So I am still going to try and get a t-shirt when they release in the US next week, but my latest obsession is figuring out how I’m going to get my hands on this new book that’s coming out “The World of Nana”
Someone posted details of the book’s contents on Reddit and it looks AMAZING. Lots of essays about the musical/cultural/artistic inspirations behind each character, as well as reflections on the impact of the manga.
It releases next month but I’m not seeing it available for purchase on Kinokuniya and Yes Asia (where I usually get imported books). But IT WILL BE MINE!!!
You could also try CD Japan. If you’re willing to buy used there’s also a lot of ways to get a hold of things. I’m usually too lazy for proxy services, but I’ve ordered from Mandarake a number of times and they’re great. Ideally order from the Sahara “store” (my understanding is that it’s their warehouse and not a physical store so their overseas shipping process is more streamlined).
Also: not me definitely going to add that to my Mandarake alerts list
I’m not too much into buying t-shirts (though I wouldn’t say no for a NANA one) but I could see myself buy such a book for NANA (also don’t open the link with the contents if you are a first time reader, it’s a bit spoilery)
I happened to notice an oddity on Volume 4, so finally got around to checking the page counts. Comparing the English volumes 1-3 to the electronic ones from Bookwalker that I was able to get for free, the page counts seem to match up. The electronic ones have extra “pages” at the beginning but all seem to match up. But, comparing my printed copies of volume 4, four pages have been cut! Junko’s Place starts on page 184 of the Japanese edition and 180 of the English edition (Viz, 2006); both pages have page numbers on them so it’s not like I have a defective copy or something.
What turns out to be missing is pages 169-173 of the Japanese edition: one page of ナナ smoking and the flashback to how Black Stones/Blast got their name. A fairly baffling cut.
I’ll keep an eye on for further cuts.
Could it be potentially to do with the fact that the band was named after cigarettes? Like you can’t really get rid of the smoking in the manga, it’s way way way too common. But maybe they didn’t want readers to know what the name is from?
Or .. even more wild, they didn’t think readers could get the jump from “black stone” to “blast”, so they cut the anecdote completely?
You could be right about the “Black Stones” to “Blast”. At the end of chapter 11, when Nana is smoking Black Stones cigarettes, that (and the picture of the cigarette box) have been changed to Blast brand. (And also when 奈々 takes them away from シン.) The company name is also gone.
Anyway, pretty strange.
Oh I didn’t think about it, I think Black Stone is a real brand.. so if they didn’t want to advertise for a real brand (and especially for cigarettes), they changed the name of the cigarettes. And if they did that, you can’t have the story about how they came up with the name.. so they just cut the scene entirely..
So not exactly censorship, but definitely something similar..
Oh you’re right, I assumed that the brands were fictitious. Yeah ads for cigarettes are tightly regulated, in fact I’m surprised that it made it in the French edition. Maybe nobody noticed…
I didn’t realize it until I saw the Swisher brand, which I knew bc I may have also smoked some of those in my dumb young days. I didn’t know of Black Stone, specifically, though.
Could be that they didn’t sell them in France, and it was early days of the internet so not a quick Google search to see that it was a real brand…
Yeah I have no idea, none of the brands we’ve seen so far looked familiar to me but then again I never smoked so I don’t know much about this.
Honestly I do think it’s a bit irresponsible for the mangaka to make such a heavy promotion of smoking and even putting real-world brands in the middle of it. This targets young readers… How many of them went looking for “the cigarettes Nana smokes”?
Agree. Although Japan is such a heavy smoking culture I wonder if she just really didn’t think about it.
Honestly, I was shocked the past few years I’ve gone to visit and there were no smoking areas. Like, I’m all for it. Youthful bad decisions notwithstanding it’s both gross and incredibly unhealthy to have people smoking all over the place.
Not that it makes it much better, but I was mostly part of the only smoked when drinking club.. and only outside. bc yuuuuuck.
Right, cigarette advertising is heavily restricted in the US. For instance, warning labels like the one on the box are required in any ad. I don’t know whether having an actual brand would be considered an ad or not, but I could easily imagine that the publisher didn’t want to risk any issues.
It does seem a bit odd to have an actual brand in the Japanese and a fake one in the English since Japanese manga often has fake name like WcDonalds…
Yeah I thought about that as well, I’ve seen manga tip-toe around very mainstream brands like fastfood chains and DisneyLand, so having cigarette brands front and center is a strange change of pace…
I also recall that they had to go back and censor all episodes of The Simpsons for broadcast in France back when they started selling IRL beer under the Duff brand. Because it now was a real alcohol beverage brand, you couldn’t advertise it freely in cartoons:
Duff Beer UG’s beer was introduced into France in 2011, though with limited success.[42] Since French television has a strict prohibition on advertising and product placement of alcohol, subsequent broadcasts of The Simpsons have blurred the Duff logo on screen.[42] The name is not censored on the soundtrack, but Duffman was redubbed “Uffman”.[42]
I never thought about it when I was reading, and thanksfully it didn’t make me want to start smoking either. I think it was simply different times back then. Smoking was still allowed in public areas, restaurants, schools, etc. Better showing them smoking than taking drugs, and they have to look badass somehow?
I don’t think it would fly if the manga had started today (and then again, this manga is about smoking together: スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり | L27 )
(also don’t open the link with the contents if you are a first time reader, it’s a bit spoilery)
. I didn’t know of Black Stone, specifically, though.
