Anime Review Roundup

Why is almost everything anime related coming out on the 29th this month? It was evenly distributed a couple of months ago, but delays and pushbacks from the distributors, especially MVM, Animatsu and Anime Limited means that everything seems to have piled up on that one day, which makes reviewing a bit of a pain. One title that also suffered a delay, but managed to avoid the traffic jam at the end of the month is Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, which I took a look at last week on Blu-ray. It’s a vintage show directed by Evangelion’s Hideaki Anno, made in 1990, based on a concept created in the seventies by none other than Hayao Miyazaki, itself based on Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It’s an old school anime of the sort I used to watch when I came home from school; three young children go on a globe-spanning steampunk adventure in 1889. A young inventor named Jean, and a girl seeking her past named Nadia are brought together by the strange necklace that Nadia wears, a necklace that has a strange power, sought after by a mysterious organisation to aid in global domination, who are in turn challenged by the enigmatic Captain Nemo and the futuristic submarine, Nautilus. It’s a classic adventure show and I loved every minute of it... well almost. Click on the review to read more.

Romeo X Juliet. While most anime shows tend to adapt manga comics, or in a more recent trend the Light Novel, there’s something to be said for anime based on more traditional literary works, as this week’s review of Nadia exemplifies. There’s a long tradition of anime adapted from longer novels, from both east and west, and you can’t get more in the way of pure literary tradition than William Shakespeare. Surprisingly, not too many of his works get the anime treatment, although Blast of Tempest was a recent example. You do see a lot of Romeo and Juliet in anime though, it’s a staple of the high school cultural festival, and it’s a great way to get protagonists in uncomfortable proximity in romantic comedy anime. But it took Gonzo to do an actual, full on adaptation of the Bard’s most famous romantic tragedy, although Gonzo did put their trademark spin on it, setting it in a strange, magical, possibly future world, where Neo Verona is an island floating in the sky, where the nobility fly on dragonhorses, where the Montagues overthrew the Capulets, leaving just one surviving girl in hiding until she can grow to adulthood and take revenge, and there’s a grand mystery behind it all. It’s got a strong, consistent story, which for the most part avoids the usual Gonzo pitfalls of faltering animation, and straying from the source material. It’s also got strong scripts, especially for the English dub, but for some reason it’s never really clicked with me. I’m watching this show for the third time now, and it’s beginning to dawn on me that I just don’t buy the romance between the two main characters, which is accomplished more by telling than by showing.