power comes and goes” and no one thinks anything of it. Remember, this is a girl who’s been allegedly involved in 4 murders while having no alibi for any of them. As I stated above, even though the braindead characters reduce some enjoyability, the actual mystery is really good at times. I especially like the whole arc when Nana kills the necromancer girl and how she would get out the events following that. The whole event was well planned out and didn’t feel forced. I was genuinely intrigued during the resolution of that case. This show could’ve done so much more if it had some better characters and the characters had better judgement. We get some backstory for Nana, and it felt like the author wanted to make her story really tragic, but it backfired as the whole thing is narrated by Nana which felt more like the author’s attempt at fulfilling his obligation towards us instead of creating a compelling case for his character. Same thing goes for the exposition we get about Michiru’s life before she arrived at the island. The animation and music are nothing special. The music was tone deaf at times. Tl;dr As I said earlier the concept is really good, but bad execution, dumb cast, weak character work really hurt this show in the worst way possible.

By now you’ve probably heard Munou na Nana described as the “among us” anime. While this doesn’t completely sum up the series, it’s a pretty good introduction to the world. I’ll preface by saying Munou na Nana is one of the only manga I actively enjoy reading these days. So when I found out that it was getting an anime adaptation I had pretty high expectations for the series. I believe those expectations were met and came away with this in my top four shows of the season. What makes this series so special for me is that Nana is a morally grey character. A lotof times we tend to see the world as right and wrong, black and white, etc., when in reality it’s usually grey. Everyone is evil from someone’s point of view, and this anime and manga really test your ability to accept other perspectives. If you judge Nana from the perspective of her classmates, you will find her to be an evil character. If you put yourself in her shoes, you see that things are not quite that simple. On top of the moral ambiguity, the arc that the anime covers is really a battle of wits. It’s Nana vs Kyoya as she races to complete her task of eliminating the students, while he gradually closes in on her. I think the tension between the two throughout the season is amazing. The internal monologues that detail the characters’ strategies that allow you to gain an insight and understand their actions really well. There’s no leaps in logic because everything is explained to you piece by piece. I’ve never seen it, but I’ve been told there’s a lot of similarities between Nana and Death Note in this regard, so if you liked that, you’d probably like this. Art and animation are solid enough. This isn’t a battle shonen, so I don’t expect super fluid animation, but when needed it’s more than adequate. I thought the OP performed by Tomita MIyu was one of the best of the season and the ED is my pick for ED of the season. I thought the OST in general was well put together. In the end, the mental and tactical warfare between Nana and Kyoya provided 12 weeks of consistent entertainment. On more than one occasional you’ll be forced to reconsider whose side you’re on and what’s right and wrong. adapdation wise, I have no issues with the anime, so based on my love of the manga, Munou na Nana gets 10 watches out of 10.

Talentless Nana is a really enjoyable show from start to finish that's unfortunately kneecapped by overly repetitive episode structures and the story being left on an indefinite cliffhanger. (This review is spoiler free with only minor allusions to events of the first episode throughout) Let's start with the good first! Talentless Nana has an incredibly compelling premise, as revealed in episode 1. I can't speak to the details without spoiling things, but rest assured that the gears get turning very quickly and keep you hooked. The plot is rather breakneck in speed by most single season anime standards, and it's honestly a nice refresher from the all-too-commonslogs. The show also quite easily delivers on its promise of suspense. The stakes continually seem to rise and only sometimes read as contrived. Momentum too from episode to episode is preserved really well and it made binging the show in a couple of days a really enjoyable way to consume it. There is a lot more to praise Talentless Nana for, but I fear I'd be overselling what is ultimately an unfinished and unsatisfying experience. As I alluded to above, the show only sometimes reads as contrived; the problem is when that begins and how it persists. After a few mini arcs, the audience learns very quickly the kind of formula that's being utilized to make this show tick. It's not that it gets worse at executing that formula; I actually think the show hits its themes and goals better as it goes on. It's just that by the time it hits its stride, the magic is already gone. The structure of an episode will already have become formulaic enough to be predicted by a viewer early - sometimes even as early as during the cold open. By the time the climax of the show is coming to a head, every plot point seems to just happen because the story needs it to, not because the characters are behaving like rational, reacting beings. Everything just feels too convenient after a while. The characters themselves are mostly whatever. The two leads are easily the most compelling, with the majority of the others being mostly flat, static background noise with varying amounts of screen time. Talentless Nana's biggest weakness, and why these problems are ultimately unforgivable, though, is the way it ends: It doesn't. Like far too many shows that come each season, Talentless Nana is an incomplete adaptation of a manga that has long since moved on and has no indication of a season 2. Any promise the show made has been left undelivered and the show suffers in posterity for it. I'm so tired of anime that serve as little more than extended previews of a manga or light novel series that will never be adapted in its entirety. The show is fun and it's really easy to binge, but it amounts to nothing. If I ever want to see the conclusion to this story, I'm going to have to read the manga, and that's just exhausting. This is a series that had the potential to go out with a triumphant bang and is instead an unfinished, sputtering whimper.

I have years of anime and hundreds of series under my belt. I speak Japanese, have lived in Japan, and have watched anime from 12 until my current age (almost 40). So, let me say with as much experience as a person can have, approaching anime from the multiple different angles it can be approached from, and having tons of experience - socially as well as linguistically- this is the single worste anime I have EVER seen. I got trapped into watching it because I thought there might be some clever way all the stupidity might tie into some big reveal. Spoiler* it doesn't. Ican't even express how much I hate this anime. It might be the worst piece of trash ever made. Do not waste your time!