Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) 1990

I took far too many screencaps with these posts and so I thought I’d better to do something with a few of them!

Visual Analysis

Firstly, I thought I’d start with some random single shots:

From the prologue with that ‘hand-drawn’ look that sometimes appears elsewhere in the series (and maybe even with a line to simulate the fold in a book). Next is some nice framing for the kids in hiding, and then lighting interrupts the line of soldiers, Jean finally has someone to share his love of science with, and at the end of the block, Sanson in action.

Round two! I’m including this first shot here because I like the composition but it’s also nice that it removes the unnecessary Ayerton too. Next is just an example of some detail on the new Nautilus because I didn’t share much of the mechanical visuals during the other posts. Next, Gargoyle adding super-dramatic lighting to his super-casual pose and finally, a close-up of Nemo’s blue water – another thing I forgot to show much in the reviews.

Okay, perhaps kinda randomly, here’s a bit of a longer section on Gargoyle’s introduction:

I like the way the camera pans up his body since starting from the feet reminds me of the classic femme fatale introduction in film noir – but obviously that genre hardly owns the technique 😀

Instead, it’s a tension-building moment combined with a signal that this is an important character. It also seems to really highlight the way Gargoyle thinks of himself as being quite the dapper gent, really. And in a way he is – he fits the type of villain with excellent manners but is also an utter psychopath. I think it also suits his ego, to have that striking suit. And look how casually unflappable the blighter is, with that single-hand-in-pocket stance!

Of course, when the camera finally reaches his face you get his disturbing but fancier-than-my-subordinates mask too. His design is one of my favourites but I also really like Motomu Kiyokawa’s commanding performance (who some will recognise as Norman from The Big O or maybe Kozo from NGE.)

There’s a lot of Nemo in these sorts of two-shots across the series, ones that put him in the foreground while he converses with others, usually without turning – I feel like it’s done to reinforce that notion of him as the boss, and super-driven, someone who can barely even take his eyes off the goal.

And to stick with Captain Nemo a moment, the scene below is always funny for me – aside from a rare glimpse of him bereft of hat, Grandis has taken the time to tie a bow upon the meal she made for him 😀

Now, to finish this post before it turns into a monster, maybe a look at Camera and Power.

This is the sort of thing that happens a lot (in all film) and it’s a nice and simple but still really effective sequence, using different shots to show a power imbalance between characters. Again, I’m not highlighting anything groundbreaking or anything that you wouldn’t find elsewhere but I’m having fun at least 😀

Okay, to start it’s two establishing shots and both reveal the scale of the setting and the power of the one who owns it, which we know is Gargoyle. The wide shot shows one character at ease and one not – being tied to a chair hardly seems like fun, right?

Next, a pair of over-the-shoulder-shots (classic for dialogue) but since this is not a conversation between equals, the camera isn’t ‘neutral’ at all. Instead, it’s a high-angle shot that shows Nadia looking up, seeming smaller than Gargoyle (more so).

For the reverse they switch to a low-angle – and now we can see Gargoyle looking down on Nadia (or at least, he would if I’d taken the snapshot at the right moment!)

And there’s the basic sequence! Similar things can be found in films all over the world of course.

But to continue in this scene a moment, I noticed the camera switches to a close-up a little later on, but rather than doing so in order to show Nadia’s defiance here, we see the classic anime ‘shadowed face/hidden eyes’ pose, because she’s giving in to his demands and feels the requisite shame.

Gargoyle then walks away in this wide shot – one that is another high angle, showing once more the scale of what she’s up against, a force Nadia cannot challenge just yet. The long shadows I reckon are a nice little call back to her moment of distress from earlier.

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And finally for this fairly self-indulgent post, here’s a shot from Marie’s point of view during one of her lessons aboard the Nautilus 🙂

Tomorrow or maybe the day after (as I’m feeling a little fatigued from writing blog posts) the Nadia/Atlantis piece at last.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) 1990

Seventh part – it’s a little longer than the last one, but hopefully not unbearably so, the way it might have been had I placed eps 1-39 in a single post 🙂

The Tartessos Arc – Episodes 35-39

A sigh of relief!

Finally, Anno is back at the helm and he really delivers with the conclusion. Here, Nadia’s heritage is realised at last and the steampunk aspects fall away to let the show head in to full ‘science-fiction’ mode, meeting the expectations that were established via little hints here and there in previous episodes.

It’s a really satisfying end to a series and a great palette-cleanser for what came before too.

Because what preceded this really felt like a betrayal on multiple levels – aimless, regressive and at times racist, I’d like to think none of that was part of Anno’s original vision.

But I’ll focus on the good stuff now.

In this final arc there are still a few twists and surprises during both the escalating ship-based battle between Nemo and Gargolye, and later when everyone is back on foot. Even the villain’s delusions reveal some interesting mythology and Christian themes that have also been hinted at from way back in the early episodes. (A fair few of these aspects will re-appear in similar or more refined ways during Neon Genesis too, years later.)

It’s hard for me to go into too many specifics here without spoiling all kinds of things in this post, but there’s a real tear-jerker moment (well, it was for me) in the ending too, so watch out if you decide give this series a shot and find yourself emotionally invested in the characters!

Visually, the animation quality is restored and monochrome/selective colour technique also returns for most of episode 35 – and it’s perfect to evoke a sense of both wonder and unease, and of course, the return of colour comes at the most dramatic moment in the episode. Elsewhere I really enjoyed the vague Egyptian look to some of the designs for certain characters, and the final, personal confrontation between the heroes and Gargoyle was pretty memorable too.

I know that I’ve saved most of my criticism for certain arcs, rather than aiming it at the overall story itself so far, but for me there wasn’t a whole lot that truly bothered me about Nadia.

Some folks don’t dig the pacing because there’s comedy, slice of life and a fair bit of time spent on characters especially during the episodic run, but again, I’m happy for those aspects to stick around. Maybe some viewers will find this anime (at least for a while) too ‘young’ though again, I can’t decide if Nadia is truly pitched at children.

Nadia herself can be hard work for some audiences because she is quite unreasonable at times, and takes a long time to open up. She has principals which I like but on the other hand, she can be awfully hard-line. And while Nadia is one of the first anime heroines of African heritage, which is pretty cool, at times it feels like the show spends too much time on her costuming and the requisite camera pans.*

[There’s a little spoiler in the next paragraph.]

More specifically to stay with these final episodes I’m not sure Nadia’s breakdown and suicide attempt is foreshadowed quite enough, and the ‘capital cities’ ultimatum-scene from Gargoyle and Nero seem a bit odd geographically.

Maybe some of the soundtrack isn’t always killer but the key pieces are memorable – especially Nadia’s theme and Nautilus-gou Oounabara Wo Yuku which are in the playlist below:

Without delving into any hints of that tired ‘sub vs dub’ debate I preferred the sub – though I believe my release included the ADV not Streamline dub. Both of these are interesting in that they use a range of accents to best evoke the multi-national Nautilus crew.

Here’s a quick comparison I found:

To focus on just one part of comparison, you’ll see that the Streamline dub has voices that feel more professional, reflected in Jean and Nadia, on the other, ADV instead chose to employ young (new?) actors for the leads. That definitely sounds more ‘right’ to my ear… however, the French accents are a little uneven across the series.

Thinking back a moment on some of this post I wonder if I’ve got too many criticisms aimed at Nadia’s character, but in some ways she’s a little passive. She doesn’t get to ‘fight back’ very often – but I will say that when backed into a corner, her defiance and desire to protect Jean is great. Related to this, Jean is more active in most ways and so sometimes it feels like it’s as much his story as hers.  

Other than those aspects (and a few other bits I didn’t get to here), Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is one of my favourite shows and I’m gonna call it a ‘classic’ even though I know that’s a very personal rating considering the real problems with those filler arcs.

Without them it’s something better.

If you’re a fan of Anno or Gainax then I think you’d like this series to some extent, perhaps if only to seek out all the Neon Genesis connections, otherwise if you dig old-school adventure with a share of darkness (though not unending by any means) then you’ll probably enjoy Nadia well enough, just please – remember to skip the majority of the Island Arc and the entire Africa Arc!

5 Stars

Two more posts to follow, if you can believe it!

One will be a bit of a write up on the Nadia/Atalantis issues and the other will be a visual analysis thing because I like doing them, basically. Not sure which will come first yet – but one of them lands tomorrow 😀  

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*As some of you know I probably come across as reasonably unforgiving on some aspects of fan-service in my reviews, and while I don’t think Nadia is ever exploitative, the show certainly never strips the guys down to bathing suits or less.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) 1990

Post number six now and the show is still very much in a bad way. In truth, I could have kept this together with the Island episodes but this arc is bad in similar and new ways. (It’s also a short post.)

The Africa Arc – Episodes 32-34

If I thought the Island Arc was bad first time around… well, wow.

The Africa Arc is easily worse.

Jam-packed full of poor stereotypes, straight-up racism and even more nonsensical storytelling and characterisation, I don’t think anyone anywhere at any time should bother with these episodes.

A final cruel blow is landed with #34: ‘My Darling Nadia’, which is merely a clip show/advertisement for a soundtrack, where the characters sing awkwardly and there’s just these long pans across Nadia’s body during one of the songs? (Marie’s song is hard work in a different way).

Character models are still really on point, here too, as you can see below.

Now, like the last post I’ve spent a lot of time pointing out the flaws and there is nothing good here – but I will say that I don’t feel like aspects of blame should lay squarely on the Korean team (doubtless underpaid) nor precisely Gainax.

Instead, I think it’s NHK’s apparent greed. Asking Gainax to suddenly add a heap of extra episodes and (I’m fairly sure) offering no extra budget for this is typically cruel of a large corporation.

Having said that, someone actually wrote these episodes.

Skip these too.

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Finally things will be back on track tomorrow with the Tartessos Arc – Episodes 35-39

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) 1990

Time for post number five, where things really fall apart – though there is another sucker punch right around the corner!

The Island Arc – Episodes 23-31

Damn. Nadia was always animated but it was never cartoonish – until now.

And the conventions of cartoons have their place for sure, but that place is just not at episode 23 onward of this particular series. There’s almost nothing to like in this arc as it’s pretty much a long stretch of excruciating filler.

Worse, it’s deeply regressive in terms of character development, as if the new team decided to trash every hard won moment of meaningful interaction that existed between the leads prior.

Aside from that bitter error (I don’t sound emotionally invested at all, huh?) the plot is mostly abandoned and a new Looney Tunes feel appears, where the laws of physics and other aspects of reality no longer matter.

Two ‘highlights’ of this new approach:

What happened? Well, in brief – when NHK realised it had a hit series, it ordered more episodes and since Gainax couldn’t handle that precisely (more on maybe why below) Nadia was handed off to a different studio with lower production budgets/values.

Direction was taken over by Shinji Higuchi who didn’t know what to do, it seems. At all. Either that or he was told to spin the wheels and just had no talent for comedy? Or maybe worse, according to this quote from an interview with Okada:

O: On Nadia, Anno didn’t direct the middle episodes, Shinji Higuchi did. And some episodes were directed in Korea–why, no one knows exactly. [LAUGHS] That’s real chaos, not good! What I mean to say is, controlled chaos–that’s good. Controlled chaos is where you’ve got all the staff in the same room, looking at each other. But on Nadia you had Higuchi saying, “Oh, I’ll surprise Anno”, hide, and change the screenplay! Screenplays and storyboards got changed when people went home, and the next morning, if no one could find the original, I authorized them to go ahead with the changes. No one can be a real director or a real scriptwriter in such a chaos situation. But on Gunbuster, that chaos was controlled, because we were all friends, and all working in the same place. But on Nadia, half our staff was Korean, living overseas. We never met them. No control.

A: Was Nadia the first Gainax film to have Korean animators?

O: No, we used Korean animators even on Gunbuster. But we had never before used a Korean director or animation director. It was real chaos, just like hell.

So, imagine working 18-hour days (can’t remember exactly where I saw that figure) and then having other team members hide your scripts as a prank(?), during an important and expensive run on a major tv network… sounds cool.

Gainax had also been suffering a lot of other internal strife around the time of taking on the project and more, it would cost them I think 80 million, a sum they wouldn’t recoup. Further, NHK and Toho were not offering any rights to the anime. Instead, Gainax would be permitted to make what became a successful video game – but it was not until Neon Genesis exploded that they would become financially stable.

In this context, and with the strict, punishing schedule of a television series, Anno reportedly suffered a breakdown, which is also generally considered to be a factor that eventually led to Evangelion.

But during Nadia’s production he was (also) unable to find a suitable ending at first… but once he had it and was back in the driver’s seat, he simply ignored all the rubbish on the island (and the Africa Arc too) and got back to ending the series, picking up with the same tension and (mostly) focused storytelling we’d seen prior.

Now, having spent heaps of this post ripping into these episodes and the behind-the-scenes stuff, there are a bare handful of interesting things that appear scattered throughout. As fans will know, episode 31 (and maybe 30 too) is considered worth watching for some context around the final arc, but I recommend skipping everything here if you’re going to watch Nadia.

To try and find a few positive notes – there are at least two worthwhile moments in the filler: we see some of Nadia’s childhood (and the source of her choice to become vegetarian) and also cut to Gargoyle’s ‘funeral’ for Nemo.

But again, these moments are fleeting and buried beneath meaningless or regressive filler and I don’t know that I’d recommended seeking them out. Instead, consider maybe watching #31 only.

And now, if you can believe it, things actually get worse before they get better…

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Next up, the dreaded Africa Arc – Episodes 32-34.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) 1990

Onward to the fourth post now, with what is perhaps the second most important (if short) arc in the series.

Beneath the Mask Arc – Episodes 20-22

Here the characters begin to face their secrets and yet more of the shadows that have been brooding across the series rush to the fore – though Nadia does get darker still, later on. Now, I’m not trying to claim that this is a ‘disturbing’ anime, as it’s not so confronting as Neon Genesis Evangelion can be, but basically by now Nadia has pretty much abandoned the tone it established during the NHK episodes.

This mini arc also has perhaps one of the better cliff-hanger moments in an anime series – though to some extent I do partially spoil it four paras below.

Now, I am aware that just above I tried to convince you that Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water isn’t so troubled as Neon Genesis (and that’s still true) but we certainly see a different side to Electra in these episodes. Here, her simmering jealousy and feelings of abandonment spill over into an explosive confrontation with Nemo – and if you think through some of the implications to her breakdown you’ll know that she’s quite lost and maybe confused in some ways.

And it’s probably understandable, considering what we learn during her flashback – and here some of the more distinctive visual elements come into play. First, you’ll notice the that monochrome and selective colouring is really striking. So too, the ‘sketched’ look to the scenes, but perhaps most of all I really enjoyed the direction* as the narrative weaves in and out of past and present, yet retaining Electra and that muted palette as the anchor in both spaces.

As part of the context around the confrontation between Electra and Nemo, Gargoyle really has the Nautilus on the ropes in these episodes – thanks to poor Jean’s ‘mistake’ – which eventually leads to some great heroics from all the characters – especially the Grandis Gang, but eventually Captain Nemo has to take drastic measures to save his crew.

And here’s when that moment from Antarctica really comes back with a gut-punch, as Nemo seemingly sacrifices himself to save Jean and Nadia. And it’s her reactions here that twist the knife, as she seems about to acknowledge her feelings but still cannot… and suddenly the kids are adrift in the ocean without means to navigate or fight, and the episode ends and we have no idea what’s going to happen to everyone!

And it’s a perfect cliff-hanger and release of all the tension that had been building on and off for 20-odd episodes.

And then something happens behind the scenes to forever and deeply mar this fantastic series.

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*I know I talk a lot about Anno at various times in these posts but I’d like to note that there were as many as twelve others who worked on storyboards for various episodes, and nineteen folks who directed episodes across Nadia’s run and so the visual style of the series cannot necessarily fall only upon one person’s shoulders here, though I’m not really able to differentiate, of course.

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Tomorrow, the first of some hard yakka* with the Island Arc – Episodes 23-31.

(*Thought I’d add in some Australian slang – means “hard work”)

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) 1990

Post number three now – this is the longer ‘arc’ as it were, and things are about to get quite episodic, as we head into the longest stretch of episodes before the quality vanishes for a while.

The Nautilus Arc – Episodes 9-19

Okay, I could have split this section into two groupings as it covers quite a large range of episodes but in the end I just… didn’t 😀

Anyway, here we have the biggest arc (and I use that term loosely I guess) of the series and the section that is most episodic. Gargoyle is still a threat, still someone Nemo and his crew are hunting, but smaller problems are met and solved too, maintaining that adventure feel. It’s also an important time for character development, which I’ll mention further down. (There’s also a spoiler during the ‘highlights’ section).

In terms of pacing, things slow down once more so that the audience can now get to know Nemo and his crew. This is a problem in the sense that it impacts the momentum that had been built up, but since I love episodic storytelling I’m kinda easy to please, I suspect 🙂

At first, the interpersonal conflict is perhaps mostly ‘teenage’ as Jean and Nadia continue their awkward (and generally cute) courtship, but hints of more troubling things to come are foreshadowed – chiefly the possible connection between Nemo and Nadia, but also what this might mean for Electra, who is more troubled than she seems at this point.

Aside from new inventions, sea mines, chases, sea creatures, nuclear leaks, underwater graveyards, a god-like whale and a fairly large dose of romantic comedy and rivalry, it’s this arc where more character development is introduced – not that it’s absent previously.

In this section there are a lot of plot threads happening at once but perhaps most important (other than the specifics around Gargoyle’s madness) is both Jean and Nadia’s relationship to each other, and to Captain Nemo. Nadia is always pushing Nemo away – usually through her fear or stubbornness, whereas Jean is drawn to the stern father-figure. And while Jean is helped by both Hanson and Sanson just as much, in terms of the coming-of-age stuff, it is Nemo who seems to have the bigger impact on the young genius.

Now, rather than put you through a breakdown of the sections within this section, I’ll try and mention just a few of my highlights from the arc:

A Stand Out Episode: #12 Grandis and Her First Love

I almost picked this one for Sanson’s outburst alone, poor guy.

But elsewhere it’s a nice change of pace from the (great) underwater tension of the sub, with that comical rivalry between Electra and Grandis taking the main stage. It also allows Jean and Nadia to bond, though of course Gainix couldn’t resist chucking in the old ‘accidental pervert’ trope.

At the end of Grandis and Her First Love however, Nadia’s vegetarianism makes an important return to the plot. Once again, her trust of adults (and Jean) is tested, setting things up for an even more dramatic – probably melodramatic actually – ending to the following episode.

A Gripping Moment: Ensign Fait’s Death

Every time this scene gets to me – probably due to Noriko Hidaka’s performance, and I feel for the crew of the Nautilus, and especially Jean whose blind, even naive faith in technology and science is badly, badly shaken.

A Touching Moment: Nemo’s Tear

Captain Nemo takes the kids to the surface of Antarctica where they witness the aurora and Nemo is quite moved. Despite the tendency for his eyes/one eye to often remain hidden by the brim of his hat, Nadia catches a glimpse of a tear at this point. It shocks her and we get a softening in her attitude toward him – something which becomes perhaps more poignant only a few episodes later.

It’s an important moment for a character who can be kinda cruel at times – and so the audience needs to see those extra facets to her personality.

Now, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve spent a whole heap of time so far in these posts on the storytelling rather than the visuals – and yeah, maybe that’s a bit of an imbalance for an animated series but I do have a few notes here and there in captions at least 😉

And I will get there in more detail soon but I want to note now that the character designs of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and Shunji Suzuki really stand out for me, heaps of variety and they’re great at comical faces without (usually) going overboard. (I think most folks know that Nadia and Shinji from Neon Genesis are quite similar too.)

But obviously don’t go in to Nadia expecting modern animation blends with CGI etc – and that’s not to say it’s bad, but you will see a fair few pans across stills and other cost-saving techniques at play throughout. On the other hand, the colours are bright when they need to be and the action sequences always feel cut together nicely, compared to having tonnes of really dynamic camera movements for instance.

Okay, that’s probably enough for now – next time, Episodes 20-22 Beneath the Mask as I’m going to call that mini-arc.

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Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) 1990

Here’s the second of seven or eight posts on Nadia! A quick note – while I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I want to steer away from heavy spoilers, I do worry that I’ve used too many pictures at times which might be spoilers in their own way… dunno, hard to tell. I’ll try my best to be disciplined somehow!

A Growing Darkness Arc – Episodes 5-8

Here the audience is exposed the darkness that lurks beneath the brighter opening episodes – something that is driven home during #5 ‘Marie’s Island’.

Based on this from Hiroyuki Yamaga and Takami Akai:

Originally, NHK would send them the script, saying this is how exactly they want it done. The director, Mr. Anno, what he would do was take the fax, staple it and throw it in the garbage. For some strange reason, every single week they would get the scripts.

it seems clear that Anno was very much ignoring the NHK scripts, even if in the first episodes he may have kept closer to their outline. Now that he’d started to take the series in a direction he was excited by I think the almost instant change in tone is clear. And having seen Gunbuster, audiences of the day would have been aware that a project he was involved with would not shy away from tougher moments.

At this point in Nadia you also get more important details in regard to the larger forces at play, forces which quickly sweep the kids up into their struggle. Here, I’m obviously talking about Captain Nemo and his nemesis, the imposing Gargoyle, who leads the Nazi-like Neo-Atlanteans.

But before we get to meet Gargoyle properly (I’ll show that moment in another post I think), another of poor Jean’s inventions (even one which had been improved by the crew of the Nautilus) lands in a spot of trouble and they crash on the island. Here Jean and Nadia save and recruit a little girl named Marie, who has lost her parents to soldiers – and this flashback scene is the first hint of the coming darkness.

It’s also in this arc that the Grandis Gang undergo some fleshing out and we see that Grandis does have limits, and that maybe she and her two sidekicks are more like rogues than true villains – something later confirmed when they all face true evil. It’s also from here on in the series that they become more heroic while still maintaining the role of comedic relief.

The ante is upped in these episodes too, as Jean and Nadia discover a mighty power plant and the menacing soldiers who have enslaved the people of the island.

Eventually, Naida must give herself up in order to protect Jean and Marie, setting up a thrilling rescue where Jean and the Grandis Gang join forces.

While Nadia is imprisoned the audience gets a peek into Gargoyle’s delusions as he grandstands and intimidates in his lust for the Blue Water – which he needs to reactivate the ultimate killing machine; the Towel of Babel, first of many Christian elements and symbols found in the series.

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Tried to be a little shorter with this one – and kinda failed, oh well, I’ll just give up on that idea perhaps! Tomorrow it’s the Nautilus Arc – Episodes 9-19, which is huge. However, I’ve tried to highlight only some moments, while still including the general discussion stuff.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia) 1990

Following on from this introduction post I thought I’d start things today – and let’s see if I can post more about this classic adventure show over the next seven or eight days straight!

The NHK Arc – Episodes 1-4

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water starts out very firmly in ‘children’s cartoon’ territory in some ways. NHK* was reportedly still sending scripts to Anno Hideaki during this time and so there’s definitely a family friendly vibe, with slapstick and a bit of fast and loose stuff when it comes to physics (though nothing like the infamous ‘Island Arc’).

More importantly, many of the characters are established in these episodes, and the MacGuffin too – or so it seems. Of course, the Blue Water itself is actually far more than a MacGuffin, but for now no-one in the story really knows why, not Nadia herself nor those pursuing her.

Firstly, we meet the super-curious Jean, a young scientist who wants to fly and more, to find his missing father. When he arrives at the 1889 Paris World Exposition he encounters a mysterious girl who works as an acrobat in a circus… and is quickly pulled in to her flight from the city, when a trio of comical villains try to steal her glowing blue pendant.

What follows for the first few episodes is a cycle of close calls as the Grandis Gang close in on Jean and Nadia during their escape, an escape which is usually aided by Jean’s wonderful (if at times unreliable) machinery. (It’s generally these aspects that, for now, carry the steampunk feel.)

Now, if you’re getting some vague Laputa: Castle in the Sky-era Miyazaki vibes from my description then you’ll be gratified to know that ‘Nadia’ was pitched to Toho by Miyazaki as “Around the World in 80 Days in Captain Nemo’s Submarine” during the mid-1970s. Apologies of course if this is old news, as I suspect it will be to Nadia fans who stumble across these posts.

Of course, Miyazaki didn’t end up in the director’s chair but eventually, a fair few years later, Anno Hideaki did and while I’m not sure how much exactly he inserted into these early episodes (compared to what NHK expected him to shoot), it wasn’t all the thrill of setting out on an adventure, though that is still definitely the main focus of the first few episodes.

Also appearing in this arc, usually only briefly, are perhaps a few things more uncommon to the idea of a fun, kids adventure story: namely vegetarianism, racism and maybe even some push-back against the idea of American Imperialism. I haven’t been able to research all of that well but I do think Nadia is at least one of the first anime characters to be firmly vegetarian, which is interesting in and of itself, but also remains an important character trait during the show.

Elsewhere we see the racism of Jean’s aunt, who refuses to take in Nadia based on her skin colour. While racial harmony (or the lack of) is not a theme that the show refers to often, it is present and Jean of course, being not only infatuated with Nadia, but also a young chap of principles, chooses to protect her without help from his family.

During these episodes Jean and Nadia get the chance to share their fears and dreams and find common ground. Nadia’s extreme (but understandable) distrust of adults clearly helps her come to trust Jean quickly, even with her tsundere personality making his life a little harder – but Jean takes it all good-naturedly, bringing a real optimism to the episodes and the whole series.

Eventually, the kids are chased into the very ocean where they end up being saved by and taken aboard the magnificent Nautilus, courtesy of the taciturn Captain Nemo and Electra, his mysterious First Officer.

Here, Jean freaks out with excitement about all the wonderful new technology and though they are attacked by a ‘sea monster’ while aboard, the kids are soon sent on their way once more – toward what is commonly known as Marie’s Island where the tone of Nadia takes a fairly sharp turn away from ‘kids show’.

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*I believe that NHK, as Japan’s public broadcaster, was generally considered ‘all ages’ for at least some of its programming?

* Another note – re: the Laputa/Nadia aspects, there’s one episode of Nadia here that will clearly evoke the earlier film, both in palette and sometimes composition, but tonally they’re different takes on a similar moment and I only pulled a few shots here.

And I’d say it’s clearly a direct homage too.

The Gainax team were obviously well-aware that Miyazaki pitched the idea and their love of fan-service is kinda legendary, so if Captain Nemo can bring both Superdimension Fortress Macross/Space Battleship Yamato to mind, then why not a nod to Laputa Castle in the Sky with the morning after Jean rescues Nadia/Pazu rescues Sheeta?

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Okay! Thanks for reading and check back tomorrow for the Growing Darkness Arc – where I’ll do my best to tackle episodes 5-8!