Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. © 1989 NHK / SOGO VISION / TOHO.

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. V.1, The Adventure Begins. V.2, The Dark Kingdom. V.3, Aboard the Nautilus. V.4, Battleground. V.5, Nemo's Fortress. V.6, The Deep Blue Sea. V.7, Nadia's Island. V.8, The Secret Cave. V.9, Nadia in Love. V.10, The Prophecy Fulfilled.
TV series, 1990 - 1991. Director: Hideaki Anno. v.1 — v.9, 4 episodes/100 minutes. v.10, 3 episodes/75 minutes. Price & format: $19.98 dubbed video; $29.98 bilingual DVD. Distributor: A.D. Vision Films.

Long before Disney ever thought of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Japan's feisty new Studio Gainax was approached by Toho Studios in the late 1980s to produce a juvenile TV series conceived of but abandoned by Hayao Miyazaki a decade earlier, basically combining Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (Miyazaki evolved his own ideas into his 1986 Laputa: The Castle in the Sky.) Gainax (co-animating with the Group Tac studio) turned the outline into a dramatic thriller in which the trip around the world was replaced with a quest for Atlantis. Two orphaned 14-year-olds meet at the 1889 Paris Exposition; Jean, a French amateur inventor and techno-nerd, and Nadia, a circus acrobat of unknown racial heritage with a "blue water" crystal pendant necklace. Jean rescues Nadia from three semi-comical thieves after the crystal and a chase starts, which leads them to the Nautilus and Captain Nemo, and to a much deadlier enemy who knows the secret of Nadia and her crystal and needs both to seize the power of lost Atlantis for world conquest.

Nadia became a prime-time (Fridays, 7:30 p.m.) 39-episode TV series (April 13, 1990 - March 29, 1991) for NHK, Japan's equivalent of the BBC; followed by a theatrical feature sequel, Nadia: The Secret of Fuzzy. It topped Japanese anime fan polls while it was running and for several years after. Many of the production staff (notably director Anno, character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto and composer Shiro Sagisu) went on to anime-industry stardom, especially on Gainax's 1995 TV series Evangelion. As with many anime serials, a large and charismatic supporting cast was built up, including Captain Nemo and his brisk blonde first mate, Electra. (Nadia was a pioneer in presenting attractive women in efficient leadership roles rather than as just assistants to a male hero or as eye-candy heroines.) Also typical was the light-hearted beginning that turns unexpectedly grim. People die. Nadia and Jean are both traumatized by their discoveries; Nadia of her heritage as the Princess of Atlantis and what happened to her family, and Jean because his idealized scientific progress can threaten the world with destruction. The two pals are further shaken by their feelings toward each other as pre-adolescence turns into adolescence.

Nadia was also a hit with the burgeoning English-language anime fandom, getting cover-feature articles in all the American and British anime magazines of the early 1990s. American fans saw it mostly through bootleg videos of the Japanese episodes, but there were two American licensed releases of just the first eight episodes dubbed, individually as Nadia between March 1992 and August 1993, and in two four-episode sets as The Secret of Blue Water in January 1996. A.D.V.'s new version, starting in June 2001 on a six-weekly release schedule, is a brand-new dubbing. As is becoming standard with most American anime releases, the DVD edition includes both English dubbing and the original Japanese dialogue with English subtitles, plus such extras as the openings and closings without text as music videos.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s.