Kidô Senkan 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.

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.

You know when I saw this first it looked kind of promising but then it got more and more annoying.

In fact I detested the vast majority of the characters because really their attitudes at times are just unbelievable and a few times really made me very, very, very sick! All in all I began to lose interest in this series as it rolled on by which I found the characters more annoying then any kind of drama or humour or whatever.

So after a few episodes I just dropped it. Of all the anime I saw this ranks among the top 10 I saw in 'Worst Character Development' because really the character development was utterly atrocious!

The only thing that really compares to this show is the movie "Scream." Both incorporated the knowledge all fans of each genre (horror for 'Scream' and mecha for MSN) to make something original and funny.

"Funny" being the prime word here. This thing is a riot! The entire crew of the Nadesico is made up the the biggest bunch of weirdoes this side of Jupiter. You've got a super-perky, dim, but, for no apparent reason, capable captain, a pilot obsessed with a cheesy 70's mecha show, a engineer who joined up just to get away from his wife, another pilot who just want to be a cook and for the captain to not be in love with him, a genius little girl you thinks everyone around her is an idiot (she's right), a beancounter, a former secretary, and a voice actor. Think 'Hogan's Heroes' meets 'BattleStar Galatica.

While the show is great, the US version has some flaws. The subtitled version is hard to read. For some reason a light blue color is used at times that's almost impossible to see. The dubbed version has screens that have had the kanji glaringly replaced with English.

On the plus side the VA in both versions are all very good. You also get the song lyrics in English and phonetics. That's a rather nice bonus.

MSN is a great parody of the mecha genre and to a greater extent anime fandom as a whole. The story is funny, but with enough serious stuff to keep things from getting to silly.

Overall, this is a good series to invest your anime-buying money in.