How to properly watch Nadia

[Xard]

Yeah, Kamina reminds me of Sanson a lot. Especially those glasses.

Nadia is great series for sure

[FreakyFilmFan4ever]

I have to confess, I haven't seen Nadia--The Nautilus Story. But I did see the TV series in its entirety. It was also my introduction to Anno's directorial works, and I thought he was wonderful and charming director, right up there with the works of Miyazaki.

Then I saw Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The "Island Arc" is horrible, especially if one doesn't catch all the otaku references in it. And even then it's still bad because you constantly think, "Wait, this show used to actually go somewhere."

The problem with skipping a lot of the island arc is that you never know exactly how they get off the island. I guess that's why people here are suggesting to watch 30 and 31 or whatever. I don't remember in which episode the characters do what anymore, it's been too long since I've seen it.

So, yeah. Some important stuff does happen in the island arc, it's just horrible stuff as well.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Reichu: Okay, you convinced me, I'll watch the full series then. It's possible the Island Arc won't bother me that much, but I've heard that Nadia supposedly whines a lot and makes a big deal of her vegetarianism despite the dire circumstances everybody's in? (I watched the first two episodes a year or so before I saw Gunbuster and Diebuster, so Jean's seiyuu didn't sound familiar to me.)

Then again, Shinji's "whining" doesn't bother me, so maybe it's not that bad at all... Or I'll just grin and bear it.

Actually, supposedly there's an episode where Nadia says "I hate everyone!" which is similar to how Asuka later says it. And some of the backgrounds/whatever else are the same with both Nadia and NGE. Neat I guess.

[Xard]

but I've heard that Nadia supposedly whines a lot and makes a big deal of her vegetarianism despite the dire circumstances everybody's in?

Asuka and Shinji is what you get when you split Nadia in two.

So yes, she's the queen bitch

[Sailor Star Dust]

Asuka and Shinji is what you get when you split Nadia in two.

Oh dear. I'll keep that in mind then.

[Reichu]

SSD: Yeah, Nadia is an epic whiner, but supposedly she grows out of it. She also does the "kirai, kirai, daikkirai!" thing at least twice.

I wasn't actually saying that you should watch the WHOLE series (at least not your first time through), just that you shouldn't suffer through the dub-only abridged version on account of the island episodes. You could do this instead:

SPOILER: Show

- Watch show up through #22
- Watch #23 at least until the kids have made it to dry land
- Could watch the end of #24 for a little on Marie's back story
- Skip ahead to #28 and fast-forward to where Nadia & Jean are reacquainted with the Grandis Gang
- Watch #30 and #31
- Skip ahead to #35 and complete the show from there

Then if you feel bored and masochistic after the fact, you can go back and suffer through the island episodes in full.

[Xard]

Oh dear. I'll keep that in mind then.

I ment that quite literally too. The fun to thing to know about Nadia's main characters is this:


- Jean is based on characteristics Anno considered positive in him as 14 year old

- Nadia is based on characteristics Anno considered negative in him as 14 year old

So the reason Nadia is basically amalgation of Shinji and Asuka in some respects is that she's based on Anno's traits, just like the previous two!


Nadia is angsty and whiny and somewhat unreasonable in "GAINAX episodes" but the island episodes flanderize her completely and turn her into OOC nutball at times. Particularly grating this is in "Africa Arc" and one I HATE SCIENCE BOOHOO episode earlier.

So yes, Nadia is angsty and whiny like any Eva character in "proper" episodes but it's only in island episodes where she loses it completely at times due to shitfaced OOC writing

[BrikHaus]

I started a thread on this some time ago: Nadia: In Defense of the Island Episodes.

[Ironfoot]

Many of NGE's ideas clearly come from Nadia, as you will see by the end...answered many of my questions about Eva, and helped me to get over Eva once and for all (One of the big things was the "cousin" of the final scene in EoE). Both shows are basically one big thought process IMO.

[gwern]

Reason for this was that GAINAX had planned it as 26 episode series but its immense popularity led to NHK extend series lenght to 37 episodes. Anno who was already drowning in work gave the "filler episodes" to be handled by his friend Shinji Higuchi. In practise the episodes were mostly farmed out to other studios which led to drop in animation quality, out of character behaviour of characters and in general bad writing.

Sauce for the extension? TNM doesn't mention it and makes it sound doomed from the beginning (http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-notenki-memoirs#fushigi-no-umi-no-nadia):

Group TAC179 had been invited to join a pitch at NHK for a new television program, and they in turn had requested settings and specific character designs (which, incidentally, were based on a proposal already submitted to NHK).

Of course, I think that TAC had actually invited GAINAX (having already produced Gunbuster) to assist with the pitch, and not just Inoue. It seems, however, that Inoue viewed this as an opportunity to strike off on his own. He decided to bypass Okada, whom he no longer considered trustworthy, and had Sadamoto and Maeda secretly work on the settings, character designs, storyboards and so forth.

It goes without saying that all this eventually came to light, but the pitch had already concluded, and NHK had decided to go with the idea that Inoue had presented. That idea was Nadia, and preliminary calculations showed that the budget for the project would drive GAINAX well into the red.

Okada, Sawamura and myself attended the Nadia production meeting at NHK. In no uncertain terms, we demanded that either Inoue step down from the project or GAINAX would withdraw. Thinking back, it wasn’t the smartest move we ever made. There was a producer from Toho in attendance, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he bears a grudge against us to this day.

They had already filled the director’s position, but he said something like “This isn’t at all what we talked about in our first meeting”, and promptly dropped out of the project. Anno would later be chosen as his replacement, and the rest of the staff - as well as NHK and Toho - sided with GAINAX rather than Inoue. In one fell swoop, Inoue had both left the project and quit his position at GAINAX.

The whole thing was just handled so recklessly. I think the entire mess could have been avoided had there been more communication between Okada and Inoue.

In any event, GAINAX was brought on to produce Nadia, and was left facing an impossibly large budget. All said and done, the company ended up some 80 million yen in the red, and was denied any of the rights associated with the project. In this sense, Nadia both is and isn’t a “GAINAX” production.

...

Numerous stories have already surfaced about the various mishaps that occurred during the production of Nadia, so I’ll refrain from going into them here. Suffice it to say that behind each of these events, several other events were simultaneously taking place…

[Xard]

I went through my Nadia bookmarks, pretty sure it was on this page but it wasn't...all I remember it came up in same text that also discussed the erratic airing schedule during late teen early twenties episodes (partly caused by this extension, partly by lolGAINAX)

It comes up on wiki too

The series was scheduled to run for two cours, but the show's popularity prompted the network to request more episodes. Production on new episodes ran late. Starting with episode 11, Anno was working up to 18 hours a day. After episode 20, NHK put Nadia on hold due to limited budget. The series returned a month later with episode 21. Production was still slow, and Anno asked friend and Gainax co-founder Shinji Higuchi to take over the direction from episodes 23 to 34, while he focused on crafting the final five episodes. These were occasionally referred to as the "island episodes" by fans who consider them oddly-animated and poor-quality filler, a sentiment that even Anno shared. Out of the newly commissioned episodes the director has later stated that he would have saved only episodes 30 and 31 if he were given a chance of omitting them; he produced a shortened compilation of Nadia called "The Nautilus Story", which deletes much of the island/Africa continuity and focuses more on the struggle between Gargoyle and Nemo.

but of course bastards don't give the source *sigh*

[Viking]

I just finished seeing Nadia right now and I agree with the opinion that the Africa arc is the worst part of the show ( special prize for ep.34 nevertheless ), followed by the island arc.

Ep. 35 is probably my favourite, could it be because is mostly B&W ( with the exception of the "Blue Water" ), like ep.6 of GunBuster.
I watched it twice, after all I saved some time skipping ep. 34...

Bye

[Xacebans]

I have not seen Nadia, but I had been planning to. This thread has been helpful; I now know what to watch out for. :)

[Kendrix]

Actually, supposedly there's an episode where Nadia says "I hate everyone!" which is similar to how Asuka later says it. And some of the backgrounds/whatever else are the same with both Nadia and NGE. Neat I guess.

Oh, Nadia is basically Asuka with Rei's apocalypse-maiden role (and vegetarianism) and Shinji's family situation. (and face design, So I heard)
If you like EVa, you're gonna like Nadia - it starts off pretty comedy-ish, but the deeeeep-ness, tons of references to western religions, foreign fanservice etc. join in after a while and it has nice bits of philosophy on topics that Anno would later adress again in EVA, like growing up, science and the nature of humanity. You'll see adam and the world tree.
It has a ton of really great scenes, with a seriousness that often surprised me when I first watched it at a relatively young age. It's part of the reason why I loved it.
The villain manages to be completely devoid of redeeming features, but still intriguing.

Also, as for the island stuff, skip it all cept ep 31 (which is awesome and provides backstory) as when the story ultimately resumes, all the derailing that took place before is treated like it never happened anyway.

You'll find a lot of parallels with the characters, since they're the products of the same deranged mind. In addition to the afore-mentioned Nadia, there is:
- someone called Mari(e) wearing a headband (tough that's where the similarities end XD.
- The protagonist = Kensuke if he got some plot relevance
(I always thought that Kensuke and Touji appeared to have the personalities found in the two classic shonen hero archetypes, the big dreamer (think Naruto) and the "protector" (Think Ichigo), but yeah, it's not realistic that ppl like them are always the chosen ones and/or get the heroic beginners luck, instead, destiny picked Shinji... )
- Sanson = more comical version of Kaji, especially when you see how he acts as provider of "man-talk" and life-lessons to the protagonist
- Grandis = Bizarre cross between Misato and Jessie of Pokemon
- Nemo = Gendo's prototype. This is perhaps the strongest resemblance.
- There is a character (one of my favorites) that, despite his immense importance for the overall plot, appears only very shortly before the end, is somehow related to a dark, paternal figure and ends up performing a heroic sacrifice, tough he isn't much like Kaworu otherwise.
- Electra... hm, Some aspects of hers made it into Ritsuko and Rei and their respective relationships with Gendo. In any case, she is a very interesting character.

[LeoXiao]

If you like EVa, you're gonna like Nadia - it starts off pretty comedy-ish, but the deeeeep-ness, tons of references...

I'm sold.

Now torrenting at 300mb/s.

[Hyper Shinchan]

^ you should really watch it.

- Electra... hm, Some aspects of hers made it into Ritsuko and Rei and their respective relationships with Gendo. In any case, she is a very interesting character.

Somehow I always noticed more Ritsuko aspects than Rei ones, though it's quite possible that you're right on this point.
Anyway I pretty much agree with everything you said, except I would stick with the island arc, I never liked the idea of watching something while skipping some blocks, you should judge both the good and bad aspects of an anime.

[LeoXiao]

^ you should really watch it.

I am right now. Seems good so far.

Episode 36: The show becomes proto-Evangelion!

Gargoyle: What? An AT-Field!?

[JTurner]

I just finished seeing Nadia right now and I agree with the opinion that the Africa arc is the worst part of the show ( special prize for ep.34 nevertheless ), followed by the island arc.

In my opinion, the whole Africa arc was a mistake to begin with. It really should have gone to the cutting room floor, because it is so out of step with the flow of the story. A better idea would have been to extend the final five episode arc by three, because even though I agree the ending was fantastic, it was so hard for me to get over those bad episodes, and yes that includes the island arc (eps 24-26 especially—those episodes, in addition to the Africa arc, really infuriated me so much that I wanted so badly to erase them from my mind. Sadly, I couldn't.) They really wasted too much time on creating pointless dribble that never belonged in the central story thread instead of creating anything genuinely interesting.

That's why I always try to advise anyone to skip past these episodes; the only thing they succeeded in doing was dampening both my enjoyment and opinion of the show.

[kboyrulez12345]

I'm really sorry for bumping this very old topic back.

I recently got into Nadia after hearing some things about it. While the show does have its flaws in terms of pacing, I like it. The character interactions are great and every episode moves the plot forward(although there are some parts which I fell were unnecessary, though that's few and far in between.) I've watched episodes 1-22...

Herein lies the problem. By now everybody knows about the horrid Island/Africa arc, which, seeing some examples from many sources, which I want to skip. The problem is, I have no idea how to properly watch it from here on.

SSD: Yeah, Nadia is an epic whiner, but supposedly she grows out of it. She also does the "kirai, kirai, daikkirai!" thing at least twice.

I wasn't actually saying that you should watch the WHOLE series (at least not your first time through), just that you shouldn't suffer through the dub-only abridged version on account of the island episodes. You could do this instead:

I've tried doing as you said. I began to watch episode 23, and for the first few minutes, everything was fine.(I would criticize those flashbacks though, but I'm just going to assume that episode 23 aired after a long time after episode 22.) I really did try to do as you say...but the moment Jean started swallowing the water to prevent the ship from sinking, I stopped. I could not go any further than that, and I heard that it gets EVEN WORSE with the Africa arcs. I really could not wait for them to get on the island. That scene is just so out of line of the previous episodes that I had to turn away, I just couldn't suffer through that.

I tried the other method, skip all the way and watch episodes 30 and 31, but I couldn't help but notice the "Last Time" preview. It felt inconsistent with the continuation of episode 22 that I just couldn't watch it(also for the fact of that racing competition between Grandis men...just what the hell was that.)

Could anyone help me out here? I really want to finish this series, but I have to find the most logical way of getting to episode 35 as possible.

[Xard]

Could anyone help me out here? I really want to finish this series, but I have to find the most logical way of getting to episode 35 as possible.

Stop whining and bite the bullet. If couple of "last time happened" bits are enough to throw you off there's nothing that can be done.

So accept it and skip shit or go and watch it all. You can't have it both ways.