Nana was in love with Hachi, but those feelings were inconsistent with her self-conception as a straight woman. This video, whose transcript is provided below, explores the methods that Nana used to manage that inconsistency, and the way in which those methods shaped her identity as an artist.
A day or two after Nobu struck up his initial romance with Hachi, he found a private moment with Nana to thank her for giving him the courage to pursue this relationship: Nobu probably could not have done it without her support. Nana, however politely, rejects Nobu’s gratitude on the grounds that she didn’t set them up for Nobu’s sake. She really did it purely for herself, because she wanted to possess Hachi; for if Hachi were dating a member of Nana’s band, it meant that Hachi would likewise remain enclosed inside of Nana’s kingdom, as a member of her royal family, so to speak.
Nana was eager to reclaim possession over Hachi, because Hachi had recently started sleeping with a member of a rival band named Takumi, and Nana was jealous that he was taking her away. But the dynamics of Nana’s jealousy with Takumi can start to look a little bit strange if you examine them closely. She seemed to behave as though Takumi was her romantic rival, and that wouldn’t be strange all by itself, except for the fact that she was so eager to set Hachi up with Nobu. For some reason, Nobu doesn’t inspire that kind of jealousy at all. If anything, Nana seems to see Nobu as an extension of herself in this context.
I think a couple of things are going on with Nana on a psychological level. She’s pretty clearly in love with Hachi, but she also seems unwilling or unable to acknowledge the idea that she could love another woman in that way. However, I think that Nana has experienced and even resolved this kind of conflict before. I’d even say that she has something of a pre-established system for managing her attraction to women while also maintaining her conception of herself as straight.
Nana sublimates or filters her queer desires and emotions through her identity as an artist. She enjoys dazzling other women as the lead singer of Blast, and she even finds a certain level of satisfaction in collecting groupies like Misato, for example, who is clearly in love with Nana, and who follows Nana around while openly nursing a fantasy of getting together with her. Nana feeds Misato’s fantasy while also maintaining her distance, and that strikes me as representative of the way that Nana has incorporated some of her queer desire into her life, while also separating it from her straight persona.
If you keep this pattern of behavior in mind, I think that Nana’s plan to set up Hachi with Nobu will be very easy to understand. That plan was a natural evolution of a system that she had been using for a long time to manage the love that she feels for other women. Nana regards Nobu as an extension of herself in this context because he’s her guitarist, and as far as she’s concerned, she is their band. She is Blast, in the way that a king is his kingdom; and so if Hachi happens to love Nobu, what that really means is that she loves Nana’s guitar. She loves an instrument of Nana’s will that expresses her seductive glamor and spirit. In short, she loves Nana. Nobu doesn’t have the power to take Hachi away from Nana in the way that Takumi does, because he’s almost like the body that Nana uses to love her.
