NANA – 16

Summary:
After Hachi’s outburst, Nana left with Misato, not returning to the apartment until the next morning. Nana actually goes to Yasu’s place first and climbs in his bed. The two talk about how Misato doesn’t like school, how in that sense she’s similar to Shin, and how Nana thinks Yasu looks bad without his glasses on. He tells that if she’s going to sleep, she should go home to do so. Nana asks him to sleep together with her, but since he treats it as a joke, she decides to go home. As she’s leaving, he asks if she had something she came to talk about, but Nana denies it. Afterwards, Yasu is alone in his room and thinks to look out the window. There, he finds Nana staring right back up at his room. When she sees him, she runs away.
Upon Nana’s return, Hachi immediately goes out and apologizes for what she said. Hachi is so clingy that Nana wonders if she’s her boyfriend. Hachi says she’s more important than a boyfriend. Hachi then remembers Misato and wants to apologize to the girl. Since she has work today, she can’t go see Misato off, so instead she gets Misato’s cell phone number from Nana. She also makes plans with Nana to eat dinner together. At work, while Hachi is thinking about what she’ll make for dinner, her thoughts fall on Sachiko and what she cooked for Shouji. Those thoughts get interrupted by her supervisor, and Hachi has to come up with an excuse for why she’s looking at recipes.
During lunch, Hachi calls Misato, who is already on the train going back home. Both of them apologize to each other, with Misato saying that it’s ok because of how happy she was to be with Blast. Misato has been a fan since the band was formed and Ren was still there. Hachi is surprised to hear the name Ren and at first she thinks that it couldn’t be Trapnest’s Ren. But as Misato keeps talking, the pieces start to fall together: there was Nana asking Shin which guitarist he respected and there was the lotus tattoo on Nana’s arm that she called a Ren flower. Once she gets off the phone with Misato, Hachi’s starts trying to figure out why the other members of Blast never mentioned it to her. She imagines Nana going out at night just to see Ren.
In order to find out the truth, Hachi goes over to Nobu and Shin’s apartment. After Hachi takes away his Black Stone brand cigarettes, Shin reveals that he already knew about Ren. It turns out that Nobu spilled the beans when he was drunk: Ren used to be Blast’s bassist, he was Nana’s lover and they lived together, he left alone two years ago to be Trapnest’s guitarist, and correspondence between them stopped. Hachi thinks they didn’t have to separate if Ren was going to Tokyo, causing Shin to agree and use Hachi’s relationship with Shouji as an example. Of course it comes as a surprise to the two guys when they find out that Hachi had actually broken up with Shouji.
Getting back onto the topic of Ren and Nana separating, Shin suggests that it would be best to hear about it from Nana herself. Nobu disagrees because everyone has one or two wounds that can’t be touched. He explains how Ren had only told Yasu that he was leaving, which made Nobu feel betrayed when he heard the news. Nana didn’t follow Ren to Tokyo, meaning that she chose to protect her pride instead of becoming happy as a woman. That’s why Nana has to be a success as a musician and be equal to Trapnest. Nobu doesn’t know how Nana still feels about Ren, but he and Yasu don’t talk about it. They didn’t intentionally keep it a secret from Hachi and Shin, but he also would rather not have them dig any further on the subject.
Hachi decides that she probably shouldn’t go to the Trapnest concert with Nana and that she should nonchalantly try to raise the topic of Ren with Nana. That night, Nana finds the cigarettes Hachi confiscated from Shin on the dining room table leading to Hachi lying to Nana about when she saw Shin. When Hachi raises the subject of Trapnest, Nana thinks she’s still talking about the concert. To Hachi’s surprise, Nana agrees to go. Hachi thinks that Nana must want to see Ren and must still like him. Her imagination conjures up a scene where Ren sees Nana in the front row during the concert and the two have a tearful embrace. At band practice later, Nobu expresses his doubt about if the reunion will really be so deeply moving. He does reveal that the necklace Ren is still wearing is the one Nana gave him. Hachi thinks that that’s very significant and gets Yasu to agree. And so when Nana enters the room, Hachi acts overly excited.
In the two weeks leading up to the live, Hachi’s mind is filled with thoughts about Ren and Nana. If the Trapnest members came to their apartment because of Ren and Nana, it’s possible that Hachi can become lovey-dovey with Takumi from Trapnest as a result. Sometime during that period, Yasu is working late at night and hears the doorbell again. Sitting outside his room is Ren. Thinking in retrospect, Hachi remembers how on the morning of the live, Nana had sat by the window as if nothing had changed. But there was a different smell – the smell of the Black Stone cigarettes that Hachi confiscated from Shin, the same smell Nana had claimed she disliked.

I love how Ren comes to visit Yasu the same way Nana does, even calling in with the same playful atashi. It not only shows how similar the two are, but also how much they depend on Yasu. Nana especially, given how telling it was that she stood under his window until she became embarrassed that he saw her. The other unifying theme this episode are the Black Stone Cigarettes, which are all over the place. They are of course what the band name Blast is derived from, but that’ll be explained next week. I’m not sure what the meaning of Nana smoking Black Stones at the end of the episode is, but there is something…
It’s funny listening to Hachi’s imagination run wild about Trapnest visiting their apartment and a love forming with Takumi. Funny because of what actually ends up happening.
Next episode is the big concert scene! I bet that they’re going to start up a little pain for that final scene and just play it through the credits. Maybe when the bands in the anime release their new songs, the OP/ED and respective bands’ songs in the anime will change.