Martian Successor Nadesico

MSN takes the usually ultra-serious mecha genre and makes fun of it in every way possible, with homages to "Macross/Robotech" "Mobile Suit Gundam" "Star Blazers/Yamato" "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and also old-school shows like "Mazinger Z/Tranzor Z" and "GoLion/Voltron". To any anime fan who's familiar with these works, Nadesico is a riot, although those who are not, or non-anime fans, might be slightly lost. However, the series has it's own interesting story to keep people interested, involving a war between Earth and mysterious space aliens who attack from Jupiter. The animation quality is variable, but it shouldn't harm your enjoyment of the show. The dub's pretty good too, although hardcore anime fans will be turned off by the use of overlays.

It's quirky, way ahead of its time and surprisingly relevant. It's a fun time. The intro song is amongst the best.

This series will amuse both newbies and hardcore fans immensely. It has the solidarity of the characters, combined with excellent animation, voice-acting, and plot to make it one of the best entrances into anime for the uninitiated. It's real treat however, is for the anime veterans, who will see throughout the entire series, parody after parody of series after series of longtime favorites and classics. This show is shameless in parody, filled with comdey and drama, and everyone will love it.

First things first: intro and outro songs in this are godly. That out of the way, the first few episodes might not be super gripping, but the meat of this thing REALLY rocks. It knows when to be comedic but when also to pull its punches and dial it back in for more emotional or character driven moments. Ruriruri is evidently a Rei clone from evangelion, but has enough bite and edge that it's an interesting spin on the character. Akito is basically an inverted Shinji, which is a fun play on the character. The end sort of peters out and rushes itself, so it doesn't come to a close too strong, but that mid section really did it for me. Just wish the movie was better.

When I first saw the boxes to Nadesico I thought it was nothing more then an Evangelion rip off, I found out later that it was actually a comedy and a parody of Eva and checked it out, I was not disappointed. Nadesico is a very funny anime series that parodies Neon Genesis Evangelion, and the old cheesy 70's mech shows (think Voltron). It has amazing characters and some of the funniest episodes I have seen in an Anime series. The series does sort of wander near the middle and kind of has an open ending but other then that I recommend it.

There is an OAV that is basically a 30 minute long version of the Mecha show they watch in the series which is very funny and a surprisingly dark movie that is decent, but could have been much better (too much build up not enough payoff)

If you like Nadesico Check out Vandread (very similar to Nadesico but with a lot of CGI and much better animation) or the fantasy comedy series Slayers