Munou na Nana (Talentless Nana)

Fifty years ago, horrific creatures dubbed as the "enemies of humanity" suddenly appeared around the world. To combat these threats, teenagers gifted with supernatural abilities called "Talents"—such as pyrokinesis and time travel—hone their powers at an academy on a secluded island.

Nanao Nakajima, however, is quite different from the others on the island: he has no Talent. With many "Talented" teenagers around him, Nanao is often a target for bullying, but even so, he still strives to complete his training. Soon after, two transfer students, the mysterious Kyouya Onodera and the mind-reading Nana Hiiragi, join the class. But just as everyone starts blending as comrades-in-arms, mysterious disappearances begin to threaten the class's entire foundation.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Munou na Nana
Other:	Munou na Nana Mini Anime

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Characters & Voice Actors

Hiiragi, Nana

Main

Ookubo, Rumi
Japanese

Onodera, Kyouya

Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi
Japanese

Inukai, Michiru

Supporting

Nakahara, Mai
Japanese

Tachibana, Jin

Supporting

Yusa, Kouji
Japanese

Nakajima, Nanao

Supporting

Shimono, Hiro
Japanese

Hatadaira, Tsunekichi

Supporting

Tamaru, Atsushi
Japanese

Sorano, Fuuko

Supporting

Kamakura, Yuna
Japanese

Kazama, Shinji

Supporting

Ninomiya, Aiko
Japanese

Sasaki, Yuuka

Supporting

Tomita, Miyu
Japanese

Tsurumigawa, Rentarou

Supporting

Yamaya, Yoshitaka
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Ishihira, Shinji

Director

Morishita, Hiroto

Sound Director

Suzuki, Yuuji

Episode Director, Storyboard, Key Animation

Hashimoto, Naoto

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"Broken Sky" by Miyu Tomita

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Ending Theme

"Bakemono to Yobarete (バケモノと呼ばれて)" by Chiai Fujikawa

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Reviews

Dec 27, 2020

13 of 13 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 4

RebelPanda (All reviews)

410 people found this review helpful

*This review contains spoilers.*

Talentless Nana is an ugly show about a class of braindead kids with superpowers; one by one, they get murdered by the titular psychopath. It's a reverse murder mystery, meaning you have to figure out how Nana will plan a murder without being caught—rather than identifying the killer.

The premise is interesting, but the execution is disappointing. Nana's plans to murder each student rely on their stupidity to succeed. Unfortunately, the show also lacks the gore or humor to be mindless entertainment—and it's too dull to be worth watching. You barely get to see anything of the killings, except for a few dead read more

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Dec 27, 2020

13 of 13 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 8

KANLen09 (All reviews)

409 people found this review helpful

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein / a.k.a I don't quite understand the hate for this show. Why? Because you're plain stupid/dumb to understand, that's mean.

What defines humanity as a whole? It's the age-old argument of stupidity. From psychology to physiology, all humans are ironically wired to have a level of stupidity, whether by a congenital lack of capacity for reasoning or temporary slow-mindedness. Don't attempt to go and defend yourself by remitting the "ignorance is bliss" adage, because while it doesn't equal stupidity, "'tis folly to be wise." Don't get me read more

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Dec 27, 2020

13 of 13 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 3

debochca (All reviews)

228 people found this review helpful

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

My god, not even my first break-up when I was a teenie disappointed me like this anime did. I think that the comparisson is pretty accurate. Desilusion, a bad time, the feeling of “why did I keep on with this, when it was such a waste of time?”, and the consequent response of “I wanted to know how this was going to end, or if this can be saved”. All those things are in common.

Munou na Nana is an anime that began strongly and that had a huge potential but, as you can expect from my rating, this ended up being the whole opposite. The story takes place in an island for special kids (and I’m not only talking about their abilities) that are supposed to protect the earth from the “enemies of humanity”, where there is a school that is a sort of Boku no Hero Academy. And actually, that’s your first impression. Nanao, the human that it’s called the ‘protagonist’, is a talentless guy in a talents school. Later on, is revealed that Nanao is not talentless as such, but a guy with the talent to nullify the other’s talents. At the same time, while you’re told his story and how he suffers because no one knew his secret ability and everybody bullied him because of that (I’m sure the CIA told him to kept it secret in order not to control the world), the new girl in the class makes her apparition and gets along with him, a cheerful annoying girl whose talent is to read minds. I was yawning the entire episode until I watched the end of it, when the thing got spicy. I was amazed and thought that it was a great idea that I made it through the end of it, because my expectations grew after that exact moment when, in the final minutes, Nanao gets apparently killed by the new girl, Nana, letting you know that she is sent by the government in order to destroy and eliminate every enemy of humanity. The interesting part of it, is that the enemies of humanity are, indeed, the students that are caught up in that island and, of course, that place is not to educate them, but to have them separated from the rest of the world so they could be killed in mysterious ways. Excellent way of cheering up the party with this finale and that revelation, isn’t it?

I waited up for the next episode to release, and I was so excited, but then it declined a little bit. I didn’t lose hope and tried to see the positive out of it, and it kept for the next two episodes. I even wrote and published a preliminary review saying this was going to be great! After the fifth episode, I had to delete it because, at that moment, I didn’t feel any of the positive things I said before.

The plot continues with Nana killing another classmates, breaking that mask of cute girl from time to time to show her real behavior, having dark thoughts and openly expressing her hate for the other students, of course, when she’s alone. Another thing that was revealed previously is that she has no talent. She can’t read minds, she’s just instructed in body language and is careful enough to understand what’s going on in her surrounding. Suddenly, as more classmates keep disappearing, a solitary cold guy from her class starts to suspects her and they begin an interesting and indirect war, where both of them try to develope the other’s intentions. At that point, I thought it was still good. But as it progresses and she starts killing indiscriminately, you realize how it gets even stupidier with every episode. Every person dies when she’s with them, and every times she excuses hemself with her fake cutie attitude, by saying that they were attacked by an enemy of humanity (what they believe that are monsters). And that’s it, her sacred word is never doubted, so no one suspects her and no one investigates, and I’m not only talking about Nana, but the school itself, everything is so weird, the professors don’t care at all for their students and neven hear them, and the students don’t even suspect a thing. Sometimes there’s even people that almost witnesses the crime and that, if they had two functional neurons making sinapsis, could easily deduce she was the serial killer. Of course, they don’t. I mean, she kills a stupid guy and, when she’s right next to his body, a stupid girl comes in and asks what happened. This stupid guy that was killed had the ability of premonitions and could keep them as photographs. The stupid girl, while examinating his body, finds out a picture of Nana killing Nanao, and she doesn’t even doubt of her. She just asks “Nana, what’s this?”.

And this foolishness is repeated every episode. Her classmates never do anything except for Kyouya, the only guy that suspects her and follows her anywhere, and everytime tries to accuse her. He demonstrates in the first episodes that he is smart enough to play the game along with her, but suddenly, after ten episodes and actually knowing she tried to kill him, he still thinks that she can read minds and even gets dazed by her manipulations. Amazing. And that point is important because that makes me real mad because of how nonsensically convenient it is. A lot of times she makes huge mistakes in her ‘minds reading’ and ALWAYS puts the same excuse “haha, I’m sorry, I’m tired and I can’t focus”, and everybody says haha that’s ok. Sometimes, she even says things, by deduction, that every person with those acclaimed neurons could realize by themself, and everybody just gets surprised and reasure she can read minds. I’ve seen secondary characters that are shameful, cringey, ridiculous or naive, but these are all those adjectives together but multiplied by 2000. It gets to a point where the stupidity of those characters and how blind they are (that, of course, is a plot convenience) is shooking, illogical, and that you, as a viewer, actually wonder if the human being who made this story is trolling you or just thinking you are as braindead as them. After a little time you even feel insulted. Mangaka-sama, I’m not asking you to write those characters with an IQ of 160, nor to make them capable of beating her in that wit game, I’m just asking for them to, at least, suspect her or to lose trust on her. Nevermind, I’m not even asking for that, I’m begging you to give them a brain. Amen.

Another poor thing about this anime is how they abuse of cliffhangers. Cliffhangers are great, are surprising, catches your attention and so, but when you use it A LOT, it looses its taste and you already expect it. Every episode is stupid and you are there, knowing that Nana is going to kill twenty students more and no one will ever notice, and you are already waiting for the cliffhanger. And you already know that the next episode, when the cliffhanger is solved, Nana will end up being free and innocent to everybody. Is not only that they abuse of this resource, but they actually never maintain what happens on that cliffhanger, since in the next episode, everything will return back to normal as if the cliffhanger never existed. Why did they make it for, then? Is obvious that they are doing that because they are desperate. Some episodes were boring and, just when you get something interesting, boom! Cliffhanger. After six episodes, they should already know that people are not falling for that anymore. Oh, yeah, I forgot, they think the audience is incredibly stupid.

After a bunch of episodes of this one-dimensional pseudo yandere simulator and her mental deficient classmates with no personality, you get to know her past and her real personality. She likes mental games, she adores chess and Shogi, she’s a manga reader and her parents were killed, apparently, by an enemy of humanity that climbed up her window when she escaped from home to go get the last volume of her favourite manga at almost midnight. Relatable. When she knew what happened she felt guilty. Nevertheless, she reveals to her only friend in the academy (The stupidiest of them all, a cutie cringey girl whose voice is annoying and that’s the one that defends Nana to death) that, after all those years, she doesn’t even feel sad about it, she doesn’t feel guilt, nor hate, nor regrets. And when I thought that this could be an interesting detail of this character, she starts to think about that incident all the time. Until then she was a cold ass killer that never thought about her parents, and hastily she can’t stop thinking about it and, even though she said two mintes earlier that she doesn’t feel anything for that, she totally contradicts her statement in order for us to feel empathy for her, or that at least we think for one second and in the last two episodes, that she is not plain and hasn’t a poor writing. A lame resource, but it’s not that I was expecting anything from this show right now.

The rest of the cast… I don’t want to keep defenestrating them since they are poor little humans betrayed by biology itself, who forgot to make a brain for them. Although, I have to make a summary. Kyouya, who I mentioned before, is a guy (with no development at all, of course) who at first hides his talent, but that later demonstrates that his ability is to be inmortal. This is the one who actually had a big potential since he was the only one whose neurons weren’t on a hunger strike at the beginning, but that didn’t last long, because episodes later he started with a nonsensical behavior. The idea was that he wanted to confuse Nana and make her think he trusted her, but it seems that the one that he confuses is, in fact, the viewer. Let’s see: he, at first, suspects her and almost spits that out to her face, and prooves he is not THAT stupid and that he could be at her level. Further on, he starts to make things like trying to be friends with her for no apparent reason. Okay. If we could understand him just by his actions, yes, it’s logical if we are confused (or if we don’t understand his reasons) since we don’t know what he’s planning to do or if it’s all just an acting to keep an eye on her. But no, the anime shows us his thoughts and his reasoning, and that’s where we see that he is actually not planning anything and he is just dumb enough to not realize obvious things. He just behaves like that because of the relief comedy of him not knowing how to make friends and so. And even when he does approaches Nana to investigate her, he gets fooled by her and her “psychic powers”. At the beginning, I thought he was just pretending to be fooled by her, but no, when they show you his thoughts, you really know that he doesn’t have a clue about Nana not having any talent. And is contradictory! By moments he unfolds an entire intelligent deduction, and by moments he is an idiot who doesn’t know where he is standing. Then, what is the point of this? Kyouya is a wasted character who wanted to be a smartass and forgot the first five letters of the word.

The rest of the cast is even lamer. Inukai Michiru is the most adorable and stupid of them all, an hypocrite who swears that wants to help and save all the people she can, but that blindly denies that Nana is the one hurting and killing everybody. If she really wanted to make a good, she would, at least, wonder why Nana is always when the assassination takes place, why Nana never lets her heal nor inspect the victims’ bodies, why Kyouya steady accuses Nana, why she found a pic of Nana killing Nanao, if she was that sacred deer she believes she is? Is ridiculous. However, by the last episodes, we also see Michiru’s past and how she and Nana are becoming besties, using Michiru as the moral trigger that pulls Nana over the threads and makes her wonder if she’s doing a good deed in name of humanity, or if she’s just being used and deceived by the government. Of course, despite she’s a smartass that can cheat an entire bunch of obtuse students, she’s slow enough to question her actioning after twelve episodes and several cold kills, but nevermind. We, the audience, are even slower, we’re not gonna notice that flamsy construction, aren’t we?

After those that I mentioned, I had a headache, so I’m not gonna extend more on this. The rest of the characters are the same and worse. You got a fire guy that is the enemy of an ice guy, you have the bullies, and so. All of them respectfully adore Nana and follow her anywhere. The persons she killed, died because of their non-base-confidence and because of that adoration for her leader (who was chosen as their leader because ‘why not?’). I mean, how can you be so confident when there is a serial killer in the island where you are trapped, and when every classmate of yours is disappearing? Not even one character is compelling nor act in a logical way, in order to ease the task to Nana and to make her look like a great unbeatable character. It’s like feeling strong when you’re winning an arm-wrestling against a one-handed person. Another plot convenience that insults you in the face.

In terms of animation and sound I don’t have complaints, but I don’t have compliments either. Everything is common and nothing I would recall. Some VA are annoying and some characters design are likeable since they are very different from each other. The uniform is nice, too. They also abuse of the resource of the darkened face when Nana is in a hurry, and abuse even more of the red and blue background, like some sort of cheap Death Note. At first that one was interesting though, but when they use it all the time to leave the Nana’s voice-off, it loses its effect, and it’s worse when they try so hard to make Kyouya fit the blue side, as if he could be a real opponent for Nana. Guess what? He’s not.

In conclusion, this is a regular animated show with no praising audiovisual work, with flat, awfully silly and absurd characters that will get to your nerves, with a story that started with a really good premise and that ended up in just a “wannabe” with a lot of ridiculous plot armors and the over-use of repetitive resources that were not used as they should. One undeniable thing is that if we need to pass through twelve episodes to say this is worth it, it is definitely not. A plot twist can be good, but there’s no plot twist THAT good to save a whole disaster as big as Munou na Nana. Normally, I try to make a closure that equals bad and good points, but in this anime there’s nothing I can save, so… Don’t. Don’t watch it. Unless you’re as stupid as the public they are aiming with this show, of course, but that’s up to you.

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Dec 27, 2020

13 of 13 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 9

TheDeedsOfMen (All reviews)

194 people found this review helpful

Let's discuss a topic people like to bring up: stupid and allegedly stupid decisions by the characters, especially some side characters, and whether this counts as luck, plot armor, or whatever. The answer is nuanced. Much of the alleged stupidity is actually deep ignorance, which is different, and the ignorance has been caused on purpose. It is revealed very early on.

First, a general point: If you follow the full narrative, it is very clear that people irrationally believing in propaganda and other convenient lies is intentional. It is even clearer if you read the manga.

"Humans don't believe the truth. They believe people."
"People believe what they read more

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