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REVIEW: Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water


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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5347
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 11:45 am Reply with quote
Was the island arc where Nadia and Jean became like a married couple? Barbecue I actually liked that part.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2560
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 12:35 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
I would discover a wonderful, complex, and deeply ambitious (albeit deeply flawed) series that nearly manages to stand toe-to-toe with its much more famous older sibling


I really do hate to be "that guy", but I highly doubt James was referencing Gunbuster with this line, as that would be Nadia's older sibling. Evangelion is Nadia's younger sibling, since it came after Nadia. I definitely know that this was unintentional, though, since he correctly used the word "precursor" in reference to Nadia a line or two earlier. That being said, the gaffe technically still fits, as Gunbuster is truly wonderful, complex, & even ambitious in its own right, so I'm sure Nadia stands tall alongside that as well.

As for the show itself, Nadia is definitely a bucket list show for myself, though I do find it interesting how the movie sequel (which apparently rivals the two infamous filler arcs in terribleness) has yet to be license rescued both times the TV series has been re-released.
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louis6578



Joined: 31 Jul 2013
Posts: 1866
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 12:45 pm Reply with quote
Yeah. Evangelion would be the younger one if anything. Bizarre wording. Hey! Maybe he was referring to the Daicon IV short! Anime hyper
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MagicPolly



Joined: 26 Nov 2020
Posts: 1585
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 1:35 pm Reply with quote
I loved Nadia when I decided to watch it on a whim a few years ago. I should go back and rewatch it at some point, though probably skipping island/Africa. I think the series even had a recut in Japan that cut that whole section out.

Oh well, at least those arcs were better than the movie shudders
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Swissman



Joined: 11 May 2006
Posts: 768
Location: Switzerland
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 2:21 pm Reply with quote
Nadia is one of those seminal formative series for many anime fans in the late 80s/90s, like Urusei Yatsura or Kimagure Orange Road. I remember having read a short article about Nadia in a now defunct English anime magazine, a few months before I discovered the first VHS tape of Streamline's English dub. I immediately fell in love with that episode and luckily, a few months later the series started being broadcast on France's most important TV channel. The same year I met an older guy who gave me a copy of all episodes on VHS. He had recorded them from an earlier broadcast on french TV. I also remember watching 25 or more episodes in an all-nighter with another fan in his impressive otaku room (he had cels of Nadia framed on the wall!). Ahh, just good memories.

I guess I'm one of the few who never were really bothered by the island episodes. The only thing which I clearly remember having disliked was the animation in some of those episodes, specifically in that episode where it was revealed that they were stranded on a spoiler[moving] island. The character designs and animation felt off. Some of the other island episodes were ok, especially that one with Nadia's spoiler[first kiss] and that comedic one with the robots resembling King.
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Eigengrau



Joined: 09 May 2015
Posts: 104
Location: Belgium
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 2:50 pm Reply with quote
It's interesting that there was this whole lineage of adventure anime running through the seventies and eighties that was all spun off from an unrealised adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki ended up making Future Boy Conan instead, which he more or less remade as Castle In The Sky. Studio Pierrot made The Mysterious Cities Of Gold. And then Gainax returned to the original concept with Nadia. You could even call Telecom's Secret Of Cerulean Sand a latecomer to that party.
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Beltane70



Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 3896
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:10 pm Reply with quote
MagicPolly wrote:
I loved Nadia when I decided to watch it on a whim a few years ago. I should go back and rewatch it at some point, though probably skipping island/Africa. I think the series even had a recut in Japan that cut that whole section out.

Oh well, at least those arcs were better than the movie shudders


There was a condensed version of Nadia that cane out about a year or so after the TV series aired. It was released as three two-hour specials that focused on the main plot while leaving out the secondary plots, including the island/Africa episodes.
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James_Beckett
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 23 Nov 2015
Posts: 278
Location: USA
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 3:42 pm Reply with quote
@Lord Geo

1. That was definitely a typo on my part! I know how linear time functions, I promise o_o

2. The movie is so, *so* much worse than the filler arcs. Don't even watch it out of morbid curiosity.
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louis6578



Joined: 31 Jul 2013
Posts: 1866
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 4:45 pm Reply with quote
I was genuinely wondering how that movie was, but I guess I know well enough now. Even if it was truncated beyond recognition, I hoped there was a somewhat halfway acceptable way for my friends to check out the story without having to sit through the Island Arc. Oh well.

I'm shocked I didn't see any disclaimers for the suspiciously grooming-esque relationship in the epilogue in your review. It didn't bother me because I've seen weirder in anime, but it just felt so out of left field for this particular series that I felt it was worth noting.

spoiler[The little girl getting married to prototype James from Team Rocket in the end.]
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James_Beckett
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 23 Nov 2015
Posts: 278
Location: USA
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 5:16 pm Reply with quote
@louis6578

I thought about bringing it up, for sure, but it honestly comes across so...well, "innocently" isn't the right word, obviously, but I didn't know if it'd be worth griping about given that it's barely a part of the story and it comes up in literally the last ten seconds of the series.

It's definitely an...odd, choice, though.

Also, the movie doesn't work at all, either as a butchered recap of the show *or* a sequel. The animation is atrocious, and it feels like a sloppy cash-grab in every conceivable way.
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Shay Guy



Joined: 03 Jul 2009
Posts: 2137
PostPosted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 5:47 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
To be perfectly honest, this is one of the rare occasions where I might have to advise anyone lacking Herculean patience to skip most of the Island and Africa Arcs entirely. Seriously, once you get to Episode 22, jump ahead to episodes 30 and 31, and then bounce right over to the final five episodes starting with 35.


This is exactly how I watched it back in 2020, based on advice I'd read way back in… I dunno, the late 2000s? The timeskips and sudden appearance of a new character or two were a bit jarring, but I think it worked well enough that I'm not too interested in going back for the rest.
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Beltane70



Joined: 07 May 2007
Posts: 3896
PostPosted: Thu Jun 29, 2023 12:00 am Reply with quote
Now I know that I’m old since I find it pretty weird to see Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water being referred to as the “lesser-known” predecessor to Evangelion. If you’ve only been an anime fan in the past twenty years or so, I can understand that, but at the time of its release back in 1990, it was a pretty well-known series among many western anime fans.
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4869
PostPosted: Thu Jun 29, 2023 12:20 am Reply with quote
I first saw Nadia a few years ago and was blown away by it. I loved the cast and Jean and Nadia's relationship and the Grandis Gang was the best. The animation and music was stellar and I was on the edge of my seat to see what happened next. That one episode early on they meet Marie made me cry so much. The English dub for Nadia is also pretty fantastic and ADV did an amazing job with the cast. I also skipped the filler in arc besides the two plot relevant episodes and I had a much better time with it.
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KlarkKentThe3rd



Joined: 21 Dec 2010
Posts: 108
PostPosted: Thu Jun 29, 2023 1:17 am Reply with quote
MagicPolly wrote:
I think the series even had a recut in Japan that cut that whole section out.

Oh well, at least those arcs were better than the movie shudders


I thought that recut by the creator, Anno himself, was the magic solution I wanted. Turns out this cut is like 6 hours long, about 12 episodes in length. That means at least 50% of the GOOD episodes got cut. That was completely unnecessary, and I suspect was due to Anno being frustrated (as expected) and dealing with tapes costing money. A better cut for the digital age would be to cut half of the island episodes (dumb scenes, looney tunes physics, characters acting like idiots, scenes of nothing happening) and leave everything else uncut.

Some people will tell you to just skip the bad episodes, but unfortunately enough plot and character development (a little, but more than nothing) happens there, so skipping entirely is not a good option.
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nyaa



Joined: 27 Oct 2022
Posts: 115
PostPosted: Thu Jun 29, 2023 8:02 am Reply with quote
I have both the original ADV dvds and the Sentai bluray set. I've watched it 4 or 5 times and it always entertains me to the end, I don't find the island episodes to be offensive. While Nadia comes across as a snotty spoiled little bitch a lot of the time as the story progresses she matures and starts treating Jean and the others more as she should. I won't hesitate to recommend the series to anybody looking for an excellent adventure. BTW-the movie-while not good isn't nearly as bad as it's made out to be.
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