Seventh day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the new millennium. 7 plus one year ago, the day was being celebrated, with over 30 cities participating around the world — with a rock concert, or a movie viewing party, or even just with a strawberry shortcake. All because the numbers lined up. And those numbers were very important in NANA.
NANA is a manga written by Ai Yazawa (who in my opinion is one of the best manga-ka still alive). It's a story about two strikingly different girls with the same name. More than that, NANA—the manga— is an icon for the fashion mavens and the music lovers. It transcended its domain, leading legions of fans, both men and women, to a higher level of awesomeness. It was as cool as snow.
It started in a LiveJournal community. A brain fart — "07.07.07 is coming up, what should we do?" That one questions spawned different ideas on how to show our love for the manga and Ai Yazawa on that particular day. The scale differed from city to city. My friend Mai, and I were a little ambitious — we wanted a rock concert. So we spoke out on the community, and we were heard. Soon we found ourselves five more members for our organizing team. There were seven of us. It was important that there were seven of us. And the seven of us were all amateurs. Half of us were under-aged, too.
For three months we worked hard. Mai and I went around personally talking to so many people—radio stations, magazine and newspaper publications, forum owners, our form of buzz marketing. I had to do Karaoke with strangers just so they would promote the concert on their website. This was before the Tumblr, the Twitter, and the Reddit were old enough to go to daycare. Our form of social media marketing was rather antiquated, but it worked.
No sickness or hunger kept us from completing necessary details for the concert. One time, Mai and I closed a deal with photographers, after which I had to be driven straight to the emergency room. Another time, we went to an all day promotional event and I only had bus fair on me.
Along the way, everything magically lined up. Japanese restaurants, sponsors, even photographers responded to us. We found our venue when we crashed a lesbian party. How magical could that get? We got what we want. And we got a helluva rock concert. And that was all we wanted. We didn't care even though we didn't earn anything from it, we didn't care if we were exhausted to our bones. We didn't even care after we were rendered unconscious after two days. We were genuinely happy. No?
On seventh day, of the seventh month, of the seventh year of the new millennium, at exactly the seventh hour and seventh minute of latter part of the day — we got our rock concert dedicated to NANA. As the world turned, "Rose" and "Glamorous Sky" played over and over.
Here's a list of the cities who celebrated NANA day. Would you believe, there was even one in Iraq? IRAQ?! (http://www.defectivegeeks.com/nanaday/)
You know what I wanna do now? I wanna collate pictures, videos, and memories from all (not only from the Philippines) and I want to show it to Yazawa-sensei. I want her to see how much she had changed the world, with NANA. And although NANA is still on an indefinite hiatus, we stay loyal fans, even a decade after.
HAPPY NANA DAY. Here's to hoping Hachi catches up with Nana.
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