Nana to Kaoru/YMMV

• Ensemble Darkhorse - Mitsuko Tachibana, the porn store manager. Such joy. Such perversion. And so informative too. SHE MUST LOVE HER LIFE!!! In the Time Skip pseudo-sequel series Nana to Kaoru: Black Label, it turns out that she's the wife/personal slave of Kaoru's favorite BDSM author... who then invites them to a countryside retreat.
  • Kaoru has some fans too ^{[dead link]} .
• Fetish Fuel - If you didn't have a BDSM fetish before reading this manga, you will by the end of it.
  • That isn't even the half of it. Read it too much and it all starts to seem positively wholesome.
    • Plenty -- plenty -- of BDSM practitioners would reply to that with: "That's because it is." The only major research failure with the series is the lack of safewords, other than that it's pretty much been a textbook lesson in a wholesome BDSM relationship.
  • This series could be renamed Fetish Fuel: The Manga.
  • The foot fetish fuel, on the other hand, may not have been intentional, but it's there all the same.
• Hollywood Homely - The live-action Kaoru is taller than Nana, and at worst could be considered "ordinary-looking."
• Narm Charm: Amazume manages to make an anal suppository heartwarming.
• Values Dissonance: The lack of Safe Words may raise some eyebrows amongst American readers - they're far less common in the European and Japanese S&M scenes, where considerably greater responsibility is placed on the dom for the safety and enjoyability of a session.
• Viewer Gender Confusion - Tachi never mentions her actual gender, thinking that it was obvious... Even though, in her jogging suit, she's masculine enough to fool everyone who sees her.
• The Woobie
  • It's hard not to feel bad for Kaoru when he starts talking about how utterly unworthy he is to ever be around Nana, despite being obviously in love with her.
  • It's easy to feel bad for Nana as well. As readers, we see Kaoru's inner thoughts and more sympathetic sides, but to her he must seem like a horrible person with a Hair-Trigger Temper, who unashamedly cheats on her with Tachi and insists on being a sadistic bondage-master to her without any actual affection.
  • It's pretty evident that everyone is judged by Kaoru to be unworthy of Nana, including himself.
  • Poor Tachi. She likes Kaoru, isn't embarrassed or ashamed in the least to admit it, is a willing and enthusiastic sub who openly appreciates all Kaoru does and has to offer as a dom... and he considers her an annoyance because she's not Nana.
• Moe: When Karou finally - awkwardly, painfully - tells someone that he loves Nana, admitting it to himself in the process. "The pitiful kind of moe", indeed.