Nadesico At the Top of the World ^_^
September 17, 2001
Written by Julie A. S.
Ahh Nadesico. Yesterday I finally saw all of the show. So what did I think of it? I LOVED IT!!! This show contains one of the best story lines I have ever seen in an anime, and yes I have seen Evangelion, which is often praised for its unusual nature. Which I agree, that definitely was unusual, and good too. However, despite the fact that Evangelion was first and these two shows really have nothing in common, Nadesico I believe I would have to say is the better of the two. I just stated that Evangelion and Nadesico have nothing in common, but that isn't really true. First off, Evangelion is about a young boy of 14 years who isn't comfortable being himself, and the whole show is about him learning who he is and how to be that person. Nadesico centers around a 20-21 year old man who has had a bad expirience and is constantly trying to escape his fate--this could actually be considered another form of finding one's self. Then you have the awkward relationships of the different chararcters; do I really love you or do I hate you??? I'm so confused. An incident throws both of the main characters from their respective shows into what could be considered a depression, and thus, with the aid of their screwed up family lives, their personalities are formed. So really there are a lot of likenesses in these two shows--funny huh? ^_~
The reason, though, that I brought up Evangelion was to talk about how everyone raves about the story and how original it was. I agree, but the story, once the mecha element is taken out, is like many stories which have come before. Nadesico's story was totally original. When I got to the last episode, I thought, "Wow! I never saw any of that coming!" Also, they never forgot anything they brought up in the series, everything was resolved. Well, almost everything. There were several things left unanswered and I cannot wait until the movie comes out next year! Thanks to ADV you won't be able to get it fansubbed because they've had the rights to it for a while now. :-P
Nadesico belongs to XEBEC, TV Tokyo
Evangelion belongs to Gainax