Nononono by OKAMOTO Lynn

[Kaiten]

Nononono
By: OKAMOTO Lynn
Genre: Sports, Gender Bender
Serialized In: Weekly Young Jump
Scanlated By: Trinity BAKumA

Nonomiya Yuuta, a Skii Jumper aiming for Olympic Gold, bursts onto stage with his exceptional skills. However, his biggest problem is that he is not really a "HE"... This Yuuta is actually Nonomiya Yuuta's twin sister, Nonomiya Nono... And with Women's Skii Jump not being an Olympic catagory, hiding her true identity is the only way for her to achieve the dreams of her father and brother.

By the mangaka of Elfen Lied

[cookie_on_fire]

Cool, there's a thread for it now :P
Despite the fact that I don't really like sports manga all that much, Nononono is surprisingly fun to read/translate. Must be influence from Elfen Lied or something...

[Brid]

Not much discussion here yet! I really like this manga quite a bit. I'm not much of a fan of ski jumping, but the manga actually makes it look cool, which is exactly what a sports manga should do. I've seen Olympic ski jumping in person (mainly because it was one of the only events we could get tickets to), and I'm sorry to say that I wasn't that impressed with it. But reading this manga, you'd swear that ski jumping was the coolest sport ever, without the manga ever going over the top to prove that point (no one has glowing skis or any of that BS, thankfully).

I like the little bit of drama the series has. The fact that Nonomiya's love life is not going at all the way she wants it to is pretty cool. If it was a shoujo manga, she would have ended up in the same dorm room as Amatsu and he would have found out her secret in 5 seconds flat--leading to a lot of contrived ecchi situations. It was sorta funny when Nonomiya found out that Amatsu would not be living in the dorms (since he has a nearby mansion). I felt like the mangaka was parodying the standard plotline of most shoujo gender benders there; it was like saying, "no sorry, I know what you were expectng, but we're going to do things differently here," which thanks to Kurogi is totally what's happened.

But I've seen the available raws and know that things get 10x more dramatic than this. Hopefully what's happened so far is the worst of it and things won't eventually get Elfen Lied bad. I know this mangaka is more than capable of making his characters get hit by a car or mauled by grizzly bears, so we'll see what ends up happening. But for right now, at least, I'd say Nononono is one of my favorite mangas that I'm currently reading.

[cookie_on_fire]

True enough. I never thought much of ski jumping, but thanks to Nononono, it was something that I actually cared about and wanted to watch in the Olympics.

And it's refreshing to see the main character beat up as much as Nono does, not because I enjoy watching her suffering, because with over obstacle she overcomes, she becomes stronger bit by bit.

I find it amusing that we decided to pick it up right before the Olympics :P I didn't even realize that fact until after it started haha. I think it helps a lot with appreciating the sport outside of the manga.

[Kaiten]

I'm still catching up, after finishing volume 1 I really like it! The art makes me nostalgic for Elfen Lied, one of the first manga I ever read. Sometimes the least likely sports make the best sports series: P2 and Ping Pong were both excellent. Why not ski jump? I love how he draws the view from the top of the ramp, he gives a good sense of the dizzying height. I've only read the first volume, so far the characters have not completely grabbed me. They are growing on me, I look forward to seeing how they develop.

Thanks for translating Cookie, Nononono had been neglected far to long!

[cookie_on_fire]

Thanks for making the thread :P

You'll see some very interesting characters in vol 3, lol.

[Brid]

And it's refreshing to see the main character beat up as much as Nono does, not because I enjoy watching her suffering, because with over obstacle she overcomes, she becomes stronger bit by bit.

I agree with you! At the begining of the manga, she's really nervous and not very confident, but then because of all the things she goes through in taking on this male persona, we see her get more confident: she can't wait for someone to help her out when she's in trouble, she's got to try and help herself out first.

Maybe it's stretching things a bit much to say this, but it's sort of like the manga is commenting a bit on the artificial nature of gender roles: Nono slowly proves herself to be pretty capable because that's what's expected of a man. But she's biologically a girl. Everyone thinks she looks female, but everyone takes the fact that she's male at face value because she says she's male and dresses like a guy. They don't see boobs, so they don't question it. So then what is a man? No boobs and the right attitude? In other mangas, they'd have her periodically doing something to look horribly weak, just to remind us all that she's really a girl (and therefore weak), but thankfully not so much here. Sure, she always cries after she loses at ski jumping, but there's a psychological reason for that, not so much a gender reason for it. (Kurogi doesn't get frustrated in the same way at ice skating, for instance.)

I love how he draws the view from the top of the ramp, he gives a good sense of the dizzying height.

Yeah! You can see all his efforts in taking all those thousands of research photos really paying off there!

[cookie_on_fire]

Okamoto is really good at character development imo. Most of the characters in the series are quite likable, and they act certain ways for a reason.

Ski jumping is so cool! XD

[Kaiten]

Thanks for making the thread :P

You'll see some very interesting characters in vol 3, lol.

Okamoto is really good at character development imo. Most of the characters in the series are quite likable, and they act certain ways for a reason.

Ski jumping is so cool! XD

Nono started getting interesting very quickly. As her past and gender issues became more prominent I started caring more and more about her. I like her cocky, athlete side too. Nobody draws a sneer like Okamoto! Mikage is really interesting too. As her dedication to training has been shown she's become much more than the "princess".

I agree with you! At the begining of the manga, she's really nervous and not very confident, but then because of all the things she goes through in taking on this male persona, we see her get more confident: she can't wait for someone to help her out when she's in trouble, she's got to try and help herself out first.

Maybe it's stretching things a bit much to say this, but it's sort of like the manga is commenting a bit on the artificial nature of gender roles: Nono slowly proves herself to be pretty capable because that's what's expected of a man. But she's biologically a girl. Everyone thinks she looks female, but everyone takes the fact that she's male at face value because she says she's male and dresses like a guy. They don't see boobs, so they don't question it. So then what is a man? No boobs and the right attitude? In other mangas, they'd have her periodically doing something to look horribly weak, just to remind us all that she's really a girl (and therefore weak), but thankfully not so much here. Sure, she always cries after she loses at ski jumping, but there's a psychological reason for that, not so much a gender reason for it. (Kurogi doesn't get frustrated in the same way at ice skating, for instance.)



Yeah! You can see all his efforts in taking all those thousands of research photos really paying off there!

I like how the gender roles is handled. I love that she's just as cocky, if not cockier, then any of the guys. I love that she's strong enough to beat up the rapist roommate. Weakness isn't her problem, her frustration is the obvious identity issues. She's trying to pretend she's someone she's not, has to hide from the people she should be closest to, and deny her growing crush to fulfill her dream. The same would happen to anyone, no matter what gender, if they were in the same situation.

[Drmke]

Finished the first volume. I love this manga!! Its so much fun. Reminds me of Ice Revolution actually. I'll catch up on the scans later tonight.

The main character is definitely my favorite. I love how she is so cocky and almost manly when it comes to ski jumping and very girly when it comes to everything else.

[Rei Ayanami]

Finished volume one. I would not exactly call it fun, For me it felt generic. Generic like I've read this story before with different characters and could guess what was going to happen. The ski jumping oddly reminded me of Air Gear and its talk of a winged road where they fly like birds.

[Raichu]

I'm happy that this got scanlated and even more that the fact that there's a thread about it~~
I'm currently at the latest chapter on MH but sad that Finestela couldn't keep up posting the raws(I can't download much from Raw-Paradise or else I'll exceed the download limit)...Oh well,but it was really fun anyway!

[cookie_on_fire]

I wonder what is the latest chapter that's available in Japan right now? I hope we won't run into problems finding the raw when we catch up...

[Kaiten]

You might be using tankobon raws for a while. There are well over a 100 chapters. 120 was the latest raw posted here, over a month ago. Raw Paradise scans Young Jump, you just have to be careful: they remove and delete raws within a week. Might be best to archive chapters.

[cookie_on_fire]

120? Do you mean 103?
Yeah, that's the thing about Raw Paradise, only a week...=/ Do you know what time of the month they usually put up Young Jump?