Nono Nonomiya's father was a skilled ski jumper, but never won an Olympic medal. His dreams of his children winning one were destroyed when Nono inherited all his ability and not her brother Yuuta, as women are not allowed into the sport. After the death of both her father and Yuuta, Nono decides to honour their memory by taking on her brother's identity and enrolling in a college famed for producing winter sports athletes. But she quickly discovers it will be very hard to keep her secret, let alone earn the respect of her fellow students while aiming to become the school's best jumper.
Nononono is a seinen manga by Lynn Okamoto of Elfen Lied fame, which was serialized in Weekly Young Jump from 2007 to 2010. Unlike Okamoto's other works, this one is substantially less violent and is not fantasy or science-fiction, though it can still get quite dark at times.
This series provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: A flashback reveals Yuuta suffered physical abuse due to his lack of ski jumping skills from his Serious Business father.
- Academic Athlete: Aside from being a ski jumping prodigy, Nono is also revealed as one of her school's top students, easily competing with the General Curriculum aces.
- Accidental Pervert: Played with more than once after Nono seizes the assumption that s/he's a pervert transvestite rather than a girl.
- Afro Asskicker: Shiriya, before he switched to a more normal hairstyle.
- Alliterative Name: Also Repetitive Name protagonist Nono Nonomiya.
- Alpha Bitch: Kourogi
- Lovable Alpha Bitch: Despite the first impression she usually makes, deep down she is actually quite a decent person that cares about others deeply.
- Artistic License – Law: Everything involving coach Hino. Twice.
- Hino's sabotage plot gets swept under the rug by both sides - to honor Shiriya's sacrifice and to avoid a scandal, respectively - but his forced resignation reveals his massive embezzlement of club funds. When we see him again, he seems to have avoided embezzlement charges.
- After Hino's second scheme falls apart and he gets arrested, we learn that he had been sentenced for embezzlement and was on parole when he decided to enslave Nono. Once again, we are not shown how his second case was handled, but it seems to have worked out according to Kishitani's improvised "plan" - when realistically, it would be impossible to keep the truth under wraps for long.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Kishitani's renewed injury during Inter High screams artistic license. The main problem with this injury were the damaged, slowly regenerating muscles, while the skin had plenty of time to heal. It doesn't stop him from bleeding all over the place and coughing up blood in the end.
- Asshole Victim: Even though his suicide is intended to be a Tearjerker moment, it's really hard to feel any sympathy for Yuusuke Nonomiya, because of his cruel and abusive treatment towards Yuuta.
- Attempted Rape: Ogata was fooled by his new roommate 'Yuuta', but that was the problem.
- Attractive Bent-Gender: Nono looks decidedly feminine but still attracts female admirers.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Averted when Kishitani "helps" dress 'Yuuta' when she is sick and bedridden.
- Berserk Button: Amatsu will let any and all personal insults slide off his back, but anyone who insults his family (due to their earning several silver medals but never gold) earns his eternal enmity.
- Do not call the First Emperor Shiriya-san (Shiri for butt, ya for shop). He will pulverize you just like what he did to Ogata.
- Never insult Nono's father or brother.
- Terashi and his love of cats. Do not insult cats and do not imply that he rapes them, if you know what's good for you.
- Blood from the Mouth: When Kishitani's wound reopens during the Inter High, it gets so bad that just before the last jump he starts coughing up blood.
- Born Lucky: Kishitani. Many people in the series believe that luck is the special skill that he brings to the Okushin team, as he's normally a wildly inconsistent jumper. A flashback to when he was younger and Chapters 140 and 141 all but cement that he's blessed by some outside force.
- Bullying a Dragon: The top students of the General Curriculum despise 'Yuuta' for being an honor student despite being from the Sports Curriculum, in addition to being the most popular guy around. They decide to gang up on Nono while she's returning from her practice. Not only does she defeat them, but she humiliates their leader by giving him her barbell as a weapon... which he promptly drops on his foot, unable to handle the weight.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: All that ski jumping has given Nono incredible leg strength, allowing her to beat up people twice her size if need be. Later, she casually Wall Jumps to catch a young girl's balloon. Even better? Swinging a barbell one handed in the aforementioned showdown.
- Chekhov's Gun: Kishitani's red jumpsuit, which masks his bleeding until the last moment.
- Chick Magnet: Yuuta, and Nono has to deal with the consequences.
- Nono, after she takes Yuuta's place, starts to attract girls. Also, when she's not crossdressing she's the inverse.
- Cosmic Deadline: The final chapter comes very suddenly, forgetting all about the numerous plot threads that were just introduced in the last tournament.
- Covert Pervert: Kishitani.
- Depraved Bisexual: It's noted that Ogata isn't purely homosexual, but girls would be more likely to file rape charges, so he's regularly given a male "sacrifice" just to keep him under control.
- Distant Finale: After the Inter High arc, the last chapter gives us a Time Skip to 'Yuuta', Amatsu and Shiriya (as well as Terashi and Makino) becoming Japan's olympic representatives.
- Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: Averted and discussed when Nono gets assigned to Ogata's room. The admins are suitably disgusted with Ogata's habits, but continue to feed him new boy toys to prevent a scandal, since boys never file rape charges.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: That girl in chapter 102 who could tell that Nono is a girl? That's a dude.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The final image of the manga shows Nono having finally won the gold medal she struggled so long and hard for.
- Easily Forgiven: Shingu sabotages Shiriya's run in revenge for being sabotaged, and also to be allowed into a prestigious training institution. It turns out that the revenge was purely a very bad misunderstanding and that Shiriya purposely ignored the fact that Shingu sabotaged his skies for Shingu's sake, and to challenge Nonomiya and Amatsu to stretch themselves (they had to make up for his fall in their own jumps). Shingu breaks down, admits his crime, and says he will turn himself in to the police. The team manager and his associate interrupt him and ask him not to do that. Whilst not exactly forgiving him, they understand his anger, and they do not want to disrespect Shiriya's decision.
- Extremity Extremist: Nono will always kick people when they start irritating her. Since she's actually female, can also count as a Kick Chick.
- Even Jerks Have Standards:
- Terashi may be incredibly arrogant, as well as being possibly the biggest jerk in the series, but he loves cats and will not tolerate any negative remarks towards them.
- Negita may be a borderline sociopath, but even he finds the jury's attempt to rig the inter-high competition to be over the line.
- Even the Guys Want Him: At least one guy has an erotic dream about Nono without knowing that in reality he is a she, and that isn't counting the one guy that tried to rape Nono because he thinks she's a boy.
- Face–Heel Turn: Yuusuke Nonomiya starts out as a kind and caring father to his son Yuuta and daughter nono. However after being publicly shamed for losing in a skiing competition, he becomes a cold and abusive parent.
- Flashback
- Forgotten First Meeting: Nono and Kishitani first met at an elementary skiing competition that Kishitani entered so he wouldn't have to lose to Amatsu.
- Gratuitous Norwegian: In chapter 3 page 9 are some guys talking Norwegian. Norwegians use å, not ä. So the correct spelling would be forstått not forstätt. And it's one word as you can see. Forstått means understood.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Sure, Yuusuke got publicly humiliated and treated with scorn because he lost the gold medal, but that does not at all justify or excuse his horrific treatment of his son, Yuuta. And while nobody calls him out for this, Yuusuke himself admits that his reasons for abusing Yuuta were selfish and completely inexcusable during his Heel Realization.
- Half-Identical Twins
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Yuuta.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Kishitani's second jump in the Inter High. While he ultimately survives, when we last see him before the finale, he is stuck in a wheelchair and undergoing rehabilitation.
- Humans Are Bastards: This is from the author of Elfenlied, so go figure. While this isn't meant to be a theme of the manga, there are enough assholes, (pseudo)rapists, and off-putting scenes that you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise.
- Idiot Ball: Yuuta grabs it big time toward the end of the backstory arc. Realizing he'll never be any good at ski jumping, he burns the house down and kills himself while wearing Nono's jacket so she'll be considered dead and can take over his identity. Apparently he never considered simply switching places with her.
- Besides, how could he know that his body would burn beyond recognition?
- Hino grabs one firmly as he plans his revenge on Nono. The plan quickly goes from "blackmail into submission" to "do whatever the hell I want". What could go wrong with that?
- Important Haircut: "Goodbye, Nonomiya Nono."
- Insane Troll Logic: Kishitani was forced to changing Nono's clothes after she got into a fever when trying to look for the Emperor's trinket. Kishitani believes that since he likes her and considers her a guy, it is perfectly fine for him to erotically change her clothes.
- It's All About Me: Coach Hino knows what he's doing is wrong, but still believes he doesn't deserve any punishment. When his plans seem to come to fruition, he starts ranting about "justice prevailing". When it all falls apart, he doesn't show any remorse.
- When Hino's arrested after trying to rape Nono and stabbing Kishitani, he's genuinely surprised that he will go to jail, despite just having severely violated his parole conditions. Even then, his main interest is getting out of jail quick enough to ruin Nono before the Olympics.
- Yuusuke made Yuuta enter olympic skiing so he could win the gold medal for Yuusuke just to make himself look good, and would beat and scream at Yuuta for losing during training.
- Jerkass: Many, many characters, ranging from the violent assholes to the snobby elitists.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The Emperor is a violent asshole, shameless pervert to boot, and is quite possibly psychotic. However, he is eventually shown to genuinely care about his teammates.
- Love Dodecahedron: Nono likes Amatsu, who likes Kourogi, who likes Yuuta (Nono), who like Kourogi. Kishitani likes Nono after finding out she's a girl, and the Emperor falls for her as well after seeing her dressed as a girl named Noriko. Komachi, the Emperor's sister, has a crush on Nono's disguise as Yuuta. There's also Satou, a side character, who has his fascination with "Yuuta" explored in a chapter of the manga.
- Near-Rape Experience: Nono has near rape moments, uncomfortably sexual personal space violations, creepy stalkers, and gotten felt up.
- Taken up to eleven when Hino finally enacts his revenge.
- Pet the Dog: The Emperor gets one of these moments shortly after it is revealed that he purposely took a dive in a ski-jump competition to help out Shingu.
- The Pollyanna: Nono was like this in the backstory until her father shut her down.
- Protagonist Title: Sorta. Her full name's Nono Nonomiya.
- Rape as Drama: Squeezed for almost every drop of drama and squick when Hino finally gets his hands on Nono.
- Recursive Crossdressing: Kourogi "forces" Nono to wear a maid's outfit while they're living together, which she secretly couldn't be happier about.
- Of which fact Kourogi is fully aware.
- Repetitive Name: Nono Nonomiya. Also an Alliterative Name.
- Replacement Goldfish: Yuuta chose to have Nono become him, committing suicide by causing the fire.
- Reused Character Design: Most characters are basically the same from Elfen Lied
- Nono Nonomiya is Yuka.
- Mikage Kourogi is Lucy/Nyu.
- Sora is Nozomi.
- Muramatsu is Dr. Arakawa.
- School Idol: Kourogi, a national figure skating champion.
- Serious Business: It makes sense that the practitioners of ski jumping take their sport seriously, but it's still a relatively minor sport in Japan — which makes the response to Nono's father losing the Gold medal rather excessive, but also more understandable.
- The measures and plans that some of coaches lay out are pretty underhanded and unnecessary, but it's taken to the next level when a juryman tries to rig the Inter-High competition in a team's favor by giving other teams absolutely unsafe conditions to attempt a jump in.
- Shown Their Work: Okamoto did quite a bit of travelling to study ski jumping rules and techniques, and shows great attention to detail with each jump the characters make.
- Slasher Smile: It's from the creator of Elfen Lied, what do you expect? The Emperor gets the best ones by far, but Nonomiya of all people gets plenty of good ones too. Mostly when she's trying to play it up for intimidation.
- Speed, Smarts and Strength: Nono, Amatsu, and Kishitani are gradually forming this dynamic.
- Spit Take: How Kourogi reacted to Nonomiya asking her what "jerking off" means, the fact that Kourogi thinks Nonomiya is a man made the question all the more awkward to her.
- Start of Darkness: Chapter 52 to 57 describes how Nono's father goes from a respectable guy into one of the most Abusive Parents in the series. He's got a problem with his left knee costing a critical loss for the Olympic Gold Medal. Also where Nono herself gets an Important Haircut.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Kourogi does this whenever anyone catches her training.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: The whole premise is Nono Nonomiya passing of as her (deceased) twin brother Yuuta, in order to make it into the ski jump Olympics and win a gold medal. She does this since women aren't allowed to compete professionally in that event.
- Took a Level in Badass: Kishitani who pretty much was just in the middle rank does a Big Damn Heroes when Nono was about to be raped by a sore loser. Feet meet face.
- Unwanted Harem: Yuuta left several girlfriends behind, who Nono now has to deal with.
- Nono herself seems to be getting one of these whether disguised as Yuuta or just being herself.
- Training from Hell: Shiriya's ski jumping practice.
- Yuuta's training as well, to the point where it drove him to suicide.
- Tsundere: Kourogi, after the first few chapters. Unusually, she is not Oblivious to Love, confessing (and being rejected) at their first meeting, and continuing to declare herself his girlfriend throughout the series. Also unusually, the boy she is tsundere for (Yuuta) is actually a girl (Nono).
- Also possibly Nono herself occasionally, though the "dere" is sympathy rather than actual attraction, and the "tsun" is a justified response to perverted behavior.
- Nono turns up the Tsundere routine whenever she has to use her Noriko persona to influence Shiriya. Notably, the tsun part is more understandable than the dere one, since he always cuts straight to sexual propositions.
- The Watson: Every ski jumping scene has someone around who doesn't know anything about the sport, just so they can have the statistics of each jump explained to them.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Nonomiya.
- Wig, Dress, Accent: Inverted, in that Nonomiya is actually a girl in the first place. When Nonomiya wears the dress that Kourogi left out, she takes a trip to Nagoya so she can be a girl for once with Sora, who knows her secret. Two of her teammates turn up unexpectedly, including her rival... but no-one recognises her. Except Amatsu.
- You Bastard!: Yuusuke was endlessly scorned by every single person in Japan after "stealing" the gold medal.
