Nadja - Die Macht des Zaubersteins

I have this in Japanese, English subbed and dubbed and even in French. Slightly different edits for each. A superb show with first class animation, especially in the first episode. Some very slight nudity was removed from several edits (including the French aired shows) and there are some very powerful emotional moments - such as Marie's grief at the loss of her parents. If you can, sit down and enjoy the whole show - it will not leave you untouched. Highly recommended introduction to the real art of Japanese animation. NB: The movie which followed is not so good.

A few years back, Disney announced they were going to be dubbing and releasing major Japanese anime in the US. So far, KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE and PRINCESS MONONOKE have been the only ones to make it. It's dang obvious though, that someone at Disney watched NADIA and took notes, because the character design of the Atlantean girl in ATLANTIS looks to have been lifted directly from here.

US release of the dubbed NADIA stalled at an early section on the series. I hope that the release of ATLANTIS prompts someone to complete the US release of NADIA, as I would like to finally understand what the heck I watched a decade ago in Japanese!

Nadia seems to have fallen off the radar when it comes to 90s anime, but it's truly one of the classics of the decade. Few shows feel as equally accessible to kids and adults alike, and the show's themes about technology, power, and love remain provoking.

The characters are all so memorable. Jean and Nadia are the finest protagonists one could ask for in this sort of adventure, likable while still leaving a lot of room for character development. (Nadia can get supremely irritating at times, but she's such a unique heroine and her growth is so powerful that her more zealous moments can be tolerated.) The child Marie and Nadia's pet lion cub King are cute without being cloying, and the Grandis trio are comic gold who come to be more fleshed out as the story goes on. Nemo, Electra, and the rest of the Nautilus submarine crew are all fantastic, and the villains are sinister without feeling one-note.

The animation in the first season is breathtaking for a television series, though it notably declines in quality by the second season. Speaking of the second season, it is awful, the one true drawback to this great show. The characters lose much of the development they gained at the end of season one and little of interest happens. Unless you are a completion-ist like me, it could be skipped altogether without losing much narrative cohesiveness.

Secret of Blue Water needs rediscovery. It's much superior to some of the more popular 90s anime and as far as coming-of-age adventures go, this series dwells with the best of the genre.

i bought a package of various bootleg anime series (bad, i know) and spent a few months muddling my way through them all. some were really good (pretear, love hina) some grew on me (macross 7) and some flat-out stunk. (to heart, and ironically, the series for which i bought the bundle, angelic layer) i approached them all with a certain amount of skepticism and nadia was no different. the story takes place in the 1880's and spent its first few minutes placing the viewer within the frame of the times. however, a few minutes later the story introduces the villains/heroes known as the grandis gang and their apparent mastery of a level of technology unavailable now 100 years later. so if anachronisms and anthropomorphisms bug you, nadia won't appeal to you.

as the plot develops, the characters take on depth and voice and you can't help but be charmed. the story becomes complicated and textured and not a little dark. then suddenly the first act closes and the second begins by abruptly changing from a tense drama into a wile e. coyote cartoon. then as soon as you settling into the admittedly funny and loopy island adventures, the series swiftly switches back into its formerly dramatic theme. so if wild swings in tone bug you, nadia won't appeal to you.

can a series flip and twist back and forth between drama and slap-stick comedy and still work? watch nadia for yourself and you be the judge. i found myself forgiving its flaws because it created characters i cared about, who seemed to have the depth to consider who they themselves were and what motivated them. the series lovingly embraces its characters flaws rather then exploiting them. (as was the case in evangelion, also by hideki anno) i forgave the surreality of the plot because it had the profound insight and courage to craft REAL teenagers. (i know a real kid who in his loving teenage cluelessness could have written jean's painfully funny "nadia" song) i especially appreciated the fact that marry's 5-year-old character wasn't nearly as obnoxious as she could have been. nadia could have been done differently, eliminating either its most serious moments or its most ridiculous, but it might not have been the same.

somewhere between the wide swings of our own pendulum is where real life happens.

p.s. there is a movie. it stinks, and adds nothing to anyone or anything in the story. resist the temptation to find it or watch it.

Possible spoilers ahead.

I don't know what I can possibly say about this phenomenal series that hasn't been said already, but I'm here to try anyway. From the moment I saw a review of this series in Gamefan magazine (rest in peace), I fell in love. I had to see it. I dashed out to the mall and grabbed the first copy I saw. And it grabbed me right back, and would not let me go.

The series uses 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (and to a lesser extent the sequel Mysterious Island) as a jumping point for its own story. It takes place in 1889, and revolves around two teens, Jean, a French boy who wants to change the world with inventions and is the biggest weenie who's ever been the hero of an anime, and Nadia, a circus acrobat and animal trainer who has a magical crystal, the Blue Water, and no clue about where she comes from. During the course of things they embark on an adventure to get to the bottom of Nadia's past, meet Captain Nemo and help to stop a group of people from Atlantis from taking over the world. And I loved every minute of it.

I mean for crying out loud, what kind of mad genius does it take to make episodes on end of adjusting to life on a submarine entertaining? Whatever kind it is, the guys at Gainax had it. Their smarts in storytelling show in other areas too, mainly the finely tuned characters, like the obligatory kid, Marie, who manages to be anything but the obnoxious brat the kid in an anime series almost always is. Nadia's the only short-tempered anime girl I've ever actually liked. The Grandis Gang go from the comically inept antagonists to helpful and resourceful back-up for the other characters once the real menacing villains show up. In the two really big battles of the series it's arguably them who ultimately save the day.

It does warrant mentioning that this show kind of flounders in the middle, owing to a bunch of quickly-proudced episodes that were shoehorned in to pad out the length of the series when it became an unexpected hit. Most of the mid-to-late 20's of Nadia can be skipped without missing anything worth seeing.

If you're an anime fan, want to watch a series with people in it you'll care about, and don't mind being expected to root for a dork like Jean, please do yourself a favor and pick this up. Oh, and do yourself another favor and watch it with the subtitles on. I'm sure Nathan Parsons is a wonderful human being who'd give me the shirt off his back, but a friend of mine actually started laughing out loud at how dumb Jean's voice sounded when we watched it with the English voices.

And before I go, I want affirm what everyone else is saying, that the sequel movie is terrible and should be avoided by fans of the series at all costs. Unless you want to see how badly a story can undermine itself (pretty much every suspense issue is defeated by watching the series epilogue and twenty five minutes straight of the movie is series flashbacks). Otherwise, stay away. You'll thank me.