DVD Reviews: Martian Successor Nadesico The Motion Picture

This movie epitomizes the majority of the reasons I love Manga.

Nadesico has magically rendered futuristic space battle scenes, nicely detailed spaceships and Mechs, with incredibly fast action. It also has brilliant and diverse background scenes, an interesting plot and the humans are animated in that Manga style (big eyes etc) without it being over the top. The characters are all given chance to develop, even if it is only a small amount, and this is enough for the plot to work. The pace of the unfolding plot is just right, and each scene is very well thought out.

There is no one "amazing" aspect about this film, but instead the film gets everything right. This is something that is rare in films, and the way you can tell a film has everything right, is that you can sit back and enjoy the film, loving every moment. It is not until you watch the film a few times that you realize how much this film has "right", but I'll leave that for you to explore.

As I said before, the plot is interesting and has enough Japanese referential material to make you believe that this is Earth in the future. Eg: the first space station the Nadesico crew visit is called Amaterasu? also the sun goddess of Shinto myth.

This film is essentially Japanese Star Trek, except that Star Trek would never look this good. The planet mars has been colonized as have some others, and a method of interstellar travel has been developed called boson jumping. This is where ships can jump from station to station to save thousands of light years of travel. This whole method of jumping via "chulips" from one station to the next is called the Hisago plan. A Martian splinter group attempts to hijack the United Forces base and launches an offensive to gain control over what appears to be the original source of the boson jumping. There are a lot of nuances left out of this plot, and the film itself seems as though it is aimed at the experienced Nadesico watcher, not necessarily a first time watcher. Lots of well executed battles occur, with some particularly cool looking costumes, and a very evil looking good guy. The final plot twists reveal themselves and the unsanctioned Nadesico crew save the day. I can't say anymore good things without giving too much away, except that there are some incredibly well realised scenes that all Manga animators should aspire to.

All in all, a very good film, that should be watched several times so all aspects of the film can be appreciated.

Pretty average fare here, only the trailers for other upcoming releases.