Anime Profile: Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water

1889...the Paris International Exposition. A great gathering of culture, science, and technology. Yet, in the middle of an air of joyous people and great expectations for the 20th century is tension in the seas with word of a sea monster on the prowl, crisis among the major powers over territories...and a circus girl with a jewel someone really wants.

Jean is in Paris, helping his uncle on their entry for the International Flying Machine Contest. He decides to take a break when he sees a pretty girl pass by on a bicycle, little realizing just what he is about to get himself into.

Jean and the girl (Nadia) suddenly find themselves being chased by jewel thieves and thrown into the middle of the giant international mess, and it all stems on Nadia's precious jewel, Blue Water. The adventure is fast-paced and the hilarity almost non-stop. This take on Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" will be entertaining for almost everyone.

While Nadia's strongest asset is its sheer likability and engaging characters, the show has its share of pacing problems. Gainax originally planned Nadia to be a 30-part TV series, but when the show became extremely popular in Japan, backing distributor NHK Enterprises requested Gainax to produce more episodes, extending the show as much as possible. This resulted in what fans dub as the "infamous island episodes" (Eps. 23-34). With the exception of one episode (Ep. 31, "Farewell, Red Noah"), these filler episodes suffer from poor animation quality (mainly because Gainax subcontracted other animated studios in Japan and Korea) and scripting that not only throws the show off course, but messes up character development, wastes time, and breaks the more somber, serious (if occasionally comic) tone that propels the story for the first twenty-two episodes and the showclosing five.

As it that wasn't bad enough, NHK Enterprises decided, shortly after the series ended, to produce a feature-length movie, with no involvement from the creative team who originally worked on the show. Approximately thirty minutes of the 90-minute film were clips recycled from the show. Given how the show ends, the call for a movie was wholly unnecessary. The animation of this feature is said to have the same inferior, cheap and rushed quality as the "infamous island episodes" which almost sank (pun intended) the show.