Nadia, Secret of Blue Water - The Dark Kingdom (Vol. 2)
The second installment of this anime adventure gets even grittier than the first. Our intrepid preteen inventor Jean and his charge Nadia are sea bound after their first run-in with theNautilus. A small island looks like paradise until they are shot down. They find a dark kingdom full of warlords turning the island into a giant power station while enslaving or killing the island's residents. One lone survivor is little Marie, who quickly joins our adventurers as they try to escape. The armed-to-the-teeth baddies make the bumbling Grandis (also stuck on the island) seem even more cartoonlike. Chases, gunfights, captures, and escapes are all part of these four episodes (numbers 5 to 8), but by the end we will have a new villain to contend with and a few secrets will be revealed about the highly prized blue water necklace that Nadia wears around her neck. Ages 10 and up.--Doug Thomas