YMMV / Martian Successor Nadesico

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: The very obnoxious, if amusing, Admiral Munetake gets a surprisingly moving death scene when his time finally comes.
• Awesome Music: The opening, "YOU GET TO BURNING". The Gekiganger 3 theme, "Let's Go Gekiganger 3" is also pretty epic. Then there's "Three Angels", the theme for Ryoko, Hikaru, and Izumi, and "Black Serena" from the Movie.
• Bizarro Episode: Episode 21, which unlike any other episode in the series is told in non-chronological order, partakes in psychoanalysis of the characters, and features several sequences in a surreal "memory room" where the characters observe each other's repressed memories as Mahjong tiles. In other words, it's the Quentin Tarantino episode.
• Cargo Ship: Seiya went head over heels with glee at the sight of the Aestivalis piloted by Nagare Akatsuki.
• Complete Monster: Prince of Darkness: Professor Yamazaki is the lead scientist of the Martian Successors, soldiers of the Jovian Federation that refuse to accept the surrender of their nation. Send to study the Bosom Jump teleportation, Yamazaki experiments on the protagonists Akito Tenkawa and Captain Yurika Misumaru because of their special nature, leaving Akito as a broken man without senses and putting Yurika into a permanent coma where she would be constantly bombarded with happy memories to farm her energy for the Martian Successors' plan to take over the Amaterasu Colony and destroy it, uncaring about their civilian population. Yamazaki also shows his fascination towards Yurika, ordering her to be left naked until other scientists stopped him after considering that to be sexual harassment.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Ruri. She's a secondary character with a couple of focus episodes, but the combination of being a Deadpan Snarker and Token Mini-Moe caused her popularity to skyrocket (and said focus episodes highlights Ruri's nicer side, and having a good dynamic with Akito as opposed to his other more chaotic relations), enduring long after the series had actually ended. Because of this, a time-skipped Ruri got promoted to Main Protagonist in the movie, a move that was met with mixed reception because the two traits that made her stand out had to be toned back: she couldn't be as sarcastic when she's the main heroine, and she was too old to be considered the Token Mini-Moe any more.
  • Don't forget Gai Daigoji, for being hilarious and engaging. No joke—many people end up dropping Nadesico after Gai gets killed off, and the Super Robot Wars series likes to increase his role by letting you save him or at least giving him a much more dignified death.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Akito Tenkawa Appreciation Society: the nickname for Akito's ever-growing Unwanted Harem.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some people would like to forget The Movie ever existed.
  • Oddly enough, this is mostly averted in Mexico and Latin America, on the grounds the movie debuted first before the TV series. It also helps the dub is really good, especially Ruri's Mexican VA.
• Genius Bonus: The Black Sarena from the movie is named after the chocolate lily, whose flower language is "curse" and "love". Considering its pilot, it's a really, really fitting name.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the credits of the dub, Ruri's voice actress is listed simply as "Kira".
  • Aso Heartwarming in Hindsight, Omi Minami (Ruri) eventually married her co-star Yuji Ueda (Akito). "I Want to be Your Number One" is a wish made true.
  • After all the references to Space Battleship Yamato, the Nadesico finally fought alongside its 2012 remake in Super Robot Wars V. They are even paired up in the game's regular cover art as a Visual Pun on Yamato Nadeshiko.
• The Scrappy: Sadaki for being a whiny, self-important control freak who always gets in the way when the crew's trying to do the right thing. Still...
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Akito on two occasions. When he tells Yurika of how his family was killed the day she and her father left Mars, he threatens to kill her if he finds out her father had anything to do with it. Never mind that Yurika would have been six years old when it happened and obviously uninvolved, his reasoning is entirely based on Revenge by Proxy. Then later, after Gai is killed, Akito claims everyone else is being selfish for not mourning him and going about their business as if hadn't happened. What Akito fails to realize is that he and the rest of the Nadesico are in the middle of a war where death can come at any moment and they can't afford to waste time and energy moping over those who are already lost.
  • Yurika for causing the cave-in that killed the Mars colonists. Though Inez tells her not to feel responsible as the colonists knew they were living on borrowed time anyway, it doesn't change the fact that her act of impulsive jealousy resulted in innocent people dying.
  • Seiya for being a Casanova Wannabe despite being married with a son. If he was so unhappy being married, then he should have just filed for divorce.
• Values Resonance:
  • Many of the anime tropes parodied in the series are still relevant, and in some cases still overused, twenty years later.
  • The true motives of the Jovian Federation came about as the result of a poor interpretation of Gekiganger 3 into a message that was never intended. With the rise of social media and (sometimes intentional) misreadings of various shows, books and games on the rise, the issue around educating people in proper media literacy has become more relevant than ever.
• Wangst: A lot of what Akito says falls into this. Especially since he has the same dub VA as Shinji Ikari.
• The Woobie: Jun Aoi, at least, if you listen to his fangirls...
• Woolseyism: Several of the jokes are made much funnier by being delivered by the English language cast who had just done Evangelion. "You mean episode 26 wasn't the last episode?" is funny. Hearing Spike (Shinji) Spencer say it is hilarious. The Directors openly state that some parts were decided upon due to links with other ADV shows. Akito (Spike Spencer - Shinji in Eva) and Ryoko's (Tiffany Grant - Asuka in the same show) roles are the prime examples.
  • Also a few other Woolseyisms, mostly to make sense of Izumi's lines.
  • The Mexican Spanish dub of the TV series pull this many times: The most notorious example is when Gai insults Akito since he's a cook: When in the Japanese version, he's simply call him a cook, in the Mexican Spanish dub he insults Akito by calling him Fritanguero. In Mexico, a Fritanguero is someone who sells traditional Mexican food (fritangas) on the streets, but it's also a offensive slang for a cook who only sells junk food on the streets^note More accurately, tacos, quesadillas, potato chips, French fries, pico de gallo, nachos, etc. and it's also one of the biggest insults you can say against a Mexican cook. Obviously, Akito is offended by this.^note Curiously enough, there's a similar tradition in Japan, except replace the aforementioned dishes with ramen, udon and similar stuff.
  • Also in the Mexican Spanish dub of The Movie, Ruri speaks more like a Mysterious Waif with a very soft and feminine voice, rather than the Little Miss Snarker personality from the Japanese version. Oddly enough in the dub of the TV series, which was broadcasted years later after the movie, Ruri speaks in a more arrogant way instead.