Nana Komatsu

About Nana Komatsu

Nana Komatsu, nicknamed Hachi, is the romantic heart of Nana and one of its two narrators. She moves to Tokyo at 20 chasing a boyfriend and a vague dream of a shining life, then slowly learns what love, work and loyalty actually cost. Warm, impulsive and funny, she is the friend everyone in the series orbits around, including the other Nana.

Appearance

Hachi has light brown, honey coloured hair worn long with soft waves, big expressive eyes and a bright, open face that shows every feeling the second she has it. She dresses in cute, feminine clothes: cardigans, skirts, floral prints and strawberry patterns, the complete opposite of Osaki's punk wardrobe. She works in shops and dresses for the life she wants, which changes as fast as her crushes do. Her smile is her default setting, and the series uses the moments it slips to real effect.

Personality

Hachi is generous, loyal and completely ruled by her heart. She falls in love fast, forgives fast and apologises fast, and she dreams in a running inner monologue that the show shares with the audience. Under the daydreaming she is tougher than she looks: she works hard, shows up for her friends and keeps going after every heartbreak. Her flaw is dependence. She looks for someone to build her life around, boyfriend or best friend, and much of her story is learning what that habit costs her and the people who love her.

Background & Story

Nana Komatsu grew up in a warm, ordinary family in a small city, the youngest daughter, doted on and a little spoiled. She fell for an older married man as a schoolgirl, then for her classmate Shoji at art school, and followed him to Tokyo at 20 with no plan beyond being near him. On the train she met Nana Osaki, and a shared flat viewing turned them into roommates and best friends. In Tokyo she works a string of shop jobs, including at the furniture store Sabrina and later for a publishing company, while her love life swings between the safe Shoji, Blast's sweet Nobu and Trapnest's dangerous Takumi, with consequences that reshape everyone around her. The story is partly told by Hachi herself, years later, looking back at flat 707 with love and regret, and the narration makes clear that this period, with all its mistakes, was the making of her. Her job history, her friendships with Junko and her family back home, and her strawberry patterned belongings all fill out a character the series treats as a full person, not a sidekick: the audience is inside her head from the first episode to the last.

Powers & Abilities

• Emotional honesty: Hachi says what she feels, eventually, and her openness is what draws guarded people like Osaki and Shin toward her. In a story full of pride and secrets, she is the one who talks.
• Holding the group together: Flat 707 stays a home because Hachi makes it one. Her cooking, her parties and her strawberries on the table are the glue between two rival bands.
• Endurance: She gets knocked down by love repeatedly and gets back up every time, sadder and a little wiser. The narration, told by an older Hachi looking back, is proof she survives it all.

Key Relationships

• Nana Osaki: Her flatmate and best friend, the person she admires most in the world. Their bond is the series' central love story, tested by fame, jealousy and the men in both their lives.
• Nobuo Terashima: Blast's guitarist, who falls genuinely in love with her. Nobu offers the honest, uncomplicated love Hachi says she wants, which makes her choices hurt more.
• Takumi Ichinose: Trapnest's leader, who pursues Hachi with total confidence. Takumi represents the glamorous, controlled life that tempts her away from everything she built in flat 707.
• Shoji Endo: Her boyfriend from art school, the reason she first came to Tokyo. Their ordinary, comfortable relationship is the first casualty of her new life.

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