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「無能力」 (Munouryoku)
“Talentless”
Every anime season is usually endowed with a surprise or three, and here to help meet that trend is Munou na Nana. With a fairly major twist out the door and crazy personalities to boot, this one is certainly making a play for dark horse of the season, although whether it can successfully reach those lofty heights remains to be seen.
Per the omnipresent RC Preview, Munou na Nana is on the surface your paint by numbers superpower story. Take a bunch of kids, give them an array of ubiquitous abilities (fire, ice, mind reading? Yeah, you don’t get more derivative than that), and throw them into a school located smack dab in the middle of nowhere under the auspices of training to protect humanity from so-called Enemies of Humanity. Or in other words, what Boku no Hero Academia probably would’ve looked like if it tried going Assassination Classroom. It may not be exactly what we’ve seen before, but at face value the show doesn’t try hard to differentiate itself.
Well, at least that’s the case for the first part of this episode. Once generic setting and cookie cutter characters are out the way, Munou na Nana wastes little time in inducing a sense of dread and suspense. The appearance of moody Onodera Kyouya (Nakamura Yuuichi) for example quietly throws a wrench into the straightforward proceedings thanks to his attitude, while the titular bubbly and naïve Hiiragi Nana (Ookubo Rumi) starts ratcheting up tensions thanks her mind reading ability and eager willingness to make friends with loner classmate (and supposedly ability-less) Nakajima Nanao (Shimono Hiro). Something is clearly “wrong” with how things are playing out (especially given how the so-called enemy of this series hasn’t even shown up), but until Nanao reveals his power to nullify other individuals’ powers we have no good idea what. Because Nana then proves why pink hair never lies and brains always beat brawn. Expectations? Right out the window. Curiosity? Firmly acquired. So much for twists largely being mid-season affairs.
The interest following such a start though will be how Munou na Nana builds off of it. With Nana apparently being the actual MC and Nanao nothing more than victim numero uno of a likely pre-planned killing spree, there’s a lot of base narrative blanks needing filling in, and only so much time to do so before attention starts drifting elsewhere. As with all shock and awe it’s all about maintaining momentum, however if Munou na Nana’s follow-up can match what we got this opener (and I’m really curious to see if it does), this will definitely be one show worthy of a bit of attention to this season.
OP Sequence
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OP: 「Broken Sky」by Miyu Tomita
Preview
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I feel like the issue here is going to be caring about Nana as the protagonist. So much was invested in making us care about Nanao, that I don’t really care much about Nana right now. It’s like we’re starting from scratch with episode 2, and we’ll have to be reintroduced to her and the series. I’ll reserve my judgement until then.
That’s is one of my concerns as well. As a twist it worked fantastic, but we really need some measure of understanding regarding Nana’s objectives and some personality outside of pink hair tropes to make her a proper fixture.
Add on top the lack of defined villain (because this series won’t get away without labelling either Nana or the class as the “true” enemy) and for the immediate future the show has its work cut out for it. Next episode should hopefully ground things and let us know where this going.
If I had to guess, this entire series may be about Nana’s journey from villain to hero (thus the entire first episode is about putting her in the worst light possible). But I guess we’ll see.
Not really, the manga eventually show her motivation, it doesn’t make sense at all
>With Nana apparently being the actual MC and Nanao nothing more than victim numero uno (well, the millionth if we’re being honest) of a likely pre-planned killing spree, there’s a lot of base narrative blanks needing filling in, and only so much time to do so before attention starts drifting elsewhere.
Not sure if you may have mistranslated it but the calculated kill count on the phone referred to the potential victims of the boy who just got mufasaed – if he were allowed to live and presumably increase his powers even further.
At least that’s how I understood it from the subs and reading up on the first manga chapter afterwards.
Whoops yes you’re right, rewatching that scene shows it refers to Nanao’s potential kill count – thanks for the catch!
That’s what I get for relying on memory after the fact when recalling details its seems 😛
The only thing that I can say to persuade people to watch this series is that it’s written by Looseboy.
… Which might not be really well known in anime community, but he’s actually the writer of G-Senjou no Maou: one of the most popular VN overseas (along with my personal favorite, Sharin no Kuni).
After reading the manga few weeks ago, his style is pretty visible here (both positives and negatives): Interesting plot twists that often require you to ignore some convenient details, battle of wits between several protagonists and antagonists… All are some of his specialities.
However, one thing that I’m not really sure of is whether he could pull an emotional plot twist: the thing that made his past works special. He’s not new in turning an unlikable protagonist or even villains into a great character overnight, but in this series achieving that is actually even harder. If you want to try this, try to be cautiously optimistic since the writer is capable to turn this into a really great series or into a total disaster.
I dropped the manga after the reveal of Nana’s motivation, for some it makes sense, i fyou have the mindset of a ten year old kid. Sorry but that exp´lanation makes no sense
For those who have doubts how the story is going, watch the next episode for a better explanation I can only say that this episode served its purpose which was to deceive the viewer by pretending to be a generic anime to put a plot twist at the end of episode, Nanao was basically a stereotype of an anime protagonist each aspect of this character corresponds to various similar characteristics of other anime protagonists such as Deku or Touma and also to show the role of Nana the true protagonist.
As if a normal infiltrated Academy City to kill all espers and her first victim is Touma. These children are really screwed.
A normal is the best person to kill Touma because his Imagine Breaker is useless against muggles. Does he stand a chance against a sniper shot to his head from > 500 yards? No. Can his Imagine Breaker cancel Novichuk’s toxicity? I doubt it.
Remember: Tsuchimikado Motoharu beat Touma with just his fists way back in the Angel Fall arc.
So if they can’t find Nanao’s body, can they still report?
Pink is very sus.
Pink is pretty sus..
This first episode is literally littered with Rolex Daytona product placements…