Nadia--The Nautilus Story **SPOILERS**

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Nadia--The Nautilus Story **SPOILERS**

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Postby JTurner » Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:26 pm

It is no secret that there are many Anime fans who love Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, myself included, but it's also no secret that its creator, Hideaki Anno, was dissastisfied with the result. As such, this six-hour compilated version, subtitled "Nadia: The Nautilus Story" was released in Japan. I had long heard about this version, but it wasn't until recently that I finally got a chance to see parts of this compilation. Well, sort of. Someone actually made an "English version" of this compilation, using the English voice actors/script from ADV's dub, following the edits on the original Japanese LDs/VHS of this compilation closely.

And I have to say that The Nautilus Story is pretty much as close to a remake of the series as we're going to get--actually, "compressed and edited" might be a better term, as it's basically the show cut down to six hours. No, it's not Rebirth of Evangelion, but it does come kinda close.

What I was mainly interested in was how Anno (who produced this compilation before finally cutting his ties with NHK) managed to pare down the series. For the most part, the edits are very much welcomed, as they do give Nadia a much-needed faster pace, but there are scenes from the Nautilus episodes that I wish they didn't have to omit but I understand why they would in order for the story to be tighter. One edit I did have a problem with, however, was the handling of Ensign Fait's death scene. In that episode, there was a more rounded introduction to the character to get a glimpse of his likeability which makes the viewer feel all the more devastated as it does Jean and Nadia when he lays down his life (where he fixes Jean's glasses, gives him flowers). This intro is unfortunately gone, and as such the impact of the death scene isn't as strong as it should be. These aren't the only trims I noticed from the Nautilus arc. Others include the following:

-Episode 9 is shortened, and serves as the "ending" for the first "volume" in the compilation. I like this, as it gives the viewers a sense of mystery about what is to come.
-Episode 10 is completely gone, as is 3/4 of episode 11 (the only scenes that remain are Jean discovering the engine, askng Electra about it, and finally, his charming talk with Nadia)
-Episode 12 is chopped down as well. It actually starts out when the crew docks at the island, and then focuses mainly on Grandis trying to impress Nemo in her bikini (they even leave in the scene where Jean accidentally stumbles on Nadia changing, but strangely take out their subsequent walk to get over their embarrassment.) But that's about all that remains.
-All that remains of episode 13 is Marie and Sanson's chase with the crab robot all the way to the end when Nadia screams "Murderers!" to everyone.
-Episode 14 is gone. Yes, I said completely gone. A shame, because I really LOVED this episode. But again, I understand why they would do that.
-Episode 16 also has some cuts; Nadia doesn't go to Jean's cabin to ask him about the Blue Water, for instance.)
-Episode 17 is also gone. This was another favorite episode of mine (as I loved the gyrocopter scene and the flight at the end; it served as a wonderful bonding point for the two protagonists.)
-Episode 18 is chopped down to barely a quarter of its running time, leaving only the announcement to go to Antarctica, and the table scene where Sanson does a humorous tirade about the North Pole. They also reach Antarctica much faster; they don't fight a squid. Again, that was a favorite episode of mine, but I understand why they cut it down.
-Episode 19 focuses mainly on Nemo taking Jean and Nadia to visit the White Whale; but they don't include most of the cavern exploring or the frozen dinosaur scene. Nor do they leave in the "ice cream" finale.
-Only the opening scene of episode 20 (where Gargoyle meets with his officers) remains of that episode, from which we cut to Electra questioning Nemo on how long he intends to keep the children all the way to the Garfish closing in on the Nautilus. This was one of my least favorite episodes (even though it does have a partial explanation on Electra's past, which is nonetheless cut, as is Nadia's jealousy of Jean's friendship with her).

Since there was nothing particularly horrible about the first 22 episodes of Nadia, it may be somewhat disheartening to see several scenes removed, but then Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0 had to make similar choices in paring down a long story to a theatrical feature.

The second volume concludes after episode 22 (arguably the last GREAT episode in the show before the five-episode finale).

While I have somewhat mixed feelings about some of the edits in the first two volumes of The Nautilus Story, the third volume is something else. It is a HUGE, much-needed improvement over the latter third of the series--all that remains of episodes 23-34 is this:

-Open with Jean and Nadia on the beach (from ep. 23), then we hear Grandis' voice, and we see a shot of the Grandis gang from an earlier episode, and we jump DIRECTLY to the campfire scene from ep. 28, sans the flashback to the Nautilus and cuts off just after Ayerton roars, "Did you just call me a dummy?!"
-We then see a downward pan from the sun to the island on ep. 28, and after that, it moves to two scenes from episode 30--the moment where J&N discover the cave entrance, and then we skip over the entering the tunnel to the scene where they're noticing the submarines upside-down. Right after Jean screams "NADIA!" after the latter vanishes into the wall, we immediately jump to...
-Episode 31, or rather, a stripped down version of it, featuring ONLY the scenes where Nadia is with that android (shorter though). After Nadia throws down the Blue Water, we jump back to Jean holding Nadia's clothes screaming her name (as mentioned, we don't see the scenes where everyone packs up in the Gratan or Jean dashing across the collapsing island; so it is somewhat odd to see him holding Nadia's real clothes without that scene). After Nadia receives the Blue Water back, we go straight to Nadia embracing Jean nude (the dialogue about the island sinking omitted) and then we fade out after we see Jean and Nadia reach the tunnel exit.

All this in less than fifeen minutes. About eight and a half episodes worth of island "material" have gone to the cutting room floor.

The next thing we see after J&N leave the tunnel is the opening scene from episode 35, and then we go all the way to the end from there, with a few minor omissions. In other words, the entire Africa village subplot from 32-33 is non-existant (the only thing remaining of it being a brief shot of our pals looking down from the Gratan in the beginning of ep. 32 to substitute for the title card of ep. 35 while Hanson is saying something), and the singing episode is gone too. Since all three of these episodes are Nadia's extremely lowest point, it is both gratifying and not totally surprising that this compilation all but omits them.

The Nautilus Story 3 is all the better for these cuts, as it keeps Nadia much tighter as a show and keeps the characters consistent (the constant derailing in the filler eps omitted was one of the reasons I disliked those episodes so much).

Unlike the Rebuild of Evangelion, though, The Nautilus Story isn't very widely known, as it only exists on Japanese LD and VHS; and they weren't theatrically distributed either. Fans more familiar with the show may be somewhat disheartened that some scenes from their favorite episodes from the early part of the show were cut; even so, this is about as close as Hideaki Anno ever came to doing a "remake" of Nadia; in fact, these three compilated volumes would've worked far better than the disaster that was Nadia The Movie had NHK and Gainax not been so on edge with each other. Even so, if The Nautilus Story is about as far as we'll see as a "director's cut" of Anno's first television success, I'm all for it.

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Re: Nadia--The Nautilus Story **SPOILERS**

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Postby Dr. Nick » Sat Apr 03, 2010 9:34 am

View Original PostJTurner wrote:Someone actually made an "English version" of this compilation, using the English voice actors/script from ADV's dub, following the edits on the original Japanese LDs/VHS of this compilation closely.


So there's no subbed version available?

All this in less than fifeen minutes. About eight and a half episodes worth of island "material" have gone to the cutting room floor.


Good riddance I say.

the disaster that was Nadia The Movie


Understatement of the decade. I'm inclined to believe that Nadia the Movie is an honest to god troll movie, some sort of monstrously cruel inside joke by Gainax. You seem pretty knowledgeable about Nadia, so can you tell in more detail why and how the movie was spawned?

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Postby Ironfoot » Sat Apr 03, 2010 8:03 pm

Oh man, how could I have missed this thread? This is the first time I've ever even heard of this version of Nadia. I know there was a LD version of the anime which also contained a 10 episode Omake, but I didn't think it also contained a remastered version Nadia with it!

Glad to hear that they cut out most of the useless episodes, although it sucks that they also threw out some of the better scenes on the Nautilus. As far as a remake goes, its certainly better than nothing. Thank you for bringing this to light! Time to hunt down a torrent of it...

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Postby JTurner » Tue Apr 06, 2010 10:44 pm

I really don't know why the movie turned out the way it did, but I learned that Hideaki Anno probably DID want to remake Nadia as a movie, only with the crappy parts removed. However, NHK wanted to tell an entirely new story, and so what ended up was a major mess of behind-the-scenes arguments that resulted with 29% of the movie being flashback footage and the rest being, well, what it is.

I really don't think there are any torrents for this version, but I do know that you can see it on YouTube. I think I saw on a fan website that The Nautilus Story was released on VHS and LD in Japan, with new narration recorded by Noriko Hidaka. They couldn't do that for the dubbed version though (since I'm guessing it's just a fan editing the dub together to time in with the NS cuts).

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Postby Sailor Star Dust » Wed Apr 07, 2010 12:19 am

I've only watched the first 2 episodes and this thread got me wondering: Should I hunt down a raw/fansub of this and just watch that, or is the series worth the time despite how "crazy" the Island Arc is? (Fun fact: Renewal/Platinum booklet mentions that NGE 08 and 09 were nicknamed the Island Arc Episodes due to their tone being similiar to those Nadia episodes.

And pardon my ignorance, but why is the movie considered bad?
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Postby SenorSquiid » Wed Apr 07, 2010 2:03 am

So would you say I shoudl watch this, or the show? because I've been meaning to watch Nadia but it would be quite an investment of time, and if you think this is better, and especially, if Anno thinks it's better I might just check this out instead to get what Anno wanted me to get without having to deal with filler.
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Postby Xard » Thu Apr 08, 2010 8:40 am

View Original PostSenorSquiid wrote:So would you say I shoudl watch this, or the show? because I've been meaning to watch Nadia but it would be quite an investment of time, and if you think this is better, and especially, if Anno thinks it's better I might just check this out instead to get what Anno wanted me to get without having to deal with filler.


Watch the original.

Just skip all Island & Africa eps minus eps 30 & 31

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Postby JTurner » Sat Apr 10, 2010 12:23 am

View Original PostXard wrote:Watch the original.

Just skip all Island & Africa eps minus eps 30 & 31


That's probably what I'd recommend as well; even so, I did like the first fifteen minutes of the third volume of the Nautilus Story for doing a more reasonable job of paring down this part of the story. (The idea of sitting through it again really makes me cringe--eps 26, 32, and 33 were especially horrible.)

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Postby Dr. Nick » Mon Apr 12, 2010 2:11 pm

View Original PostSailor Star Dust wrote:And pardon my ignorance, but why is the movie considered bad?


It's utterly pointless, ugly, generic mad scientist story created of scraps and interspersed with moments of shockingly bad writing. For example, the movie implies that Jean crosses the English Channel on a motorcycle.

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Postby Sailor Star Dust » Mon Apr 12, 2010 2:43 pm

...Yeahh. O_o

In that case, I'm skipping the movie and simply checking out the series overall when I have some time.
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Postby Ironfoot » Mon Apr 12, 2010 8:36 pm

The movie is so bad that I refuse to even see it.

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Postby cat42 » Tue Apr 13, 2010 12:03 am

I kinda liked the movie...
Though it might be because I was comparing it to most of the island episodes, and the African village episodes, and the goddamn musical episode... (my OCD would not let me skip any of it, no matter how painful they were) so the movies isn't that bad compared t those...

Though it would have been nice if we had gotten a new version of the ending starting from the start of the island arc, like Tomino did in The Ideon: Be Invoked.
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Postby JTurner » Tue Apr 13, 2010 11:20 pm

View Original Postcat42 wrote:I kinda liked the movie...
Though it might be because I was comparing it to most of the island episodes, and the African village episodes, and the goddamn musical episode... (my OCD would not let me skip any of it, no matter how painful they were) so the movies isn't that bad compared t those...

Though it would have been nice if we had gotten a new version of the ending starting from the start of the island arc, like Tomino did in The Ideon: Be Invoked.


The only thing I liked about the movie was the joke on Jean's accent and the two romantic scenes between Jean and Nadia; I also thought it did a much better job of creating a love triangle without destroying either character. Don't get me wrong, Fuzzy was very much a monodimensional character just like everyone in the Africa arc, but I liked that Jean didn't take a 180 turn and remained true to Nadia; plus it doesn't happen after a crucial bonding moment in their relationship, making it less infuriating than the Africa arc.

Otherwise, though, the movie pretty much deserves every scathing criticism it gets. It's still a very bad waste of time; only marginally better than the Africa arc and ep. 26, but that isn't saying very much.

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Re: Nadia--The Nautilus Story **SPOILERS**

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Postby cloudvii » Mon Sep 06, 2021 1:11 pm

Hello. I found this thread today. About 11 years after it was opened. But maybe my reply would be useful to Nadia fans. I made my own cut of the anime show last year 2020. I converted the whole 39 episodes of Nadia into a trilogy of movies. You can find the trailer to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg4sCxKUx-8

This is a personal project to me, since I was and still am amazed by the beauty of it. And after 30 years of its release, many people forgot about that work, and even most of the newer generations of anime fans didn't have the chance to experience this one of a kind piece of art. My fan edit converts the 39 Episodes long series with over 16 hours to a trilogy of three movie of less than 6 hours for easier watching for both old and new anime and Nadia fans. The fanedit removes fillers and concentrates instead on enhancing the story pace and character development. Some goofs and continuity errors were removed as well. Moreover, the Island Arc was tackled in a smooth way to keep the quality of the whole three movies consistent all in HD 1080 resolution.

There are two versions of this, the first one which I made in 2020 had the English superb dub by Studio ADV. I personally think that this dub is even better than the Japanese original due to reasons like better acting, and giving the roles of the teenager and children to real teenagers and children instead of grown up women who act like they are kids. The second version was made by Lennart Kokarew (AKA LaytonsApprectice2). He thankfully converted my edit to use the Japanese dubs with English subtitles, for fans who prefer that dub.

I am so glad to find more Nadia fans here. Actually I joined this site today, because I thought I should add the edit to the database. If you are interested in checking it, you can find inside the YouTube video's description the links for downloading. And I do welcome feedback. ^_^

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Re: Nadia--The Nautilus Story **SPOILERS**

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Postby Raktus » Mon Feb 19, 2024 3:41 pm

As much as I hate to necro threads in places I've just joined...
I only recently was made aware of Nadia, and just got done watching the entire series plus the movie. Unfortunately, most places that have people talking about it were doing so about fifteen years ago! Means I'm doing a lot of viewing into the past when trying to reach out to the fandom, lol.
I was just wondering, having read this thread about The Nautilus Story, if there was ever a SUB version of it made?


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