Super Robot Rollcall: The Nadesico Crew of The Past
Yurika Misumaru
"You can't tell people fighting on the frontlines, people who don't know if they'll even return alive, that they don't have the right to know anything!"
Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico
Age: 20
Height: 166 cm
Hobbies: Jigsaw puzzles, singing
Favorite Food: Anything sweet
Voice Actress: Houko Kuwashima
Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh
Yurika Misumaru is the seemingly airheaded captain of the Nadesico. Between her difficulties adhering to social norms and her fervent affections for Akito, it's easy to think that's all there is to her, but in truth, she's a combat genius, and passed military academy with frightening scores. When everyone's back is to the wall, she's liable to make up for her lack of experience with her tactical gifts to create miracles.
Much like with Noin, her stats do not reflect her canonical skills, being painfully middling even for battleship captain standards. SRW R hates to see a girlboss winning.
Her spirit commands are fairly decent, however, with a lot of fringe support utility that you won't find in many other learnsets, which is especially handy to have on a unit that's gonna be forcibly deployed most of the time.
Fun Fact: She has a near photographic memory, and seems to have a knack for linguistics.
Nadesico
Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico
Length: 300 meters
Power Source: 2 Phase Shift Engines, 4 Nuclear Pulse Engines
Real World Designer: Rei Nakahara
A civilian battleship designed by Nergal which far outclassed anything the Earth military had in their possession at the time. This fact, coupled with the fact that it was heading for Mars for a seemingly suicidal rescue mission while the Earth Sphere was embroiled in the bloody Lizard War created a lot of enmity between Nergal and the military, leading to a lot of the conflicts early into the story.
It's the Nadesico B if it had missiles (meaning it's not completely EN dependent). I don't know what you want me to say here, it certainly is a battleship.
...If i'm gonna be a bit more charitable, it is fairly funny that when you think about it, this thing is a straight upgrade over the B, which is meant to be a successor to this thing.
Fun Fact: The Nadesico is an amalgamation of quite possibly the three most iconic space battleships in japanese sci-fi nerd culture at the time the show came out; its large, flat upper hull is reminiscent of Star Trek's Enterprise, the protuding "legs" are a homage to Mobile Suit Gundam's White Base, and the Gravity Cannon is obviously evocative of the Yamato's Wave Motion Gun, to say nothing of how the two names combined form Yamato Nadeshiko, a name emblematic of the idealized "japanese beauty".
Akito Tenkawa
"I finally watched the last episode of Gekiganger V."
Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico
Age: 18
Height: 175 cm
Favorite Food: Earth cuisine
Voice Actor: Yuuji Ueda
Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh
A cook who felt completely aimless in life. He lost his previous life on Mars, he lost his job due to his PTSD from his experiences with the Jovian Lizards' assaults on Mars, and through a series of convoluted circumstances, he ended up landing a cooking job on the Nadesico... only to be further roped into being a pilot as well.
Throughout it all, the few things anchoring him were Gai, Gekiganger, and Yurika. His struggles to balance these influences on him with his dreams, ideals and values are the crux of the story of Nadesico. He loses sight of himself multiple times, but in the end, he manages to come out of it with a better understanding of both himself and the things he holds dear.
He pilots the pink Aestivalis unit.
Akito and Gai are very much a set. Akito has a more Real-oriented spirit learnset, better Evasion and worse Defense, but better Ranged... sadly, since the aforementioned Double Gekigan Flare is gonna consistently be his best move, it's easy to consider Akito to be a simple add-on to Gai, and he doesn't really feel like a protagonist for much of the game.
Even so, as the game progresses, he'll get a few ways to differentiate his playstyle, and by the end, both him and Gai will be a lot more interesting... though ultimately, you'll still realistically need Gai (who can actually draw out the full power of the DGF thanks to his higher Melee stat) if you want to use Akito to his fullest. It's easy to joke then that Gai is the real protagonist of Nadesico in this game, but in my opinion, we haven't yet encountered the character who truly takes up the mantle of Nadesico protagonist in SRW R...
Ryoko Subaru
"Did i just find it...? My own evening star..."
Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico
Age: 18
Height: 165 cm
Hobbies: Basketball, motorcycles
Voice Actress: Chisa Yokoyama
Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh
Daughter of a military man, Ryoko is a confident pilot with the skills to back it up, but she struggles with social situations, and can find it hard to act formal.
She's the leader of the trio consisting of her, Hikaru and Izumi (often called the Buttercup trio, as the Aestivalis is named after the Adonis aestivalis, a member of the buttercup family).
She pilots the red Aestivalis unit.
she's also really cute
Gameplaywise, Ryoko is like a midway point between Akito and Gai. Her Melee and Ranged stats are perfectly balanced, and her defensive stats are on par with Akito's, but she has the upper hand in the Skill department. The biggest issue with her though is that much like Akito and Gai have their combination move, she and the other two girls have a combination move... which primarily uses the Ranged stat. As such, you'd really want for her to have higher Ranged, rather than the balanced loadout she has here, which seems to be an attempt to make her better on her own than the other two, but just isn't impactful enough when Aestis are so underwhelming without their combination partners.
Still, she's far from a bad pilot; you just wouldn't really want to deploy her without her two squadmates.
Fun Fact: This is less of a "factual" one and more an experience report, but. I went with her route in the first Nadesico Sega Saturn game because of course i did, which has a mechanic where you can take the girls out on dates to the Nadesico's holodeck and live out a little romantic fantasy scenario. But for some reason, Ryoko seems to have glitched for me, and every single time that she initiated a date, without fail, she'd pick the castaway scenario, over and over and over again.
maybe she just really liked The Blue Lagoon
Hikaru Amano
"I learned the hard way that hobbies and romance don't mix..."
Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico
Age: 18
Height: 152 cm
Favorite Food: Pizza crust
Voice Actress: Shiho Kikuchi
Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh
A quirky girl who's really into anime and manga, being a fan of Gekiganger herself (though never really talking about it much with Akito nor Gai). She's a doujinshi artist and writer (remember, doujinshi here just means fanwork), who plans to break into professionally making manga.
She easily falls for 2D men, is a bit of a fujoshi, and seems to have gone through a bad breakup not too long before the show began.
She pilots the Yellow Aestivalis unit.
In terms of raw stats, Hikaru's a really good Aesti pilot. Her spirit commands, while not amazing, are also more than serviceable. If i had a complaint, it's that like Ryoko, she really needs the other two to function, and even moreso than Ryoko, as her second strongest move, the Distortion Punch, is Melee-based. But if you're deploying all three, she's rather powerful.
Izumi Maki
"I'm a woman who only causes misfortune..."
Source Material: Martian Successor Nadesico
Age: 18
Height: 177 cm
Favorite Food: Botamochi, inari sushi
Hobby: Bad puns
Voice Actress: Miki Nagasawa
Character Designer: Keiji Gotoh
A patented Weird Girl, she's a gloomy-looking young woman of few words. Usually, she only ever speaks up to make a terrible pun related to something that was just said, but she's not just gloomy-looking; she seems to have had quite the unlucky past, though she doesn't outwardly dwell on it very often.
She pilots the Turquoise Aestivalis unit.
Much like with Hikaru, Izumi is clearly meant to be deployed as a set with the other two. Only real notable difference to point out here is that Izumi has slightly better offensive stats and slightly worse defensive ones than Ryoko.
Fun fact: The second Sega Saturn Nadesico game (The Blank of 3 Years) reveals that Izumi enjoys... dressing in a ninja costume and jumping around in the woods in the middle of the night. Just for fun.
yeah sure why not
Aestivalis
Source: Martian Successor Nadesico
Height: 8 meters
Power Source: Gravity Wave Antenna, backup generator
Real World Designer: Mika Akitaka
A modular machine made by Nergal, made to work in conjunction with its line of battleships. Thanks to cooperation between the machine and its mothership, the weight of a dedicated generator doesn't need to be taken into account, and Aestivalis units are capable of formidable versatility thanks to their various frames.
If you're coming from other games, you basically get the gist of how Aestis work. Pretty good survivability, pretty underwhelming firepower unless they can fire off their combination moves.
Of note, however, is the Artillery Frame, which i feel is particularly strong in this game; though its Mobility and Movement Range are just as bad as always, and it has no post-movement attacks, it manages to make up for it with decent firepower, and perhaps more importantly, there are a lot of maps in this game where you can get away with turtling on base tiles. It's also a tempting way to use Hikaru and Izumi's high Ranged stats without having to deploy all three of them, but don't get too used to that; you won't actually get to keep these to the end of the game. Not as they are right now, anyway.
Another thing of note is the lack of a Ground Frame; as a result, against land-based opponents, Aestis will really struggle to deal damage unless you're using the Artillery frames.
Fun fact: In flower language, the Adonis aestivalis can stand for bittersweet or unforgettable memories.
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