Nadesico: A recommendation by a Mecha Fanboy

O

Ork_dreadnought

Brigade Leader
Following kind words from various people, here is my review for Martian Successor Nadesico. I recomend this anime.



Anime Retrospective: Martian Successor Nadesico
by Ork_Dreadnought @ 08.03.2006 - 14:25:31
It says a lot about me that I rate humour as high as plotting. The intellectualism of Ghost in the Shell is great, but a good joke requires intelligence and observation. Nadesico was the first anime ever to make me laugh, and was voted by Japanese fans as the best anime ever, just before Cowboy Bebop came out. So it must make a lot of people laugh. You will too, please read on.

The Basic Plot
Aliens known as “Jovian Lizardsâ€
 
psst its nadesico not Naedsico :D

aye it is one of my alltime favorite series so much so i bought all the video's then bought the dvd collection

a nice waste of £300 :D
 
Not seen this show since it was on sci-fi yeeeeears ago. I have no idea why I still have not got round to getting it yet from what I can remember I enjoyed it. Hmm (looks at the dvd boxset on play.com) I wonder...
 
Have you considered PMing Paul about doing reviews/articles or something? That was a great read! :)

Anyway, I've been tempted by Nadesico for a while now, especially considering the whole series came out as that 'complete' set. With so many serious mecha shows around it sounds like a refreshing change! The whole idea of making it a show about mecha fans as well as for them makes it all the more interesting.
 
On the whole I have to agree with Ork's review, but he (she?) has left out one detail that really influenced my apreciation of the series. The ending. After the credits rolled i think my repsonse was... " I sat through 6 dvd's for that $#!+, ^&+_@>?~^%*(*%&*))$"!%$*+...etc." the ending is weak. Very weak they completely fail to answer may questions, even poseing several questions in the last 5 min that sevre no purpose other than making you feel cheated out of some grand reveal. It turned what was one of my favourite series when I was watching it into a very mediocre series. It was like several western series that give cliff hanger endings which will be answered in the next series which never comes, or it being stopped half way through the series.
 
Nadesico was for a long time my fave anime series. When watched back in 2002 alongside Evangelion and Blue Gender on the Sci Fi channel, it was easilly my favorite of the three (With Evangelion rock bottom) It also was the first Anime i bought on DVD. I Loved the deadpan humour with the very good plot. Noting that the humour did not grate at all against the storyline (Ala Fullmetal Alchemist) I was very impressed, and it for the first time made me look for series' rather than just films.

However, stay away from the Movie. It's awful.
 
hopeful_monster said:
On the whole I have to agree with Ork's review, but he (she?) has left out one detail that really influenced my apreciation of the series. The ending. After the credits rolled i think my repsonse was... " I sat through 6 dvd's for that $#!+, ^&+_@>?~^%*(*%&*))$"!%$*+...etc." the ending is weak.
Click to expand...

First off, he :)

Second, the ending was both a rush job to finish of the main story, and parody of how animes end. I did hint at this issue with the comment I made about Nadesico becoming more serious. The basic idea of a war ending because of a lover's quarrell, and a slightly ambiguous fate for the characters, is a nod to the ending of SDF Macross. The constrast between Gekigangar's ending and Nadesico's ending, is a comment on how anime shows tend to end these days, i.e. abruptly.

And of course, Akito describes the last episode of Gekigangar as being the worst one. Some self-awareness there :)

Warmaster said:
However, stay away from the Movie. It's awful.
Click to expand...
Gah, no kidding, that plot needed to be a 6 episode OVA series in order to work at least. Too many characters, and fractured characterisation. Plus the tone was all wrong.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
the movie was ok but not praise worthy

it does make a lot more sence if u play the game that came out though (and it also makes the end of the series not seem so rushed)

personally i think they were considering a 2nd series at one point and ended up trying to finish it off with the movie instead.
 
Ork_dreadnought said:
Warmaster said:
However, stay away from the Movie. It's awful.
Click to expand...
Gah, no kidding, that plot needed to be a 6 episode OVA series in order to work at least. Too many characters, and fractured characterisation. Plus the tone was all wrong.
Click to expand...

I agree. The plot was incredibly truncated, and what there was of it consisted mostly of the old 'lets get the origional characters back together for the sake of it' routeen (which seems to be a thing in Anime films based of series) And then of course the Tone - i'm all for sequels doing diffierent things, but what they did do was awful. Ruri and Akido were the worst. Somewhere along the line they repeated the story and changed the tone, when they needed to repeat the tone and change the story! :roll:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I only saw it recentley (with the release of ADV's new set) which imo helped it immensley, it's one to watch once you've seen a lot of other robot animes otherwise the parodys and purposefull genericness of the plots can be lost on viewers.
The early pilot (Gai?) was my favourite character with his Go Nagai lust.
 
Big fan of Nadesico, and now I think it about I thinkit was the third dvd series I bought.
The series is great, the movie did leave alot of questions unanswered. I hate it when it does that^^
 
I honestly thought the movie was really good...up until the rushed ending which was horribly played out. It's great if you see the movie as a stopgap until a new series, rather than a conclusion to the saga. The way they've left the ending open would make a great new series (imagine Akito as some kind of ultra-serious-ultra-cool Matrix-Neo-like figure, to contrast his humourous, clumsy, bumbling nature from the original series) Here's hoping the second series eventually materialises in the future, but it seems unlikely.
 
I remember watching this series dubbed on the Sci Fi channel ooh, a while ago now, was a bit of a mixed bag for me but overall I enjoyed it

Lots of LOL moments
 
Back
Top