OK, so I lied last time and am not doing the second half of my medical stuff post like planned, and will save that for later. I should be posting happy stuff on a supposed-to-be-happy day like today anyways ^_^;. Most of you out there who have heard of Gainax know of it due to Neon Genesis Evangelion (better known, and hereby referred to, as Eva), their “ground breaking” series released in ‘95-‘96. I’d have to say this was, and may still be, the most well known good anime series, meaning not including such tripe as Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Digimon, Sailor Moon (which isn’t THAT bad actually...), etc. It always gave me a bad tremble whenever I mentioned anime to general people and they replied with “oh, you mean (like) Sailor Moon?” But anyways... I should let you know beforehand, most of this post is a history of anime and some interesting info on the anime Nadia.
The TV series Gainax did immediately before Eva, Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, released in ‘89-‘91, is one of, if not my favorite anime series. You can definitely see the influence it had on Eva too. Before I talk about Nadia though, a little history about Gainax first. If anyone is really interested, check out their OVA (Original Video Animation) “Otaku no Video” release in ’91, which is KIND OF an autobiographical parody. I just picked up a copy for myself with some of the Chanukah/Xmas I received this year ^_^. Basically, Gainax is made up of a bunch of otaku. So these anime otaku in the mid ‘80s were of the mindset of “man, we can do better than all the shit that’s coming out”, so they started their own “amateur” company of fervent obsessed fans, and revolutionized the industry with their brilliance. A good chunk of what they do is worth a watch, though I am not quite a fan of all their stuff, it all has its own fun nuances and radiance to it that can only be found by people that truly love what they are doing.
So, back to Nadia. I’d rather not really go into the story because I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone that may choose to watch it, but it is heavily based around Jules Verne’s works, most specifically around Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and the exploits of Captain Nemo, though with the usual crazy Japanese anime twist. It takes place in 1889-1890 and has a very steam punk feel to it. Disney’s 2001 Atlantis: The Lost Empire is actually quite a blatant rip of Nadia too, and not even an iota as worth it, IMO. I have also heard The Lion King was a pretty blatant rip of Kimba the White Lion, an anime from the mid 1960s. I cannot personally confirm this however, and can’t complain much as The Lion King is one of my two favorite Disney movies, along with Aladdin. But um... back to the topic on hand... darn tangents!! Nadia weaves many different genres very excellently into its story including science fiction, adventure, mystery, comedy, and a hint of romance, but maintains its silly mood throughout, even when dealing with clichéd “difficult” topics like killing, death, and general genocide :-). The main characters are Nadia and Jean, an engineering genius Frenchman, who are excellent foils for each other. One example is how Nadia is one of those “dear god how can you possibly even think about eating a dead animal” vegetarians, which Jean just can’t comprehend “what are you talking about, it’s meat”. And then you bring in the well-mannered 4 year old Marie who is always complaining about how immature/ill mannered the adults are... it’s just a very fun series with a lot of memorable and lovable characters.
So after finishing the ~40 episodes over a week, I went and checked the Wikipedia article on it and found some very fascinating facts, namely tying in Miyazaki with the series, which was a shocker too me. Hayao Miyazaki is by far my most respected (anime?) director, I believe. Most people would know of his works under the anime studio Studio Ghibli, though he doesn’t only do stuff for them, and they have other directors too, but Ghibli and Miyazaki are generally pretty synonymous. I have multiple other topics written down on Miyazaki that I will talk about later, and will post a good list of Miyazaki/Ghibli titles I made a while ago as soon as I can find it. Anyways, some of the more interesting trivia notes I stole from Wikipedia are as follows:
One of the most important notes here is the forth and fifth bullets talking about the “infamous island episodes”. While they are still in the general Nadia style, and are fun, they have their downsides. I would personally even recommend skipping at least one and a half of these episodes, due to them being so worthless. They are:
On that note, the movie really isn’t worth watching at all either. Especially the first 1/3 (30 minutes) of the movie, as it is nothing but a recap of the series.
Oh, also, the original title was translated as “Nadia of the Mysterious Seas”.