Ok so maybe I just haven't dug deep enough and I'm about to make myself look like an idiot, but I've been through a few homunculus forums always searching the word Nanako and have yet to see anyone else say that the lady from the last arc of homunculus is probably not Nanako or even really propose it. Here, I will list out all the reasons why I think this woman is not Nanako at all.
Reasons why she is probably not Nanako:
1. She says Satoshi when Nakoshi describes the face he sees on her and acts shocked that he could even know what that face looks like, specifically saying "his face" and not "your face".
2. She continues to say she's not Nanako and that she never saw hearts even when she's admitting that she was ugly and Nakoshi left her along with the pregnant child in her stomach. Why would she even lie at that point if that much of the past and truth is exposed? She literally never admits to being Nanako or having the ability to see homunculi.
2.5 Additionally, the pier he takes her to that's so precious to him is the first place he ever kissed Nanako and had sex with her, but this woman acts completely unphased by being brought here. This would make sense if she were Nanako and just hiding it out of spite, but considering she never admits to being Nanako and she would have to at least have a really good poker face to pull that lie off, I doubt it.
3. Nakoshi literally tells her that in order for them to truly connect and see each other's hearts, she will have to lie to herself a little. If he's not referring to her real lover having been Satoshi instead of Nakoshi, I have no idea what else he could mean by that.
4. We never actually see her ever draw on a sketched background, only ever on a white background, while we know Nanako only drew on sketched backgrounds.
5. Nakoshi's old photo of himself doesn't match the one that shows up on the woman's face and he even admits to Ito that he was never terribly ugly, just detached and empty.
6. It's not a big secret that Nakoshi's mental health steadily declines as the series goes on, especially after we've seen him willing to drill a hole in his skull and potentially die just so he can see the homunculi again. Becoming delusional enough to believe this woman is Nanako doesn't seem so far-fetched to me.
7. Though nakoshi has seen the imprint of the face before, he refuses to believe that it's him since there's no proof that she's Nanako and there's the old picture of his face that he still had (that we never see, so we can't compare it to the face on this lady btw), which is reasonable. This all suddenly flips around when Ita commits suicide even though he had a place to go back to and someone to love him, along with the gradually mounting pressure of all the homeless being forced out of the park with nowhere to go. Nakoshi's sheer desperation makes him lie to himself to believe this woman is Nanako.
8. If she is Nanako, then why is she interacting with Nakoshi, the man who she was together with for 3 months and then abruptly abandoned her? What's the point of her lying to the point of literally never admitting she was ever nanako or she could ever see hearts? If she isn't Nanako, then she met Nakoshi at a party, could tell he was a pig, left him a drawing to show what she thought of him, and then interacts with him when he's passing out from blood loss and comes over to help. She only really starts to believe in him somewhat when she sees how he saw the heart of the yakuza who was about to kill him. Before that point, she was just going to use him to skip town and get away with all the yakuza money she was stealing. You could even wonder if her whole reason for talking to him over and over out of the blue was so that she could have someone to run away with (remember we don't even know if she has access to a car).
9. Before the encounter with the yakuza, she definitively states that seeing hearts isn't real and there is only the material: what you see. it's difficult to believe that someone who could see homunculi like Nanako would completely reject the notion of seeing hearts as even being possible.
Reasons why she might be Nanako:
1. This lady being able to see Nakoshi become a demon is honestly something that cannot be reasonably explained if she is not Nanako. You could chalk it up to her being able to just get a feeling that this man is dangerous, but the detailed illustration of Nakoshi's demon face really does make him look like a homunculus and would seem to imply she can see homunculi.
2. Her artstyle of heavily relying on shading (Nakoshi's face and the black cat) does look quite a bit like Nanako's. Of course this could just be a coincidence, but there's no denying it looks similar.
3. If she's not Nanako, why was Nakoshi able to see her homunculus even when he couldn't see any others (remember this is the first time she really gets his attention)? I have no idea honestly; the whole ability to see homunculi is never definitively explained, only theorized on by Ito. By the end of the manga, even Ito admits that they have no clue what any of it means or how it works. There's really no way to know for sure why this lady looked different to him if she's not Nanako.
More ambiguous points:
1. Obviously, it seems like Nanako and this woman have enough in common to be the same person at first glance. But think about it like this: all we know for a fact about Nanako's backstory is that she was very ugly and with a man of low confidence who abandoned her after sleeping with her. All we know for a fact about this woman's backstory is that she was very ugly and with a very ugly man who abandoned her after getting her pregnant. She then got plastic surgery to look pretty and became a mistress for rich men. Although there are definitely similarities, is it really such a huge coincidence that two born-ugly women in tokyo whom nakoshi meets have similar backgrounds? Logically, you could say it's too much of a stretch, but I think it works for the manga extremely well thematically since there's a pretty blatant motif about how depressing and hard life can be in this modern society. Of course there would be so many ugly women treated so horribly in a society that only values appearances and lies.
2. What about the flashback where Nakoshi was called ugly as a kid and his dad said "so what?". Also you could argue Nakoshi's dad looks like the face imprinted onto the woman's homunculus. Yes, that's all true and does make it seem like Nakoshi is indeed that ugly, but it's important to note that after Ita's death, Nakoshi gets extremely desperate and can be seen as a completely unreliable source of information, saying and believing whatever he can to get what he wants. Even if these things were true, he could have just looked less ugly as he got older or the girl could have just been calling him a mean name for putting on the wrong clothes or his dad was just an asshole or his dad's resemblance to Satoshi was a coincidence.
With all of those points listed out, there's really nothing that uniquely ties this woman to Nanako aside from seeing Nakoshi as a demon once since it would imply she saw his homunculus. However, everything before Nakoshi becoming extremely desperate for someone to look at him (Ita's death) suggests that she simply is not Nanako. Tons of feedback and discussion would be appreciated.
This is the first actually interesting post I've seen on MAL... Very good observations, and although I'm not totally on board at the moment as I only just recently finished the series, I really think this theory might be plausible
nice explanation i too think that the woman was not nanako and i believe that maybe nakoshi was just going jack shit crazy after all the things that happened and was most probably lying to himself about her being nanako because he needed someone like nanako who would love him even if he's evil
I think she is Nanako, but in denial. Just like Nakoshi, she too left her past behind, got the surgery probably because the breakup gave her some insecurity complex regarding her looks, and also a determination to erase her painful past and start a new life. Nakoshi didn't actually forget his past, although it seems that he did; he forced his mind to believe his new self as the original one as if the old one never existed, because it was too shameful to him.
Nanako feels the same way. Unlike Nakoshi, she remembered her old life, but didn't want to face the painful past anymore. She denied being Nanako, because recalling the old moments were too painful for her. She rejected Nakoshi earlier saying "I hate the lips that lie" (something like that, I don't remember the exact sentence) because she recognized Nakoshi despite his plastic surgery, because she knew him personally (corner of his lips twitch upright when he lies). She saw him through his facade. In Nanako's eyes, Nakoshi was as pure as a white cloud at the time, when he hadn't turn evil. But later, she refused to see him as the cloud because she has witnessed his true self.
Red_sparkling said: I think she is Nanako, but in denial. Just like Nakoshi, she too left her past behind, got the surgery probably because the breakup gave her some insecurity complex regarding her looks, and also a determination to erase her painful past and start a new life. Nakoshi didn't actually forget his past, although it seems that he did; he forced his mind to believe his new self as the original one as if the old one never existed, because it was too shameful to him.
Nanako feels the same way. Unlike Nakoshi, she remembered her old life, but didn't want to face the painful past anymore. She denied being Nanako, because recalling the old moments were too painful for her. She rejected Nakoshi earlier saying "I hate the lips that lie" (something like that, I don't remember the exact sentence) because she recognized Nakoshi despite his plastic surgery, because she knew him personally (corner of his lips twitch upright when he lies). She saw him through his facade. In Nanako's eyes, Nakoshi was as pure as a white cloud at the time, when he hadn't turn evil. But later, she refused to see him as the cloud because she has witnessed his true self.
I agree, she even grabs his lips and then he cannot lie in that one scene. I recently finished Homunculus and I'm not sure what to think of the last arc really lol.
Red_sparkling said: I think she is Nanako, but in denial. Just like Nakoshi, she too left her past behind, got the surgery probably because the breakup gave her some insecurity complex regarding her looks, and also a determination to erase her painful past and start a new life. Nakoshi didn't actually forget his past, although it seems that he did; he forced his mind to believe his new self as the original one as if the old one never existed, because it was too shameful to him.
Nanako feels the same way. Unlike Nakoshi, she remembered her old life, but didn't want to face the painful past anymore. She denied being Nanako, because recalling the old moments were too painful for her. She rejected Nakoshi earlier saying "I hate the lips that lie" (something like that, I don't remember the exact sentence) because she recognized Nakoshi despite his plastic surgery, because she knew him personally (corner of his lips twitch upright when he lies). She saw him through his facade. In Nanako's eyes, Nakoshi was as pure as a white cloud at the time, when he hadn't turn evil. But later, she refused to see him as the cloud because she has witnessed his true self.
I agree, she even grabs his lips and then he cannot lie in that one scene. I recently finished Homunculus and I'm not sure what to think of the last arc really lol.
@InfiNitrous He had grabbed his own lips in said panel.
