00:01
He's extremely, like, long-suffering because she's constantly mad at him.
And, like, often for, like, quote-unquote, no good reason.
Like, sometimes he'll do something that's, like, admittedly kind of boneheaded,
but other times, like, he accidentally eats magic mushrooms
and is high when she kisses him for the first time,
and she, like, never forgives him for that.
And you're like, yo, what about you not realizing he was completely high
when you, like, decided to go in for that kiss?
You're not gonna own, like, any responsibility for that, right?
ポッドキャストの始まり
Welcome back to 2AM OTTACK!
I'm your host Mayu, a born-and-raised Japanese non-otaku, and...
I'm Cisco, your co-host, an American otaku.
In this podcast, we share our reviews of anime and manga
through our distinct perspectives with commentary on Japanese culture, history, and language.
Cisco.
It has been almost one year since we started 2AM OTTACK!
I can't believe it.
That's ridiculous.
Yeah. We were not trying to do this. Do you remember?
2AM?
2AM.
Yeah, that's right. We were only gonna do 3AM, right?
That was the whole idea?
3AM OTTACK! is an all-Japanese podcast,
which is basically the same concept as 2AM OTTACK!
Right. I also didn't think I would be this involved.
I really pictured 3AM OTTACK! being mostly you and your friend talking,
and, like, me chiming in occasionally with, like,
what do you think as an American?
And I'd be like, oh, blah blah blah.
I would be, like, the smallest part of the show.
That was...
Yeah.
I thought I was just, like, in a supporting role, really.
Yeah, it didn't go like what I expected.
I was like, oh, we're gonna chat about, like, animated manga.
I'm gonna learn about it.
No.
No, you're doing all the work.
It's really true.
Yeah, I got kind of obsessed, and I still enjoy doing it.
Well, that's good.
After one year.
Yeah.
So, yeah, let's celebrate together.
That would be more convincing if we had, like, champagne or,
I don't know, any sort of celebration.
Yeah.
Okay.
We are doing Otakue, so no champagne.
Cool.
All right.
So, anyway, thank you so much for your support, listeners,
and please keep supporting us so that we can keep going
and share the awesomeness of anime and manga.
Celebrating our one-year anniversary,
we are going to talk about this epic anime.
Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water.
This anime is very special for you, Sisqó, right?
Yeah, although the more that I've, like, thought about it,
because I'm already, like, old enough that now I don't remember
everything from my youth, like, perfectly anymore,
but I think I didn't actually see this anime until college,
and I was really exposed to it first via its music
because I for sure bought an imported CD from Japan
at, like, an anime goods store in Reseda in, like, probably 1996 or 97
that had a lot of Nadia music on it.
It might have been just a Nadia CD.
I'm not positive, but, like, it had, like, five or six different songs.
So I knew it, you know, it's not a musical,
but I knew it from its music first.
And once you watched it, you hooked?
Yeah.
I mean, well, there are a couple, you know, especially watching it again,
it really struck me that, like, there's a surprising number
of straight-up just bad episodes in this show,
but, yeah, the original, like, you know, the first arc of the story
and the very end is really good and very interesting,
and so I think it was an important anime in my life.
It was, like, a gateway to Evangelion.
See, that's the thing, though. No, I saw Evangelion first.
I think the music of this show is hugely important to me
because, okay, I'm going to, like, reveal something fairly embarrassing.
I definitely stole some of the lyrics of the opening theme song
and wrote them in the yearbook of a girl I had a crush on in high school.
The cringe face you're making right now is so priceless.
Painful.
In English, at least, but maybe that's worse, actually.
Okay.
Well, my point is at least the opening theme song
got me to sort of think about relationships in, like, a new way
or was, like, an important touchstone for me at, like, that point in my life.
All right. We're going to all dive into...
We're going to edit that out later.
No.
All right. We are going to talk about what Nadia is about,
the dynamic message of Nadia,
Ghibli studio director Hayao Miyazaki's relation to Nadia,
the secret of mystery episodes,
what was actually going on behind the scenes, and more.
Before we dive into Nadia, make sure to subscribe and follow 2AM Attack
on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube, and YouTube Music.
We are on Instagram and Blue Sky,
so check out those social media for episodes update.
Oh, damn. We're on Blue Sky?
Mm-hmm.
Okay. Cisco, can you introduce about Nadia briefly?
Nadiaの紹介
Sure. Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water, Fushigi no Umi no Nadia,
is a Japanese anime television series created by NHK, Toho, and Korad,
directed by Hideaki Anno of Gainax.
Inspired by the works of Jules Verne, particularly 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas
and the exploits of Captain Nemo,
the series follows young inventor Jean and circus performer Nadia,
who are led off to adventure by a secret in Nadia's pendant.
The original Japanese broadcast of the series aired from April 1990 to April 1991
over the course of 39 episodes.
We watched all 39 episodes kind of in a row,
and there are a lot to talk about it.
But first of all, we'd like to talk about Nadia, the main character,
who has a kind of like a rare evolutionally different from other anime back in 1990s.
What did you think?
Yeah, so I don't know. I remember reading somewhere,
this is probably like while I was in college and like studying anime as an academic thing,
that the original designs for Nadia made her actually blacker than she turned out.
That she was like originally intended to be a straight up African character with like,
you know, like kinky hair, like without like straight silky anime hair.
And that at some point along like the production line, somebody killed that idea.
It was like, no, like she's too dark.
She like, you know, she looks too obviously African, like we can't do that.
And so it's hard for me to see Nadia as like a triumph of not racist attitudes,
even though it was significant that she was just a dark skinned, you know, animated character at all in that era.
But knowing that in the background,
her final character design was informed by the racism of the period being like,
no, that's like too dark. That's too African.
Like makes it hard for me to like compliment the studio on having that character,
even though yeah, from the circumstances of the time, it is in some sense a step forward.
文化的感受性についての考察
There were real limitations to how much they were willing to let her be like a really quote unquote black character.
And are we giving spoilers about stuff?
Yeah, it's been only 35 years.
So okay, fair enough.
The fact that she's really an Atlantean, basically an alien, right?
And is not from Africa at all.
I mean, don't even get me started on like the depiction of the people in Africa when they actually go to Africa.
And like, the main guy they meet there looks like he's not from Africa at all.
Looks like a Native American or something.
Yeah, it's I'm not going to give this show any points for being like culturally sensitive or like ahead of it.
I mean, I guess it is ahead of its time.
I'll say that it was ahead of its time in having non white characters or like non Asian characters represented at all.
But it also hedged really hard on that in ways that make me not that proud of it.
Okay, from my perspective, as a child, I knew about Nadia was on NHK,
but I didn't try to watch it because it's not kind of show I enjoy.
I was more like Sailor Moon and like something like a story ends every single time.
Got it, an episodic type show.
Right, right.
And then on the other hand, Nadia is like keep going, going.
But I noticed the skin tone of Nadia being different.
Sure.
Yeah, I was like, huh, it's a very different from other anime.
Now, you were scandalized by the amount of skin Nadia showed, but not by the amount of skin showed by the Sailor Moon girls?
No, no, that's what our manga artist friend was saying.
Oh.
She was kind of like, ooh.
That's a lot of skin.
I can see her, you know, belly button, belly button.
Okay.
I mean, she is a circus performer, so I think that's part of it.
You know, I mean, like I also that's another point I actually kind of have like I take issue with a little bit is like,
did they like really have to like make that the clothes she wears like almost the entire show,
except for the part where they're on the island where she's wearing like a bed sheet, basically.
Because she was washing.
She never really wears more clothes.
And then like towards the end of the show, there are several scenes where she's just like fully naked.
Right.
They're like bathed in like a weird blue glow or something.
But like, yeah, like I don't I don't really know how I feel about that.
I feel like they took like a girl who's already like being exotified in a lot of ways.
And then like also gave her like a skimpy circus costume that she was then forced to wear for like the entire show,
even though there were plenty of chances for her to get other clothes.
What about her personality?
So I think this is actually probably like the most interesting part of her character,
because they had to compromise on everything else.
But one of the things that really struck me about watching the show in like,
you know, in 2025 is this show treats death really seriously.
And from the first moment where Nemo shoots somebody who's like attacking them,
like it's clearly maybe not self-defense, but it's clearly defense of someone else,
like legitimate defense of someone else.
But the guy gets shot and Nadia is like, you're a murderer.
That kind of attitude is, I think, pretty rare among both, sadly, people and anime characters nowadays.
And it's really refreshing to see her have such like moral clarity about everything.
Nadiaのベジタリアニズム
The series kind of doesn't know what to do with that, right?
Like the the depictions of her being a vegetarian often show her as like sort of hypocritical or like irrational and like hard to understand.
Like she's not expressing like a, you know, a philosophy like veganism, right?
They're like, well, you would eat eggs like you're not a real vegetarian, right?
And she like has internal clarity about that.
She's like, no, it's different.
But they don't really like, I feel like they don't really show that side of her in a positive light.
They more like, oh, like what a weird, quirky choice to like not eat meat.
Like you're so weird as opposed to being like, oh, yeah, like that's like a pretty legitimate thing to like decide to do.
Like, I don't know.
Like, I feel like even within the series own internal logic, they could have been like, well, I like hear animals voices.
Like to me, they can talk.
That's why I don't eat them.
Like there would have been so many easy ways for her to like kind of take that idea and like display it in a more, I don't know, respectful or thorough manner.
And like they don't.
And like, I think they I think they do depict the other characters like John, who's like, well, like, you know, all animal or not all animals, but like many animals eat meat.
Like, I don't understand why you're against this.
He comes off somewhere in between, like genuinely curious about her beliefs and like a little bit dismissive of like her decision not to do it.
I think like, again, it's more that like a person who is vegetarian is depicted at all and somewhat respectfully is like a huge leap.
Right.
For Japan, a society that does not understand vegetarianism even a little bit.
And like, I don't even think could conceive very easily of vegan people.
Right.
Like there's nothing like that.
I mean, there's so, so few options in Japan that are like vegan accessible.
Almost everything has got some kind of animal substrate in it somewhere that.
Yeah, that it's impressive that she gets to do those things and that they made the choice to because they didn't have to.
男女関係の描写
Right.
She's not based on a character from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
There's no like original source material.
They're not being true to by making her a vegetarian.
They just were like, that's part of who she is.
And I think it's one of the things that makes her kind of cool.
Yeah.
And what did you think about the relationship between John and Nadia?
So it feels like, I don't know.
I like go back and forth on this.
Sometimes I really feel like Nadia is portrayed in an almost misogynist way.
And like, you can really feel that most of the people who made the show were dudes.
Right.
Because there's like a real emphasis on like, God, like women are so like crazy and irrational.
Right.
Like there's a lot of that vibe.
And a lot of the characters are men.
And I think like Sansan and Hanson and like, you know, Sansan and Hanson really are basically pigs.
Right.
They're like actual chauvinists who are like, women are so hard to deal with.
And like, it doesn't make any sense.
Like, as long as you buy them flowers, it should be fine.
Like, they're kind of like primitive in their thoughts about this.
And like, John is in the middle.
Right.
He's not like quite like them.
But he often is just like, I don't understand why she's mad at me.
And I think like Nadia is often shown to be kind of like, I don't know, borderline, like,
just irrational.
Right.
And she gets angry really easily, which like, I don't know, people are like that, but it's
not treated in a respectful way.
Right.
And both John and Nadia are, I think, the same age.
Right.
And they're going through puberty.
Puberty.
Sure.
Which is like one of the themes, I think.
Oh, totally.
Yeah.
There's one theme for Nadia going through puberty and one episode of John going through
like his puberty.
The one where on the island?
I think, yeah.
I mean, he's sort of going through puberty the whole time and he does a little bit more
developing towards the end.
But I think like I mean, I think actually that's part of it for me is like Nadia's
puberty is sort of like dealt with as like, oh, and it's making her crazy.
Like John's isn't at all like aside from him, like trying to look up her shirt occasionally,
like he's really not depicted as like, oh, yeah, well, you know, boys hormones.
He's like he's very rational all the time.
He's extremely like long suffering because she's constantly mad at him.
And like often for like, quote unquote, no good reason.
Like sometimes he'll do something that's like admittedly kind of boneheaded.
But other times, like he accidentally eats magic mushrooms and is high when she kisses
him for the first time.
And she like never forgives him for that.
And you're like, yo, what about you not realizing he was completely high when you like decided
to go in for that kiss?
You're not going to own like any responsibility for that.
キャラクター描写の問題
Right.
So it's I think she's portrayed in a way that is like more sort of like just derogatory.
I don't know derogatory, but like less respectfully than he is.
And I think it's I think that's true with most of the female characters in the show.
Like Grandis gets a lot of the same treatment of like, oh, she's so unreasonable.
She's so irrational, like so hard to deal with.
And like even to an extent, I think that's true of Electra, who isn't portrayed those
ways most of the time because she's totally submissive to everything Nemo wants to do
until she finally fricking stands her ground and is like, you know, and shoots him with
a gun.
But then she's portrayed as totally irrational.
You know what I mean?
And when you look at most of the male characters in the show, with admittedly the like exception,
I think of Sanson, everybody else is like super rational all the time and like doesn't
act on their impulses and is like more in control.
And it just like, I don't know, it squares with like so much classical like sexism about
like men being rational and women being irrational that I struggle with that theme of the show.
You covered what I wanted to ask you.
That's great.
Okay.
宮崎駿の影響
So as I started watching Nadia, I couldn't help realizing the similarities with Castle
in the Sky from Studio Ghibli.
It's like, you know, they both have like girl, you know, main characters of both girls.
True.
They have like special stone kind of thing.
Yep.
And then they have like a daughter and then, you know, they're like bad guy, like a bad
guy looks even similar how they talked and like how the evil.
I mean, isn't that true of a lot of things, though?
No, especially that like one particular guy in the suit, you know, like Muska and Gargoyle.
Yeah.
They sound so similar and then they act, behave so similar.
Also, they are like bad guys like Sanson, Grandia and Hanson.
Grandus.
Grandus.
And then like in the Castle in the Sky, there's like a whole gang.
Yeah.
I think the fact that the pirate gang and the Grandus gang.
And they were evil at first and then later they become like Nakama and then like help
each other.
It's like so much similarity.
No doubt.
And then there's a reason why.
It's because.
Do you want to explain?
I don't know.
I feel like you got kind of like mad at me when I talked a lot last time.
So why don't you do this one?
Okay.
The story's origin dates to the mid-1970s when Hayao Miyazaki was hired by Toho to develop
a television series.
One of those concepts was Around the World in 80 Days by Sea, adapted from the 1980 novel
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, in which two orphan children pursued by villains team up
with Captain Nemo and Nautilus.
It was never produced.
But Toho retained the rights for the story outline while Miyazaki reused elements from
his original concept in later projects like Future Boy Conan and The Castle in the Sky.
Yeah.
So there was a project by Miyazaki Hayao, but he left the idea with NHK and Toho.
Yeah.
So it sounds like Toho was going to make something like an adventure story based on either Around
or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and they hired Miyazaki to come up with some ideas
for it.
And he made a bunch of ideas, and then he left the project.
And they kept the rights to the story outline, so he wasn't allowed to use the Nautilus
or like Captain Nemo, right?
But they couldn't really stop him from being like, I'm going to have like a female lead
character with like a magic gem, who's like key to some ancient technology or whatever.
I mean, I think if he had called it like Neo Atlantis, he would have been in trouble.
But I mean, also he's Hayao Miyazaki, right?
Like people aren't going to like sue him for plagiarizing, and he was probably careful
and had a lot of his own good ideas.
But it does explain why there's such a strong similarity between this and that.
Because yeah, he came up with a lot of the ideas and left the project and went to do
his own.
Gainaxの経緯
So NHK brought the idea to Gainax, and the Gainax had to make the story.
Yeah.
So do you want me to go into more depth on what happened with Gainax?
At this point within Gainax, the vice president of the company, I think was like dissatisfied
with the president's leadership of the company.
And he pitched an idea to NHK for what they would do in terms of making the show that
was probably, I think, just more ambitious than what the actual head of the company
would have agreed to.
And NHK went with it.
They're like, yeah, no, we like your ideas.
Okay, let's do it.
And then the company boss found out that the idea they had pitched was going to be so expensive,
Gainax was going to lose money.
And so they insisted that the guy who made the pitch be off the team.
They essentially got him removed from the project.
And he had worked with two other people, one of whom was slated to be the director for
the show.
And then that guy also got forced off because he was on team vice president, essentially.
制作の困難さ
And so at that point, they had to find another director.
And they pulled Hideaki Anno, who at the time, I think, was relatively young and had
worked with Miyazaki, but had not directed his own show before and made him the director
of the series.
And so he's very new.
And the series is way over budget for what they think they're going to make back.
And they don't even own the rights.
The rights are owned by NHK.
So Gainax was in a really tough position in terms of making the show because the people
who made the pitch overpromised, and then the people running the actual production
didn't want to spend the money.
And that explains a lot of the problems that happened later on.
But Hideaki Anno used to work in Studio Ghibli for Miyazaki, and then I don't know which
point he left.
Do you know?
I don't know what year he moved from one to the other.
But I think by the time they started production on Nadia, he had obviously moved from Ghibli
to Gainax.
Lincoln Islandのエピソード
Okay.
So throughout 39 episodes, it's great.
The whole story is great.
Characters are awesome.
Until you get to the point where Nadia, John, Mary, and the King reach to an island, Lincoln
Island, Lincoln Island, and they have to start living by themselves.
Yeah.
And you see some light differences each episode.
Oh, yeah.
The animation quality just goes way, way down from that point until the last, like, four
episodes, basically.
And it's not just the animation quality.
I mean, like, the story gets worse.
It's kind of boring.
It's weirdly comedic.
I didn't think it was boring.
I thought it was pretty entertaining.
Like I couldn't help commenting.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
But it's like, it's just so radic.
It's such a huge departure from everything else that's happened in the show up until
that point.
Yeah.
Like, wait, what is going on?
So, like, the magic mushrooms scene is in the Lincoln Island segment.
He has several dreams while they're there that are just, like, completely wacko, right?
Which are kind of brilliant.
Like, I really like the dream sequences, but they're also just very strange.
There's a lot of reused animation.
Oh my gosh, so many recycling shots.
I mean, like, and you can really see how different animation production was in this
era of, like, smaller budgets and teams.
Because there are several different points in the show as a whole where they have three
characters brushing their teeth in, like, short, repeated motions with different backgrounds.
And they, like, all the voice actors talk throughout the teeth brushing scenes.
And they go on for, like, a stunningly long period of time.
So long.
And it really, like, doesn't it's not a choice.
It's not like we decided to do this.
It's like, yeah, we don't have enough money to animate anything else.
So we're going to have to run at least 30 seconds of the teeth brushing shot.
And, you know, it's a real contrast with Neon Genesis Evangelion, which has, like, famously
some shots that go on for, like, a minute.
I don't know how long, but it feels like forever with no one talking.
And it's just a still of, like, an elevator going down.
And you wonder, like, was that Hideaki Anno, like, doing, like, kind of a shout out to,
like, these other scenes from Nadia?
Or like, you know, is it the same thing of, like, they didn't have enough money to, like,
do any more cuts in that episode that are like, whatever, we'll just use the still of
the elevator for, like, 30 seconds.
But there it really does feel like a choice.
It feels like they're trying to express something about the relationships between the characters
who are in the elevator, just not talking to each other.
Whereas in this show, it's like, oh, you guys ran out of money again, didn't you didn't
have much budget.
Also, they were behind this schedule.
Yeah.
So they have to ask other studio to do the job and do it.
Right.
I can't animate anything.
I can't draw worth any like, if your job is being an animator, you're supposed to be able
to get like the eyes of the character to be roughly the same size, right?
Yeah.
Like, it feels so rushed.
It's like, oh, God, like they stayed up all night, like drawing like these things the
night before it was due.
Like it has that feel to it in the Lincoln Island segments.
Really about each character, each episode, like they have different face expression or
no expression.
Yeah.
King's eyes just going dead for like several episodes is really one of the funniest.
King is like a very lively character, but like one episode, he looks like just looks
like they didn't get the memo that he was like supposed to be alive.
So that's why, like, it was bad.
But to me, it was entertaining.
Yeah.
In a different way.
I would find it more entertaining if I didn't love the story so much and want the whole
thing to be good.
Like, I think the challenge for me and rewatching it was like, my memory of it is that it's
『ナディア』のエピソード品質
really a good show.
So then and then and then, you know, and I also remember being like, yeah, except for
the island episodes.
They're bad.
And I knew like, I knew logically that the island episodes were like more episodes than
I wanted to admit they were.
But in rewatching, it was like, holy crap, it was this long.
This is like 12 out of the 39 episodes are like terrible.
It's a lot of them.
And like, they are funny.
So like, I wouldn't be like, oh, skip them because like, they're funny.
But like, you have to let go of being like, this is a great anime and like everything
about it is good.
You have to like be able to just be like, no, it's not.
Like, there's some real bad parts in here.
Story beats are weird.
Like, the voice actors are all, you know, doing their damnedest to salvage this thing.
But like, the actual animation quality is becomes very, very bad.
And you have to like approach it as a comedy until they get to Red Noah at the end.
Right.
Well, I have to mention about episode of 34, which is looks like a promotional video.
Yeah.
I mean, there's like it was I guess I wonder like whether the recap episode as like a trope
existed in 1990.
Like it definitely was a major thing in almost all anime in the 1990s, where like you would
get to episode 13, you would get halfway through the show.
And the like, you know, the production company would decide, well, for people who haven't
watched all the episodes of the first half, we need to like give them a rundown on what
happened so that they're ready for like the plot developments of the second half.
Let's do a recap episode.
That's literally just like a montage of stuff that happened in the first 12 episodes.
And that used to be like standard operating procedure for anime.
And so you kind of think that's what episode 34 is going to be.
And then it's not even that it's a musical.
It's a musical and they reuse the scenes from previous episodes.
So most of the characters get their own song.
Yes.
And these are very early 90s and not really that good, not good at all.
And then these like weirdly like mid quality songs get paired with like the equivalent
of an AMV made of only cuts from the episodes that had already aired.
It's it's really something.
It's quite something.
So like episode 34, I think they had some some episode it was like story in it.
But the drawing was really, really bad, which is I still have trouble believing this because
the drawing is really bad on a lot of the episodes.
They had one of which they didn't use, because Hideaki Anno couldn't stand it.
I mean, I couldn't stand it if I'd seen all of the episodes leading up to it either.
And then like he paid money, he used his pocket money to redo the whole thing.
Wow.
But he didn't have enough time to redo the whole thing.
So he decided to, you know, pick up some scenes from previous episodes, connect it and make
you know, put on music.
The whole music video, the whole episode, it took 60 hours of editing to make it.
Is that a lot or not that much?
Like I'm not really sure.
I don't know.
It's not.
When I edit a podcast, it takes a long time, but not 60 hours.
I don't know if that's like reasonable for an episode of animation to be like 60 hours
of editing.
Probably.
Probably it is.
But I think especially it was for the time period, like it must have been like really
a lot of work.
It's not digital.
It's not digital.
Yeah.
So he had to go pick out all the physical cells and reshoot them.
Or was he able to use like existing footage from the, I guess only when the cuts were
right next to each other.
Yeah.
That would have been a lot of work.
Anyway.
Yeah.
It's, it's impressive that he did.
Did he do all the editing himself or he gave it to the editors and was like, I want you
to find these cuts.
Yeah.
He was the director.
So.
True.
Okay.
Well, either way, it's a, I mean, that episode is actually very interesting, but it makes
me wonder whether we have Hideaki Anno to blame for the emergence of the recap episode
as like a thing in Japanese animation.
I'm curious how bad that original one is, was.
Yeah, that's true too.
Like how bad did it need to be for him to include all the other episodes, but not that
one.
Right.
All right.
So do you want to talk about any like connection between Nadia and Evangelion?
Yeah.
So I found this out today actually, that Evangelion was originally planned as a sequel to Nadia
and that like Red Noah would have like dropped the other atoms out of the sky as the angels.
So that's pretty wild, honestly.
Like I think you can kind of see some stylistic similarities in the design, particularly of
the new Nautilus, like the spaceship one.
Yeah.
Purple.
Yeah.
It's color scheme is very Eva Shogoki.
Right.
And they couldn't get the rights back from Toho and NHK because Gainax didn't own the
rights to the show that they made.
NadiaとEvangelionのつながり
And so they weren't able to make it as a sequel.
And I think like that was probably all things considered for the best, but there are a lot
of callbacks to Nadia in Evangelion in terms of like the music is actually really similar.
And I wonder if it was like the same composer.
If you like, well, you know what, maybe it's like me just having a faulty memory and like
remembering it wrong.
But I think some of like the musical cues in Evangelion are really like reminiscent of
some of the ones in Nadia, especially like the battle music and stuff.
I mean, the idea of the show centering on a group of 14 year olds is also really similar.
And some of the sort of visuals of NERV headquarters and Ikari and Fuyutsuki are very much called
to mind Gargoyle.
And I'm pretty sure the same voice actor who voices Gargoyle is Fuyutsuki in Evangelion.
So there are a lot of like crossovers there.
And some of the other things like the underground hidden base that is, you know, Neo Tokyo or
whatever like or Tokyo three, I don't know whatever NERV headquarters like has a sort
of like the Nautilus in some ways, right?
Like there's a character I'm blanking on I like I think like you can see sort of traces
of Elektra in both like Ritsuko and in Misato.
I mean, the last couple ifsos when Elektra wearing like totally new bodysuit.
Yeah, she kind of looks that it kind of has that's what that's like kind of the same thing
that they has to wear right in terms of its color scheme.
So yeah, there's like, there's some real crossover in terms of some character design and some,
you know, some other stuff.
Yeah, I did not know it was planned originally as a sequel until recently.
And the other thing that's sort of interesting about Nautilus, so Gainax lost a ton of money
producing this because it was way over the amount of money they were going to get paid
that it actually cost to make the thing.
And the way they recouped their budget was they got rights to sell video games of Nadia.
And so there's like six Nadia video games.
And they're all they all have basically the same name.
They're all Fushigi no Umi no Nadia or Fushigi no Umi Nadia or like, you know, or like the
secret of blue water or the secret of the blue water like they're all the names are
like next to each other.
And yeah, I've never played any of them.
I didn't but they're like, they made a bunch of them.
And that's how they got their money back.
And I think eventually, then they also got like a huge advance on the movie, which they
I think eventually did get made, but I don't think Hideaki Anno directed it because he
was like, super stressed out, or they had to convince him to direct it or something.
And then I feel like the project didn't go through and then they made another one later
or something.
It was like, it was complicated.
I think Gainax only finally got out of the red once they made Evangelion because that
was such a big hit.
And I think they probably retain the rights to that.
But that's what like pulled them out of the red after having made this.
So it's fascinating, like backstory of what was going on at the company during the time
that it was made.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
音楽の重要性
Do you want to talk about the music?
Yeah.
So it's the best music in like any anime ever.
I can I say that with like deep respect for like lots of anime music, which I love, but
like blue water and the closing theme song Yes, I will are just like, for me, the pinnacle
of like all anime music, like there is nothing better.
And they're so singable that like, you just can't help like singing along with the opening
ending theme song.
And because they never change it, or the animation, even when you're like sweating through the
terrible Lincoln Island episodes and the awful Africa arc, at least the opening theme song
and the ending theme song are still good.
Yeah.
With the worst lyrics.
Oh, yeah.
It tells you how to sing it at the bottom.
Yeah.
Right.
And like, the lyrics are pretty straightforward.
It's not that hard to sing.
And it's like, so it's just so good.
Yeah, it is.
Okay, shall we do word of the day?
Sure.
What's today's word of the day?
I was gonna say, sakuga hokai.
I don't think a lot of Japanese people know the word.
I think I'm sure a lot of otaku knows this word.
I didn't, I clearly didn't know.
But literal meaning is illustration, destruction, destruction, sakuga hokai refers to an occasion
that occurs during production of anime, where the quality of an anime decreases, notably,
due to factors such as distorted characters, wrong structure, or logic or rough background.
Okay, well, yeah, then that's a really good word of the day for this show, because it happened.
It happened too many times.
Yeah, well, I mean, it just happened to like a whole suite of episodes where they didn't
have the budget, they had to farm it out to another studio, like outside Japan of people
who cannot have been like paid very much, because the the animation quality went down
アニメ制作の技術
so far so fast.
This seems like pretty common.
Yeah, I think it happens with a lot of productions.
And I don't know if it's because like, you know, Japan just works on like smaller budgets,
right?
They're not going to make as much money selling everything.
And I wonder whether, you know, some of why anime is just better nowadays, like, I mean,
I attribute some of its technology, because all of Nadia is cel shaded animation, there's
no digital production here.
And you can really see like, that sometimes while they were filming, like the cells, it
goes like it gets blurry and like out of focus, out of focus and like dust.
Yeah, you can like see things on the like recording.
So it's sort of like shockingly, like low tech in terms of how it was produced.
And then like, the amount of like frames is low often.
And you know, only like Gainax is famous for like, it's missiles and stuff like so like
the scenes where like things are shooting at each other or exploding are like beautiful
hand drawn animation, but that's where they spent all of their money.
And so the scenes where like, humans are interacting with each other are not really
that well animated.
And I think like, we still see sakuga hokai, right?
In things like, unfortunately, Omi-san, like, I don't understand how that happened.
Netflix helped pay for that, or they did it, they just like acquire it later.
I don't know.
And well, so like, that is what that's like a modern example of sakuga hokai, where like,
towards the end of season two, Komi-san's animation quality all of a sudden rapidly
degraded and it was so frustrating.
That was really bad, because at least Nadia, they spent like all money for towards the
end where the story is important on the important and Komi, there was this really important
like story was sakuga hokai, yeah, I couldn't focus on the story at all.
You're so angry about like, I was so mad.
And after that, I didn't see the anime.
Yeah, I gave up.
Yeah, I didn't.
It didn't come up.
Yeah.
So I think I mean, I don't know, I feel like I've been like ripping on Nadia from the beginning
of this episode being like, it's sexist.
It's racist.
It's, you know, it has like this huge drop in animation quality midway through.
And I like all of those things, I think are true.
But it's a very, like, sort of historically important and you made established kinetics
as a studio, it presents like a strong, you know, woman of color in the main role, who's
like unapologetic about her beliefs has total moral clarity and winds up being like a substantially
better person than almost everybody else in the show.
It like investigates like, you know, sort of like young love, and also not young love
in terms of like the other characters that appear, it's quite deep, and it has the best
opening and ending theme songs of all time.
So I love it.
I hope more people watch it.
And also, you cannot approach the show expecting it to be on the same level as like Demon Slayer,
and then being like disappointed when the animation quality is worse, and there's like
random blurriness.
And then there's the complete Sakuga Hokai for like 12 or 14 episodes and like, you know,
the latter half of the show.
But despite all of those things, it's really a classic and a great, great show.
エピソードの締め
All right.
That was a great ending.
All right, let's end this celebratory episode of 2A Motak one year anniversary.
All right.
All right.
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Peace.
