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YMMV / Ashita no Nadja

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  • Awesome Music: Every single music piece is great, but especially "Jounetsu" (the Flamenco song), "The Angel that can't fly" (Raphael and Sylvie's duet) and "Waltz Number 5".
  • Die for Our Ship: Marianne is bashed by other shippers in various sites like YouTube.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Fanon: Sylvie is, or was a prostitute. Her past is never addressed, she's fine with dating around despite her commoner heritage and her costume is very inappropriate for the time period.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • Nadja/Keith is substantially more popular than Nadja/Francis, probably because of his bad boy persona and outwardly risking more in trying to help her.
    • Nadja/Christian also has a following from people who think she should ditch the twins altogether.
    • Thomas/Sylvie also has some fans, oddly enough.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Considering how many videos in Spanish, Italian, and French there are on Youtube, it's safe to say that this anime is big in Europe, probably naturally due to its European setting. Spain in particular is somewhat of a subversion, though, because while the series had some decent success, it never reached the popularity Spanish channel RTVE had in mind when it bought the series (to explain, RTVE promoted the series left and right and tried literally to turn it into the next Heidi, Girl of the Alps, an effort that predictably failed due to the legend status of the latter).
  • Inferred Holocaust: Nadja's family is Austrian nobility. The show is set nearly at the door to World War I. The show itself has a happy ending, but the Premingers may very well have been decimated in the war as Austria was on the losing side.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Initially played straight with Rosemary, though the sympathy could get lost with each act of cruelty she pulls later on. (Though it might be recovered with her last scene, with her acknowledging how wrong she was and bowing out willingly, as well as telling Nadja to treasure her mother, whom Rosemary herself kinda cared for as well).
    • Averted with Hermann. Despite his final scene (see Alas, Poor Villain / Cry for the Devil on the main page), he's such a bastard that he's never really seen in a sympathetic light by any characters or the audience.
    • Played straighter with Marianne and Keith. The first is kinda self-centered and stuck-up but her love for Francis is genuine, she cries at some point since Love Hurts, doesn't lie to Nadja or try to manipulate her, and the scene where she acknowledges her love as impossible and quietly leaves is rather sad. The second is extremely cool as Black Rose, has a decent Freudian Excuse in his mother's death and is humanized by his conflict with Francis, but some of his attitudes to Nadja later in the series can come off as possessive and self-centered, if not very hypocritical.
    • Adding to Marianne's case, from the perspective of someone NOT friends with Nadja, Nadja really was causing a lot of trouble for Francis.
  • Les Yay: Nadja and Rosemary are a textbook example of Pseudo-Romantic Friendship (what with Rosemary calling herself a princess and Nadja her knight), until the latter snaps and becomes sworn enemy to the former.
  • Magnificent Bitch: Rosemary Applefield, believing Nadja was stealing the princess life Rosemary had always dreamed of away from her and casting her aside, becomes a willing participant in Hermann Preminger's schemes and proves herself a deceptive, manipulative, and ruthless schemer in her own right at only age 13. Pretending to be the long lost Nadja Preminger to the Duke and to Nadja's mother, Rosemary charms everyone with her elegance, courtesy, and seeming innocence, which proves useful when implicating the real Nadja, the Black Rose, and even the Applefield orphanage in alleged crimes against her. When Nadja confronts her, Rosemary feigns being an Unwitting Pawn before shredding Nadja's most cherished dress right before her eyes. In a later meeting Rosemary emotionally agitates Nadja into nearly assaulting her, which gets the police to go after Nadja. Nadja returns to prove her identity, but Rosemary counters her claims with quick thinking and skillful manipulation of others in the room. After getting what she'd wanted but finding Victory Is Boring, Rosemary is quick to denounce her alliance with Hermann, who himself has come to fear her, and when proven to be a fraud, she shows herself to be a Graceful Loser and imparts advice to Nadja before leaving the manor of her own accord, receiving no punishment for her actions and even earning Nadja's respect.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Once his plans start falling apart, Hermann decides to heck with being sneaky and straight up attempts to shoot his niece, Nadja.
  • Spiritual Successor: To Hello! Sandybell - both anime are about an innocent, cheery blonde haired blue eyed girl travelling all over Europe finding their long-lost family using nothing but an Orphan's Plot Trinket. The Japanese fandom often compares the two anime and likes to joke that Nadja is Sandybell.
  • Squick: It's hard to not get creeped out by the various adult male characters of the series crushing on Nadja, such as Christian, Antonio and Thierry, the final being a known womanizer and always calls Nadja with the nickname "My Little Rosebud". This website estimates that the Harcourt twins are 21 years old, as the site runner did the math on the years that Keith left home and disappeared, which makes the show's emphasis on Nadja's romance all the more uncomfortable.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • More than one fan has been shocked to see that Nadja, a very sweet and kind girl who loves animals, approves of and likes bullfighting and has no problems working in a circus that has a lion tamer and her two mini-lions as a part of their attractions. This is because the series is set in the first decade of the XX century, when there was next to none awareness about animal abuse. (Plus, to be fair about Rita and her lions, she comes from a now gone circus with many animal-based acts and, before dying, her parents asked the Troupe to take care of her, Cream and Chocolate.)
    • When Sylvie accidentally get tanned, she's horrified and pitches a fit. This is a huge contrast with modern beauty standards, which tend to love attractive people with a good tan.
    • The entirety of the episode "A Lie at the Alpine Flower Festival." Tomboyish girls who hang out among boys and lack femininity like Zabbie are accepted today, but the XX century society of the series treats it as cause for Zabbie being a pariah among her peers and disapproved of by her parents. It doesn't help that Zabbie putting aside her tomboyish ways and embracing femininity was treated as the episode's positive conclusion.
    • Several adult male characters have feelings for a 13 year old girl.

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