Site Index | Blog What's New? Review List Stuff Review Outline Why Hate Anime? Wheat RoD: The TV Haibane Renmei Teen Titans Chaff Akira Legend of the Overfiend Black Heaven Part One: The Review Part Two: Nadia vs. Atlantis Part Three: Anime Lyrics Usually I don't use a very big sample before I write a review for AA. My philosophy is: if a series has something good in it, it'll be in the first few episodes at least. Thus I don't need to watch an entire series before I can throw it up against my scale; I've done reviews using as little as one episode as a benchmark. This might sound unfair, and more than once I've been regaled with cries of "Well, [x] series doesn't get good until [y] episode!" To which I respond, why should anyone have to sit through [y] episodes to see something good? Some series, however, require a full viewing. Oh no, not necessarily to form a fully well-rounded judgement; a series that hasn't captured me after an episode or two isn't likely to ever do so. No, sometimes I have to watch a full series just to get into the head of a typical anime fan. Sometimes nothing less than forcing oneself through every square inch of a show can give you the full picture. Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (hereafter simply Nadia) is three seasons long. That's thirty-nine episodes, or roughly 975 minutes. Sixteen hours and change. In sixteen hours I could have watched the entire extended Lord of the Rings trilogy and had time left over for a nap and a shower. In sixteen hours I could have watched almost a full season of Survivor. Or, sticking to the world of anime, I could have watched Read or Die ten times. But no, I watched Nadia instead. Characters: Thirty-nine episodes... of this. The main character of Nadia is, not surprisingly, Nadia. And let me tell you about Nadia. In shortest possible terms, Nadia is the most disagreeable, bitter, beastly, cranky, combative, vile, venomous, belligerent, mean, ill-tempered, ill-bred, ill-natured, ill-spoken, ill-humored, childish, unpleasant, unfriendly, ungrateful, obnoxious, offensive, snappy, surly, rude, unlikable, uptight, peevish, grouchy, argumentative, quarrelsome, unsympathetic, unkind, unfavorable, irritating, infuriating, self-involved, self-righteous, self-centered, selfish, petty, greedy, dispicable, repugnant, outright detestable character I have ever seen in an anime. Sure, there are other characters in the series besides Nadia... about twenty or so, in fact. But even if you were to take all their best qualities, add them all together, and then throw in Spike, Yomiko, and Kiki just for good measure, it still wouldn't be enough to counterbalance just how terribly unappealing Nadia is. She's that bad. When I was first told how hateful Nadia is, I didn't possibly think she could be as bad as was described to me. BZZZT!! Wrong! But thanks for playing. As a matter of fact, she was worse. I'm at the point now where I simply can't believe anyone would let a character like Nadia spotlight their series; she has no redeeming value whatsoever. There is not one facet of Nadia's character that is good... or even not-that-bad. It's just unbelievable. Story: Nadia is loosely based on Jules Verne's classic novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Just how loosely, I couldn't say, since I haven't read the novel. In any case, this means the story involves an Atlantean princess, a submarine, sea monsters, and what-have-you. Look, it's Team Rocket! The story can be broken down into five major chunks. The first deals with Nadia meeting a young French inventor named Jean and their adventures leading them to an island full of evil KKK lookalikes while being chased by a red-headed jewel thief and her gang. The second is when Nadia and Jean are taken under the wing of Captain Nemo aboard the Nautilus, a super-scientific submarine. The third begins when *the Nadia is destroyed* and deals with the children adapting to life on a deserted island. Eventually they're rescued and taken to Africa, where some filler occurs. The fifth and final stretch is the series' finale, which actually turns out to be the most enjoyable part of the series since (1) Nadia isn't in most of it and (2) the series ends, which is cause for celebration. Now, to be fair, other than Nadia's irritating screeching the series is more or less inoffensive. There is not enough story, however, to fill up 39 episodes. As a result we're treated to a lot of filler, including about seven separate episodes of Nadia and Jean running to the hapless adults for advice on love. Also present are at least three episodes that revolve around Nadia not wanting to eat meat, roughly Meow! Why hast thou forsaken me? Rawr? four which are just long chase scenes, and one flashback-y clip show thinly veiled as a musical. We also get to see a handful of uber-plot-twist episodes which are so horribly telegraphed it's laughable they needed a whole episode to do the twisting. Nadia is a story that would have been perfect for a one-season show; maybe even an OVA. But three seasons? It's like ordering a 12-piece McNuggets and only getting one little thing of that yummy honey dipping sauce. Animation: It's about what one expects from a late-80s cartoon. The artwork isn't downright wretched, but it's nothing amazing either. The settings are, for the most part, rather drab. You're either in France, on an island of some kind, inside a submarine (*or a spaceship*), or in an ancient crystalline ruins full of magic lights and whatnot. The series does not diversify from this small cache of locales, so after the fifth or sixth episode everything has a very strong same-ness to it. This is common in most anime, but Nadia is touted as an "around-the-world" adventure, so you'd expect more than just a couple of backdrops. Don't let the cheeriness fool you; that is a combat hot-air balloon. The characters, however, are characters you're likely to remember for the rest of your anime-watching career. Grandis' big red hair, the mustache that threatens to take over Nemo's face, King's... er... endowment; these are all things that stick with you throughout the series and beyond. Which isn't to say they're necessarily well-drawn characters, just that you can tell there's some imagination in them. For an anime with this many characters who come and go all willy-nilly like throughout the series (sometimes for very extended periods of time, as is the case with Ayerton) this is important. Culture Shock: I had the pleasure (using the term loosely) of sampling two different voice tracks for Nadia, although neither was particularly pleasing. The main difference is that Nadia has a French accent in the earlier dub and not in the more recent one; but since 98% of her dialogue is just her pitching a fit it doesn't really matter. (The series' second protagonist, Jean, has a bad French accent in both dubs.) Bad voice acting aside, there's nothing unbearably Japanish about the series. When you get right down to it, Nadia is just a bare-bones sci-fi adventure with a loudmouth in the leading role. Even the stupid anime quirks are kept on a short leash throughout the series, and there's not much in the way of in-jokes or self-mockery as one sees in other series. If you ask me, the Eiffel Tower had it coming. What I did knock points off for, however, was the laughable use of religious symbolism towards the end of the series. This must seem really deep and symbolic and intense to Japanese people, much in the same way Asian mythology seems very mystical and mysterious and enigmatic to us. When you try to feed our own mythology back to us, however, it just comes out as forced and contrived. The case here isn't as bad as elsewhere in animedom, and they actually try to half-justify their Bible-crunching with storyline relevance, so I have to give them points for effort. I mean, it's cheesy, but it ain't Xenogears. Links Annoying Fanpage (annoying as Nadia herself) Animenation Listing IMDB Listing Nadia would have been a three hamham series, easily, if it weren't for it's insufferable star. Which is still chaff, but not the kind of chaff that makes me want to vomit blood. Heck, even if there had been something in the way of character development to turn her into less of a whiny little brat, I might have topped off at 2.5 hamhams. But when all is said and done the series simply cannot be saved from its horrible, horrible lead player. Overall Rating: Now, as a special treat, we're going to delve into the disoriented mind of the anime fan! Come with me, as we look at the veracity of the rabid claims that Disney's wonderful 2000 animated feature Atlantis: The Lost Empire ripped off Nadia! Continue on to part two...

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