#Nana
Honestly Nana has been a remarkable experience and while the overall arc at Chapter 84 ends abruptly, I think the final line is perfectly bound to the soul of the series. Nana is realistic, but it is bound to a very specific age, profession https://twitter.com/Nikpicking/status/1390099011240042499

and type of friendship. As someone who lived among a similarly close and almost incestuously bound group of friends and more-than-friends who were professionally starting out as musicians, I felt 20 and affected all over again.

Yazawa's eye for realistic dialogue and internal characterization is where all the magic happens, because when you step outside of the world of Nana, it's almost difficult to believe that you could forgive or understand many of the choices our leads make.

These are not mass-implication choices like genocide or planet saving ofc, it's a life of often small-choices and I think that's what makes them even more affecting. I did appreciate that the flash forwards paint a relatively cohesive picture; it makes it possible to predict

the general trajectory of the latest events to a few years forward, so at least that much is left not-too-ambiguous. But of course it would have been something to have the future arc wrapped up.
I've come to both deeply love and be disappointed by almost every character in-series

and I will likely be posting a few serious threads in the future about the decisive dichotomy that Yazawa sets up between desire and happiness in Nana, and a mini exploration into Takumi and love. (Believe me, if you're a fellow reader, I know how strange that sounds)

The series is not entirely perfect to me because while Yazawa is great at delving into the moment , she takes certain decisions with character development in the future arc that I believe almost make it seem like she's just as reluctant as the characters to let go of their

20-something selves (to clarify, I'm not dismissing holding onto emotional trauma or being affected by it years later, just that some characters whom I would imagine are quite likely to change, seem to do so very little.) The characterization is rounded but reluctantly dynamic?

Only that complaint tho. I'd highly recommend this series. The art is striking at all the right moments even when foreheads are expansive, and the dialogue, plot, character writing and pacing are almost flawless until both the manga and anime abruptly stop, but hey what can ya do

Entered my Top 5 pretty easy. I want to say thank you to the bum who prompted me to start this after 10 years of putting it off and the people who graciously suffered the slow pace of the also-cancelled group watch with me. May we embrace the endless dream of a perfect ending.