Nadia: Secret of Blue Water Volume 2: The Dark Kingdom - Revolution SF
- Revolution SF
- Kevin Pezzano
- 09/24/01
- click here
Nadia: Secret of Blue Water Volume 2: The Dark Kingdom
Reviewed by Kevin Pezzano
Rating: 9/10
On the massive bell curve of anime quality, you find masterpieces like Evangelion and Escaflowne at one end, and crap like Sakura Diaries and NieA Under Seven at the other, and a whole hell of a lot of just pretty darn good anime in the middle. Nadia is one such series, providing a cracking good adventure story laced with just enough atmosphere and humor to add spice, but still not being without its flaws.
An older effort from the same studio and crew that produced Evangelion (same writer, director, and character designer), Nadia definitely foreshadows that later masterwork. The spooky technobabble, the alien enemies, the wheels-within-wheels nature of the plot, and even the children-as-reluctant-heroes theme are all the same. There's even a fiery redhead tossed into the mix!
The opening credits list the basic story as being 'based on' Jules Verne's classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and this is indeed the case. We have the enigmatic Captain Nemo and his wondrous Nautilus, a Mysterious Island that's base to some rather unsavory characters, and a definite steampunk quality to all the groovy mecha on display (remember, this IS anime). But this isn't Nemo's story, or even Professor Arronax's story (he doesn't even make an appearance!). Instead, the heroine is the Nadia of the title, a 14 year old orphan with exotically dark skin, a circus acrobat background, and a strange gem in her possession known only as the Blue Water.
Nadia and her gem quickly become the focus of a hunt by several groups of unpleasant people. The masked Neo Atlanteans, who may not even be fully human, want the Blue Water as part of their project to dominate the globe once more. They have no compunction about massacring innocent villagers or using slave labor to achieve their goals, and the young Nadia is really not match for them. She's also being chased by international jewel thief Grandis, a flame-haired beauty with big breasts and a bigger ego (her two henchmen, the doofy but surprisingly competent Sanson and Hanson, obey her without any question). Nadia's only friends are the young French inventor Jean, and the aforementioned enigmatic sub captain Nemo.
In the episodes on this disc, Nadia and Jean (having been saved from a Neo Atlantean attack by the crew of the Nautilus) fly Jean's prototype airplane from the sub, and are promptly shot down on a strange isolated island. They survive the crash, but are horrified to discover that the Neo Atlanteans have occupied the island, killed most of its inhabitants, and are using the rest as slaves to construct a giant particle beam weapon, powered by ancient Atlantean technology. Jean and Nadia find and adopt Marie, a girl whose parents were killed in the massacre, and try to escape from the island.
Unfortunately, Marie is found and kidnapped by the Neo Atlanteans, who only want one thing: Nadia's Blue Water. Nadia uses herself as a decoy and gives herself up to them, while giving Jean the gem and instructing him to escape on his own. Jean, though, has more than a little crush on the dark-skinned beauty, and teams up with Grandis and her henchmen to get her back. (Grandis and her gang may be mercenary, but they're too good at heart to sacrifice the girls to the vicious Neo Atlanteans.) While in captivity, Nadia is shocked not only by the Neo Atlanteans' particle weapon, but by the fact that they call her 'princess' and treat her rather well for a prisoner.
This being early in the anime series, the good guys naturally manage to rescue Nadia and Marie (with a little unexpected help from Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, who are sworn enemies of the Neo Atlanteans), and they all escape. But the questions raised by the experience remain: who are the Neo Atlanteans, what is their relationship with Captain Nemo, what do they want with the Blue Water, and why did they call Nadia 'princess'?
The animation in this series is a little weak (Gainax has apparently ALWAYS had budget problems), and the dubbing tries its best but can't quite manage to cross the line into 'good' (Jean's fake accent is even worse than that of the French knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail). But despite these flaws, the Nadia episodes on this disc manage to tell a thrilling edge-of-your-seat adventure story, though one more suited to Burroughs than Verne, no matter what the opening credits might say. The slow unfolding of the mystery, from the discovery of the orphaned Marie to the final climactic rescue attempt deep in the Neo Atlanteans' base, is expertly paced. Things are neither too slow nor too rushed, and the balance of gut-clenching action, belly-busting character humor, and heart-wrenching drama is just plain perfect. If the scenes of Nadia and Jean having to explain to Marie just what happened to her Papa and Mama don't have you teary-eyed, then you're just a heartless bastard.
It's easy to see, with this series, why Gainax has such a strong reputation for quality anime. Nadia: Secret of Blue Water is a modern classic, being new enough to appeal to the latest generation of fans while at the same time being old enough to have had a strong influence on later anime productions. While perhaps not as groundbreaking as the later Evangelion, Nadia is a much more easily-digestible series, balancing the mindblowing mystery and plot development with action-adventure and humor in a much better way than Evangelion.
If Evangelion is a bit too heavy for you, but you still want a good-quality anime, then you could do a lot worse than picking up this disc.
Posted on Monday, September 24, 2001 (Archive on Wednesday, October 24, 2001)