Martian Successor Nadesico

This series will amuse both newbies and hardcore fans immensely. It has the solidarity of the characters, combined with excellent animation, voice-acting, and plot to make it one of the best entrances into anime for the uninitiated. It's real treat however, is for the anime veterans, who will see throughout the entire series, parody after parody of series after series of longtime favorites and classics. This show is shameless in parody, filled with comdey and drama, and everyone will love it.

MSN takes the usually ultra-serious mecha genre and makes fun of it in every way possible, with homages to "Macross/Robotech" "Mobile Suit Gundam" "Star Blazers/Yamato" "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and also old-school shows like "Mazinger Z/Tranzor Z" and "GoLion/Voltron". To any anime fan who's familiar with these works, Nadesico is a riot, although those who are not, or non-anime fans, might be slightly lost. However, the series has it's own interesting story to keep people interested, involving a war between Earth and mysterious space aliens who attack from Jupiter. The animation quality is variable, but it shouldn't harm your enjoyment of the show. The dub's pretty good too, although hardcore anime fans will be turned off by the use of overlays.

Don't be deceived by the DVD cover that makes you think of Evangelion, Nadesico is one funny series. The series generally points to a show down between "Jovian Lizards" and Earth, but each series, unlike say Gundam Wings, has its own individual plot. Don't get me wrong, the plot does progress but the fact that the writers explore every possibility of comedy within the battleship Nadesico.

Good things I like to point out is that you become VERY familiar with each of the major crew members who range from the super intelligent Ruri to the crazy pilot Izumi. Also there is definately enough action and adventure to keep mecha/sci-fan fans satisfied.

The Nadesico has an OVA, Gekiganger, which is about Akito Tenkawa's favorite anime. There is also an MS Nadesico Movie called Prince of Darkness and as it may sound the movie takes on a darker, more serious tone than the series. These two are not listed on IMDB unfortunately.

You know when I saw this first it looked kind of promising but then it got more and more annoying.

In fact I detested the vast majority of the characters because really their attitudes at times are just unbelievable and a few times really made me very, very, very sick! All in all I began to lose interest in this series as it rolled on by which I found the characters more annoying then any kind of drama or humour or whatever.

So after a few episodes I just dropped it. Of all the anime I saw this ranks among the top 10 I saw in 'Worst Character Development' because really the character development was utterly atrocious!

The only thing that really compares to this show is the movie "Scream." Both incorporated the knowledge all fans of each genre (horror for 'Scream' and mecha for MSN) to make something original and funny.

"Funny" being the prime word here. This thing is a riot! The entire crew of the Nadesico is made up the the biggest bunch of weirdoes this side of Jupiter. You've got a super-perky, dim, but, for no apparent reason, capable captain, a pilot obsessed with a cheesy 70's mecha show, a engineer who joined up just to get away from his wife, another pilot who just want to be a cook and for the captain to not be in love with him, a genius little girl you thinks everyone around her is an idiot (she's right), a beancounter, a former secretary, and a voice actor. Think 'Hogan's Heroes' meets 'BattleStar Galatica.

While the show is great, the US version has some flaws. The subtitled version is hard to read. For some reason a light blue color is used at times that's almost impossible to see. The dubbed version has screens that have had the kanji glaringly replaced with English.

On the plus side the VA in both versions are all very good. You also get the song lyrics in English and phonetics. That's a rather nice bonus.

MSN is a great parody of the mecha genre and to a greater extent anime fandom as a whole. The story is funny, but with enough serious stuff to keep things from getting to silly.

Overall, this is a good series to invest your anime-buying money in.