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.
