Originally an Utaite (a singer who covers existing songs) fromNico Nico Douga, Nano (real name, Hana Ishiyama Ohara) is a popular musical artist who made her official debut in her career during 2012. Having done music forBTOOOM!,M3: The Dark Metal, andGunslinger Stratos 2, she has quite the experience under her belt. And like other Utaite, before Nano made her face reveal in 2017, she had a mascot that she used for her videos and promotions.
The mascot was a young man who wore a hoodie that is identical to one that she wears in real life. In most of her early album music videos, he was the primary subject. Though there are two distinct music videos that feature another character, a girl - and it seems that there’s an underlying story being told: “No Pain, No Game” and “Nevereverland”. This analysis will be focusing on “No Pain, No Game”.
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“No Pain, No Game”
Also used as an OP forBTOOOM!,“No Pain, No Game"was formally released on Nano’s first album in 2012,Nanoir. In the music video for it, we see Nano’s mascot and a girl featured in what looks like a school, permanently stuck in time. For the sake of this analysis, we will give these two characters names, Naoko and Nobuya.
At the beginning of the song, we see Naoko curled up in a dark setting, before a shadowy figure begins to approach her. Sensing his presence, she looks up and the surrounding backgroundtransforms into a school. We then get a shot of her body surrounded by a destroyed building, presumably the school she went to. From the beginning, we can already conclude that something happened to her. After the title drops, Naoko is sitting in a classroom when she sees Nobuya outside in the hallway, and chases after him as he gets farther and farther away. It’s then that we see a glimpse of flashbacks, most likely memories of Naoko’s life. As she sprints faster, she ends up in the dark again before finding herself back in the hallway and reaching out to Nobuya. We see this from her point of her view, and realize that now he’s in a different building. Naoko once again calls out to him, but he doesn’t hear her. She closes her eyes in defeat and the scene changes, accompanied by the following lyrics.
When you feel you’ve reached the last dead end
What will you do to save yourself from fate?
Would you take a knife into your heart
Or would you rather break the fall and take defeat?
As the outside scenery fades to red, now we see that Nobuya has entered the classroom Naoko was previously in, and places a bracelet on her desk. Naoko sees this in the doorway andbegins piecing together what happened to her. Though as she enters the room, Nobuya hears her voice from when she called for him in the hallway and sprints towards the direction she was previously in. This implies that purgatory and reality are minutes apart. Now once again in front of her desk and having realized that she’s long gone from the world, her reality shatters.
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The Stages of Grief
Come the bridge, Naoko is once again in the dark, this time holding the bracelet that Nobuya put on her desk. Despite her previous resolve to chase him down, she now sits and waits for the shadow that we saw at the beginning to approach her, who is none other than Nobuya. But she hadalready resigned herself to her fate and accepted the shadow. However, he leans down and tell her something, most likely the last words she heard or his love confession. Given the setting that they were in, it’s safe to assume that Naoko and Nobuya met and fell in love when they were in high school. But as a result of an earthquake or accident, the original school building was destroyed with Naoko in it. It’s at that time she died, holding the bracelet Nobuya had given to her. If we want to make this more sad, we can assume Nobuya was at the rebuilt school on the anniversary of her death, which was also happened to be her birthday, hence the reason she’s still holding onto the bracelet - she died with it in her hands.
Nano begins singing again, and we see a reflection of Nobuya’s shocked face replaced with Naoko’s. This could be themoment they both realized she had died. A ray of light peeks through the black void she’s in, and the sky fades to blue as she ascends the stairs to Heaven. She once again opens her eyes to a fully rebuilt city and finally walks into the bright morning, having moved on to the afterlife.
Things To Note
A few small details are worth noting. Naoko’s eyes are blue when she’s in her school uniform, as is Nobuya’s. In Nano’s other videos with Nobuya, he also has brown eyes. We can conclude that it’s an artistic choice to make the eyes more vibrant in dark settings, with neutral settings allow for their actual eye colors. Moreover, Naoko’s eyes are also red at the beginning.
If Naoko did indeed die at the school, Nobuya may feel a sense of survivors guilt, especially if the reason she was in the school building, was to retrieve her bracelet; if he hadn’t given it to her, she wouldn’t have died. This sense of guilt is further built upon in “Nevereverland”. Nobuya is never seen in a school uniform. Going off of how Nobuya recalls his most fond memory of her in a dress in “Nevereverland” - her most precious memory of him was the exact same moment.
“No Pain No Game” and “Nevereverland” are available for viewing on Nano’s officialYouTube channel.
