Talentless Nanawas one of 2020’s best psychological anime, with a unique storyline filled with thriller-packed events. Unlike other stories, where the righteous main character tries to overthrow villains and dark forces,Talentless Nanais told from the villain’s viewpoint.
The seriesstarts by showing several happy-go-lucky students that enroll in a special school for individuals with superpowers. The first episode ofTalentless Nanahad a striking resemblance with the popular shonen series,My Hero Academia,misleading fans to believe thatTalentless Nanawas cut from the same cloth; however, minutes toward the first episode’s end caught everyone off guard, ushering the birth of aremarkable psychological anime.
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Talentless Nana Reveals An Interesting Narrative
Talentless Nanaquickly changes the presumed hero training narrative to reveal a calculating killer tasked with the mission of killing the students sent by the government to an uninhabited island to train their powers. The protagonist Nana Hiiragi proved to be the perfect candidate for the job due to her cute but misleading appearance and her social skills. In the first episode, she befriended Nanao Nakajima, a victim of bullying who possessed an erasure ability that could nullify any superpower. Her actions as a friend give Nanao the push he needs to free himself from his inferiority complex. Later, the true extent of Nanao’s abilities is shown when he saves his classmates from injuring themselves in a fight by using his erasure ability.
In the final minutes of the anime, Nana pushes Nanao off a cliff, killing him and revealing her true intentions for the students on the island. Indeed, powerless Nana was an assassin hired to kill all the super-powered students. Though it sounds ironic, her wits and intelligence help her execute her mission with frightening precision. Nanao’s saga was also quite surprising because the anime was centered around him for a while, leading viewers to conclude that he was the protagonist. The show’s intricacies and unpredictable plot easily make it an enjoyable psychological thriller.
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Talentless Nanaalso showed Hiiragi telling her classmates that she possesses mind-reading powers. To allay any doubts, she disclosed what some of them were thinking, proving to her classmates that her power was genuine. Even fans at this point couldn’t deduce that the"Talentless Nana"was actuallyNana who possessed no power. Her supposed mind-reading abilities were just spot-on deductive reasoning backed up by surrounding circumstances.
Why Is Nana So Similar To Light From Death Note?
Nana’s actions are quite similar to Yagami Light’s fromDeath Note, a character who kills people and evades suspicion using intelligent measures. According to Nana, she is killing the students because they pose a threat to humanity – another similarity to Light, which involves rightly justifying wrong actions using self-righteousness. Episode 1 revealed a major twist, with Nana at its center, but episode 2 portrayed how Nana can easily dispatch super-powered individuals despite possessing no ability.
In episode 2, she kills Youhei Shibusawa with incredible abilities. At this point in the series, no one suspects Nana as a murderer, so she uses this to her advantage, getting rid of herclassmates before they can use their abilitieson her. A prime example is her second kill, Youhei. Youhei possesses time travel abilities, so frankly speaking, he isn’t someone that can be easily killed. As hard as killing Youhei seems, Nana pulls it off. She outsmarts Youhei, suggesting that he use his time travel abilities to go back in time, knowing that if he time travels, he will end up in a lake that was frozen the previous day. Youhei time travels and doesn’t come back, portraying a clean kill without any evidence pointing to Nana.
In this episode, the anime also showed Nana’s primary cause for killing the students. In a flashback, Nana tells viewers about how individuals with superpowers started appearing worldwide. These superhumans lost control of their powers, turning into weapons of mass destruction that annihilated millions of lives on earth. To prevent such tragedies from occurring in the future, the government covertly sent children with promising abilities to an island, so they could be killed before they becamewalking time bombs.
Similar toDeath Note, Nana’s kills seem to go on unhitched until she encounters an intelligent character, Kyoya Onodera, another transfer student. Kyoya’s reason for coming to the island was to find his sister. So unlike his optimistic classmates, he had reasons to suspect the academy. This is probably one factor that makes Kyoya suspect Nana after Nanao’s suspicious death. Soon, Nana becomes wary of Kyoya when he begins to ask questions thatmay incriminate her and revealsa piece of valuable evidence from Nanao’s incident. This scares Nana. She discovers that Kyoya has a bad sense of smell through careful observation, so she sets a deathtrap for him by using a gas explosion.
Would Nana Eliminate Kyoya?
However, the plan flops, and Kyoya’s immortal ability is revealed. Consequently, Nana can’t kill him; the only person thatposes a threat to Kyoya’s immortalityis Nanao, who was already eliminated. Kyoya’s powerful ability and impressive detective skills make him a formidable opponent for Nana. However, his awkwardness and poor social skills confuse everyone on whether he truly suspects Nana or if he just talks without being aware of the consequences.
Talentless Nana’sfirst season leaves many unanswered questions such as, “How will Nana handle the un-killable Kyoya,” “Are the students really the enemies of humanity?” and “Is Kyoya really suspecting Nana? Fans are curious as to how this underrated anime would progress and whether the next season would reveal a different dimension to the thrilling storyline.
