It’s always nice to see comics I like at the top of the charts. It’s even more fun to see two of them there. All-ages charmer Yotsuba&! and Ai Yazawa’s Nana led the Taiyosha list of best-selling manga for the week ending Aug. 23 (found via Love Manga).
Yotsuba&! has been getting a fair amount of attention from the blogosphere. Nana, by the creator of the splendid Paradise Kiss, seems to be taking a bit longer to catch on. I haven’t dug too far into the latest issue of Previews, but I was happy to see that the first digest of Nana is set for release. I’m guessing some people are waiting for the tankoubon and aren’t inclined to read it in installments in Shojo Beat.
But for an idea of how big Nana already is, it got glowing coverage in the Financial Times (rather complicated registration required), both for its quality and for the cottage industry that’s popped up around it.
“Nana has become a phenomenon precisely because of its disarming reality. This is not a comic-book filled with one-eyed monsters or perverse S&M fantasies to thrill downtrodden salarymen; rather, it highlights normal, everyday issues such as emotionally absent boyfriends, birth control, the trials of being a young woman in modern-day Japan and (potential spoiler removed). Women identify with one of the two Nanas – or both of them – which is the crux of their appeal.”
Okay, so the writer came uncomfortably close to invoking “tentacle rape.” Given the choice, I’d actually prefer the “big eyes” cliché. Moving on…
“An entire Nana enterprise has been spawned. This autumn, the movie Nana featuring two popular Japanese starlets will be launched; a Nana-themed cafe opened in Shibuya, Tokyo’s teenage hub; a CD of Nana-themed songs has been released, along with a Nana PlayStation 2 game. And those are just some of the officially licensed goods.”
I know the Nanas aren’t giant robots (or at least I strongly suspect they aren’t and will be very surprised if Yazawa takes the story in that direction), and the Financial Times is certainly no Fox News, but it’s always interesting to see the impact of a given title. I wonder how big a splash it will eventually make here?
(Quick question: For those who’ve read it either in scanlation or SB, would you classify Nana as shojo or josei? I’m leaning towards josei myself. Not that the label matters; I’m just curious.)