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The “We Love Nadia” 100th Wedding Party doujinshi

I finally bought the collaborative, compilation doujin manga called “We Love Nadia” On Yahoo Auctions Japan. I mentioned about this manga before in another post I made about Jean and Nadia’s wedding. It looks like Sadamoto did the cover art, but inside are illustrations and mini comics of Jean and Nadia, with their life past the events of the TV show. I have said many times that the Nadia movie was a huge disappointment. They separated Jean and Nadia by having Nadia pursue a career in journalism in England and left Jean alone in France, reset Grandis’s character, concocted a dumb plot involving a girl named Fuzzy who needs rescuing, and it was just dumb. The only positive about it was seeing Jean and Nadia a few years older. I was hoping that a followup to the stellar TV show would involve Jean and Nadia either getting married, or post-marriage with children.

Well, this “We Love Nadia” doujinshi does not disappoint! This cute manga is a collection of short stories of Jean and Nadia becoming adults, their wedding, and raising a family. It is a collaborative tribute to Nadia from many various people. Some of the art is crap, some of the stuff is comedic, but most of it is fantastic. A story of their wedding, Nadia thanking her father, Jean and Nadia naming their son (Jean wanted to name him Nemo, but Nadia objected and thus became Junior), Jean and a pregnant Nadia explaining to Junior where babies come from, and Nadia giving birth to their baby daughter Cherry! I want to try to translate this as much as I can because this is very precious. It cost me 5,000 yen, but I think it is worth it! It contains some rather charming stories, and I want to translate some of these to put on my Greg’s Life page like I have with other scanlations I’ve done in the past.

Too many doujinshi based on existing properties are pornographic. When I found this on YAJ, it was described as a doujin about Nadia and Jean’s wedding. Well, is it about their wedding or their wedding night? I asked the seller if it was hentai, and he said no. Even Sadamoto was involved, the seller said. I imagine at least the cover art is by Sadamoto.

This is a thank-you letter to Sadamoto.

“I alone will make Nadia happy,” says Jean.

“I’m so happy.”

I swear, this is what I wanted the movie to entail.

Jean and Nadia’s family, with their son Junior and daughter Cherry. I imagine that must be King’s son next to them? There is a picture of a full-grown King and his own son.

Nadia giving birth to their daughter, Cherry. (Cherie?) This is so cool.

Nadia was such a fantastic anime series, and I think it helped that Miyazaki developed the concept plot for the show. It follows in the same Miyazaki style as Future Boy Conan and Laputa: The Castle in the Sky. Young girl is in trouble and being pursued by those after her, young boy rescues her, they go on an adventure. One might be tempted to think that Nadia is a ripoff especially of Laputa, without knowing that both were developed by the same creator and that Nadia was possibly conceived before Laputa.

But then came Evangelion, which in many ways ruined anime. It introduced the anime trope of a brooding, miserable protagonist full of angst and self-pity, throw in a bunch of characters who hate each other in a lazy attempt to provide tension, and give the plot so many psychotic, gross elements that don’t make sense and fools everyone into thinking that it’s “artistic” or something. Sorry, I would rather see Jean and Nadia kissing on the beach than Shinji jerking off in front of Asuka as she lays unconscious in the hospital. Shinji is a pathetic, miserable turd who never develops as a character. Boys need a protagonist to look up to, not a loathsome weakling who wallows in self-pity to commiserate with.

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The allure of Nadia’s sexy, white island dress

Many reviews I’ve seen of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water comment on how the middle of the series containing the episodes of the gang stranded on the island is “boring” and “pointless.” Yes, this stretch of episodes is a bit of a lull in terms of action and the main plot, but I disagree. These episodes contain character development, zany action bordering on Looney Tunes, and of course Jean and Nadia kiss for the first time. Perhaps the most memorable from these episodes is the whole “white island dress” motif for Nadia when she made a makeshift one piece dress to be sexy and use her femininity to appeal to Jean after she realizes how much he cares for her. On the island, she really starts to fall in love with Jean and she flirts with him, and makes an effort to attract him with this dress. But the allure of this white dress seems to be lost somehow to English audiences as it doesn’t seem to be commented on much or have such pictures posted on image boards. Actually, doing a Brave image search for “Nadia anime white island dress” shows most of the relevant hits from my Tumblr page. But doing a similar search in Japanese can produce plenty of results, one of which is this one. I found it at this page:
https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/4019389

Several garage kits have been devoted to Nadia and her white island dress (I happen to own two resin and one sofubi kits of the subject). So if anyone tells you that the middle of the show when they’re on the island is boring, just remind them of Nadia’s skimpy island dress. This image exemplifies why this island dress is so popular in Japan. Here is a translation of the image above.

TOP: なでぃあ島編のカーテンワンピース：ナディアさんはいろいろとヤバイ!! / Nadia’s island white one-piece dress made from a curtain: Nadia-san is wild in many ways!

LEFT: <「言って！似合うて」”Tell me! Do you think this looks good on me?”> <Her compulsion is cute!> <無防備にもほどがあるとこがとてもGood!! / It’s so good she’s uninhibited!> (This is referring to how she is mostly uncovered while wearing this dress.)

RIGHT TOP PIC: <「おねがーい！なんか妙に甘えてくる!! / “I’m especially pampered!”> (That doesn’t really translate well into English, but it must be my lack of Japanese level.) おっぱいぜんぶ見えちゃうよ!?わざとなの!? というトコもGood! / Her entire breasts can be seen? Is this on purpose!? This point is also good!

RIGHT BOTTOM PIC: <パリーン！/ CRASH!> <-ジャンのメガネがゆれる音　/ This is the sound of Jean’s eyeglasses popping out! <いきなりのたくし上げ攻撃！/ Sudden pull-up attack!> <ヤバイ！/ WHOAH!> <ナディアはいったい何を考えて生きているのでしょうか？/ What is Nadia thinking?> If you recall, this is when Nadia hikes her dress up to show Jean the allergic reaction to something on her legs she’s had on the island.

Furthermore, unlike as depicted in this picture, in the show when she is wearing this white dress, she’s actually going commando (called nopan in Japanese slang —“no panties”) as she made this dress to wear while laundering her regular outfit. This nopan status is conveyed in the two resin garage kits of Nadia in her island dress that I own.

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New addition to my Pac-Man obsession.

This lamp was over half off on Yahoo Shopping Japan, with free shipping. I couldn’t resist. It arrived last night. It now sits on top of my CD rack, next to my Diamond Select TWOK Enterprise, under my fabulous Nadia poster. This is on my side of the bedroom.

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Nadia & Jean’s wedding that was never animated

This is what the Nadia movie should have been as a followup to the stellar TV series, but instead we got a crappy, poorly-written and conceived movie in which the character progression was reset for lazy reasons.

I expected the movie to either entail Jean and Nadia’s wedding, or to perhaps lead up to it, or maybe even be set after they were married. No, the movie has Nadia in England working for a newspaper, separate from Jean, their relationship sort of on hold, with Grandis and her two companions back to a life of crime. It’s as if the reset button was pressed on the evolution of the characters and their relationships with each other.

The movie features a new enemy who claims to be more powerful than Gargoyle, yet is completely forgettable and is defeated within the span of this movie. Oh, and it entails the characters helping a girl named “Fuzzy.” No, the story never even explains why the heck her name is Fuzzy.

According to the fantastic retro anime site Zimmerit.moe, despite the Nadia show being a huge success, Gainax did not have the rights to Nadia and did not make any revenue from it. They were given a 50 million yen advance from Toho, but in the end they were unable to make the movie and ended up not being able to give the money back. Oops. The movie was not done by Gainax and was not written by Hideaki Anno.

Of course, Anno is far more famous for his Evangelion series, but I don’t care for it because it’s psychotic and gross. Nadia is essentially Hayao Miyazaki meets Jules Verne, and to me that is fantastic. But I’m told that Anno didn’t like 1. working off of Miyazaki’s scraps and 2. being bossed around by NHK. His bizarre Evangelion’s nihilism is a bit of a response to Nadia, I’m told. That’s a shame, because Nadia is a far better story and it’s something I’d love to see more of. It would be wonderful to see Jean and Nadia’s children, etc. They are one of the few anime couples I care about.

On Yahoo Auctions Japan, I found a doujin manga called “We Love Nadia.” Yoshiyuki Sadamoto was involved in this even. Being doujin, I was afraid it would be some sort of hentai manga based on Nadia having sex on her wedding night. I am told by the seller that this is not the case, and that it’s a regular manga. I’d love to have it; it’s just a bit pricey. I cannot find scans of it online, so I’ll have to keep my eyes out for it.