Talentless Nana Chapter 67, Beginning of the Revolution Review: It Finally Happens.

I have been keeping up with the Talentless Nana manga, created by Looseboy and illustrated by Iori Furuya, ever since I finished the anime.
While I have been enjoying the story, for the most part, I did feel that the plot was beginning to get a bit dragged out.
Nana was constantly being framed for crimes she did not commit, followed by her innevitably proving her innocence, and there was even a cliffhanger where she promised to tell Kyoya everything… only to not tell him everything.
With moments like these, it made me wonder how much more story we would have to go through before Nana finally admitted to her crimes and we got to see some substantial fallout from that.
Well, turns out, we did not have to wait long.
I knew I was in for a treat as soon as I saw the title of this chapter, “Beginning of the Revolution”, an on the nose title that perfectly represents the events of the chapter both in reagards to Nana’s beginning revolution against Tsuruouka and Tsuruoka’s fake one to justify taking out the Talented.
Chapter 67 begins with Moe having a dream about her grandmother, finally coming to terms with her death, saying she now has a vague sense of what life is about.
Nana’s efforts to keep Moe from killing and to protect her have really paid off and this is further confirmed when Moe wakes up in the hostpital and Nana affirms their friendship.
However, despite this happy start, “Beginning of the Revolution” quickly follows this up with an event that will clearly shape the story for some time.
The cliffhanger from the last chapter was Nanao arriving to free Soma, and we get the payoff for that here, in gruesome fashion for Soma.
After questioning Soma on his “friendship” with Saijo and the nature of his Talent, Soma admits that it would be dangerous to use his electricity talent in this room because it could cause a “phreatic explosion.”
Nanao says he wants Soma to do it and Soma calls him an idiot because that would kill them both.
Unfortunately for Soma, this is exactly what Nanao wants, minus the killing himself part, just Soma.
Using his Talent, Nanao orders Soma to create this phreatic explosion and cause a major incident to frame the Talented, which is Tsuruoka’s plan, before he leaves Soma to die.
Soma can do nothing but scream for help as he activates his Talent, sealing his fate.
Before we see the result of this act, however, we get the moment Talentless Nana fans have been waiting for forever: Nana’s confession.
Kyouya, Fuko, and Sachiko are wondering why no police invesitgation has been opened up for the numerous murders, including Saijo’s, and Kyouya speculates that the military actually approves of them killing each other.
Nana then marches in and announces that he is right stating, “Talented individuals are the ‘Enemies of Humanity.’ They should be killed off secretly.”
I got chills when I read this moment.
For so long, I and many others had waited for the moment when Nana would confess her to murders and how the military wants to kill all of the Talented and she finally did it.
She leads them all outside and gives a full confession, even taking the blame for Ryuji’s death by creating the environment where was killed, which I never thought of.
Fuko and Sachiko are stunned by this, but Kyouya is as level-headed as ever, taking control of the situation by deducing that Tsuruoka put Nana up to murdering the Talented.
Nana, relieved that Kyouya believes her, offers to tell everyone else about her crimes to get them to evacuate, however, Kyouya points out that they are more likely to swarm her and order her execution for everything she did.
With a panel above showing all the people she murdered and whose deaths she indirectly caused, Nana says she knows this but still looks determined to risk it to protect the other Talented students, showing just how far she has come since the beginning of the story.
Kyouya considers this and then agrees to work with Nana, not because he is on her side, but for the good of all.
They will not have to work alone though because who should show up but none other than Jin, who followed them as a cat before revealing himself.
He tells Kyouya and the others that he can testify about the military’s crimes because of what he went through five years ago.
Kyouya and the others are naturally shocked to see Jin appear as if from nowhere, but what I find most interesting is the actual first interaction between Kyouya and Jin… well, their first interaction where Jin isn’t disguised as a cat.
The reason I was excited to see these two meet is because I am a firm believer in the theory that Jin is secretly Kyouya’s sister.
We know that Jin is not who he appears to be, due to him keeping the real Jin safe because he is in a coma.
So, since Jin’s identity has been built up as a mystery, he is most likely someone important, like Kyouya’s sister.
There have even been some signs that Jin is actually a girl, like when he jokingly asked Tsuruoka if he was inviting him on a date in their first interaction, and he refrences religion a lot, just like the girl in his story who killed people for religious reasons.
Ignoring this, the only other person Jin could be that would have a significant impact on the reader is Nana’s brother but Jin actually mentions him in this chapter, telling Nana he found out some information about him, so that would seem to eliminate that theory.
Speaking of Nana’s brother, though, we will have to wait to find out exactly what it is that Jin discovered about him because, before he can say, he is interrupted by the massive explosion caused by Soma.
The blast is so huge that it looks to have taken out some of the city as well.
So Nanao has graduated from killing Talented people, to apparently innocent civilians as well, which is way worse than anything Nana did, so it will be interesting to see how Nana reacts to have causing Nanao’s descent.
Just as Nana realises that the explosion came from the warehouse Soma was kept in, Tsuruoka arrives, declaring Nana a suspect in this terroist act and placing her under arrest, ending the chapter.
This was a great cliffhanger, unveiling Tsuruoka’s plan to frame the Talented for a terrorist attack to get the public on the side of executing them all so they won’t have to do it covertly anymore.
Sure, this is yet another instance of Nana being framed for something she did not do, but at least it has the variety of coming with her confession to the crimes she did commit and this being the biggest framing of all, considering its for a terrorist attack not just murder.
I wonder if this will end in a fight with Nana and the Talented against the soldiers, or if Nana will go quietly, giving her allies the chance to escape?
Either way, it really feels like we are approaching the final arc of this story, if we’re not in it already.
Nana has confessed to her crimes, Jin has also introduced himself, and Tsurukoa and Nanao have initiated their master plan to frame the Talented for a terrorist attack.
I am eagerly anticipating the next chapter after all of this,

Talentless Nana, Manga Review: Please, Give Us a Season Two.

I really enjoyed the first season of Talentless Nana.
Based on the manga by Looseboy, it was a fun show to watch, where the twist of the very first episode was that the superpowered individuals we were following were actually being hunted down by a normal person to save humanity.
Watching Nana trying to covertly murder all of her classmates, while being constantly under suspicion from wannabe detective Kyouya, only to slowly begin to realize she is killing innocent people, made it extremely fun to tune in every week.
So, once the first season was over, and seeing that it was unlikely we would get a season two because of the lackluster Blu-Ray sales, I decided to give the manga a read and it did not disappoint.
Picking up from where the season one finale ends, the manga details the aftermath of the traumatic events from that finale on Nana’s psyche, and how she slowly comes to realize the full weight of her crimes.
Nana’s character development is great, as is her growing bonds with the other characters, especially Jin, who I have a theory about, which I will get into down below because it contains spoilers.
Back to Nana herself, she has many fantastic moments of growth, especially after yet another traumatizing and horrifying reveal for her that shatters her entire world view and causes her to temporarily snap entirely.
As for the other characters, many of them are very well handled, especially the new and returning characters.
The new main antagonist of the story, Nana’s mentor, Tatsumi Tsuruoka, is a fantastic villain, who gives off a very threatening presence.

This intimidating first panel of Tsuruoka’s face sure makes one hell of an impression.

Although, this praise of the characters being said, the author still has a problem with introducing many of these characters because they are just introduced like they’ve always been there when we’ve never seen them before.
It’s very clear that Looseboy comes up with these characters on the spot.
The only new ones who have a well built in introduction are Tsuruoka, Moe and one other character.
Speaking of which, I’m about to get into spoilers for the manga now so, if you’re anime only, then just take my word for it that the manga is really good and stop reading at this point.
Now then, this other character I’m referring to is actually something I was worried about coming into the manga.
I had heard rumors that the character Nana murders in the first episode, Nanao Nakajima, was actually alive somehow.
When I heard this, I was very much against the idea.
Nanao was a purposeful red herring in that first episode, being a bland protagonist cliche who existed to just get killed by Nana for the twist.
I really wanted the impact of his death to stay and didn’t think his character would be strong enough to get me to like him if he came back.
Well, I shouldn’t have doubted Looseboy because Nanao certainly came back and it was in the best way possible.
I love how he has been crafted into an antagonist for Nana, now that she is finally beginning her redemption arc, which will undoubtedly create a rocky road for this redemption in the future of the story.

Watching Nanao go from cliched Deku clone to bruding villain has been very interesting, to say the least.

Another element of the manga that surprised me was the revelation that Jin is actually, well… not Jin.
“Jin” is just the form he’s been showing to Nana and everyone else to fight them off with telekensis if need be, and he has been keeping the real Jin, who is in a comatose state, safe.
So, who is the fake Jin, then?
Well, this is the part where my theory which I mentioned earlier, comes in.
I believe that the fake Jin is actually Kyouya’s missing sister.
Her Talent was probably Transformation and she used this ability to win the civil war and keep the fake Jin alive, before acting like she was the real Jin to try and uncover the conspiracy.
There are some holes in this theory, like that fake Jin doesn’t really seem to be that interested in Kyouya, which he would be if he was actually Kyouya’s sister, but this could just be to keep him safe.
It will be interesting to see if my theory about Jin is correct or not as the manga goes on.

Whether fake Jin is secretly Kyouya’s sister or not, I’m looking forward to the reveal of who he actually is.

Overall, I would say that the Talentless Nana manga is quite an enjoyable read, despite its problems with features like character introduction.
I hope that, despite the low Blu-Ray sales, a season two will get the green light, so I can see all of the great moments from the manga adapted.

Talentless Nana Anime Review: My Hero Academia Meets Death Note.

Nowadays, whenever someone makes a Talentless Nana reference, you can bet that they’re going to turn it into some kind of Among Us reference, like, “Pink sus!” or something similar.
Well, I think a much more suitable way of describing it (as well as not having been referenced to death) would be to say that, “Talentless Nana is what you would get if your merged Death Note and My Hero Academia into a single story.”
Before I get into what this entails though, I would like to warn some who may have not seen the first episode of Talentless Nana to go and watch it before reading this review.
Trust me, you don’t want the entire surprise premise of this show to be spoiled for you by a review.
Still here?
Ok, so based off the manga by Looseboy, and directed by Shinji Ishihira, the story takes place on an isolated island, where children with super powers known as Talents are taken to be trained to fight the vaguely named “Enemies of Humanity.”
Our main character is supposedly Nanao Nakajima (Hiro Shimono), a one note, Deku clone, who I found it very hard to relate to because of how many times I’ve seen his character done before.
Enter Nana Hiiragi, a new student who supposedly has the ability to read minds and pushes Nanao to be more confident and eventually become the class leader.
Notice how I used the word “supposedly” when talking about how Nanao was the main character and that Nana could read minds?
Well, the surprise twist of the episode is that Nanao is actually not the main character because Nana murders him, after revealing that she actually can’t read minds but is just really good at reading people.
Turns out that the Talented are actually the true “Enemies of Humanity”, and Nana has been sent by a shady government organization to covertly murder every single one of them on the island to protect humanity.

I didn’t expect this twist and it instantly made the show 100 times better.

Before the twist, Talentless Nana looked like a generic, cliched, rip off of My Hero Academia.
Now though, it had taken a Death Note twist, becoming a murder mystery where we see the perspective of the murderer.
And, if Nana is this series’ Light, then Kyoya Onodera (Yuichi Nakamura) is definitely its L, as the antisocial, wannabe detective who begins to suspect Nana right from the get-go.
Their game of cat and mouse is entertaining to watch, and just as good is the slowly growing friendship between Nana and the insanely good natured Michiru Inukai (Mai Nakahara), an awkward turn of events for Nana because she is supposed to kill Michiru eventually.
The character development Nana gains from interacting with these two, while still trying to kill them and every other student, is just great and delivers many fun episodes, like the two part “Necromancer”, “Survival of the Fittest”, and “Revival”.
As for Nana herself, I have to give major props to her voice actress, Rumi Okubo, who is able to portray the fake, outward persona Nana shows and her true self perfectly.

Nana has different voices for her fake and real personalities and Okubo pulls both off expertly.

Along with this, the show’s OP, “Broken Sky”, by Miyu Tomita, and ED, “Bakemono to Yobarete”, by Chiai Fujikawa, are also complete bangers.
However, there are a few issues with Talentless Nana that do hold it back a bit.
The first of these is the direction, which is, overall, nothing special for the most part, not that there’s anything wrong with this.
One thing I definitely had an issue with, though, was the cliffhangers, or rather, the way they were constructed.
More often than not, an episode would end with some big cliffhanger, where the audience would wonder if Nana was about to get caught, only for the first few minutes of the next episode to resolve this cliffhanger with absolutely no lasting consequences.
This did get quite frustrating after a while and it made it hard for me to get excited for next week because I was sure that whatever cliffhanger we were on would instantly be solved in the following episode.
Also, the show had a bit of a problem introducing characters because it’s clear that the writer came up with them as they went along, with characters, who we have never seen before, showing up, only for the other characters to act as though they’d been there the whole time.
Still, this did not ruin my experience of these episodes and there really are some great scenes and twists throughout that had me eager to see what would happen next.

Some twists, like the one in episode nine, do actually keep consequences and made me excited for what was to come.

In its entirety, Talentless Nana is a really good anime, with some fun moments and great character development, for its main characters at least.
Unfortunately, I’ve heard that the sales for the show haven’t been doing too well, so it seems unlikely that we will be getting a season two, which is a shame because the manga is also a blast.
You can expect a review for the Talentless Nana manga in the coming weeks.