Nana Komatsu
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Nana Komatsu (小松 奈々 Komatsu Nana?) is a fictional character in the manga/anime series, NANA, by Ai Yazawa. She is the titular "Nana" of the series, along with Nana Osaki.
To disambiguate between the girls, the English-language publisher of the manga, VIZ Media, uses Nana K. to refer to Nana Komatsu.
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[edit] Character
Komatsu came to Tokyo, looking to find her dream. Unlike Osaki, Komatsu came from a large and happy household, though her childish outlook prevented her from living on her own initially. She's the middle child of three sisters.
Her chance encounter with Osaki began a friendship which changes Komatsu's life forever. She is introduced to Osaki's band, Black Stones, and their members (Nobuo Terashima and Yasushi Takagi initially). She later even helps "Blast" to find their bassist, by drawing a poster to advertise the vacancy. Much to her surprise, she also discovers that the members of Blast were friends with the members of Trapnest, a popular rock band of which she's a very big fan. After learning of Osaki's breakup with Honjo Ren, she helps the two to reconnect after realizing that they were still very much in love with each other.
In the early stages of the manga, Nana was dating Shoji Endo, until he cheated on her with Sachiko, a co-worker at the restaurant where he works. After this he chooses to stay with Sachiko as she stood up for him when Osaki threaten to beat him up. But its hinted that they still have some feelings for each other, as shown in their meeting after Komatsu entered an engagement with Takumi.
After Shoji, Komatsu found herself caught between two men: Takumi Ichinose, the leader of Trapnest, and Nobu, the guitarist of Blast (Osaki's band). Komatsu discovers she is pregnant (revealed in chapters 25 and 26), and although she loves Nobuo, she realizes that Takumi would be in a better position to care for her and her unborn child. Her child would be named Sachiko but in the end turned out to be Satsuki.
She is now the wife of Takumi (initially in name only, for Takumi delayed their wedding because of Osaki's engagement to Ren) and expecting a child. Her married name throughout the series is Nana Ichinose (一ノ瀬 奈々 Ichinose Nana?). She hopes that she will be able to live happily. Her nickname is "Hachi" - a shortened version of Hachikō because she always tries to be kind and faithful to her friends, like the dog from the Hachikō legend. (Hachi means eight in Japanese, and the kanji for seven can be pronounced as 'nana'. This also clears up confusion between the two Nanas.) A running gag in the series is for Hachi to suddenly sprout a pair of dog-like ears and a tail whenever she's very happy.
With the reporters of SEARCH (a paparazzi magazine) snapping photos of Ren and Reira together alone, Takumi decided to do some manipulating by revealing his relationship with Komatsu to SEARCH, who decided to run that news instead. As such, the couple was formally married.
However, trouble was brewing. SEARCH's photographer decided to show Hachi photos of Nana's birth mother. Hachi then travels to Osaka to uncover the truth for herself.
[edit] Personality
As noted above, due to her sheltered raising, Nana Komatsu is initially a rather childish and self-absorbed person. She relied heavily on Saotome Junko, a high school friend of hers.
When it comes to relationships, Hachi has fallen in (and out of) love many times. The first man she ever slept with was Asano Takashi, who was a lot older than her. During a chance encounter in Tokyo, she comically warned him not to cheat again. However, like her subsequent exes, she could only forget about him totally after being together with another guy (in this case, Shouji).
Though very capable of great acts of kindness and caring for her friends, and even strangers, Hachi tends to be very self-absorbed at times failing to take into consideration the feelings of others. Though her friends care for her deeply, they sometimes seem to think of her as burdensome as well.
[edit] Voice actors and live-action actresses
- In the PS2 game, she's voiced by Rumi Shishido.
- In the anime, she's voiced by Midori Kawana, alias KAORI.
- In the first live-action movie, she's portrayed by Aoi Miyazaki. Since Miyazaki turned down the offer to appear in the sequel, Yui Ichikawa replaced her as Hachi.
[edit] Trivia
- The covers of the manga series depict her activities with Osaki, which includes meeting her in apartment 707, shopping and watching a movie, among others. Also, she does not appear on the cover of volume 1, which is her only absence so far.
- Her birthday is on 30 November, 1980 (She celebrated her 21st birthday on 30 November 2001, which is featured in volume 16.)
