incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

Some time ago we watched the end of this series, but I haven't had time to write it up until now.

Spoilers for the entire series, obviously, behind the cut.

( Martian Successor Nadesico, episodes 22-26 )

There is a movie sequel which sounds pretty bad to me; opinions?

Brain still mush. Replies to comments on religion and colonialism still coming, also another post on colonialism. Meanwhile, back to Love! War! Giant Robots! very quickly, thanks to yhlee.

Spoil me, die, etc.

( Martin Successor Nadesico, eps. 17-19 )

Disc three and halfway through disc four. Since episode 14 is a recap episode [*] to start the second half of the series, might as well write them up now rather than waiting to watch the rest of disc four.

[*] I didn't realize these were a tradition; the only other one I've encountered was in Samurai Champloo. Is there ever anything new (not counting amusingly inverted meta) in one of these recap episodes, or when I find myself watching one, I can just skip it?

Spoil me and die; see the userinfo if you can't figure out what that means.

( Spoilers for episodes 9-14: )

The back cover of volume one of Martian Successor Nadesico proclaims in bold letters, "Love. War. Giant Robots.", which is refreshingly direct. We flipped a coin between this and Crest of the Stars last night.

I know that the traditional description for anime and manga is that it's on crack, but this is on speed, I think, or possibly on both crack and speed. It goes by very fast, so fast that I couldn't tell you most of the characters' names, and often couldn't tell you what they just said. Though it starts out seriously, with the invasion and conquest of Mars, it rapidly reveals itself to be a humorous take on the aforementioned love, war, and giant robots, with more than a bit of scary Japanese id thrown in. (For instance: the father who walks in on his twenty-year-old daughter changing, and thereafter refers to his daughter's giant boobs every time he speaks of her? This is apparently supposed to be funny. Go away, Japanese id, you are scary.)

Anyway, in the 22nd century, Mars and the Moon were overrun by Jovian lizards, and Earth is under siege. The military sucks, so a private company has comissioned the ship of the title and staffed it with a bunch of cute-to-Japanese-anime-fans girls, an overly-dramatic fanboy, and a survivor of the Martian invasion who has a mystery in his past and just wants to be a cook. That's the war and giant robots; for the love, there's an extremely unfortunate romantic subplot involving the ship's captain, who veers wildly between captain-y competence and abject and humiliating pursuit of the wannabe cook.

I do like that the show is commenting on anime tropes by having some of the characters be fans of a classic giant robot anime, though I'm unsure about the way it is commenting (more on that behind the cut). And I'm curious about the Jovians and the mysterious past of the wannabe cook. But the breathless pace, the scary Japanese id, and the really horrible romantic subplot may keep us from getting far in this—I don't know. Anyone who's seen all of it want to comment: no spoilers, please, but general comments on whether it's worth my time?

Oh, one other thing I like: one of the cute-to-Japanese-anime-fans girls can be counted on to say that the overly-dramatic characters are idiots. Chad: "They've written you into the show!"

( spoilers )

That all said, I do thank yhlee for loaning us these. Even if we don't keep watching, apparently it's a very popular series and good to at least try.