Kyouya. His love for retro games, slightly awkward grasp of social skills, and eager efforts towards making new friends greatly contrast with his unapproachable nature.
Moe is a very excitable girl, despite being a trained assassin, who goes in headfirst rather than plan, and she is absolutely dedicated to her grandmother.
When lives are not on the line, Nana can get very excited about figuring out the potential and limits of someone's Talent.
Ass Pull: The way how many of Talented students get to be introduced very late to the story and pretend like they were always there. Initially it was mildly annoying at worst and inoffensive at best, but as the series goes on some readers started to be more critical of this, especially in regards to Ryuuji, Takeo and Daisuke, who are all treated as very important characters for the class. The Goodreads ratings reflect that, as the volume where the latter two are introduced is the lowest rated one to date, and the only to drop below a 4-star average rating.
Base-Breaking Character: It is impossible for Nana to find middle ground. Her betrayal of Nakajima in the first episode earned her a large base of hate. Although her relationship with Michiru, her Freudian Excuse, and Character Development gave her sympathy, Nakajima's role in her transformation into a villain didn't help much.Her Heel–Face Turn and her The Atoner, in particular, divided readers over whether she had truly suffered enough punishment and deserved to be forgiven—and still others felt that her becoming a more moral character actively detracted from what initially made her a unique protagonist.
Fridge Brilliance: Nana derogatorily compares Michiru's mannerisms and attitude to that of a dog's several times during her inner monologues. While this was intended to be insulting, given that Nana is an Animal Lover, it's only natural that a girl who behaves almost like a puppy would wind up becoming her Morality Pet.
Kyoya and Nana are constantly at each other's throats due to both of them employing Sherlock Scan, and when Nana decides to explain everything to him, Nana leans in towards Kyoya as if intending to kiss him.
In the manga, Nana and Koharu get pretty◊ blatant◊ with◊ it.◊ And for all their prior rivalry, their relationship ends in a very similar way to Nana and Michiru's did.
Funny Moments: In chapter 90, several of the Talented that Nana's rallied try to speak out to Nanao and apologize for their misdeeds on the island. Itakura, who doesn't know Nanao from that time, interrupts the heartfelt friendship speech by wondering aloud why Nanao's sided with the army.
Ho Yay: In cover art, splash pages, and several scenes, Nana and Michiru have several Pseudo-Romantic Friendship moments and are generally shown to be incredibly close and physically intimate with each other. The use of flowers and how they're drawn sleeping together (after Michiru falls ill from exhaustion) makes one wonder.
Almost everyone had guessed that the government wouldn't be loyal to Nana and would betray her in some way since Chapter 2, and lo and behold, Chapter 47 reveals exactly that.
Some theorized that because he had been so well established, Nanao would be more than just the initial Decoy Protagonist and be revealed to be alive later. They were correct, as he returned with a literal vengeance.
Among Us: The Anime Explanation The story has a premise of an Enemy of Humanity hiding among the Talented cast, thus the comparisons to the video game. With the reveal of Nana being a fake Talented trying to kill her classmates, the comparisons became stronger, and the anime is depicted an adaptation of the Impostor's point of view.
Pink sus.Explanation An extension of the Among Us references, using Nana's pink color scheme.
Yuuka is revealed to have crossed the line long ago: she was never in a relationship with Shinji and was the one who started the fire at the movie theater believing that she could have Shinji even if he was dead.
Rentaro started off with killing animals on the island, but when Ishii found out, he opts to kill him. If that wasn't enough, he sets his eyes on Michiru as his next target.
Tsuruoka has different candidates for this: he was the one who arranged for the death of Nana's parents and created the child soldier program making him directly responsible for Nana's actions on the island; he held Moe's grandmother hostage to keep Moe under line; he shot Michiru twice in the head to prevent her from healing herself all to ensure that Nana continued to kill for him; he forced Nana to kill Koharu after Nana had tried to sneak her to safety, and he brainwashed a vengeful Nanao into becoming a pawn.
After the time skip, Nanao has gone from a vengeful murderer to a fascist State Sec, killing people not because he hates them, but because it's funny to watch them executed for petty crimes. Then he tries to kill Nana for trying to free the Talented in a way that is half revenge-driven and half Government ordered.
Signature Scene: Nana pushing Nanao has become largely iconic because of how Nanao was situated as the main character. It also goes against the expectations readers had of the manga being similar to other series like My Hero Academia.
Intentional or not, this series fits remarkably well into the history of My Hero Academia, either as a prequel or even a sequel.
Some viewers have also gone as far as to compare the series to The Boys, especially following the shocking revelation.
For the western audience the series can also be looked at as a Japanese variation of The X-Men. Especially with the concept of the government going after people gifted with superpowers.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A few fans have expressed this about Kaori of all people, reasoning being that if she hadn’t taken the poisoned contacts it could of let to some interesting developments such as Nana killing someone personally close to her and one of the last things she said to her best friend before Nana killed her was to go die. The possible guilt from that and a legitimate grudge against Nana for killing someone so close to another character would of led to interesting development, especially if other students began to suspect her instead due to the last message she sent to Kirira, her bullying ways and the fact that she can teleport giving her easy ways to kill anyone from anywhere, would draw accusations with an opportunity for Nana to exploit and manipulate Kaori into gaining her trust if she defends her by “reading her mind”, leading into character development. Also the fact that the story introduces another teleporting girl later on, people felt like Kaori would have fit the role while already being an established character.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Earlier chapters of the manga portray the story as a lot more morally ambiguous than it ultimately ended up being; Nana's first two assassination targets are pretty decent people but still, just like everyone on the island, have the potential to be threats to the entire world if something isn't done. Nana and her main rival, Great Detective Kyouya, both have equally understandable motives and take equally pragmatic actions, making it very hard to figure out who is supposed to be in the right, if anyone at all. Unfortunately, the moral grayness dissipates very quickly; Nana's subsequent targets are all various flavors of horrible people that the audience is not supposed to feel bad about her killing, and she and Kyouya end up having to team up to fight more conventional villains.
This gets rectified in the second big arc, set after Time Skip, where the conflict is "Semi-Superpowered Nazis Vs. League of Supervillains/Rebels".
And even before that the two people she was supposed to kill, Hikaru and Mishima, were also fairly good, with the latter's fate being one of the few reasons why Nana commits Heel–Face Turn.
◊ blatant
