softlyraining’s blossoming book stack 
April 5th
NANA 1 (55% → 57%)
Exhausted today, so a very tiny read. Anywho, my thoughts from yesterday:so Nana says that she’ll sleep with Shoji if he says that he loves her (愛してる). He freaks out about saying it and ponders if he should try to pretend to be an American guy so that he can go through with it. And…I have mixed feelings, honestly. On the one hand, I get it: that word has a very strong connotation in Japanese (not sure if modern times are changing with regards to this, but it was probably still the case when this was written), so the idea of telling someone who you technically aren’t even dating that is a lot. On the other hand, they clearly have feelings for each other, and the fact that he didn’t even try to compromise with 好き or something is…interesting. Spoiler in a spoiler, but Nana says she “hears his heart” say it, and they hook up. I don’t really know what to make of that. It’s framed like a lovely moment, so is it? I guess she could just realize that she feels a sense of love coming from him: as the old song goes, it may have been “in his kiss.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve read NANA, so I’m incredibly biased toward the happiness of both Nanas, so I might just be trying to look for any signs of trouble. Speaking of, with the conclusion of part one of the volume, it occurs to me that Nana O. gets less “page time” than Nana K. Meanwhile, Nana O. is not only the only one on the front cover, but also the only one on the back. Kind of interesting.