Nadia: Secret Of Blue Water: Collection 1 (5 dvds + 2 cds)

Combining elements of Jules Verne's 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA with Hayao Miyazaki's CASTLE IN THE SKY, this 39-part TV Anime series (which had originally been conceived, interestingly, by the man himself but produced by GAINAX) has proven to be a popular favorite with millions of fans since its initial 1990-1991 broadcast in Japan. In particular, Nadia, one of the most interesting (and occasionally annoying) characters ever to be realized, has shown up on the Japanese Animage polls as favorite Anime heroine, dethroning Miyazaki's NAUSICAA. Despite having an impressive fan base, NADIA: THE SECRET OF BLUE WATER has had little exposure to U.S. audiences, but ADV Films has recently released the entire TV show (plus the infamous, ill-fated theatrical version) to introduce this charming, involving, and sometimes traumatic fan favorite to budding Anime fans.

What makes NADIA: THE SECRET OF BLUE WATER so much fun are the characters that propel this action-adventure set in 1889 Europe. First off, I absolutely ADORE the main character, an endearing 14-year-old aspiring aviator named Jean; he displays an incredible depth of bravery, confidence, and brains -- he handles EVERYTHING by using his intelligence. He's also consistently sweet, honest, loyal, and compassionate -- probably the sort of Best Friend or Love Interest ANYONE would ever want to have. He treats everybody with kindness and respect, and, as such, everyone likes him, too. Actually, the primary reason why the show keeps us interested is BECAUSE of Jean.

Nadia herself, by contrast, is, as stated above, not always the most likable character in the show. She is the sort of girl who has her own share of problems and really has a lot of growing up to do. While Nadia is capable of showing goodness to her friends and finds herself falling in love with Jean, she does not know how to express herself to him. Nor does she know how to talk about her problems; she often reduces herself to fits of anger and frustration which, of course, damage her relationships (thankfully Jean is loving and patient enough to forgive her). Nadia has never had any experiences trusting anybody other than animals, and, as such, is socially inept. She's also, at times, frustratingly stubborn and impossible to reason with -- particularly when it comes to her rather shrewd opinions about eating meat, killing, and/or especially grown-ups. However, she DOES do a lot of things which show that she cares deeply about Jean throughout the show, and it is endearing to watch her self-centered, distrusting, suspicious, strong-willed nature slowly change as a result of her love for the boy.

The rest of the characters are richly created and developed. There's Marie, a cheerful and happy little girl who shares some of the best moments with Nadia's pet lion cub, King, as well as a howlingly funny trio of bandits who at first are enemies but later prove to be true friends -- loud-mouthed Grandis Granva and her "boys", vain, arrogant Sanson and mechanical nerd Hanson. Where NADIA feels like 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA is that it employs the submarine, Nautilus, (and yes, the captain's name is Nemo) as a character. This Nemo is portrayed not as a cold-blooded killer, but a benevolent figure fighting for peace in the world who, too, suffers from his own set of mistakes. He is aided by his Bridge Crew and overprotective (not to mention easily jealous) First Officer, Electra. What's most unusual, though, is the series' chief bad guy, Gargoyle, a misanthropic doppleganger who desires world conquest. He hides his face behind a mask (ala Darth Vader), covers his head in a tall hood, and wears a red suit and tie. Manipulative, sarcastic, and very deadly, he threatens to kill anybody he pleases, and taps into other people's weaknesses in order to make them do his bidding. This mixture of his calm, soothing voice and inner malice makes Gargoyle all the more terrifying a villain, even when he displays surprisingly casual manners.

Yet for all its likability, NADIA does not always stay afloat. It gets off to a great start and for a while, rides high on a plateau of adventure and imaginative animation, but things get completely out of hand in the second half and do not return to its initial roots wherein lies its appeal until the last five episodes. Fortunately, the first five DVDs out of ten feature the fantastic first eight episodes and the slightly slow-going but nevertheless entertaining Nautilus episodes (Episodes 9-22). My one complaint is that the last disc on the set ends at an unsatisfying cliffhanger, leaving one anxious for more (and the Nautilus arc concludes on the Second Collection which then, sadly, delves into stupidities).

Also included are the first two soundtrack CDs from the TV series. Major kudos to ADV Films for putting together this convenient collector's set at a nice price.

I should also mention that while serious hardcore fans would rather watch the series in Japanese, the English dub made by ADV Films' Austin-based Monster Island studios is not bad for what it is. Three gifted young children, 14-year old Meg Bauman (Nadia), 12-year-old Nathan Parsons (Jean), and 11-year old Margaret Cassidy (Marie) all produce fantastic chemistry with the more experienced adult members of the cast. Granted, the dub is not perfect -- the French accents do take some getting used to -- but on the whole, this is a commendable English track, and one to which I do not mind listening.

The DVDs themselves have great visual transfers and the audio on both Japanese and English tracks are well mixed, but the extras are a bit lacking; the later DVDs have more meat in the form of the voice actor/actresses interviews. Presented here are the creditless opening and ending sequences and some character profiles, which aren't bad, but they don't feel like enough.

Still, this is a great collector's box for longtime fans and newcomers to the series, as well as a solid purchase. Just be warned, though, the second collection isn't as good.

Most anime directors (and indeed most TV/Film directors in general) have in addition to a certain trademark visual style certain themes that are -for better or for worse- employed through most or all of their works and brand any such work as their own. Mamoru Oshii employs dense plotting and long-winded philosophizing. Yoshiyuki Tomino uses political intrigue and giant robots. Hayao Miyazaki is fond of environmentalism, airplanes and young girls. And Hideaki Anno is apparently obsessed with hormone-driven teenage angst and absent and/or abusive parents. He first gave the anime world his brand of puberty-fueled anguish and parent issues with the OVA "Gunbuster" in 1988. After this show he would take it up to 11 with "Neon Genesis Evangelion". Now this is not to say that "Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water" is as angsty as either of those two works. But it is hormone driven. Boy is it hormone driven.

The story starts out simple enough: Jean Roque Raltique is a French 14-year-old genius inventor who has come to Paris for the Exposition of 1889. There he meets Nadia, an African (or is it Indian? Even Nadia is not sure) circus acrobat who is being chased by a pack of jewel thieves hoping to snatch the precious Blue Water gem that hangs from her neck. After escaping from France the two land on an island where they discover that more than just petty thieves are after the Blue Water: a sinister organization seeking to restore an ancient power are after both Nadia's gem and Nadia herself! Soon Nadia and Jean will find themselves racing across the world to keep the Blue Water out of the clutches of the evil Gargoyle and his Neo-Atlantean Empire. It's a good thing they have help from the enigmatic Captain Nemo and his wondrous submarine, the Nautilus.

This plot summary may seem familiar to anyone who has seen Miyazaki's film "Laputa, Castle in the Sky" and that's because Miyazaki was actually partly responsible for this show as well as directing that movie. Way back when Miyazaki briefly worked on a TV show idea with Toho which was to be based on Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" but the project went nowhere and Miyazaki moved on to concentrate on making movies. Toho retained the rights to the story, and thus Miyazaki had to tweak the plot and setting a bit when he made "Laputa", which basically substituted Jonathan Swift for Jules Verne and added more airplanes. Toho decided to go ahead and make the TV series and had Studio Gainax handle production with Hideaki Anno (who had worked with Miyazaki on "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind") directing.

And the result was good. I really like "Nadia". It plays like a mix between Verne's original "20,000 Leagues" and Ishiro Honda's film "Atragon" (made by Toho, by the way). The animation is decent (this show is from 1990) and the music is pretty good as well. The drama is tense and honest, and the action is exciting and well executed. I never thought "Oh, well, they're the heroes - of course they'll get out of this situation. Ho hum." I was actually gripped with suspense a few times while watching this. Gargoyle and his deadly Neo-Atlantean goons are competent villains and actually come off as a credible threat. The comedy is good if a bit dumb sometimes. The characters are great: Captain Nemo is suitably mysterious and commanding -just as he was in Jules Verne's original novel- but is much less misanthropic. His first officer Electra is both the softest and the hardest character in the show. Marie, a spirited and genuinely cute four year old that Jean and Nadia pick up on their travels is one of the few child characters I have been able to stand watching. The Grandis Gang, the not-quite-so-evil trio of jewel thieves after Nadia's gem, serve as comic relief but have some good dramatic reasons behind their actions. And the masked villain Gargoyle is, as previously mentioned, a competent threat in addition to being ruthless and unsparingly brutal - in this collection of DVDs you will see him threaten young children with death and order the extermination of large swaths of innocent people in addition to offing unsuccessful underlings in the tradition of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Darth Vader. What is it about dark overlords in masks?

It is the two lead protagonists though who take up the most screen-time and on whom the most character development is spent. In fact, this entire series could really be seen as the story of the maturation and growth of Jean and Nadia - the fight against Neo-Atlantis and even the adventures of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus seem secondary. And while I usually don't care for "coming-of-age" stories (I find most to be sentimentally gooey and needlessly nostalgic) I enjoyed "Nadia" for its honest look at the uncomfortable point between childhood and adulthood, and the conflict between children and adults. Both Jean and Nadia have different ways of dealing with adolescence. Jean is a genuine genius who tackles problems in an intellectual way but is naïve and almost clueless about the "real" world. Nadia is more passionate and due to her upbringing is not very good around other people. She is also very moody and tempestuous, which is were the hormones come in. Potential viewers be forewarned: the titular character of this TV show will throw quite a few tantrums over the course of this series (more than the 4-year-old, amusingly enough) and this has caused some hatred for her in anime fandom. I didn't mind so much as I realized that Nadia is the way she is because of her circus upbringing and parent-less life. Oh, and being a fourteen year old girl.

But enough analysis! What is this quadruple-dip collection of DVDs itself like? I do not own any of the previous editions of "Nadia" so I can't compare picture and audio quality. However I do know that these collections (this is the first of two) do not come with soundtrack CDs as the ones previously released by ADV a few years ago did. However, the cases used to hold the DVDs are very convenient and save on shelf space - this collection holds five discs (the next has six) and takes up much less room than the first single-disc releases. The discs are easy to access inside the case too, with single discs being held on flipbook "pages." You won't have to remove any discs to get others.
The discs themselves are (I believe) ports of the previous releases. Some of the ADV previews at least are of long-out-of-print DVDs. The video is pretty good - for a twenty year old anime this is in great shape. The audio is clean and decent enough. I would avoid the English dub - normally ADV dubs are tolerable for me but I didn't enjoy the weak attempts at European accents done by the dub cast. Also, some of the dialogue is stilted and it sounds sometimes like the actors are merely reading lines and not *acting* (I have read somewhere that part of the reason is that ADV hired actual children to play the leads, which while an interesting move proved to be unfortunate). Stick to the Japanese. The voices match the characters perfectly (Nemo's voice struck me as being appropriately deep and commanding, for example) and the acting is spot on. Kikuko Inoue in particular impressed me as Electra: I didn't know that she had that much range as a voice actress! Extras include the aforementioned ADV previews as well as character profiles and clean opening and ending animations. This set is now out-of-print along with everything else produced by ADV (the company folded last year) but can still be found for sale here or elsewhere on the net. This is followed by a second collection, which will be necessary to buy: this set ends on a cliffhanger!

Pluses - Great characters, engaging story, good action and comedy, and decent visuals and music.

Minuses - Can be (as per typical Anno) a little angsty, characters may rub some viewers the wrong way, some juxtaposition of serious drama and silly comedy may alienate other viewers.

Conclusion - This show is unreservedly *fun*, and while not an absolute anime classic is still a very enjoyable experience. This is recommended to anyone who wants a good anime adventure story.

this anime is fun, and is appealing too lots of people, it has alot of different things in it. there are 3 main characters, and the series does a good job showing there personality, it is safe for kids, good for teens, good for adults. the ending of the series was suppossed to be a little bad. animation is good, and the humor is ok. great story, doesnt feel like 1889 though.