GKIDS announced a new 4K re-release of Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno's first televised anime series, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water.
The anime distributor announced on its website that it has licensed and plans to re-release the critically acclaimed 1990 anime series with an all new 4K restoration. All 39 episodes of the classic anime will be remastered when GKIDS releases the series sometime before the end of 2022. The new remaster will be the first time the series will be available in 4K and will make the show officially available again after being out of print for some time; the series was first brought to North America by the now defunct localization company ADV Films, and was later re-released on Blu-ray in 2014 by Sentai Filmworks.
Production of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water infamously caused animation studio Gainax to lose money, but the series is now widely regarded as one of the best anime series of the early '90s. The show was based on a story concept by Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki, which was developed into a series by Gainax. The anime was the first full-length TV series to be directed by Hideaki Anno, and features many of the staff that would later join him on the production of 1995's seminal Neon Genesis Evangelion, including co-director Shinji Higuchi (Shin Godzilla, Shin Ultraman) and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (FLCL, Summer Wars). Evangelion was originally envisioned as a direct sequel to the series, but was eventually turned into an original story after Gainax could not secure the rights to the show from NHK, the Japanese TV network that originally broadcast the anime.
GKIDS' official synopsis for the Nadia describes the show as:
It’s 1889 and people from around the globe are flocking to Paris to see scientific achievements at the Exposition Universelle despite rumors of dangers lurking in the oceans. While attending the fair, teenaged inventor Jean meets Nadia, a mysterious girl who possesses a highly sought-after crystal called Blue Water. Pursued by nefarious forces, the pair journey by sea and by sky to escape their would-be captors and to discover the secret of the crystal.
This isn't the first time that GKIDS is giving one of Anno's works a deluxe re-release: last year the company re-released the original Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series and its follow-up movies, Death & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion, on DVD, Blu-ray and digital home video formats. In addition to the standard boxset release, the distributor also released a $275 "Ultimate Edition" of the series that included a 156-page art book and a paperweight shaped after Sachiel, the Third Angel.
Source: GKIDS