Anime: Kidou Senkan Nadesico

ANIME MINOR JEWELS SERIES
Full list of the review series can be found on this page, 3rd post from bottom:
http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?uid=251338&show=userpage&do=blog&blogid=29009&page=0

TEASER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smQmzjrXNo8

Animated by Studio Xebec, which is notorious for its badly made and boring shows. Nadesico happens to be amongst their best works and even that is not exactly a great show. Directed by Satou Tatsuo, who has made several uncommon and interesting shows, such as Shingu, Stellvia, Lagrange, and Miniskirt Pirates. They are also usually too slow and lack excitement, so you almost always end up being bored even before the second half begins.

MSN is in a nutshell a tribute to otakuness. It is made to be at first a simple tale of good humans versus evil aliens but along the way it introduces more to it, to the point that you think you are watching 3 different shows at the same time. They don’t really feel that disjoined, so it’s a good mix too. Which shows would that be?
1) The crew of a powerful Earth spaceship fending against alien invaders
2) The romantic mishaps of a young pilot with his kindergarten love and various similar acquaintances
3) The tribute to retro mecha anime
4) ???
5) Profit

So you can always pick one of the three and stick to it for all you care and dump the rest. Each one has its own charm but to be honest, it’s only by combining all three you get a unique result that makes this anime not that average. It is hard to describe one without having to mention the other two, therefore it really does a good job at being more than meets the eye.

Let’s start with the phenomenon that is Gekiganger. Gekiganger is a show within a show, a mecha series based on Getta Robo mostly, plus a few scenes from similar mecha shows of the 70’s. Many people in the series love it and still watch it for its simple yet direct and powerful message that inspired them to strive for something better. This is not a new thing in anime, there is also Kujibiki Unbalance in Genshiken as the most famous example of this trope. Yet unlike a cosmetic detail there, the show here is affecting the story in a most direct way. You take it out, you have no anime. I won’t spoil how but I will point out it is not there just for show. It is used all the time and just when you think it’s just an otaku obsession WHAM you realize that it’s the very driving force of everything.

The anime in general keeps making references to plamo and voice acting, all part of showing how a fictional work can affect the real world. It is kind of a shock to see them being eventually used as war propaganda, against those villains, who are evil green lizards from Mars that want to destroy Earth and have sent a remote controlled army of ships and robots as the first wave … NOT! I don’t want to spoil it but, seriously, the revelation is what made this anime to stand out from the lot.

It is still a tribute to mecha and even breaks the fourth wall at times. I mean, just look at the intro, it is pretty much made to tell you all the characters stare happily at the camera because they know they are in an anime… watching an anime. Wut!

So how do the characters fair in this mess? Well, none of them feel special today but back then they were really uncommon. So yeah, everyone has huge stupid eyes, Yurika is the typical bimbo that as a kid promised to marry the typical shounen lead Akito, whose family was killed by evil lizards from Mars and has uncanny skills at fighting TM. So corny you can harvest your own crop out of it. But they still keep trying to excuse it all as part of incompetent leadership on part of the military, so everything is by default a joke. Everyone is stupid and thus the most inappropriate people end up in the wrong seats. And there is a war going on and most elites are already dead, so no time for rethinking. Great excuse for all the lunacy there. And the story is not completely retarded random jokes all the time as important characters do get killed and the military keeps trying to take possession of the lead ship for themselves. Also, Hoshino Ruri may appear to be an archetypical cooldere today but back then it was just her and Rei from Neon Genesis paving the way, so in a way she was a very unique character. She also has her own sad side story thrown in somewhere but unfortunately it doesn’t really get resolved.

In fact, not everything is resolved in the end. After the big revelation I mentioned, the series ends in a rather open way and a movie was made later to wrap things later… And it was weird. Very weird. In an almost bad way as everyone turned emo or something like that.

Anyways, in all the series uses archetypical characters and a very corny story and by the smart use of “story within a story” makes a lot more out of them. It doesn’t fully exploit all the setting had to offer, a big portion of the plot really is aimless comedy and the ending is open while the movie finale was rather bad. But I will go easy on them all, as the final result was definitely not typical and did entertain me. I appreciate how they used a goofy setting and turned it to something far more elaborate than that.

Animation and sound are nothing spectacular. As long as you don’t mind the stupid faces the characters have and the old fashioned Gekiganger clips (which are done so on purpose as to feel retro) then you have an ok series to watch even today. The mecha have interesting designs, the battles usually have some strategy in them (albeit extreme as heck), and there is some fan service at times to break the boredom. The music score is good, the opening theme is likable for an otherwise silly pop-song. Voice acting is relaxed but it’s excused in such a setting. Some talk in very fake ways but it is also part of the whole joke / tribute thing. My grip is with Yurika’s voice, she usually sounds like she is a granny and having to listen to her irritating bimbo voice as a narrator in every episode can really test your nerves

Bottom line? See it as a typical show and you will find it mediocre. See it as a tribute to mecha and you will instead have a good show that doesn’t fully exploit its own merits but it’s fun nonetheless.

And now for some excused scorings.

It's the end of the 22nd century. Mankind was doing fine, colonising the Moon and Mars, when out of the blue the things called Jovian Lizards attacked. They overwhelmed Mars and are holding Earth under siege with their unmanned robotic weapons.

In the midst of this despair, a young cook, Akito Tenkawa, disappears from Mars moments before the Lizards take it over, only to end up on Earth, much to his own confusion. Meanwhile, Nergal, an Earth-based corporation, is preparing to launch its newfangled High Mobility Battleship, the Nadesico, manned by the best people of their respective fields... at least the ones left... no matter how erratic their personalities are...

Thus, relationships between the crew of the ship are an important part of this series. This makes for characters that get a lot of exposure and development, and the characters and their personalities are the strong point of Nadesico. They are fun to be with, yet they can be very thought-provoking.

What the writers seemed to have problems with were the characters' reactions. While military personnel certainly are casual with death, "I hope the new pilots are real bastards so we won't mind when they die" as it was very insightfully put, people simply reacted to things in a strange and unfamiliar way. Events in an episode wouldn't sometimes be even mentioned in the next one, making the whole a bit disintegrated.

The writers did have guts though, and you could never be sure what would happen next. Not the Hollywood syndrome of knowing that the protagonist will survive and the ending will be happy, which makes for a bland experience. Altogether the story is pretty interesting, and it never gets that boring. The ideas can be somewhat familiar to friends of the scifi genre, but that's something they are often used to.

The ending was, though, a disappointment, which seems to be a given with anime. The few twists were obviously planned from the beginning, and the story was left wide open. The main conflicts weren't even properly solved. Hopefully the film was in the works already the moment the production of the series ended, and certainly I feel sorry for the fans who had to wait for the two years it took for it to come out.

One crucial aspect of Nadesico, which can make it a "hit or miss anime", is the fact that it never really takes itself, or anime altogether, seriously. It makes fun of how ridiculous lifting anime on a pedestal is, it makes fun of itself, and throws a jab or two at its own genre. If the odd moment of self reference ruins your immersion, this isn't the right one for you. It also has some aspects of a "harem anime", i.e. one boy who a herd of girls pine away for, but the whole affair is carried out pretty decently and it contributes to the drama well.

Refreshing was the aspect that anime even existed in its imaginary universe, and oh did it exist! There is even a separate OVA made of Gekiganger 3, the anime which gets huge exposure and is a plot element in Nadesico. This also allowed for a very imaginitive approach to the mandatory recap episode in the beginning of the second season.

The animation is your run-of-the-mill scifi stuff with proper production values. The characters might require some getting adjusted to, and while the capital ship designs are pretty clever, especially Nergal's ones, the mecha et cetera aren't that special. Nadesico isn't a really visual anime in this sense, it's there to simply do its job.

The series has three soundtracks, full of good music from various artists. The main composer is Takayuki Hattori, who was also in charge of the Final Fantasy Symphony Suite VGM concert, testament to his abilities. The main theme is a good listen every twenty-six times, with a great if somewhat narrow and thus repetitive selection of background music, with lighter and darker themes.

Altogether, Nadesico is a great science fiction romp perfect for the fans of the genre. If you like Star Trek (TNG, none of that Enterprise pap) and you watch anime, this might be a good choice for you. It maintains a steady rhythm throughout the series, so you won't get nasty surprises with the entire mood of the series doing a 180 degree flip half-way through.

The humour comes from the characters and their antics, their personalities and the situations they get themselves into. A good example of this is one of the mecha pilots, who is a real pun machine: while her puns themselves are not funny, the way she tells them and the way others react to them is. Nadesico makes for an enjoyable experience, and it's quite possible to feel sadness after it's over. That is a sign of good anime.

Well, Martian Successor Nadesico, what I can say... it was good for a bit, but it catched me only from time to time.

The animation wasn't bad, even if it feels a bit old. Battles aren't exceptional, but all goes smoothly. Characters are well drawn, even if I didn't like the drawing style, but this is a matter of taste. Overall, I think animation is sufficient, and does its work.

Opening and closing themes are both nice, again nothing exceptional, but they are enjoynable. Voice actors are good, there are a couple of them that worked in good anime, as Ueda Yuuji (Keitaro in Love Hina) acting for Akito and Seki Tomokazu (Sosuke in Full metal panic) even if he has only a little part here.

And now there is the wrong point (for me at last). The story: don't get me wrong, it isn't bad, I can say that the original idea and the developing of the plot are really good, but there are a lot of things that really bored me. Chronologically speaking, first of all the very first episodes seems a bit rusced, as if they wanted to put all in action as soon as possible. After that, there is an awful mixing between sad and comedy parts, I mean, there isn't a clear distinction, while something bad is happening (for example when someone dies) almost noone seems to worry about that, and there are a lot of comedy acts in the meantime too, and this gave to me a bad feeling. I would have liked a better distinction between drama and comedy parts. After the half, the plot becomes better, but it didn't get rid of this strange mixing of things. I wasn't satisfied by the ending as well, and the whole thing about all being mad about Gekigangar, as much to influence the way to live of a lot of people (and the story as well of course) seemed a bit too much strange even for an anime not at all serious as this one. Of course all this is only personal taste ;)

The characters are all very well done, all of them have their unique characteristics that differenciate one from the other, and some of them have quite a development. Again their emotions feels a little strange from time to time but I already talked about this in the previous point.

I don't think I'll rewatch this one, or perhaps I'll do it, but it will take quite some time, and nothing better to watch.

After all that I said, I enjoyed this one ;P Or at last I enjoyed it in the middle, where the story has a lot of twists that keep up the attention of the viewer.

Finally, watch it if you are a sci-fi maniac (even if in this one there isn't anything spectacular regarding this), but I can't feel to recommend this one, it has a good plot, but it is bad used. For almost all the first part I had the feeling it was too similar to Vandread, and I think that would be a better choice to watch.

"Martian Successor Nadesico" proved to be quite a surprise for me.

At first glance it appeared to be another slapstick-space-robot-fighting series with no depth at all. But after a couple of episodes it started showing it's full depth. The characters and the story got me really attached and while the humorous style was ever present there were also some very serious moments that almost made me cry. The really outstanding part are the insights into human nature and philisophy which you wouldn't consider possible in such a funny series. Yet, they are there and are presented in a elegant way I've never seen before.

Over time the characters prove to be more and more complex just like the storyline. Even sidekicks get important all of a sudden and it's surprising how well developed every last figure is.

There's also a certain "anything is possible" feeling after the series has really begun and you can expect to be surprised till the very end.

The animation is probably the only weakness of "Nadesico", but it's well done nevertheless.

I loved it and I can only recommend it strongly. If you don't like it you didn't understand it ;-P

Martian Successor Nadesico is about Akito, a 20 year old who wants to become a cook. No chances of that though, pretty soon he finds himself on the Nadesico and winds up piloting a robot and fighting off aliens. The captain Yurika firmly believing he’s doing it to save her while he’s just trying to get away from the ship, you get the idea.
Nadesico has some of those anime moments all should have seen. While generally not the best in anime Nadesico has its really good moments. For those of you who have read the manga I can say that the anime is far better.

The animation is generally ok but sometimes bad. The music is completely satisfactory and the kids screaming hysterically thingie isn’t used too much, something quite original for the genre!

The story is pretty good, not always predictable and the real rough spots are saved by Ruri in a "we know!" manner. Characters are individual although quite often pretty stupid. :P There is some depth and character development but I can’t say I see it as one of the main strengths.

I probably won’t see Nadesico again; I just hung on to see it to the end. There are many nice parts and Ruri saying "baka baka" makes everything all right. Nadesico gets a BIG prop for the recap episode which was actually interesting.
If you like Sci-Fi anime I guess this is a good anime, for us others it’s pretty average.