Talentless Nana – 12 – Off Her Game

I like Michiru. She’s just so damn nice and good! So like Nana, I’m glad she’s not dead, only feverish and dehydrated. Unlike Nana, I don’t think liking or caring about Nana makes me weak or disrupts my Talented murdering spree.

Despite the trained, hardened killer in Nana lamenting how much time she wastes tending to Michiru while Kyouya is distracted by the new killer, she simply can’t and won’t leave Michiru’s bedside, even when Sorano offers to take her place there so she can rest.

Michiru eventually comes to, and we learn her mishap in the shower wasn’t the result of foul play, but the limits of her own Talent. While Nana was gone, two cats came to Michiru’s dorm. One, unbeknownst to her, was really Jin, while the other had a nasty cut on its neck. Shortly after healing the cat, Michiru took a shower and suddenly blacked out.

When Michiru spots the cut on Nana’s hand from breaking into the cafeteria to help her, she tries to lick the wound away, but Nana stops her, angry that Michiru didn’t learn her lesson about overuse of her Talent. In the precious subsequent moments when the two girls are making fun of each other’s unkempt hair, Nana isn’t a killer and Michiru isn’t a target…they’re just good friends.

Meanwhile in the woods, Jin encounters Ishii’s killer, who remains a dark silhouette to us. Without judging their murders, Jin requests that they at least stop hurting animals. We also check in with the committee that sent Nana to the island. She has apparently exceeded their expectations, and they praise the man who trained her, Tsuruoka.

When Nana goes off to clean herself up, she struggles with her sudden conflict not just over whether she should kill Michiru, but whether Michiru is remotely deserving of death. At the same time, she fears what Tsuruoka’s reaction would be if he could see how far off her game she currently finds herself.

When Michiru insists Nana stick around so they can play shogi, Nana brings up the name “Hitomi” she saw in Michiru’s journal, saying she “heard Michiru’s inner voice”—which is true to a degree! Hitomi was a delinquent-ish classmate back on the mainland whose dog Michiru healed. Hitomi, in turn, protected Michiru from bullies.

Hitomi once asked Michiru if she could help her sick “mom”, and Michiru explained she couldn’t heal illnesses. That said, she realize she can help a lot more, so she starts going to the hospital and healing people until passing out like she did most recently in the shower. That’s when Hitomi visits her and reveals she was asking for herself; she has terminal cancer; her orange hair was only a wig.

Michiru feels terrible for “making” Hitomi come to school to rescue her again and again, but Hitomi assures her she did it because she wanted to—and because like everyone, even she felt lonely and afraid sometimes. She likens leaving the hospital to help Michiru to Michiru risking her health to heal people—”we know it’s bad for us, but it’s okay to live a little.”

Shortly after reuniting in the hospital, Hitomi passed away, but Michiru promised herself to never stop healing and helping others—better a short life full of good deeds than a long life of cautiousness. Nana is so overwhelmed by this story, she has to excuse herself.

Out in the hall, she collapses from the weight of what is now the greatest single threat to her resolve. She keeps staring at the text indicating Michiru’s “Potential Death Count” of over 150,000 souls, partly hoping seeing that number will snap her out of her conflict, and partly hoping it will go down or disappear entirely.

She didn’t want to get this emotionally invested in one of her targets, but she is. She didn’t want to doubt the committees estimates, but she does. There’s still time for the show to reveal that Michiru is a supremely deceptive, evil, nasty piece of work after all. I sure hope they don’t go there.

That would let Nana off the hook too easily. I, like her, want to believe Michiru is exactly who she seems to be. Not only that, Munou na Nana created something truly beautiful in Michiru the pure, irreproachable, virtuous angel puppy. I’d hate to see that beautiful thing destroyed.

Talentless Nana – 11 – Proper Ventilation

Nana arrives late to the latest murder scene with Detective Kyouya already working the case. He questions those in the adjacent room: Muguo and three acolytes, whose talents are voice mimicry, astral projection, and magnetism. They apparently didn’t hear a struggle in the Ryuuji’s room last night.

Ryuuji’s girlfriend, Sorano Fuuko, is the most suspicious to us because she’s in the opening credits and also just framed suspiciously. Fuuko demonstrates her power to focus atmosphere into a powerful weapon on a willing (and invincible) Kyouya. She does it outside because she finds it hard to focus in a closed interior space.

After the demo, Kyouya goes off to ponder, while Nana checks out the crime scene. If Fuuko needed air, that explains the open window and bugs that got in the dorm, as well as the messy state of the place. Michiru tags along, and Nana senses something has been off about her since last night.

Nana is also surprised to find she can’t hold back her emotions when Michiru thoughtlessly talks about how great her parents are when Nana told her about her parents’ fate the previous night. The fatigue could well be getting to them both, but then Nana thinks she’s figured out the reason for Nana’s off-ness when the teacher comes by with a fresh uniform.

Kyouya told him to deliver it, and Nana recalls she had a bottle of poison in it. Thus she suspects Michiru is off because she found it, and like the incriminating photo of her, is torn between their genuine friendship and suspicions of her own.

When Kyouya suddenly appears, her fears seem to be confirmed, but the detective only wants Nana to accompany him for an interview with Fuuko, hoping her mind-reading will help him determine if Fuuko is telling the truth. Interestingly, at no point during their time with Fuuko does Nana consider this is why Kyouya brought her.

When he asks about Fuuko’s thoughts, Nana tells the truth: she wasn’t focused enough, but for what it’s worth, she doesn’t think Fuuko did it…yet. But when Kyouya starts piecing together the night of the murder in intricate detail, he ends up starting to convince her that it could be Fuuko. It’s great procedural stuff.

That brings Nana back to Michiru’s, as she didn’t like where they left things the last time they were together (Nana yelled at her and stormed off). Michiru is in the shower, so Nana searches her dorm for the poison. Instead, she finds Michiru’s open journal, which is full of beautifully pure, earnest entries about how much she loves and admires Nana.

I should know better considering her conditioning prior to coming to the island and, ya know, all the people she’s murdered, but Nana seems…chastened by this journal…even a little guilty for ever suspecting Michiru? No doubt those suspicions were somewhat influenced by Jin’s fake “Dark Michiru”.

Right on cue, Jin appears. Turns out he took the potion from Nana’s clothes before Michiru or Kyouya could find it. He’s determined to allow Nana to “keep swimming”, i.e. continue her mission until he can draw out more about the people she answers to.

Jin then forebodingly mentions how Michiru has been in the shower quite a long time, and takes his leave. Nana suddenly panics and rushes in the bath, where Michiru is slumped over the side of an overflowing tub. Could this be the end of dear, sweet Michiru? Was Nana snapping at her really their last interaction?

Something else to consider: Is this the act of the one who murdered Ryuuji, or did that last terse interaction drive Michiru to kill herself? We don’t know, and at the moment neither does Nana. From the first episode she’s prided herself on being on top of things with regard to who is up to what; it’s what any serial killer needs to be to avoid ending up caught or dead.

But at the moment Nana herself is a bit “off”—both unsure of the second murderer and morally conflicted vis-a-vis Michiru. It’s an intriguingly uncertain place for her to be with just two episodes remaining.