KIDOU SENKAN NADESICO

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MOVIE ActionKidou Senkan Nadesico: The prince of darkness
OVA ActionGekiganger 3: Nekketsu Daikessen
MANGA AdventureYuugeki Uchuu Senkan Nadesico

REVIEWS

• 

  SomeDuder

  70/100
  A loveable mess with iconic characters

  I started writing this review several times over, because even though I enjoy this title, it's a mess.

  Nadeshiko isn't great. Honestly, most of the early episodes are all over the place. But when it decides to be good, it can be fantastic.

  To elaborate on the former - MSN is, at its core, a comedy. So lots of puns, wacky situations. But because our protagonist is male, it also involves romance, and even some harem-situations. Yet it's also trying to depict a war between the "Jovians" and humanity, with all the violence and death that a solarsystem-wide conflict brings. For example, in the first 3 minutes of the very first episode, our protagonist tries to drive back a hostile robotic drone with a cart. He succeeds, only to turn around and see an explosion kill all the people he was just trapped with, including a little girl.

  Another 2 minutes later, we've got the iconic Ruri doing the first of her "bakabaka" lines and a wacky crew dealing with the inflated ego of a self-important military attaché.

  So the tone is pretty much all over the place. And this keeps up for the rest of the series, so it's something to keep in mind if you decide to give this a try.

  What does it do right? You've seen the rating I gave it, so there must be some reason you want to watch this, right? First of all, the action. The aestivalis are a great concept in this story. Modular robots which can equipped for a wide range of tasks. The titular battleship is also fantastic and a character in its own right (~those unforgetable days... for them, I live~), able to do what the entire spacefleet of the rest of humanity can't. Plus everything just looks great - pretty much iconic combat mechs and spaceships.

  Music is also great, the opening is a banger, with no noteable issues throughout the series. Visually, it's a bit dated, but still leaps and bounds better than the fully-CGI stuff that's gaining traction nowadays.

  Leaving the story. I already mentioned the tone of the series being hard to pin down - comedy one scene, character dealing with PTSD the next, followed by two characters and their relationship issues, wrapped up by Ruri shutting everyone down with a "bakabaka". Queue the next episode where it deals with the burial rites of all the people who've died thus far.

  Alright, fine, be that way. What about the actual contents of the story? I mentioned how the early episodes are all over the place. It's not just that - it's that they don't really deal with the main story at all. Like, there's a war between humanity and a robotic invader taking place. Do we really need to have an episode where the protagonist escorts Ruri to a themepark? Or explore a virtual alternate reality? So yes, while it's technically not filler (MSN is not adaptation), it does feel very much like it's trying to fill empty time.

  Fortunately, it does feel like the production staff felt that the second half of the series required it to actually deal with the story. So while nonsense episodes don't disappear completely (Running a contest to decide the leadership of a battleship. Because apparently, combat is a democratic thing), it finally starts to delve into the mysterious enemy. It even ties in the in-universe cartoon series ("Gekiganger") to the main story.

  Anyway, it's an interesting series with some high points. Whether there are enough of these is for the viewer to decide.

  Continue on AniList

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