Micro-post #27: "Martian Successor Nadesico," a charming 90s mecha anime

Found out recently that Nozomi Entertainment (the successor to the anime retailer known to 1990s anime fans as Right Stuf) has been reposting a good chunk of their back catalog for free on YouTube. One of the shows they have now is all 26 episodes of the very mid-90s giant robot dramedy series called Martian Successor Nadesico. Mileage may vary - it has a lot of that old anime humor of "yelling + falling over = funny" and gets pretty doofy - but whenever I've come across it, I always thought it was entertaining. Since Nozomi prohibited playback outside of YouTube, I'll have to provide a link instead of a video playlist for the whole series if you're interested in checking it out:

All 26 episodes subbed

Addendum 6/13/25: So having watched most of the series since I first wrote this post (23 out of 26 episodes), I realized this might've been either a bit premature or misguided as a recommendation. I still find it to be charming but also has a lot of problems with it. Zac Bertschy (Anime News Network) covered quite a bit of the same issues I found in a rather scathing review in 2017 but I might be a little more charitable. The writing is definitely the worst part, since the tone fluxuates too wildly and things get mentioned then dropped without much explanation. There's also indeed a lot of chauvinism to account for as well but I'll be more generous and say that it's nowhere near as bad as a lot of the isekei shows that have come out during the last 10-15 years. I forgot how much of it hinged on harem tropes, though, so that was irritating... Overall I'd still recommend it but with multiple caveats and to think of it as more of a "Survey of 1990s Mecha Anime" show than anything else.

Addendum 7/11/25: Finished this show before I left on Summer Sabbatical in late June and still having a slightly bitter taste from the last 10 minutes it finished out with (having Tenkawa slap Yurika to snap out of her frenzy then kissing her feels incredibly dated and troubling when seen in 2025), thus throwing my notes about it being "charming" against the wall a bit. Final verdict is that this is mostly a curio that I'm glad I checked out after all these years but would have a hard time recommending to anyone else in good faith without context. Not even bothering with the movie, since it apparently goes for a hard-sharp turn into Dark and Depressing territory. Make what you will of it all...

I've also included a video from Anime News Network that reviews it from a more recent (2022) standpoint, to give a better taste of expectations: