#rawrawrmonster

[komatsunana]

Nana and Ren for the ship thing pleeeaase c:

Who said “I love you” first:  Oh damn, who did say it in in canon? Or did they not?  I’ll say Nana, a bit into their relationship.  Maybe post-sex? Or during.  But Ren gives her That Smile he does.

Who would have the other’s picture as their phone background:  Ren, he’d make it a “bad” photo too - nothing professional, like just her scowling at him over a pot of miso soup.

Who leaves notes written in fog on the bathroom mirror:  Ren starts it, but they leave each other silly notes in which they play at being extremely domestic like “Remember to take out the burnables Darling

Who buys the other cheesy gifts:  Ren ‘gifts’ Nana flowers and chocolates and she glares dully at him because the cards on them clearly state they are for him from fans. xD

Who initiated the first kiss:  Ren, like in canon!

Who kisses the other awake in the morning:  Ren wakes Nana up with forehead smooches sometimes that get progressively more sloppy and silly.

Who starts tickle fights:  Ren starts the first one and Nana isn’t amused until discovering that Ren is just as ticklish.  Then it’s ON.

Who asks who if they can join the other in the shower bath:  I cannot stress enough how these characters prefer baths lol. ANYWAY, bathtime is a staple time of intimacy between the two so if they are both around they generally go in together.

Who surprises the other in the middle of the day at work with lunch:  Ren, but he has to be secretive if he doesn’t want the rest of Blast and Gaia staff to get greet him for a while (which sometimes he does want lol).  Nana pretends to be annoyed, but she likes seeing him outside of just at home since they have such conflicting schedules.

Who was nervous and shy on the first date:  Nana was shy because it was her first date but she let up quickly.  Otherwise they were pretty comfortable - the were good enough friends but also it wasn’t like they’d known each other so long that dating each other was weird.

Who kills/takes out the spiders:  Nana - Ren likes to playfully squeal for Nana to do it.  She whacks him in the head with the newspaper she killed the spider with afterwards.

Who loudly proclaims their love when they’re drunk:  They both do! They both do really silly things together when they are both drunk, like competing who can proclaim their love the loudest or in the weird voice etc.

Thanks for sending that in. ^^

[komatsunana]

Hey, i just noticed that you havent done an analysis on Nana and Ren's relationship, could you do one? c:

Yeah, I’ve mentioned here and there about my thoughts Ren and Nana, but I hadn’t quite gotten to my in depth analysis on them so here goes:

I know there is a lot of discussion/thoughts on how healthy Ren and Nana are, if their relationship toxic or not.

I think it is rather clear that where Nana and Ren are with each other, is very very unhealthy and toxic for the pair. I don’t think this means that their relationship is worthless or unsalvageable.

The symbolism of the Sid Vicious and Nancy parallels, like with Ren wearing the lock on his neck (which ends up embedded in head), are entirely intentional on Yazawa’s parts. I’m not all that knowledgeable on Sid and Nancy or the Sex Pistols to be able to go into too much depth and I’m not going to pretend I am, but what I do know isn’t this is NOT the relationship to emulate. Both ended up dead very young, one still suspected for the murder of the other. From the moment Nana put that lock around his neck and then kissed in front of a Sid and Nancy poster, reading “LOVE KILLS,” we should have known. There isn’t going to be a happy ending.

Even though I would call Nana and Ren’s relationship toxic, but I wouldn’t say it was malignant. They weren’t out to sabotage each other, not even unintentionally I don’t think. They had their own desires, outside of and about the other, that conflicted with the other’s desires like their differing desires to build a family. Nana is sensitive to any hint of abandonment or betrayal from anyone and Ren is struggling with increasingly disturbing intrusive thoughts about killing Nana.

Both Nana and Ren lacked unconditional, reciprocal love before they loved each other. Nana’s grandmother might have loved her, in her own way, but she left Nana with lots of bad internalized feelings.

And Ren might have had Yasu’s unconditional love, but it was a constant give on Yasu’s part and Ren had very little to give back. I’m sure that while Yasu had the best of intentions, dealing with his own guilt, Ren didn’t feel comfortable with his inability to give back what Yasu gave him. Yasu hands him anything that Ren wants that Yasu has, apart from Reira Ren notes. And Ren doesn’t enjoy it, he feels rather inadequate as a result.

This might actually, in part, be why Ren rejoins up with Trapnest in the prologue, because it is the very first thing he feels like he’s gotten that wasn’t handed to him by Yasu. I’ve actually always thought that there had to be more to Ren going to Tokyo with Trapnest and leaving Nana, about why Ren feels so passionately to Trapnest and such loyalty to both Reira and Takumi. Because Ren isn’t really ambitious himself, he isn’t like Nana who wants to sing at any costs. Ren just wants to play music with the people he believes in.

Their final conflict and the last conversation they really have, hinges on both of them having different values in their band members. Ren cares about the integrity of the band and the people he is playing with. Nana cares more about singing, and about atmosphere of the audience than the people on stage with (though she cares for some of them off the stage). And I honestly don’t think either are really wrong, it is just… okay yikes, I think I just went on a tangent and accidentally sorted Nana into Slytherin and Ren into Hufflepuff. And now I’m going to have to a whole post sorting everyone aren’t I? Why do I do this to myself? /throws my hands in the air

ANYWAY, yeah. Even musically they had differing values for why they made music. They had very differing desires, as they’ve discussed with each other.

But one thing they had in common was that they had chosen each other as their love of their life from the start, both unwilling to give up on their love or try and love again. Because in each other they found understanding as unloved children, as fuck-ups. They gave each other, or wanted to give, the unconditional love they never received from their parents who abandoned them both.

I’ve been asked before, if I think Nana and Ren loved each other. And I do. But they didn’t do it healthily. I think at the point they were in the series, they needed to separate. They had become so entangled and obsessed with each other, that sometime through the series they might have loved their idea of each other more.

What they needed to do was separate and grow as their own person, be something more than all encompassing love, a co-dependent love, a love that satisfied neither of them. They needed to resolve what their own desires were. They were only in their early twenties after all. They couldn’t remain static for long, their desires and goals would change naturally. Trapnest wasn’t going to last forever, even if Ren hadn’t died,

But I do think that once they’d grown into their own person… I do think their relationship could be healthily revisited and reignited - even if in friendship and not romantically. If they learned to honestly communicate, at least.

Because they did have something worthwhile in each other, is my belief anyway.

I’m not sure what exactly Ren’s plans before his death and what his gift for Nana was, but I’m not entirely convinced what he had in mind could have resolved every problem they had with each other, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if we ever find out.

Thanks for asking - hopefully this is lucid.

[komatsunana]

Hi c: I like your analysis, and i'd like to know your opinion on Ren's death, like what do you think he's last thoughts was, and such. Cause a lot of people believe that he commited suicide, but i dont think he really wanted to die. I think that on that last second he just wanted to be with Nana at all costs. I dunno, i'd like to know what you think c:

Hey! Thanks, I know I say it all the time but I really do love writing all this stuff and I’m happy people ask for my opinion on stuff haha.

For Ren’s death - tbh, it always surprises me that some readers think Ren’s death was a suicide. For me, it was always clear that Ren saw the two paparazzi following behind him and was speeding up to get away from them.

See, he clearly saw them. In fact, this panel is a clear parallel to chapter 25 in which Ren spots a paparazzi hiding and taking his photo. Right after the following panel, it is affirmed when he tells Takumi that he did indeed see the paparazzi at his place.

This parallel is not accidental. Yazawa wants us to know that Ren saw these two following him and only us the readers know this fact. That’s why he speeds up - the two paparazzi kinda freak out about how fast Ren is going and wondering why he is but… he’s trying to lose them. After all, he just declared he wanted to protect Trapnest. And having these two following him right to where Reira is, where they can twist out their made up “Reira is pregnant” story, is not going to help. So he tries to lose them and instead loses control of his car (because ice/snow) and crashes. This is an accident on Ren’s part - tbh I’m not sure about the legality of paparazzi following people around in their cars but I personally think it is clearly as a result of these two following Ren:

The thing is, though, that they drive away and don’t tell anyone. What they did should count as vehicular homicide or manslaughter or something idk. Maybe not in the eyes of the law, depending on what paparazzi is allowed to do in tailing people, but definitely in my eyes. Following someone like that is just all kinds of wrong. Because either way, I don’t think Ren would have been in an accident if they hadn’t followed him. And there is every, small, chance Ren could have survived if they hadn’t fled the scene of the crime and called for help like decent human beings.

While there is a chance they might have come clean about their part in Ren’s death in between where we left off in chapter 84 and the flash-forward chapters, most likely these two got away with it and so all of Ren’s loved ones (specifically Yasu and Takumi) are left behind to speculate suicide and drugs when the simple fact is that he was trying to get away from these guys. That’s one of the tragedies here, that only we know that the paparrazi following him and none of the other characters will ever know. I kinda got on a tangent there, sorry…

While I won’t deny that drugs might have played a part in his accident, like preventing him from breaking, I totally agree with you that he wanted to be with Nana in those last moments. His last thoughts were definitely with Nana, whether his hallucinations of her were drug induced psychosis or some kind of predeath vision or what have you, he was thinking of Nana.

His last thoughts were with Nana definitely - the specifics I can’t say - and while we don’t know what exactly his plans were for his future together with Nana (his final gift to Nana will probably give us all insight), I think Ren was very optimistic for the first time in a very long time before his death which is the saddest part of it all. 

His very last spoken word that we see in the manga is his promise to not die before seeing Satsuki’s face. And he means it, I really think he does. Ren had finally gotten resolve to do what he needed to do for both Trapnest and with Nana and his reward was going to be seeing Satsuki. Afterall, one of his dreams was to have a child and name the child after a flower after himself and if his decision was to stick it out with Nana, Satsuki might have been the closest he was ever going to get to a child of his one, one that he names.

Another of the tragedies in Ren’s death (and there are many tragedies in his dying) is that he finally knows what he wants and he is motivated to make it all happen: to retrieve Reira, to remain in Trapnest, and to finally reconcile with Nana once and for all (whether ending their relationship or finally dedicating himself to remaining in the relationship). 

The ultimate tragedy here is a lost soul who finally finds the resolve to reach their goal and dies moments later, a tragic hero.

TLDR: No - I don’t think Ren committed suicide. I think he was suicidal in other parts of the manga, but Ren in his final moments is him at his most optimistic. He had hope and resolve for the first time in a long time and died a tragic hero. I think his final thoughts were with Nana and whatever his decision was regarding his relationship with Nana (whether to stay together or let her go), he died loving her.

Yikes, that got longer than I wanted. Sorry, haha. Hopefully I got everything in there. Thanks for asking me though. My ask is always open for questions.

[komatsunana]

Top 5 Disney animated movies? c:

HMMM... Not counting like Pixar and Studio Ghibli:

The Rescuers

Lilo and Stitch

Cinderella (my fave princess omg)

Big Hero 6

101 Dalmatians (For nostalgia’s sake - I watched it five times a week when I was little)

Hopefully I didn’t miss anything that I really like... Thanks for asking and I think I need to rewatch some of these, it’s been awhile haha.