The seven different versions of Nana have different seiyuu, and I have to say they were cast pretty well. Their voices are similar enough to be believable, but different enough to give them personality. But sometimes some or all of the Nanas speak in unison, and I simply don't believe that they could get all of them to speak so closely the same. It sounds like they took just one voice and electronically distorted it to make it sound like a group.

I wonder whose voice they're using? Probably it's Mizuki Nana, since she's the star of the show, but that's by no means certain.

Nanapon continues to be very strange. At the beginning of ep 6, she's running around in a miko costume offering to put a curse on a teacher who was mean to Nana that day at school.

And I wouldn't want to bet she couldn't do it, especially with the help of the purple power prism (her color).

Having a nutcase in the story always helps in comedic series, and Nanapon is it for this one.

UPDATE: I'm watching the 7th episode now, and it's breaking out of a couple of ruts I was afraid they were going to get into. First, is that for a change there's conflict within the group but it isn't 6 against Nana. This time it's Nanachi who's the victim.

A different thing I was afraid of is that there are three nasty girls who are always together and who also often speak in unison. I was afraid they'd get on my nerves, or make Nana miserable.

They're bad guys, I guess, but mostly they're used for comic relief. So far, at least, they haven't bothered me too much. They're losers, for one thing. And they aren't very formidable. Nor very good looking. Nor very smart. Nor very resourceful. And they have flat chests. Which, I guess, is why they are unformidable losers. (No, not the flat chests. Well, maybe.) Moving right along...

Sometimes when the Nanas have to choose one of them for something, they do janken. Which brings up an interesting question.

In Adventures of Minigoddess, one of the things Urd does is to create copies of her chibi self. In one of the episodes, in fact, she ends up creating hundreds of them, and a bunch of them rebel. One group of Urds ends up fighting a war with the other group of Urds, and they eventually fight to a draw. The two leader Urds decide to settle it with janken, and the game goes on forever because both of them think exactly the same way. Aiko desho! Aiko desho! Aiko desho! Aiko desho! Aiko desho! Aiko...

Since the seven Nanas are all slightly different, I guess that's not a problem here. But another example from a different anime show, to explain the other problem:

One of the weirder episodes of Martian Successor Nadesico involves all (or most) of the women on the Nadesico participating in a beauty contest to select a new captain for the ship. The managers back home are tired of having Yurika in charge. Anyway, cutting to the chase, the contest itself is inconclusive (for reasons I won't explain) and so it gets settled with a janken tournament. Given that Yurika is a genius at strategy and tactics, she cleans up and thus continues on as Captain.

So, if all the Nanas are different, why doesn't Nanasama (the brainy one) win all the time? Two possibilities: either the Nanas aren't actually all that different (which I think is true; their characteristics only are apparent by contrast to each other), or Nanasama doesn't actually want to win all the time. Which could also be true.

Of course, the third possibility is that I'm overthinking this.

So far I'm very happy with this series. I just wonder if there's really enough juice in this story to satisfactorily fill 26 episodes.

UPDATE: Another thing that's interesting is that they're using a lot of Scott Joplin in the soundtrack. I think it works, too. It's refreshing, and it does tend to support a light feel to the show. Joplin isn't ponderous and certainly isn't slow or depressing.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in at 07:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 703 words, total size 4 kb.