As the episode (and series) opens, we hear a delivery man asking for a "Miss Suzuki", with a package from overseas. As he waits for "Miss Suzuki" to get the seal, he starts getting confused over seeing so many identical looking girls. As he makes a hasty retreat, he sees one more identical looking girl, and royally freaks out. The girl quickly realizes something is wrong at home, and get back, stating "You six are in trouble!" As the other six give her a letter "from Mom" and take the rest of the package... "HOLD ITTTTT!!!"
"One!"
"Two!"
"Three!"
"Four!"
"Five!"
"Six!"
"Seven of Seven!"
(Yeah, that little sequence lost something in translation.)
And with that title drop, cue the episode title card:
Question 1: Does Nana Times Seven Equal Nana?
(Actually, for the record, 7*7=49, not 7. But that doesn't answer the question...)
The episode resumes with a voice-over of Nana's mom reading the letter she sent. She mentions a few things, like that it's spring in Japan, that she and her husband are going to be staying in America due to Dad's job for a while longer, that it's about time for Nana to start getting ready for her high school entrance exams, and that "after all, you are our only daughter", before closing the letter. (Remember that Mom is currently living in the States, so she's not actually in the room here. We're just hearing her voice.)
"Well, I was their only daughter, but, sorry Mom and Dad, you... don't... have an only daughter any more! I'm so sorry, what am I gonna do?"
"We can't help it, it's not our fault we multiplied."
And after a little further conversation, Nana get picked up and carried to her room by the others; apparently she needs to study. "Oh shut up, I'm not going to sit here and be nagged by... me!"
As we watch the girls get rid of "all these candy and music C Ds" "and manga and games" so Nana can study for her aforementioned entrance exams, they leave with a "and remember, knowing is half the battle!"
Cue Nana in a voice-over:
"So here I am, Nana Suzuki, the unluckiest junior high school student in the entire world. Welcome to my nightmare. I'll never pass my high school entrance exams with all these Nanas pushing me around. And in case you're wondering, we're not septuplets; we're not even sisters. All seven of us are actually the same person! We got split into seven Nanas! How did we get ourselves into this mess? It all started on Valentine's Day..."
And cue the flashback, and the rest of the episode! (And we're only three minutes into the episode. Yeah, there's no OP in the first episode; it's the very first thing in every other episode, however.)
We start off the actual key part of the episode with it being revealed that Nana has a crush on a boy named Yuichi, and another girl giving us some information, disguised as reasons why Nana shouldn't date him: His hobby is photography ("boring"), he's got the best grades in the class ("geek"), and that Nana is nowhere near his GPA ("he's a bit out of your league").
Of course, as it turns out, the girl is Nana's best friend, Hitomi, and she's only joking. And she thinks now is a good time for Nana to go for it. Except that Nana is now too embarrassed to actually do it! It doesn't help that the resident bullies, the "Bosom Buddy Trio", AKA "the Trio" (or, as my friend Zack puts it, "the Turncoat Trio". This will make sense later), come up and steal Nana's homemade chocolate. They also imply that she's 10 years too early for a Valentine. They also reveal that they haven't made any chocolate of their own, so they're just going to take Nana's, give it to Yuichi (who they also have a crush on), and claim it as their own.
Good news: The Trio doesn't succeed, mostly because of the bad news: They're standing on a bridge over a stream, and the chocolate gets knocked into said stream. The Trio blames this on Nana (and for once, they're sorta right) and run off, with Hitomi giving chase.
Later, as Nana and Hitomi walk back to the Suzuki household, Hitomi says that if Nana had acted faster, she might have actually gotten the chocolates to Yuichi. However, Nana was pulling a Nanoha and wondering just what it is that Yuichi takes pictures of. Hitomi realizes that this could be the pickup line that Nana needs; Nana objects, but Hitomi is hard to stop once she gets going. "Walking back to the Suzuki household" just became "Hitomi is dragging Nana back to the Suzuki household".
Back at the house, Nana and Hitomi are in a panic: The microwave is gone! They quickly realize that Nana's grandfather took it for another one of his wacky inventions, and promptly give up on seeing it again. But since they need it to make more chocolates, they have to brave the storage shed turned lab and get it back. Nana doesn't like this idea.
As we'll soon find out, she won't like it in the future, either.
But in an odd twist of fate, Hitomi makes Nana go in, since the lab gives them both the creeps, but that's where everything seems to end up around the house. That, and the inventions are weird; but what other reaction would you get from a VCR turned toaster (the "Video Toaster"), a washing machine turned exhaust fan (the "Washing Machine Tornado Maker"), or a vacuum cleaner turned mouse catcher. And that's just making it up the stairs (yeah, it's a two story shed).
Nana finds the microwave, but there's an odd sphere of light around it, cycling through the rainbow. Nana notices it's okay, but there's a crystal floating inside, with seven colored balls of light circling it. Nana gets distracted by the "pretty".
Outside, Grandpa has finally gotten back home, and says hi to Hitomi. He panics shortly after he finds out that Nana's looking for the microwave.
Back inside and upstairs, Nana is doing her best to earn a What An Idiot entry by trying to open the microwave's door, which is refusing to open. She realizes that the timer going might have something to do with it, so she turns it to zero (it's a microwave with a dial timer, not the keypad and digital timer setup you're likely used to). The door opens.
Grandpa comes dashing up the stairs, telling Nana to not touch that microwave. Um, too late?
Nana, now holding the crystal in her hand, turns to look at Grandpa. Grandpa asks Nana to put down the crystal as she looks at it, now kneeling on the floor.
Then the crystal flares, and the balls of light come flying out. Nana gets confused, and Grandpa keeps Hitomi back.
The lights seem to be investigating Nana, and she starts to freak out when they go underneath her skirt (as my friend Zack says about this scene: "Perverted they are. Your sisters they will be.").
She has good reason to be freaked out, since bands of yellowish-white light are forming around her, and the lower half of her body disappears. Grandpa grabs... I think it's a Thermos, and catches the balls of light. Too bad that it doesn't reverse what's happening to Nana, and the light balls manage to escape, as well.
The lights go right through the hand Nana has in front of her, and straight through her chest, as well... and come out her back as expanding rainbow colored rings of light. Nana's unsupported-by-her-now-nonexistent-legs torso finally falls to the floor, only to disappear too. The balls of light fly up, and fly back down to strike the ground where her torso fell...
And turn into seven differently colored heart-shaped crystals. I think Nana's likely earned that What An Idiot entry by now.
Hitomi has a Captain Obvious moment, stating that Nana's disappeared; Grandpa's going "oh no", and Hitomi notices that a point of light is floating over the town's big hilltop sakura tree. The point of light turns into the balls of light (boy, are those things getting around)... as the rings of yellowish-white light reappear, and inside the rings, so does Nana, from the top down.
Something about this sequence of events causes the sakura tree to spontaneously bloom, and a lot of the snow on the ground goes bye-bye.
The camera angle moves to show Nana, lying on the ground under the tree, as the cherry blossom petals fall... and then it pulls back a bit, revealing her 6 new sisters/clones/whatever.
Oh yeah, definitely earned that What An Idiot entry.
Cue the mid-episode eyecatch, and with it, the end of the first 10 minutes of the series, the first half of the first episode of the series, and this post.
