Martian Successor Nadesico Review

Martian Successor Nadesico

Director: Tatsuo Sato

Music: Takayuki Hattori

Character Design: Keiji Gotoh

Studio: Xebec

Synopsis

Tenkawa Akito is a man who doesn’t want to fight. Even though he grew up enjoying a mecha anime called Gekiganger 3, he still hates to fight and rather be a cook. However, fate intervenes as his home on Mars is destroyed by unknown aliens, nicknamed the Jovian Lizards. Mysteriously, he is transported instantly from Mars to Earth without any explanation as to why. By chance he meets a girl from his past, named Yurika, who just happens to be the captain of Nergal’s private battleship, the Nadesico. She decides to enlist Akito as a cook for the Nadesico, while having him as a backup Aestivalis pilot for the Nadesico. Along his path of getting revenge for Mars and fighting against the Jovians, he gets teamed up with a crew of nut jobs, otakus, and ditzes. Along their way, they learn the real truth behind Nergal, the Jovian Lizards, Akito’s past, and the mysterious phenomenon known as Boson Jumping.

Review

Martian Successor Nadesico is an interesting anime to say the least. It seems to combine a lot of various genres from mecha to comedy and much more all in one fun filled joy ride. The story starts out with Akito on his home planet of Mars where he is talking with a little girl named Ai. All of the sudden his home planet is attacked by a mysterious aliens known as Jovian Lizards. In the midst of the attack, Akito begins to panic and then somehow mysteriously ends up on Earth without any clue of how he got there. He decides to work as a cook while on earth, but ends up getting thrown out of his job. All the while the crew of Nergal’s latest battleship, the Nadesico, is being assembled. He then by chance meets a girl named Yurika, who just so happened to be a childhood friend of his when he was living on Mars. Akito ends up following Yurika and learns that she is in fact the captain of the Nadesico. He then decides to overcome his fears and pilot an Aestavalis, a humanoid mecha unit, to help the Nadesico escape from Earth. That’s pretty much how the first episode goes. As the story goes on, we learn more about the organization known as Nergal, the Jovian Lizards, and much more. There are times where some episodes go from being completely comedic to a mix of seriousness and comedy. Even so, the story will more than likely have you wanting to keep watching till the very end.

I’d have to say that one of the best things about Nadesico is its wide range of characters, each with their own unique personalities. You have the ditzy yet strong Yurika, to the child prodigy yet adorable Ruri, to the tomboyish Ryoko, and many more. With such a wide range of characters, it’s hard to not like at least one of them.

Martian Successor Nadesico aired from late 96 to early 97 in Japan. For its time, I really do like the animation, even if it’s not the best looking, I really did like the character designs. Keiji Gotoh, who is known for doing the character designs for Gate Keepers and Gate Keepers 21, did the character designs for Nadesico. So to give my final thought on the animation of the series, I’ll just say simply that, “I like it!” There isn’t really anything bad I can say about the animation in Nadesico to put it simply, so it gets a thumbs up in my book.

As for the soundtrack to this series, I can’t really say it impressed me that much. While the music is fitting for the setting of the story, there just wasn’t really any background music that got my attention besides a few songs. Vocal wise, I liked several songs in this anime. You Get To Burning, the opening theme for Martian Successor Nadesico is a great song and always got me in the mood to watch Nadesico. The opening animation really fits the song as well by the way. I also liked the ending theme, Watashi Rashiku/Being Myself, sung by Houko Kuwashima, a.k.a. seiyuu of Misumara Yurika. The song itself I enjoy, but I didn’t really care much for the ending animation that went along with it and found myself skipping it a lot unfortunately. Another vocal I also really liked was the Gekiganger 3 theme. It just had this really old school feel to it that sounded great.

As for dub vs. sub, you probably know by now that I have a pretty biased opinion when it comes to this stuff and I only watch my anime in Japanese with English subtitles. I liked the voice work in the Japanese version plain and simple. I particularly enjoyed hearing Omi Minami voicing Ruri Hoshino the most though. She did a great job with Ruri’s character. Not to mention you have Yuji Ueda voicing Akito, along with Houko Kuwashima in her debut voice role as Yurika. Not to mention we get to hear the voice of the great Tomokazu Seki as Gai Daigoji. Though unfortunately his role as Gai is short lived, as you will find out after the first few episodes of this series. Now going to the English dub, I did happen to take a few minutes to listen to it by chance. While my opinion remains biased, I still stand by it. After hearing Spike Spencer, who is best known for his god awful role as Shinji in the English dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion, voicing Akito in this series, I would really have to recommend passing on watching this dubbed. Not just because I think you are getting the best out of this series by watching it in it’s original language, but because I thought Akito’s dub voice sounded almost as bad as Shinji’s from Evangelion.

This series overall was very enjoyable in my opinion. Just about all the characters, especially the crew of the Nadesico were at the most likeable in my opinion. Some episodes go from being serious to being to comedic to being a hybrid of both and then some, but it will probably leave you with wanting more. While some things about this series were mediocre at least such as the soundtrack, as I said before, I think the characters are really what make this series shine. Combining that with fun filled comedy, mecha action, and a story involving a war between Earthlings and the Jovians should really make this an enjoyable viewing experience. I would definitely have to recommend this series, even if you aren’t a fan of mecha. If that isn’t enough, ADV Films has re-released this entire series via their Anime Essential line on DVD. You can get this entire series for around a mere thirty dollars if you look at the right places and the Anime Essential DVDs do not have those annoying overlays that were used in the original DVD release. You just can’t beat a deal like that for a great series like Nadesico.

For more information on this series, you can check out the following link below.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=42

Martian Successor Nadesico Rating: