Once upon a time, I was in an anime club.

But that’s rather irrelevant, save for how there used to be a weekly “Space Night” event where we’d be shown what the organizer deemed to be typically enjoyable ’space’ anime. And I’ll admit, that had I not that much spare time during that period of my life, I might’ve chosen to give space anime a miss since my then biased and totally baseless impression of ’space’ anime was that of giant mechas duking it out in fierce battle - in space of course.

I swear I did not use Photoshop Paint on this one.

Well, as it turns out ‘Space Night’ served to destroy that narrow perception of mine about ’space’ anime - well, mostly anyways. I’ll have to thank Space Night and (its organizer), without which I’d probably never have touched Planetes (=awesome) or Crest of the Stars (=great -> awesome because of random amusement park episode. And Kawasumi Ayako) willingly (not because I saw anything off putting in these titles, just that as ’space anime’ they’d probably have never come under my radar otherwise).

And then there was Martian Successor Nadesico.

I mean, just look at the picture! (Okay maybe I should’ve chosen one actually set in space)

At first glance, the show really did seem to reinforce that perception I had about robots in space and the general cliche contrivances to get main character to pilot said robot (in space). Oh, toss in the ditzy girl character who’s head over heels in love with him and you get a winning combination of space saga + romance I suppose?

Err, yea… (Obligatory Seki Tomokazu role spam =P)

How was I suppose to know that the eventual focus of the series wouldn’t fall at all at robots (in space) or angsty pilots, instead devolving into a (a)typical harem setup with some of the most in your face mecha otaku fantasy fandom self-referencing EVER??? (there’s no way you’ll get what I mean until you’ve been subjected to Gekigangar 3/V ) Oh btw, show

Yurika is apparently Kuwashima Houko’s debut role as a seiyuu. Voice recognition aside, you’d never guess she’d go on to do absolutely un-Yurika-like roles like Shuurei in Saiunkoku and Clare in Claymore(!). We also learn from Nadesico that she can’t really sing -_-”

Yurika/Ruri : Sheryl/Ranka? When all’s said and done though, probably the main reason most lolipedofins people will remember this show for would be Ruri (”Baka, baka”).

Which goes on to perpetuate an even larger plot which I wish I could say I won’t be talking about here to avoid spoilers, but really it’s because I don’t think I fully grasped what actually went on behind the ‘bizarrem‘ moments (granted, they were funny, at least for its time). In the second half especially plot twist upon plot twist just about rain down on us that at one point I thought to myself that this could possibly have been the (less flashy) Code Geass of the 90s Not that I would know anything about the 90s since I’m a newfag anime n00b anyways.

But don’t bother with what this little panda has to say, go back to watching Macross F, why don’t you? ;P

As it turns out, there’s so much going on in the show based around the characters that you can’t really be bother to pay note to the giant mecha whoring - which turns out to be very little (mostly for self/Gekigangar-referencing in-joke purposes) considering the grand scheme of the show. This may or may not have been part of the reason why I did enjoy the show as much as I did, since if it had solely been about robot wars and Yurika going “Akito loves me, I KNOW it!” and Akito ignoring the statement because he’s too busy angsting over being a ginat robot otaku every episode, my brain would’ve melted by the end -_-”

Overall, though I did end up loving most of the cast and their interactions (though they were just so many of them, I’m surprised I could keep up with them - though if you asked me to name them I’ll only be able to answer “pilot 1″, “pilot 2″, “pilot 3 who makes horrible puns”, “the chef” etc.), it becomes rather obvious that they were trying to do a whole lot in the span of 26 episodes - which totally showed in a rather anticlimactic finale (which otou-san informs me won’t be rectified by the extra movie I’ve yet to watch). Nadesico does warrant a rewatch I suppose (if I was the type to rewatch shows), it should be interesting to see what I’ll think of the show when I have a more proper grasp of what to expect from it (and I pay more attention to the plot points).

(Now I won’t feel so left out the next time someone sings “Let’s Go Gekigangar 3!” in karaoke -_-”)