Games - Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water

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	Games - Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Japanese: ふしぎの海のナディア Fushigi no Umi no Nadia, Nadia of the Mysterious Seas) is a famous Gainax series very loosely based on various Jules Verne novels, particularly Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and the exploits of Captain Nemo. The series was chiefly directed by Hideaki Anno, director of other famous Gainax productions such as "Neon Genesis Evangelion," "His and Her Circumstances," and "Top o Nerae! GunBuster," with character designs by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and music by Shiro Sagisu. (Gainax co-founder Shinji Higuchi served as director from Episode 23 onward.)

The lead characters are an orphaned young inventor named Jean, who lives with his aunt and uncle, and a dark-skinned former circus performer named Nadia, who wishes to return to her home in Africa. Many of the designs in the series, including characters' appearances and several machines, showed up in later Gainax works. In particular, several characters in Neon Genesis Evangelion vaguely resemble Nadia characters due to the same head design artist, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, working on both. Sadamoto has said that the design of Shinji Ikari, the protagonist of "Evangelion," is basically the result of giving Nadia a "masculine makeover."

About two-thirds into its run, the production ran into financial difficultes, since the series was a huge hit and NHK wanted more episodes than had been originally planned. It had to be budgeted to cheaper overseas animation, resulting in a noticeably sharp decline of animation quality and an odd shift in the use of sight gags. (Many consider this the first example of Gainax's tendency to go way over budget during the early stages of producing a TV series and end up having to finish the series on a shoestring; other notorious examples can be seen in Evangelion and His and Her Circumstances (Kare Kano). Gainax has never made another series as long as Nadia; both Eva and Kare Kano ran for 26 episodes.) A less famous movie, "The Secret of Fuzzy", was released in 1993, but generally regarded as poorly plotted and animated, with no involvement from Anno or Gainax outside of some flashback footage from the TV series. It was not received favorably and is almost unheard of by most American fans of the series.

In its original Japanese broadcast, it aired from 1990 to 1991 and ran for 39 episodes. The complete television series and aforementioned movie are currently available in the United States from ADV Films on DVD. ADV's Anime Network has broadcast the series in the United States. Reportedly, the series was to have been screened on TV in the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s, but the U.K. distributor balked because of the amount of violence in the series (which is never gratuitous but is at a greater level than most English-speaking viewers might be used to in TV animation). In Italy, the series was shown on TV as Il mistero della pietra azzura, and it has also been screened in France as Nadia, le secret de l'eau bleue.

Characters

Nadia

Born: May 31, 1875
Species: Atlantean
Origin: M78
Height: 156 cm
Weight: 38 kg
Bust: 73 cm
Waist: 56 cm
Hip: 75 cm
Foot size: 23 cm
Hair: Straight black
Eyes: Emerald green

Nadia is a 14 year old who works in a circus as an acrobat in order to survive, since she is an orphan and of unknown origins. She is chased by Grandis and her associates Sanson and Hanson, who are looking for the jewel that Nadia possesses, the Blue Water. While escaping from them, she meets Jean, and from that moment the two of them will be together in the series, where she tries to discover her origins and find out the truth about her past and the Blue Water, the jewel that seems to have an enormous intrinsic power.

Nadia is a vegetarian, stubborn, easily irritable, socially inept, and has the ability to talk with animals; for example she is able to communicate easily with her little lion, King, thanks to the power of the Blue Water. Because of her unhappy past, she is extremely suspicious of grown-ups. As a result of her growing love for Jean, however, she comes to learn valuable lessons about friendship, respect, and trust.

In the epilogue told by a grown-up Marie in the last episode, Nadia has married Jean and they have a couple of children.

Jean

Full Name: Jean Roque Raltique
Species: Human
Origin: France
Born: 1875
Hair: Orange
Eyes: Blue

Jean is a 14 year old orphan and fell in love with Nadia ever since he first laid eyes on her. He has a completely different personality and interests. He is very generous, patient, enthusiastic, and devoted to the things he loves, which are his friends and the love for science. He is a genius inventor, in fact he is capable of creating complex machines at a very young age. Jean's father is a wealthy trader and ship's captain, but was recently lost at sea and is presumed dead. (We later find out that there has been a rash of mysterious disappearances of ships lately and there are rumors that a sea monster has been attacking them) Jean doesn't believe in the rumors and is determined to find his father along with his big adventure with Nadia to find about the Blue Water.

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