Martian Successor Nadesico

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

Having received the first volume of this series on DVD for christmas, I only had one thought. 'Can I sell it on e-bay if I don't unwrap it?'

This will teach me to judge a book (or DVD in this case) by the cover.

2 weeks later I figured I might as well put it on and have a good laugh at this potential garbage. How wrong could a man be. Not only did I have a GREAT laugh but I've been turned onto anime a second time. The animation is stock standard but the script more than makes up for this. Well paced, peppered with loads of laughs.

Lets hope the boys and girls in Japan keep cranking out more series like this. *** out of ****

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.

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.

Don't be deceived by the DVD cover that makes you think of Evangelion, Nadesico is one funny series. The series generally points to a show down between "Jovian Lizards" and Earth, but each series, unlike say Gundam Wings, has its own individual plot. Don't get me wrong, the plot does progress but the fact that the writers explore every possibility of comedy within the battleship Nadesico.

Good things I like to point out is that you become VERY familiar with each of the major crew members who range from the super intelligent Ruri to the crazy pilot Izumi. Also there is definately enough action and adventure to keep mecha/sci-fan fans satisfied.

The Nadesico has an OVA, Gekiganger, which is about Akito Tenkawa's favorite anime. There is also an MS Nadesico Movie called Prince of Darkness and as it may sound the movie takes on a darker, more serious tone than the series. These two are not listed on IMDB unfortunately.