It’s the year 2199. The bright future of humanity is frustrated when alien invaders unleash radioactive meteorite bombs, poisoning Earth. But a message arrives from Mars: There’s hope for salvation out there! Rebuilding the crown jewel of the Japanese Imperial Fleet, the WW2 battleship Yamato, as a spaceship, a courageous crew sets out for the stars, the tale of their adventures ultimately inspiring genre-defining series like Gundam, Harlock, and Macross and igniting the love of anime in the heart of a young Hideaki Anno, who regarded Space Battleship Yamato as his all-time favorite anime.

With glory comes emulation, inspiration, and also subversion and parody. And sometimes, the parody manages to shine an unexpected light on the original. Last year, I was considering abandoning Martian Successor Nadesico, a renowned mecha comedy from 1987 set in a Yamato-like spaceship that lovingly pokes fun at this and other beloved series by way of Looney Tunes-style craziness. (Apparently, the very name is a pun, coming from the Japanese phrase “Yamato nadeshiko.”) But then, suddenly, things got serious.

The Christmas episode connected everything: Hidden layers of the story were revealed, and I found fascinating thematic parallels with Evangelion, Gundam, and Haruhi. And also with…the origin of the Twelve Days of Christmas. That is, the feast of the Epiphany.

The Twelve Days bring to mind this 1780 English Christmas carol rearranged by Frederic Austin in 1909. The carol is a “cumulative song,” detailing an increasingly large list of presents given by the “true love” of the singer. But why twelve? Here at BtT, we play them as a countdown. But in the original carol, these are the twelve days between the Nativity on the 25^th and the feast of Epiphany on January 6^th, Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” which usually involved a masquerade (hence the plot of that play; you might also remember Disney’s depiction in The Hunchback of Notre Dame).

A masquerade certainly fits the theme of the feast. The Cambridge Dictionary defines “epiphany” as “a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you.”  It comes from the Greek verb phainein, “to show” or, according to its root, “to shine.” As a Christian feast, it commemorates two seemingly disparate moments: the visit of the Magi to Jesus in Bethlehem, bringing strange presents, and the baptism of Jesus some years later.

But what has all this to do with Nadesico? Well, masquerades and epiphanies certainly abound in this show. Very seldom do you find a mecha space opera in which half of the characters are themselves mecha fans, obsessed with Gekigangar III, a non-existent Super Robot mecha anime in the vein of Getter Robo, with full-fledged anime conventions on their spaceship. It is masked in a second sense too: Much like Christmas itself, Nadesico has a bright exterior, worth loving on its own, laid over a world-changing structure of ancient questions and fascinating answers.

The series’ surface is quite by-the-numbers. Like Kyon’s or Shinji’s, Akito’s three potential love interests embody three different paths. Pursuing Megumi, a coworker (and voice actress!) leads to a normal life on Earth. Pursuing Ryoko, a fierce young pilot with issues, would bring them companionship in the continued battle. But the bright and chaotic Captain Yurika ties him to the past he rejects and to a crazy, unpredictable future in space. The story is quite the cumulative romantic avalanche, with “true loves” overwhelming Akito with their crazy advances. So, will they? Won’t they? Your guess is as good as mine.

Before episode 13, There Is No Single Truth, I’d been vaguely aware that Nadesico was referencing older shows. Everything had been played for laughs, though. There were exceptions—deaths, losses, and the odd tragic moment (unintentional tonal whiplash, I thought)—that came and went in between the harem show antics and the preposterous conflicts of the cast. But episode 13—rather fittingly, the Christmas episode—was my first little epiphany, as I realized that the contrast was intentional. A deeper story had been building below the surface and revealed itself at last. Under the colorful carnival, there was substance.

Suddenly (spoilers), the force behind the space battleship revealed itself as Nergal, a shady underground public-private operation with no qualms about carrying out human experimentation or mass surveillance, or risking mutually assured destruction. Nergal happens to be the Mesopotamian god of the underworld, considered the “sinister aspect” of Sun deity Utu. This is Amestris all over again: our present world revealing itself as an inhuman sacrificial empire. And the tone is suddenly dead serious.

Akito’s dilemma between the desire for a normal life as a cook and his Gundam dreams is solved for him. He’s replaced by Seelie, a trained pilot, and expelled from the ship, which is promptly militarized: This is more effective in the serious standards the show has embraced all of a sudden. Megumi goes with him. But, as the couple celebrates Christmas Eve, just like any other couple, the enemy attacks. And Akito wants to go, to fight. “I’m not enough for you to protect?” Megumi asks, in tears. And the silent answer is no.

That is Akito’s own epiphany: The desire to be like everyone else is not his deepest desire after all. So Akito gets into the, ahem, accursed robot, jumps back into action, helps those who expelled him, and miraculously survives being teleported, while his replacement is not so fortunate. In the empty cabin, a third epiphany comes. Real-life Gekigangar elements lie all around. The enemy, the supposed hostile alien lizards, are human colonists exiled after a civil war now erased from memory. And so the Evangelion-esque attack on the moon turns out to be not an invasion, but a retaliation.

The Gekigangar anime the protagonists love is not just fiction: it is the cultural artifact of a rival civilization. The space adventure era began and was thwarted by the powers that be. The anime characters are coming for revenge. This is not only a dramatic discovery for our characters, it is also a reversal of the themes of Yamato, which Nadesico had been following pretty closely until now. Sure, the unexpected alien attack had happened in 2195, not 2199, and the thwarted future had been that of the Utopia colony on the Moon. But the general direction of the story was the same. Not anymore.

This is a twist for the characters, sure, but it is also a subversion of the entire genre—and a subversion that leads us to the greatest epiphany of all. To understand this, we need to take a look at the original. What was Yamato all about? “There is,” author Nishizaki tells us, “a dream beyond the boundaries of Earth, hidden in the infinite potential of space to inspire the imagination of those who look up. I have thought about this for a long time, wondering if a grand story could be developed from this theme.”

If kids doubt themselves, fearing this world, he continued, “Space Battleship Yamato is there for them. And they can feel strengthened by seeing the characters reflected inside themselves, just as the work of Juzo Unno once made my heart swell. If they assume that they cannot be their true selves in the present world of social reality, Yamato is there.”

Martian Successor Nadesico shows us a Yamato crew that is coming to conquer us as part of the grand space opera in which they are wrapped up, and contrasts it with a deeply compromised, oppressive world. In this way, it highlights the darker side of both dreams and reality, revealing that what we are deeply nostalgic for, what we really need, is not actually in the past, nor is it in the present. Normal life (and Megumi) cannot satisfy our protagonist. But making his life a heroic tale like Gekigangar with Ryoko is not an option either, when Gekigangar and its pilots want to destroy you.

But Nadesico shows us that apart from the opposing options of dreams and reality, there is a third alternative: hope, symbolized by Akito choosing the captain, not Megumi or Ryoko. It is a hope that might embrace, purify, and unify both dreams and reality.

This is what Akito is called to do. His strange ability to open quantum portals and his love for Gekigangar III point to the mission that is starting to be revealed in this episode, one that will make him an anime-loving diplomat and peacemaker in the forgotten conflict, as well as a living bridge across the stars.

Akito is called to be the man who can fly high, dreaming of adventure and epic stories, while also remaining grounded with the maturity of an awareness of reality. He opens a path of hopeful love for both sides: Earth and Gekigangar, reality and dreams.

The connection between Christmas and Epiphany is also a tale of reconciliation and realizations, a light that shines bright in Israel and enlightens its traditional enemies—the pagans, the peoples of all nations. A common hope that embraces Israel’s dreams but also purifies its contradictions. Gekigangar is an epic story whose events have a real counterpart. The Bible, “the greatest story ever told,” which has captured the hearts of many peoples and generations around the world, shares that trait.

In it, we read about the people of God, Israel, walking His path of salvation, assisted by miracles. To our astonishment, we continue to find archaeological confirmation for many of its elements. But we also see a great void: the gifts Israel received from God—the Temple, the priesthood, the Davidic dynasty, the Ark—all of these are no more.

Why? Babylon, Greece, and ultimately Rome—three powerful pagan empires—destroyed the signs of the people of God, often exiling the people themselves too. The so-called zealots dreamed of a war of national liberation and a restoration of the throne of David, but it was not to be. These empires were able to prevail because of Israel’s sins. The prophets of Israel tell us so, and so does Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.

Both sides of the conflict seem compromised, and even if one of them shines more brightly, no zealot-style effort suffices for a restoration. Living in the pagan world under the powers that be and forgetting about the past, being swallowed by everyday concerns, is a disheartening possibility. What to do, then? The saintly Israelites in the time of Our Lord, those who “waited for the consolation of Israel,” hoped and prayed for a way they themselves they could not bring about.

And this is the sometimes-missing context of the Nativity story, which is also the story of the way forward, of how Zachary and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, Simeon the Elder and the Temple itself saw a new light appearing in the darkness. Those who were not prepared to solve the conundrum themselves prepared instead to go along with God’s initiative. They believed the powerful story handed down to them, and followed the light when it came.

The light shone brightly, and connected places and peoples that could never have found each other. And so, Joseph and Mary saw shepherds from Israel whom an angel had told to come see their baby, and wise men from the lands of the Pagans arrived at the small town of Bethlehem, adoring Him as God with the gift of incense, recognizing Him as king with the gift of gold, and giving Him the mysterious gift of myrrh, the most precious and most bitter of the oils of the East.

It was the world’s Epiphany. Starting with them, the pagans, the nations of all color, creed and condition, began adoring the God of Israel through Jesus. The masquerade was over: The disguises over the deepest desire they had in their hearts fell off, and they recognized it in the Child they were seeing. The Gospel doesn’t tell us what foreign land they were from, though the word magi seems to suggest the Persian priestly class. After their visit, a prophetic dream helped them travel back to their land without giving any warning to Herod, who would have killed the Child (Matthew 2:3-9).

Artists, making them three because of the number of the gifts, usually depict them embodying different races, or being an old man, a man in his prime, and a boy. In the Catholic world, they are designated with the names Melchior (“king of light”), Caspar (“treasurer”) and Balthazar (“God protect the king”)—also the names of the advanced NERV IAs in Evangelion—and usually depicted as kings or mounting camels, illustrating an old prophecy by Isaiah they started fulfilling with their adoration.

We don’t know what the magi or their entourage actually looked like, or even how many they numbered. But we do know that they were real people who traveled to a foreign land to witness the light John the Baptist would see when he baptized Jesus of Nazareth, the day the heavens opened and the voice of God declared Jesus was His Son. Jesus would open a path to the greatest adventure, farther than the sea of the stars, for Israel and the pagans alike. With His all-encompassing love, our Captain gave us a new Ark in His Church, and set it to sail the whole world.

In Spanish-speaking countries, the day of Epiphany is when the Christmas presents are given to children, as they were given to Jesus. Christmas stories have retained the theme of epiphanies (think A Christmas Carol), and with good reason. Christmas is indeed a given day, but it is also a period of grace, a season of joy and celebration, of ever-deepening wonder, favoring sudden realizations, sudden changes, the renewing of our love. Just like Akito, we might discover a deep desire in our hearts and jump to the fight, following our Captain to the highest heaven.

To do so doesn’t mean having to choose between reality and dreams, as if they are irreconcilable. It doesn’t mean stopping being a cook or no longer appreciating the everyday. And it doesn’t mean writing off cultural manifestations of Christianity here and now, however vague. BtT has always made a point of embracing the folk aspects of Christmas as well as the spiritual ones—KFC and merchandise as well as prayer and contemplation. Christmas’s radiant star still attracts the faraway, the unsuspecting, the nations, to the place where they might meet their Savior.

It’s the year 2024, and humanity hasn’t stopped dreaming about the infinite. Earth is still poisoned by the darkness. But a message is still being sent to all nations: There’s hope for salvation out there! An old Ark, rebuilt endless times, might be able to make the jump. After all, one Man did it first. The greatest stories ever told are true. And we’re in search of a courageous crew, now as ever. Misfits, shepherds, magi, and cooks are all welcome. Merry Christmas!

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Martian Successor Nadesico can be streamed on Crunchyroll and Prime Video.