English Dub Season Review: Talentless Nana Season One

 

Overview


Based on the Japanese manga series written by Looseboy and illustrated by Iori Furuya. The story takes place in the far future. A small percentage of humans are born with superpowers known as the “Talented,” and without them are the “Talentless.” For five years, a war was waged between the Talented and the Talentless. Cities were bombed to ashes in an attempt to genocide superpowered people. The Talented fought against the government because they didn’t want to be the country’s guinea pigs. They were stigmatized because some of them had dangerous and uncontrollable powers. Decades later, the Talented were accepted, but they’re isolated from normal humans and later sent to a school located on a deserted island, where they have all their daily needs provided for until they graduate and communication with the outside world is forbidden. One day, a new student named Nana Hiiragi arrives at the school. Her friendly and cheerful personality lets her quickly make friends with the class. But In reality, however, Nana is a Talentless government assassin who has been dispatched to kill the Talented, whom the government deems to be the true Enemies of Humanity…

On the technical side, The art is colorful, and well detailed in parts But nothing off-putting at all thanks to the efforts of character designer Satohiko Sano. Along with the show’s opening theme, “Broken Sky”, performed by Miyu Tomita, while the ending theme, “Known as a Monster” is performed by Chiai Fujikawa. Along with specific and atmospheric sounds that fit the proceedings appropriately. The other characters are a mixed bag, as some come across as bland, and through the plot, contrivance feels like they were designed to help push the story along. Not that the rest of the background cast is bad by any means, but within the proceedings of each episode, more of its primary focus is placed on certain characters more than others.

The commentary on superpowered people co-existing amongst society boils down to a straightforward question, as Nana quotes later on, “Anyone who attains superpowers without any efforts will always become arrogant… If we let immature humans with immature psyches have superpowers, would the world survive?” Sadly, this topic was better handled in shows like Amazon’s “The Boys”. It also doesn’t help that many of the plot elements feel like a bizarre amalgamation of other anime and shows within popculture such as Death Note, My Hero Academia, Battle Royale, and the Showtime series “Dexter” that ensues in a cat and mouse game between the titular Nana (Michelle Marie of Hazbin Hotel and Hello Kitty fame), and Kyouya (Stephen Fu from the Netflix Dub of Squid Game) one of her suspicious superpowered classmates.

Overall, the premise is interesting, but the execution was disappointing. Nana’s plans to murder these very kids that are discriminated against and punished for the wrongdoings of their ancestors by the very government who placed their asses in this school rely on their stupidity to reach Nana’s calculated & murderous results. Unfortunately, the show also lacks the gore or humor to be mindless entertainment and it’s too dull to be worth watching. Much like the movie Se7en, you barely get to see any of the killings, except for the gruesome aftermath of a crime scene here and there. It also overused cliffhangers until I stopped caring about what would happen next week. In the end, it attempted to be profound and memorable. But unlike Death Note, it lacks a sense of finality and left more to be desired due to ending on such a disappointing cliffhanger…