Martian Successor Nadesico
26 Episodes, 1 Movie
Studio Xebec
Action, Mecha, Parody, Comedy, Everything
DVD's are available from ADV

The Concept:

All's quiet in the world and humanity is thriving as far out as Mars, when...THE ALIENS INVADED! The so-called "Jovian Lizards", a force comprised of automatons begin wreaking havoc. Flash forward- In the face of the humiliating defeat of the Earth forces, Nergal Heavy Industries has built the most powerful battleship. The thing is awesome. They dug up a crew, too. Personalities aside, the best crew ever. So the best ship with the best crew embarks on a mission to retake Mars. What could go wrong?

And..?

Going into it, I had no clue what to expect. Not only was it not spoiled...I'd really not heard much of anything about it. First stop: plot! It's a...strange one; In reality it's sometimes hard to figure out who is on what side. The biggest consistency is that Misumara Yurika is a total bimbo and Ruri will call some(one/ group) stupid, and those aren't plot points. I'll go easy on it because it is, I think, more about the parody humor than the amazing story but it still irritated me from time to time because it couldn't decide just how deep it wanted to get. Oh yeah, and I'll just say right now that it has an ending that isn't.

The visuals in general are pretty good, though the shape of the faces looks odd at certain angles. Nothing particularly amazing here, though I think this was intentional. The humor is the real selling point of Nadesico. From the crew itself (their interactions, banter, personality quirks) to the play-winthin-a-play that a lot of the story revolves around. I don't think there was an episode that I didn't laugh out loud at the sheer silliness. Who could forget the pilot that philosophizes on death and bad puns, busty former-secretary helmswoman, the otaku mechanic that builds exploding inventions as a hobby, or a parody of Hayashibara Megumi at the comm chair? There are a lot of characters that don't even have names, but they're funny too. On the sound front, the opening is called You Get To Burning (Matsuzawa Yumi) is actually kind of addictive and the ending, Watashi Rashiku (Kuwashima Houko) is...decent I guess. The rest of the soundtrack is wholly unremarkable with one exception. It fits, but isn't all that amazing. The exception, a song sung by Ruri in episode 19, is probably the best piece of music in the entirety of it.

Overall, it was good. More would be good too as, even after the movie, it still seems to lack something. Like an ending.

******* 7/10

Discuss.

I would disagree on two parts. 1) The best song is the Gekigengar III openings!

2) I think the ending is fairly deep. It makes a pretty bold statement about the nature of man, and the fact that they not only fail to end the war, but declare that wars can never be avoided, and that this particular one can never end piecefully is a huge step away from the slapstick sillyness of it all. From the last episode, it is kind of hard to believe that this was the same show that had a ceise-fire for an anime con! Last, Ruri's speech in the end was anything but funny, even though they try to buffer it with one last "Baka" joke, it was really pretty tragic sounding, especially considering she's just a little girl.

1) You know, after I posted this, I realized that that would come up and that you were the likely source. Go figure.

2) I see where you're coming from, but I still hold that at least a little more closure to some of it would be nice. In Dune, for example, nothing was really resolved, but at least there was enough closure for it to stand on its own. Nafesico feels like they just got really sick of being funny and gave it that ending. It's something that you could have seen coming. In some circumstances it would even have been an appropriate ending. The only other scenario I can think of is that they were, in some way, parodizing how Eva (The series: Haven't seen EoE) ended.

Heh, actually, there are some silly parallels between Eva and Nadesico, maybe even as many as there are with Getter Robo.

Nadesico is in many ways considered a parody of Eva, and if you've compared the credits you'll see that at least some of it must be intentional (I'll show you the video next friday we're all together if you want, it's cool).
The ending they had was a long time comming. If not from the attack on mars, then from the failed peace talks it is clear that that was the only possible ending. The show is very serious and well thought out under its slapstick cover.

Out of curiosity, have you seen the movie?

Yeah I saw the movie. I actually liked it because I took your warning to heart and didn't watch it as if it were an episode of the series. It offers some of the closure I so desparately wanted too.

To me the movie better illustraits what it took me a long time to realize about the series, which is that essentially a dark war story so slathered in slapstick comedy that you barely even realize it.

However, opening with announcing that the two main characters are dead is hard to cover over.

In a lot of ways I think the movie isn't as popular (or understandable) because it has too much light/dark contrast. It is far more serious, which would be fine, but it still tries to show it though the tinted lenses of comedy. Were it to either lay it on as thick as it did in the series, to not lighten it at all, or to seperate the funny scenes from the serious ones it would probably be a lot better, but in the end it suffers from spreading the comedy too thin over all the scenes, making a dark film that gives the impression it should be funny, leading the viewer to feel like neither laughing or taking it seriously.