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Your Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo

Nana

Nana

Why can’t the North American comic market support a female-oriented hit like NANA? From Yuki’s Kissui.net:

Every girl reads the comic book NANA. It is on its peak of popularity right now, published monthly in the magazine Cookie and it is on volume 12 in the comic book. The story consists of friendships, love and relationships, family problems, celebrities, punk rock bands, art students’ lives, and most of all, the lives of the general 20 year olds in Tokyo. It’s a story about a dreamy, addicted-to-love girl named Nana (in kanji) and an independent, punk-rock girl named Nana (in katakana) coming to Tokyo and sharing an apartment by chance. The katakana Nana wants to be a famous rockstar, and somehow as the story goes on, the dreams come true and it gets a bit unrealistic, but it is still enjoyable in a different way. The author Yazawa Ai has been dominating the world of girls’ manga world for over a decade, publishing hits after hits from Tenshi nanka ja nai, Gokinjo monogatari, and Paradise Kiss. Her drawings have gotten modern with time, and in NANA, the pictures are as delicate as ever. Everchanging facial expressions are drawn nicely, the different types of fashion trends (from OL to punk to hiphop) are drawn well, the dialogues are poetic, and you can relate to the characters’ thoughts. It seems like NANA is heading towards the climax. Oftentimes in boys’ comics, the popular stories never end because they want to keep on making money.. NANA had a tribute album made by Japan’s popular musicians and artists, had an exhibition with a Nana-themed cafe, and is going to become a movie. But I really hope it ends when it have to, and I hope it ends nicely.

I did notice the big NANA boom, with ads everywhere, and have been curious about the series itself — and I love the art I’ve seen. I’m curious, to those who have read or watched BECK, how does it compare to that? Is it a bit similar? I absolutely loved BECK, and was really bummed when the anime series ended earlier this year.

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PauseTalk

PauseTalk is a regular series of events that take place at Cafe Pause on the first Monday of every month, with a start time of 20:00. The idea is to create a forum where Tokyo-based creatives can get together and discuss their own projects, as well as cultural currents of the city. The next edition happens June 4.

We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.

Codex is a weekly music podcast hosted by Jean Snow, recorded in Tokyo. Playlists for all episodes are posted on the site, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of posts and episodes.

Jean Snow is a contributor to Arcade Mania, your guide to the arcade gaming scene in Japan (Amazon US/Amazon Japan). He also provided assistance on Tokyolife: Art and Design, a guide to Tokyo's cultural output of the past few years, covering the works of over 80 influential creatives.
He will be contributing to the upcoming fifth editions of The Rough Guide to Tokyo and The Rough Guide to Japan, due for release in 2011.
PechaKucha

Jean Snow is Executive Director of the PechaKucha organization. He also helps run the PechaKucha Night in Tokyo -- please get in touch if you are interested in presenting at a future event. For a more intimate salon-like discussion group, join him at his monthly PauseTalk event.

A longtime resident of Tokyo, he lives and breathes design, pop culture, and gaming, sustained by an unhealthy addiction to magazines and frequent visits to his favorites cafes. He has reported on these obsessions for various online/offline publications, including the following: Time, Inside (Australian Design Review), Gizmodo, Gridskipper, Kotaku, 1UP, Tokyo Q, Superfuture, OK Fred, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, I.D. (International Design), Metropolis, Azure, MoCo Loco, Kateigaho International Edition, Wired's Game|Life, PingMag, CNNGo, Phaidon, and The Japan Times.

You can subscribe to an RSS feed of this site, and also follow him on Twitter and Facebook, or get in touch by email.

 

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The "Jean Snow" logo is written using the free Kirimomi Swash typeface. The "M31" logo is by Ian Lynam, and is part of a series of 31 unique designs. The site's design is based on the Grid Focus WordPress theme by Derek Punsalan.

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