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Martian Successor Nadesico: Prince of Darkness
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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: watchable
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
Clearly the fans demanded more, especially of fan favourite Ruri, and at least one writer felt up to the task. This movie takes place some time after the TV series, with the old crew now largely retired from the military. We follow Ruri, now commander of the Nadesico, as she examines an outbreak of fighting which could herald a new agressor, or the culmination of some conspiracy. Certainly there are enough factions, with the various military bodies, the two races from the TV series and the continuing enigma of the alien technology from the same. As the story develops it turns out that some of the characters are centrally involved and the only solution to save them is to work independantly of the existing military. Which requires a new ship and a crew to fly her, in such a situation who else would she turn to than her old friends from the nadesico?
To be honest I can only barely remember the exact flow of the story. This is partly because it moves at a very fast pace to fit in the neccessary events. This comes about because the movie has a lot of `requirements' it must meet in order to keep the fans happy. It has to show a bit more of Ruri's story, it has to show at least a bit of all the other crew, and it has to have some nice effects and action to justify itself as a movie rather than just another TV episode. While this is all well and good it does mean that the actual story almost gets buried beneath all the needed scenes. In addition some of the `story glue' used to connect some scenes is not particularly believable. This also effects the conclusion, which feels rushed and sudden. This really does seem to be a movie engineered for the fans of the TV series and if you are expecting anything else expect some degree of confusion to result. In addition some characters have been substantially modified for the story, which not all fans will be happy about. Energetic and entertaining but, somewhat like the TV series, a bit too messy and chaotic to be a classic.
This chaos is also clear in the production. There's an immense number of characters, with all the TV characters plus a lot more, who flit across the screen. At the same time they are talking about politics and or technology that will be quite meaningless to a new viewer. The animation itself is quite reasonable although not that as good as one might expect. The action scenes are high detail but jerky action as will be familiar from the TV series. On the other hand a lot of money seems to have gone into computer animation. This is often used quite well to represent holographic displays which are clever and entertaining but are largely little more than a distraction. These add to the `noise' level of the movie, and merge with the normal animation only in that they are largely seperate. The voices are alright, but the simple dialog and short dialog sequences (as well as the large number of voices) make it hard to tell.
The only review I could find was from Lord Carnage and what to me are weaknesses he perceives as strengths.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:21 WST 2009