Huge essay on canon.
I love my character, I really do.
I love him because at first Nanba seems almost annoying, too sure of himself, too easily teasing everyone and pushing buttons. But then the author gives him backstory and you learn that he is not all that meets the eye. There are reason as to why he acts.
Minami-chan
I've essayed in a very poor way about Nanba's family before, but I think I'll expand a few points
Nanba's mother, Io, is a very strong woman. She had Nanba at sixteen, and is a strong presence in the lives of both her son and her brother. In fact, she used to dress them both as little girls when they were little. (a fact that disturbs them to this day) She is also capable of dragging them into helping her with work whenever she wants. Being close in age- nine year difference, almost like Umeda and Io, who are eight years apart- Umeda and Nanba have a relationship that resembles a little more that of older/younger brother than that of uncle/nephew. Basically, it means Umeda keeps an eye on him… and wins with the kicking.
The weird age differences among his family don't bother Nanba, particularly judging how he teases Rio- his aunt, who is one year younger than him- about it. What does embarrass him -and everyone else in the family- are his creepy eternally-young grandparents.
The one person we never get to see is Nanba's father, even if Io and Nanba do mention him. He's apparently a rich businessman who is always traveling due to work. He was not even around for his son's birth, so a nine year old Umeda had to take Io to the hospital. Despite that, Nanba loves all his family and had a very nice childhood.
Even if he spent most of it dressed as a little girl.
Angry adolescence and first love
The first time I met Kanako, it was summer of the year I turned 14.
Since I was already grown up, I'd stopped depending on my mother,
But I had something against my father who was always traveling away from home
due to his work, and my rebelliousness grew each day.
And the way it showed itself most clearly, was on my grades in school.
Nanba at fourteen is really different from the eighteen year old Nanba. He is a lot less social, a lot more angry and childish, even a bit shy. There's almost nothing of the charming, playful personality he has later. He insists that he is already grown up, but makes a childish fit of mommy and daddy not being there. Attention whore much? You bet.
Nanba's mother decides to get a tutor for him and asks ( in the "do it or else" way) Umeda to find one. Enter Tanabe Kanako, second year university student and Nanba's new oh-wow-she-is-cute tutor. Kanako is friendly, social and thwacks Nanba on the head when he does an equation wrong. Most importantly, she sees right through the rebelling and simply points that Nanba should just say what bothers him and get over it.
To say that Nanba likes her is an understatement. He falls in love with her quickly and, luckily for him, she likes him too. The relationship lasts for a year, during which Nanba pretty much spends every possible moment with her. The relationship doesn't lack a few problems, though. To start, Nanba is easily jealous, a behavior Kanako finds childish. That's another thing Nanba hates: he thinks she treats him like a child sometimes. He hates the age difference because of this.
By the time he is about to enter high school, Nanba decides he is just going to pass the entrance exam to please his family, but that he is dropping. After all, if his mother had him at sixteen, why shouldn't he drop out of school and move in with his girlfriend at fifteen? Kanako answer to this is... basically dots. And Nanba is too excited with the idea to notice her reaction.
After Nanba passes the entrance exam, he finds Kanako is gone. She has moved out of her apartment and has cut all ties that could help him find her. Nanba doesn't even get a note.
Aftermath
All I was sure of was just one thing...
I had been dumped, and was alone again
This is Nanba’s number one mayor emo button. He has issues with people leaving him and with leaving people. After, Nanba looked for her for a while, until it became clear that finding someone who didn’t want to be found was not possible. The one good thing about this point of time, is that he appreciates all the help Umeda gave him during it. Even now, in camp, Nanba talks once in a while with Umeda and almost always about light subjects. But the fact that Umeda is there is a source of tranquility for Nanba.
But I'm sticking to my views on canon, so let's continue and see how Nanba deals with heartbreak. Apparently he does it by dating. A lot. Surely it all means he’s gotten over Kanako, right? Not really.
The playboy
The number one thing everyone at Osaka will tell you about Nanba is that he is a playboy. What they won’t tell you is that those relationships are all short lived and empty. Basically? "You are great, I'll call you. (except not)" How much of his reputation is exaggeration and how much of it's truth is arguable, but there's no denying that:
1- Umeda men are hot. Getting a date is kind of easy. It helps that Nanba knows how to be charming and be noticed. You might notice Io and Umeda have similar mannerisms, I don’t think this is random at all. He has learned how to be charming.
2- Rebound sounds like a good idea when you just had your heart broken. Yes, it counts as rebound after years because he HASN’T ACCEPTED IT YET.
3- He is an attention whore. Making people notice him is something he loves.
But then, as any proper backstory character, Kanako comes back. To paraphrase “I left you but I loved you. Oh, and I’m getting married.” And basically forces Nanba to realize that yes, there are still issues there. Yes, he had been childish to just jump into things and not realize there was something wrong with their relationship. He ends up telling the whole thing to Mizuki, getting a hug from her and finally decides to send flowers to Kanako’s wedding and get over it. I play him as “still working on it”, even if he has gotten over most of it.
Mizuki
Nanba likes Mizuki (for those unfamiliar with Hanakimi, girl crossdressing as a boy in an all-boys highschool, main character). Well, not as much as Sano and Nakatsu do, but he definitely considers her a friend enough to talk to her about personal problems. And to buy her coffee and basically poke her when she has been crying. And to [spoiler] leave his head dorm position to her.
Nanba, as most of the cast, thinks Mizuki is a boy. This doesn’t stop one of his first thoughts about Mizuki being “He is so cute. It’s sacrilegious to call him male”. He flirts a lot with her, basically as a joke and to make Sano and Nakatsu twitch.
Fashion
Remember what I said about being an attention whore? It’s also in the way he dresses. Most of the time, at school, he wears simple shirts. But sometimes he wears things like this. Which is still tame …more or less. And then there's the coat. It was part of the clothes from Akiha’s photoshoot… but he kept that one. The best way to describe it is to call it a pimp coat, I mean, it practically screams “Look at me!”
Combined with his personality, and sparkling (yes, sparkling, he is shoujo and sparkles) he is actually kind of dramatic and flashy sometimes. In a way, he can only call Himejima “flashy bastard” because he is more flashy. This takes me to my next point.
The hypocrite
If you call Nanba anything, he’ll probably respond with a likely insult. Even if that insult is valid for him. If you kick he’ll kick back. If he is getting back to the dorm very late, he will still comment that according to school rules you shouldn’t be running around. If a student does something not allowed he’ll deny ever knowing about it.
If he is sad or angry, he won’t show it.
Mizuki is the one to notice that Nanba can be completely different when he thinks he is alone and when he is surrounded by others. ( He doesn’t let it show when things bug him. He generally only cracks when he is alone. It’s a show of how much he trusts/like people if he lets them see him sad or worried.
The stalker
After Kanako is gone, Nanba is pretty much the same as ever. Enter Julia, Mizuki’s best friend from America. The first time Nanba meets her he hits on her and she completely ignores him. After asking Mizuki if she’s really not her (his) girlfriend, he continues to hit on her. A lot. Julia’s reaction is “Tell this guy to go away” and punching him, yet Nanba says that makes him want to date her even more.
The other characters comment that is either 1) Pride 2) Nanba’s a masochist. I think it not exactly that but, why someone who can easily get a date goes after the one that says “no!”? He is so insistent that when her school and Mizuki’s class go on a school trip he follows them to another part of the country. Yes, this is one of the times I go with “wtf, Nanba…”
It’s interesting that this happens just after Kanako left. It might be that Julia was a way to try for a longer relationship and to be fair women with strong character have always interested him. But it looks more like a way to prove something to himself, since he doesn’t seem that depressed when she leaves the country. Only a bit hurt on his pride.
The dorm
One thing that Nanba cares for a lot is his job as a head dorm. He know every single student in his dorm, and he even knows how good their grades are ( a fact he has no problem using as leverage to make students listen),and can pick easily changes in some of them (like Nakatsu's problems, or how early he picks on Sano's protective vibe for Mizuki).
Nanba does manipulate his own dorm sometimes, particularly when it's a matter of outsmarting the other two head dorms, but he cares about them. He risks his neck to keep his students out of trouble and it's damn serious when he does it. You just don't mess with dorm two, roar.
Dorm two fills Nanba's need to be needed. Is just that simple. Or that complicated. Mess with any of them and he’ll be angry.
The sakura council
Unlike the students of dorm two, the other dorm heads are complete equals, not people he is responsible for. And canonly, Himejima is one of the few people outside his family that calls him by first name. When they all work together they are great, they ignore personal differences and you don’t want those three going against you.
The thing is… most of the time they are too busy competing against each other. They lie, they kick each other, throw glares of doom and are basically a trio of shoujo retards.
And finally…
Nakao
This part includes some heavy spoilers for the last three volumes of the manga. I’m not using a [spoiler] tag because this part needs to be complete.
One of the first things I did when I knew I wanted to app Nanba, was to reread the entire series and take small notes about speech, personality and minor things like what kind of sweets he liked. (lemon, grape) And then, at the bottom of it, I wrote " ...Nakao needs an entire essay"
Nakao Senri is one of the dorm two students, a year younger than Nanba. At first look a girly boy, Nakao is anything but delicate. Called "the one of many dislikes" by classmates, Nakao will call his classmates apes, shun those he deems inferior and firmly believe he is the prettiest thing ever.
He will also, without fail, glare at anyone who approaches/makes eye contact with Nanba. And cling to him. A lot. He will include himself into things only because Nanba is going, or drag him if he is not. Even if most of the time, this appears to be just comedy, it's not that simple.
Nanba is not exactly excited by Nakao's fanboying. He will eventually sigh and ask for his arm/leg/ability to breath back and will escape him to flirt with girls. But he never kicks him back (and, considering how he treats Nakatsu, Nanba doesn't have a problem using violence) or tells him something serious (and possibly hurtful) that could make him stop. He basically just tries not to encourage him, but never pushes back either.
As the series progresses towards the end, it becomes more clear that Nakao's adoration is not just a crush. He is really in love with Nanba, and it's also terribly obvious for everyone. Nanba does start indulging him a little more, pushing back a little less than usual and being a little nicer to him. This doesn't go unnoticed by one of Nanba's friends, but it's obvious there is guilt at play. Time is running out and guess who has issues with abandoning someone who is in love with him? Yeah.
But time is also running out for Nakao who, in a very brave move, decides to confess. Nakao knows already the answer, but he does it anyway and even manages to smile after Nanba turns him down. It's a sad point of the story, because they are both being honest and it's hurting them both. Hanakimi deals a lot with the theme of unrequited love, and in this case is double: Nanba knows what is like to have his heart broken, but he can't help it with Nakao. He won't pretend to love someone when he doesn't because knows that would be even more cruel.
After this encounter Nanba is visibly miserable (okay, Nakao is A LOT more miserable, but I'm not focusing on him right now). Let me repeat this: he hardly shows when things really bug him and he is visibly moping about it. This alone is an indication of how important was the issue. This is also something about Nanba that I find both adorable and retarded: he feels guilty for things that aren't really his fault.
Eventually, Nakao and Nanba fall back into their usual dynamics. But the issue still hangs in the air and even at the end of the series, Nakao is still the same.
…have I mentioned I want a Nakao in camp? Because I do. I have no idea exactly how things would play, but I do want a Nakao in camp.
I love him because at first Nanba seems almost annoying, too sure of himself, too easily teasing everyone and pushing buttons. But then the author gives him backstory and you learn that he is not all that meets the eye. There are reason as to why he acts.
Minami-chan
I've essayed in a very poor way about Nanba's family before, but I think I'll expand a few points
Nanba's mother, Io, is a very strong woman. She had Nanba at sixteen, and is a strong presence in the lives of both her son and her brother. In fact, she used to dress them both as little girls when they were little. (a fact that disturbs them to this day) She is also capable of dragging them into helping her with work whenever she wants. Being close in age- nine year difference, almost like Umeda and Io, who are eight years apart- Umeda and Nanba have a relationship that resembles a little more that of older/younger brother than that of uncle/nephew. Basically, it means Umeda keeps an eye on him… and wins with the kicking.
The weird age differences among his family don't bother Nanba, particularly judging how he teases Rio- his aunt, who is one year younger than him- about it. What does embarrass him -and everyone else in the family- are his creepy eternally-young grandparents.
The one person we never get to see is Nanba's father, even if Io and Nanba do mention him. He's apparently a rich businessman who is always traveling due to work. He was not even around for his son's birth, so a nine year old Umeda had to take Io to the hospital. Despite that, Nanba loves all his family and had a very nice childhood.
Even if he spent most of it dressed as a little girl.
Angry adolescence and first love
The first time I met Kanako, it was summer of the year I turned 14.
Since I was already grown up, I'd stopped depending on my mother,
But I had something against my father who was always traveling away from home
due to his work, and my rebelliousness grew each day.
And the way it showed itself most clearly, was on my grades in school.
Nanba at fourteen is really different from the eighteen year old Nanba. He is a lot less social, a lot more angry and childish, even a bit shy. There's almost nothing of the charming, playful personality he has later. He insists that he is already grown up, but makes a childish fit of mommy and daddy not being there. Attention whore much? You bet.
Nanba's mother decides to get a tutor for him and asks ( in the "do it or else" way) Umeda to find one. Enter Tanabe Kanako, second year university student and Nanba's new oh-wow-she-is-cute tutor. Kanako is friendly, social and thwacks Nanba on the head when he does an equation wrong. Most importantly, she sees right through the rebelling and simply points that Nanba should just say what bothers him and get over it.
To say that Nanba likes her is an understatement. He falls in love with her quickly and, luckily for him, she likes him too. The relationship lasts for a year, during which Nanba pretty much spends every possible moment with her. The relationship doesn't lack a few problems, though. To start, Nanba is easily jealous, a behavior Kanako finds childish. That's another thing Nanba hates: he thinks she treats him like a child sometimes. He hates the age difference because of this.
By the time he is about to enter high school, Nanba decides he is just going to pass the entrance exam to please his family, but that he is dropping. After all, if his mother had him at sixteen, why shouldn't he drop out of school and move in with his girlfriend at fifteen? Kanako answer to this is... basically dots. And Nanba is too excited with the idea to notice her reaction.
After Nanba passes the entrance exam, he finds Kanako is gone. She has moved out of her apartment and has cut all ties that could help him find her. Nanba doesn't even get a note.
Aftermath
All I was sure of was just one thing...
I had been dumped, and was alone again
This is Nanba’s number one mayor emo button. He has issues with people leaving him and with leaving people. After, Nanba looked for her for a while, until it became clear that finding someone who didn’t want to be found was not possible. The one good thing about this point of time, is that he appreciates all the help Umeda gave him during it. Even now, in camp, Nanba talks once in a while with Umeda and almost always about light subjects. But the fact that Umeda is there is a source of tranquility for Nanba.
But I'm sticking to my views on canon, so let's continue and see how Nanba deals with heartbreak. Apparently he does it by dating. A lot. Surely it all means he’s gotten over Kanako, right? Not really.
The playboy
The number one thing everyone at Osaka will tell you about Nanba is that he is a playboy. What they won’t tell you is that those relationships are all short lived and empty. Basically? "You are great, I'll call you. (except not)" How much of his reputation is exaggeration and how much of it's truth is arguable, but there's no denying that:
1- Umeda men are hot. Getting a date is kind of easy. It helps that Nanba knows how to be charming and be noticed. You might notice Io and Umeda have similar mannerisms, I don’t think this is random at all. He has learned how to be charming.
2- Rebound sounds like a good idea when you just had your heart broken. Yes, it counts as rebound after years because he HASN’T ACCEPTED IT YET.
3- He is an attention whore. Making people notice him is something he loves.
But then, as any proper backstory character, Kanako comes back. To paraphrase “I left you but I loved you. Oh, and I’m getting married.” And basically forces Nanba to realize that yes, there are still issues there. Yes, he had been childish to just jump into things and not realize there was something wrong with their relationship. He ends up telling the whole thing to Mizuki, getting a hug from her and finally decides to send flowers to Kanako’s wedding and get over it. I play him as “still working on it”, even if he has gotten over most of it.
Mizuki
Nanba likes Mizuki (for those unfamiliar with Hanakimi, girl crossdressing as a boy in an all-boys highschool, main character). Well, not as much as Sano and Nakatsu do, but he definitely considers her a friend enough to talk to her about personal problems. And to buy her coffee and basically poke her when she has been crying. And to [spoiler] leave his head dorm position to her.
Nanba, as most of the cast, thinks Mizuki is a boy. This doesn’t stop one of his first thoughts about Mizuki being “He is so cute. It’s sacrilegious to call him male”. He flirts a lot with her, basically as a joke and to make Sano and Nakatsu twitch.
Fashion
Remember what I said about being an attention whore? It’s also in the way he dresses. Most of the time, at school, he wears simple shirts. But sometimes he wears things like this. Which is still tame …more or less. And then there's the coat. It was part of the clothes from Akiha’s photoshoot… but he kept that one. The best way to describe it is to call it a pimp coat, I mean, it practically screams “Look at me!”
Combined with his personality, and sparkling (yes, sparkling, he is shoujo and sparkles) he is actually kind of dramatic and flashy sometimes. In a way, he can only call Himejima “flashy bastard” because he is more flashy. This takes me to my next point.
The hypocrite
If you call Nanba anything, he’ll probably respond with a likely insult. Even if that insult is valid for him. If you kick he’ll kick back. If he is getting back to the dorm very late, he will still comment that according to school rules you shouldn’t be running around. If a student does something not allowed he’ll deny ever knowing about it.
If he is sad or angry, he won’t show it.
Mizuki is the one to notice that Nanba can be completely different when he thinks he is alone and when he is surrounded by others. ( He doesn’t let it show when things bug him. He generally only cracks when he is alone. It’s a show of how much he trusts/like people if he lets them see him sad or worried.
The stalker
After Kanako is gone, Nanba is pretty much the same as ever. Enter Julia, Mizuki’s best friend from America. The first time Nanba meets her he hits on her and she completely ignores him. After asking Mizuki if she’s really not her (his) girlfriend, he continues to hit on her. A lot. Julia’s reaction is “Tell this guy to go away” and punching him, yet Nanba says that makes him want to date her even more.
The other characters comment that is either 1) Pride 2) Nanba’s a masochist. I think it not exactly that but, why someone who can easily get a date goes after the one that says “no!”? He is so insistent that when her school and Mizuki’s class go on a school trip he follows them to another part of the country. Yes, this is one of the times I go with “wtf, Nanba…”
It’s interesting that this happens just after Kanako left. It might be that Julia was a way to try for a longer relationship and to be fair women with strong character have always interested him. But it looks more like a way to prove something to himself, since he doesn’t seem that depressed when she leaves the country. Only a bit hurt on his pride.
The dorm
One thing that Nanba cares for a lot is his job as a head dorm. He know every single student in his dorm, and he even knows how good their grades are ( a fact he has no problem using as leverage to make students listen),and can pick easily changes in some of them (like Nakatsu's problems, or how early he picks on Sano's protective vibe for Mizuki).
Nanba does manipulate his own dorm sometimes, particularly when it's a matter of outsmarting the other two head dorms, but he cares about them. He risks his neck to keep his students out of trouble and it's damn serious when he does it. You just don't mess with dorm two, roar.
Dorm two fills Nanba's need to be needed. Is just that simple. Or that complicated. Mess with any of them and he’ll be angry.
The sakura council
Unlike the students of dorm two, the other dorm heads are complete equals, not people he is responsible for. And canonly, Himejima is one of the few people outside his family that calls him by first name. When they all work together they are great, they ignore personal differences and you don’t want those three going against you.
The thing is… most of the time they are too busy competing against each other. They lie, they kick each other, throw glares of doom and are basically a trio of shoujo retards.
And finally…
Nakao
This part includes some heavy spoilers for the last three volumes of the manga. I’m not using a [spoiler] tag because this part needs to be complete.
One of the first things I did when I knew I wanted to app Nanba, was to reread the entire series and take small notes about speech, personality and minor things like what kind of sweets he liked. (lemon, grape) And then, at the bottom of it, I wrote " ...Nakao needs an entire essay"
Nakao Senri is one of the dorm two students, a year younger than Nanba. At first look a girly boy, Nakao is anything but delicate. Called "the one of many dislikes" by classmates, Nakao will call his classmates apes, shun those he deems inferior and firmly believe he is the prettiest thing ever.
He will also, without fail, glare at anyone who approaches/makes eye contact with Nanba. And cling to him. A lot. He will include himself into things only because Nanba is going, or drag him if he is not. Even if most of the time, this appears to be just comedy, it's not that simple.
Nanba is not exactly excited by Nakao's fanboying. He will eventually sigh and ask for his arm/leg/ability to breath back and will escape him to flirt with girls. But he never kicks him back (and, considering how he treats Nakatsu, Nanba doesn't have a problem using violence) or tells him something serious (and possibly hurtful) that could make him stop. He basically just tries not to encourage him, but never pushes back either.
As the series progresses towards the end, it becomes more clear that Nakao's adoration is not just a crush. He is really in love with Nanba, and it's also terribly obvious for everyone. Nanba does start indulging him a little more, pushing back a little less than usual and being a little nicer to him. This doesn't go unnoticed by one of Nanba's friends, but it's obvious there is guilt at play. Time is running out and guess who has issues with abandoning someone who is in love with him? Yeah.
But time is also running out for Nakao who, in a very brave move, decides to confess. Nakao knows already the answer, but he does it anyway and even manages to smile after Nanba turns him down. It's a sad point of the story, because they are both being honest and it's hurting them both. Hanakimi deals a lot with the theme of unrequited love, and in this case is double: Nanba knows what is like to have his heart broken, but he can't help it with Nakao. He won't pretend to love someone when he doesn't because knows that would be even more cruel.
After this encounter Nanba is visibly miserable (okay, Nakao is A LOT more miserable, but I'm not focusing on him right now). Let me repeat this: he hardly shows when things really bug him and he is visibly moping about it. This alone is an indication of how important was the issue. This is also something about Nanba that I find both adorable and retarded: he feels guilty for things that aren't really his fault.
Eventually, Nakao and Nanba fall back into their usual dynamics. But the issue still hangs in the air and even at the end of the series, Nakao is still the same.
…have I mentioned I want a Nakao in camp? Because I do. I have no idea exactly how things would play, but I do want a Nakao in camp.