1990 Primary

1990 Secondary

1990 Tertiary

extreme but interesting 1990_34ya article on otaku: ‘“I’m alone, but not lonely”: Japanese Otaku-Kids colonize the Realm of Information and Media; A Tale of Sex and Crime from a faraway Place’

1991 P

Animage: What would you recommend?

Anno: Shows like Yamato or Gundam (1979_45ya, TV) which have soul, emit the staff’s “cry of mind” out of the screens as a certain vibration. On the other hand, I feel bad when I watch shows that are made sluggishly without such soul.

… Anno: Of the movies, I recommend Gundam III: Meeting in Space. The picture is quite nice. Moreover, if I have to recommend Mr. Tomino’s animation, I would choose Legendary Giant IDEON (1980_44ya, TV). It would be best to watch the movie version’s Part II (1982_42ya, movie) after watching the TV series. Although some of the picture quality might be poor, please tolerate it.

…Anno: Yes, I did, although it is a little bit light. I was just overwhelmed by its adult mood throughout the animation. I can’t express such mood yet. Actually, I felt sad when I watched Nadia, which I directed, soon after watching it. I felt Nadia was too childish. (laughs)

… Anno’s Top 10 Anime 1. Space Battleship Yamato (1974_50ya, TV) 2. Mobile Suit Gundam (1979_45ya, TV) 3. Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (1988_36ya, movie) 4. Legendary Giant IDEON (1980_44ya, TV & movie) 5. Animal Treasure Island (1971_53ya, movie) 6. Fight! Pyuta! (1968_56ya, TV) 7. Future Boy Conan (1978_46ya, TV) 8. Aim at Ace (1973_51ya, first TV series) 9. Tom & Jerry (1944_80ya) 10. Ann the Red Hair [Anne of Green Gables] (1979_45ya, TV)

–Kazuhiko Shimamoto (Gyakyoo Nine) and Hideaki Anno (Nadia); from Animage magazine, September 1991_33ya; translated by Masashi Suzuki; The Rose #33, July 1992

1991 S

1991 T

1993 P

“We had no trouble starting up another project right away. All the outside staff we had hired for Aoki Uru were now gone, but Anno and the rest were still there. They went on a retreat to Matsumoto in Nagano and before you knew it, they had a project plan all drawn up. Still, it would take over a year to go from project start to broadcast. Anno had been running on empty ever since Nadia finished, but Evangelion seemed to be just the thing to get him up and running again. And once he puts his mind to something, he goes all out…”

–Yasuhiro Takeda, Notenki Memoirs pg 165

1992 S

1993 T

GAINAX, the studio that created Gunbuster, was made up of fans who really–I mean really–knew anime. They were out to have as much fun with it as possible, and break a few boundaries while they were at it. They were the best anime has ever seen. Look at their short film that opened Daicon IV [videos], following that up with the incredible four-minute ROYAL SPACE FORCE, the film that got them the funding for their masterpiece (and only feature film) THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE. With NADIA and GUNBUSTER, they demonstrated they could produce classics in the TV and OAV genres as well. In their coda, OTAKU NO VIDEO, they made anime’s great roman a clef, closing the circle for anime fans and exiting in style.

–Carl Horn https://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.anime/browse_thread/thread/f0401912352a88b1/f82f63a1f3571cb3?q=author%3ADHORN%40ricevm1.rice.edu+roman+a+clef&pli=1

1994 P

“So why did Evangelion wind up with that shape?” I figure that from now on I will hear that question countless times. The director instructed me to make, “the image of a demon [oni].” A giant just barely under the control of mankind. I get the feeling I’ve seen that correlation before… The image I had for the design concept was the fairy tale, Gulliver’s Travels. Enormous Power Restrained.

–“Ikuto Yamashita Discusses Eva’s Design” (Ikuto was the mecha designer)

[Yutaka] Izubuchi drew some design proposals on the Evangelions. Anno sent him instructions and rough sketches, and Izubuchi drew some designs. Izubuchi introduced one with four eyes like what unit 02 ended up having. We don’t know how much his proposal influenced the final design though, since he’s not credited for the final designs.

… I’d always thought Izubuchi had influenced the mecha (for lack of a better term) designs in Eva; there’s a good deal of resemblance between the Eva-01 and Izubuchi’s Kaempfer design from Gundam 0080, particularly around the head. Nice to see that there is actually some proof to back me up on this.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20121202070826/http://www.animenation.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-197689.html

For the salvation of mankind who are approaching evolutionary dead-end as living things

“The Human Supplement Project” is put in motion

Attacking to prevent that project, an unidentified fleet of gigantic battle weapons ? “The Apostles”

Are they, bestowed with the name of “Angels”,

Really “messengers of the gods” at all?

–packet, page 02; tentatively assigned to 1994_30ya Primary, promotional material related to the Proposal? (archive)

What is the appeal of Giant Robot Anime?

“Giant robot anime” is an expression of children’s subconscious desires.

That is to say, the thing called “giant robot anime”

Is compensation for the complexes and various suppressions that children hold, a means of resistance, compensatory behavior.

Adults know “the difficulty of living.”

And, at the same time they also know “the fun of living.”

In order to live, even if they know it is a “lie”

They know that “hope” and the “dream” called “justice and love” are necessary.

We can communicate purely to children with no sense of difference between fiction and reality due to a characteristic of the means of expression called animation, namely, usage of the view of the world where everything are “pictures” drawn by people.

That is the greatest appeal that “giant robot animation” holds.

–package, page 03 (archive)

Japanese Children Averting Their Eyes From Repulsive Things…

This conversation was made possible thanks to Anno-san expressing his wish to speak with director Tomino during our interview for the V Gundam special edition, being a devoted fan of his. Anno-san considering V Gundam as the best TV anime in recent years,

Tomino: …G Gundam is someone else’s work, but it’s not just a work aside of mine. I’m willing to follow its reception.

Anno: I have hope in G Gundam. I think kids will like it. But I think works with complicated relationships like V Gundam don’t appeal to children anymore. As a matter of fact, even people about 20 years old prefer clean stuff now, and are becoming more and more reluctant when filthy parts are visible.

…Tomino: Even when talking about variety, we often hear things like “In response to user’s requirements” or “to respond customer demand”, but what we’re offered are only differentiations inside a very narrow range of possibilities, not actual variety in my opinion.

Animage (to Anno): When you told us about it on May’s issue, you said the only solution would be diversification.

Anno: On the other hand I think anime nowadays has gone too far into its own specialization, to the point where it’ll soon collapse.

…Anno: I didn’t feel like it was relevant to blind her [a V Gundam character needing punishment, Katejina]. Doing so makes it the main focus of that climax. If she survives anyways she could have lost an arm, or a leg…

Tomino: These all infringed TV codes so we turned them down. Besides, that’s why we limited ourselves to suggesting that she may not see anymore.

…Anno: In the novel, Katejina gets burned. I prefer that.

Tomino: I’d rather have done that, but it’s completely taboo on TV. Also when we reflected on how much of that kind of imagery an audience who prefers clean things could take, well…

Animage: So you mean there is an issue with the audience’s tolerance towards that kind of representation, even before thinking about taboos in the media?

Tomino: That’s exactly the problem. In that sense it’s totally true that we compromised too much.

Anno: That’s what I thought.

Tomino: Yesterday I randomly came by Record of Lodoss War [a D&D-themed RPG anime], that’s the name, right? So I watched it. On a technical viewpoint I thought “Wow, Rintaro-san’s very good”. Even processing after his directing was fine to my mind. But as a creator, when I actually step into that kind of work, I can’t help but rejecting it instantly and in its entirety. What do you think about it?

Animage: Drawings look good, and it was a big hit as a product.

Anno: I understand very well that it sells well. But I don’t find it entertaining.

Animage: Viewers’ mindset seems to be on the side of enjoying its safe, predetermined outcome.

Tomino: Of course, they wouldn’t like to face what they find the most gross or uncomfortable on mediums like video or anime.

Anno: Since it’s compensatory behavior, sure they don’t want to pay money to see repulsive things. In V Gundam for instance, many kids stopped watching when Uso’s mother died, saying they didn’t want to watch an anime like this. Viewers react to people’s death more than we expect.

Tomino: No doubt there are kids like that.

Animage: But now that the bubble has ended, there’s the economic crisis, and climate is becoming more and more austere, so I think there will be changes from now.

Anno: On the contrary, I think they’re going to lock themselves up even more.

Tomino: Children nowadays lack the energy to live in these times. I think people actually suffering from autism wouldn’t be able to live in such an environment. But I’m in the kind of position where even if there’s only darkness one step ahead, I want to do my best until I die. At least I want to show that life is not so bad, even when we don’t know what we’re living for.

Anno: I think people need a will to live to keep on living. They won’t go on living unless they’re repeatedly told to. If religions teach obvious things such as ‘people must live even if they’re suffering’, it’s probably because they need to be told so and to realize it in order to keep on living.

…Tomino: Exactly. That’s how unforgiving the world is. Our only message is: be more prepared to it. But for children nowadays, particularly middle and high-schoolers, maybe it’s their entire school life which causes them trouble. I think that’s why they don’t want to see depressing images, including the kind of story they could live themselves. But the other important thing is that there are children who actually take things as little as this harshly.

Anno: Indeed.

Tomino: Recently there have been rice shortages from time to time, and it’s a very good thing in my opinion. It allows them to imagine a little bit more seriously a case where there really isn’t any more food. The advantage for people creating entertainment in that case is to be able to say “Sorry if it’s disturbing, but we’re showing these austere parts in anime you like as well”, in case it helps 10 or 20 years from now (laugh).

Anno: Indeed, we must put a bit of poison inside our works (laugh), particularly for children.

–July 1994_30ya issue of Animage; “Interview: Hideaki Anno vs. Yoshiyuki Tomino (Animage - 07/1994_30ya)”/“Japanese Children Averting Their Eyes From Repulsive Things…”; translated by Noh Acro for Wave Motion Cannon

1994 S

1994 T

In the end, Leiqunni’s attempt to isolate herself from a world she regards as evil is no more productive than Shiro’s initial refusal to even consider good and evil in the world (that’s why I prefer to render his opening line as “I don’t know if it’s good or bad” although one could say “For better or worse”). HONNEAMISE is a film advocating anti-detachment.

… Yamaga has not merely jerked Shiro’s strings to commit this act–indeed, the act derives from choice and serves to illustrate that Shiro knows he has a choice–Leiqunni believes she has none. Leiqunni believes in original sin, that “all are guilty.” But if one is guilty from birth, the entire concept of “sin” as a choice becomes meaningless, for we are evil–indeed, doomed, by nature and can do nothing but ask for grace.

But Shiro doesn’t believe this is true. His prayer at the end comes only after a long string of conscious choices, actions, and decisions on his part. He prays not out of a belief that God’s mercy is the only thing that can save the helplessly evil human race–on the contrary, his prayer is based on the careful observation of humanity’s historical record: full of choices that led to slaughter. And yet, he simultaneously recognizes that the same human race has made it here, to “God’s space”–what used to be thought of as Heaven. What he beseeches, then, is a light to mankind–“In our despair, give us one, fixed star.” A beacon of truth–to remind us that we always have a choice.

The more I look at HONNEAMISE, the more convinced I am that Yamaga knew what he was doing. The film holds with [Andre] Gide’s warning: “Do not understand me too quickly.” Whether the necessity for the viewer to go back again to fully comprehend it, will be a liability in its release here–I don’t know–there is so much one can get from the first viewing only. But in that endurance, the viewer discovers that which endures: the art of THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE. The film is Yamaga’s choice–and also, still, a light to anime–a genre that doesn’t believe in itself as it should…

–Carl Horn, “Some more thoughts on the rape scene in HONNEAMISE”; incidentally, Bochan_bird bought Honneamise “character/mecha drawing references and animator storyboards”, and mentions “The attempted rape scene unfolds differently in the storyboards.”

1995 P

• Literal Translation Project of NGE episodes

And in that world, a 14-year-old boy shrinks from human contact. And he tries to live in a closed world where his behavior dooms him, and he has abandoned the attempt to understand himself. A cowardly young man who feels that his father has abandoned him, and so he has convinced himself that he is a completely unnecessary person, so much so that he cannot even commit suicide.

And there is a 29-year-old woman who lives life so lightly as to barely allow the possibility of a human touch. She protects herself by having surface level relationships, and running away.

Both are extremely afraid of being hurt. Both are unsuitable-lacking the positive attitude-for what people call heroes of an adventure. But in any case, they are the heroes of this story.

They say, “To live is to change.” [This is apparently a quote of the last line of Miyazaki’s Nausicaa manga.] I started this production with the wish that once the production complete, the world, and the heroes would change. That was my “true” desire. I tried to include everything of myself in Neon Genesis Evangelion - myself, a broken man who could do nothing for four years. A man who ran away for four years, one who was simply not dead. Then one thought. “You can’t run away,” came to me, and I restarted this production. It is a production where my only thought was to burn my feelings into film. I know my behavior was thoughtless, troublesome, and arrogant. But I tried. I don’t know what the result will be. That is because within me, the story is not yet finished. I don’t know what will happen to Shinji, Misato or Rei. I don’t know where life will take them. Because I don’t know where life is taking the staff of the production. I feel that I am being irresponsible. But… But it’s only natural that we should synchronize ourselves with the world within the production. I’ve taken on a risk: “It’s just an imitation.”

…July 17, 1995_29ya, In the studio, a cloudy, rainy day.

…By the way, Shinji’s name came from a friend of mine. Misato’s name came from the hero of a manga. The name Ritsuko came from a friend of mine in middle school. I borrowed from everywhere. Even names that have no bearing on anything actually came from the countless rules that govern these things. It might be fun if someone with free time could research them.

–“What were we trying to make here?” Anno, original manga vol 1 (for character name sources, see Anno’s 2000_24ya discussion of Character Name Origins)

[Anno] ’“It isn’t completed yet, but in episodes one and two my recent ‘feelings’ should be faithfully reflected. When I realized this I thought ‘Ah, well done.’”

… [Anno] “I think this will become a greater cult film than ‘Nadia’, because there will probably not be another work with this ‘feeling’.”

… We visited Gainax towards the end of January. By then, they were busy refining the first few episodes of the new TV series “New Century Evangelion.” To start off our information gathering, Hideaki Anno said, “How could I think of doing an old-fashioned robot anime?”

… Thinking this, we wondered why he would participate in and direct a robot anime project.

“One reason is that we thought it would be good to put on TV a robot anime that is not sponsored by a toy company.”

He said that since having an attached sponsor can interrupt how the mecha is designed, this work was not going to have one. He also said, “Robot anime has been stuck in a pattern, and we wanted to break out of it.” They are trying to make a film with an entirely different stance than “robot anime” being made with tie-ins to ordinary toy companies. [See the Otsuki anecdote in the “Shinseiki Evangelion” chapter of The Notenki Memoirs.]

He said that originally this was not a project that started with a psyched-up feeling, but when they began the real project it began turning into a fairly “hard and heavy” robot anime.

Also, as he was involved in this work he had a thought something like the following. “For example, I wonder if a person over the age of twenty who likes robot anime is really happy.¹ He could find greater happiness elsewhere. Regrettably, I have my doubts about his happiness.”

… The protagonist, Ikari Shinji, is not portrayed as an “otaku”, but from my point of view [the reporter’s] he is not making a positive start in his work, and he could be considered a dependent young man.

“As I was making this work I wanted to try to consider what in the world could the ‘happiness’ of such a person be?”

… Ayanami Rei

Voice by: Hayashibara Megumi

Pilot of Evangelion device #0. Reticent, rarely showing her emotions, a nihilist. She’s 14.

Katsuragi Misato

Voice by: Mitsuishi Kotono

Introduced as being like Shinji’s older sister. She appears to be an optimist, but she has a core of firmness. Her private life is quite….. She’s 29.

(Ritsuko image) Akagi Ritsuko

Voice by: Yamaguchi Yuriko

The person responsible for the Evangelion development team. Intellectual, firm. She and Misato are close friends. 30.

(Shinji image) Ikari Shinji

Voice by: Ogata Megumi

Protagonist of the stories. He becomes the pilot of the #1 Evangelion device. He’s a relatively obedient honor-student type. He’s 14.

(Asuka image) Soryu Asuka Langley

Voice by: Miyamura Yuko

Pilot of the #2 Evangelion device. High-spirited personality, Japanese-German ancestry, from the American quarter. 14.

–“Skill Up”; (“From Newtype, April 4, p. 4, article entitled ‘Skill Up’.” Internal evidence dates this to April 1995_29ya)

LD Liner Notes Vol.4

Voices from the Cast - Miyamura Yuko

… Director Anno: “Hey, what kind of stuffed animal do you like?”

Miyamura: “Monkeys (heart mark)”

…[Note: Asuka’s stuffed monkey doll is a pre-Eva character drawn by Miyamura Yuko, and is her trademark, appearing in many of her other works and sometimes her autograph.]

–https://web.archive.org/web/20080515215447/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/2001-December/040737.html

A question from a listener (for Kotono [Mitsuishi]), “Is there any new TV show that you will be doing a voice for this spring? Is there any new show that you will be doing with Megumi?”
Megumi [Hayashibara] said, “Well not this spring, but this fall. Evangelion. We will start recording the voices soon.”
Kotono said, “It has robots, and a boy rides in it. I still don’t know much about it.”
Megumi said, “I’m surprised that I’m doing a girl who doesn’t talk much at all.”
Kotono said, “Yeah, there are three who ride the robots.”
Megumi said, “The cute girl, the boy (Ogata Megumi), and the quiet girl (me). I have to challenge something new.”
Kotono said, “For me this is the first time I’m doing a role of someone older than myself.”
Megumi said, “I also auditioned for that role too. But the director suddenly asked me to audition for the other role too. I thought that it wasn’t me, but you never know what happens.”

–1995-03-25 episode of Tokyo Boogie Nights radio show, Hitoshi Doi; in the same show, Megumi Hayashibara discusses her surprise at the male homosexual villains in the recently airing Sailor Moon - one of which seiyuu, Ishida Akira, would voice Kaworu Nagisa

What I read in Evangelion Design Work, is that, Mr. Anno asked every staff on the team to write out what the ending of the TV series should be and in the Design Book Yamashita Ikuto (the main mecha designer) re-printed his story…

BTW, Mr. Anno ask the staff to do that as a way to generate ideas/leads for his own ending.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20110717213005/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-August/019406.html (Tentative guess at 1995_29ya rather than ’94)

• _Evangelion Design Work (the aforementioned Yamashita book; partial translation of his movie proposal; next to nothing on his TV ending)

Yesterday I bought “Sore wo Nasu mono: Shin Seiki EVANGELION design works” by YAMASHITA Ikuto and KIO Seiji. ISBN number is 4-04-852908-0. On page 44, YAMASHITA comments:

Well, ‘serious’ fans may feel anger that I got inspiration of EVA-02 from synchronized-swimmer-gay(1) with goggles who appears with crying ‘SEXY DYNAMITES!’ before the last stage of PC-Engine game ‘CHOU-ANIKI’(2)

(1) not a typo of “synchronized-swimmer-guy”. (2) “Chou-ANIKI” is, IIRC, a shooting game. What’s peculiar of the game is, both background story and all the characters are written/designed under the concept of “stereotypical image of muscular gay” ( again, not “muscular guy” ).

–https://web.archive.org/web/20121112171242/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-March/012161.html

In 1995_29ya, Sadamoto told Newtype magazine what led him to volunteer for the manga job:

Four years after Nadia, I began to think it would be fun to write and plan a manga. At the time I had no experience in that area, but it was something I really wanted to try. Everyone wanted to see my previous work or sales figures, but I had nothing that would prove I was a bona fide comic creator

The approaching release of Gainax’s new series gave Sadamoto that chance to prove himself. Resisting the doubts of his Gainax colleagues, Sadamoto took the scripts and storyboards for the TV episodes, and began producing 24 pages a month for Shonen Ace magazine.

‘When I started on the manga, we’d only plotted about five or six episodes, so I didn’t have too much of an idea where we were going. We hadn’t even decided what colour Evangelion was going to be, or how to design the cockpit! Also, although I was very well acquainted with certain characters through my assignments as a designer, I had to immerse myself in the rest of the Evangelion universe, in whose creation I hadn’t been so closely involved.’

For this reason, the first few issues of the manga kept extremely close to the TV storyline. But Sadamoto was already using the manga to play up his own interests, accentuating elements that might have passed the viewing audience by. In the manga version, the first shot of the underwater angel attack shows it drifting past the submerged hulk of the Gainax building. The character of Doctor Ikari is slightly more sympathetic: the Sadamoto version permits him a relieved smile when Shinji agrees to pilot the Evangelion. It also puts the early episodes back into chronological order, ditching the anime’s flashback approach which saves Shinji’s first battle until the end of episode two.

‘Of course I wanted to add as much to it as I could,’ says Sadamoto, ‘and to try and make the manga version slightly different. The TV series is very much dominated by Hideaki Anno and the staff, but the manga is a “Sadamoto Brand” product, because I’ve been able to devote myself to it.’

Sadamoto recognised early that the anime team would always have more success with the moving, full-colour battle scenes, and so concentrates more on the characters’ thoughts and feelings. Consequently, there is more in the manga on the psychological damage suffered by the pilots, and extra scenes of Shinji recuperating in the hospital. Most notably, there is a cycle of dream sequences in which Shinji encounters his mother, only to see her transform into a fearsome Evangelion machine.

–Manga Mania, 1998_26ya?

Hayao Miyazaki, from January 1995_29ya Comic Box, “I Understand NAUSICAA a Bit More than I Did a Little While Ago” (compare Anno’s2010 memories about making new Nausicaa, and Miyazaki’s 2013_11ya comment “I’ve come to think lately that if he wanted to do it, it would be fine for him to do it”):

MIYAZAKI; Nausicaa and Kushana are very similar - they are two sides of the same coin. But Kushana, whose background I showed a little of, has some deep, physical wounds. I think that she had the capacity to become an extremely fair ruler. But I didn’t know if a competent front line commander was capable of being a competent ruler, so I didn’t make her one. I made her a surrogate ruler, someone who could take the place of the king. I thought that she could be limited to that role. But as I wrote about her, I kept feeling sorry for her. Her character wasn’t being communicated through the writing. I was perplexed. I thought that I had to touch on her relationship with her mother and that I had to depict her more clearly, but I had only one page in which to do all that. In the end, though, I had no choice but to get to it.

• I hadn’t thought about it that deeply. Mr. Anno (director of ‘Fushigi no Umi no Nadia’) previously sent a note saying that he would like to write a story with Kushana as the heroine. I feel that it would be a rather interesting story.

MIYAZAKI: No, I don’t think so. It would be boring. He just wants to play war games. I don’t dislike playing war - I think that the battle scene I did in volume 3 was done perfectly. It was done well enough that I could say “See! Told you so!!” - but that’s just overweening pride. When it comes to depicting war, I think that I can do it just as well as anyone else. But Nausicaa is not a manga about war.

• But [obstinately] what’s wrong with having an hour and a half long fighting scene with Kushana as a peerless front line commander?

MIYAZAKI: It’s useless. Terrible. Well, that goes without saying, doesn’t it? If that’s the only plan that’s been made then it would be much better to just give up the movie entirely. [laughs] Lots of movies about peerless front line commanders have already been done in America. Combat for example. [the 1962^–₁₀1972_52ya series Combat!?]

— What was the reason you wanted to do an original work, despite these circumstances?

Anno: Of course, for myself (laughs). There is always a very personal reason for creating [something]. There is probably no need to say any more [than that] here.

— Even so, insisting on something original-?

Anno: It’s probably so my self-existence will remain within the film.

–Newtype January 1995_29ya; “Creator’s Talk - Hideaki Anno x Yoshiyuki Sadamoto”, untranslated transcript; excerpt by Numbers-kun; there is apparently another interview in the January issue: “on page 14 it’s between Anno and a couple of the Seiyuu”

1995 S

1995 T

• 1995-animerica-newdirectionrobotanime.pdf

• 1995-ebert-chicagosuntimes-honneamisereview.txt

• 1995-mangazine-previewdescription.pdf

1996 P

Because there is no real original in this world but one’s life.

–Anno, Studio Voice October 1996; translated by Numbers-kun

Interviewer: Is it possible that the fates of the characters in the manga (drawn by Sadamoto) will differ from the anime?

Sadamoto: Well, that’s possible. I might have everybody die, for example. Maybe something like, “This is getting difficult to keep up… Okay, next month is the final episode!” -Kaboom! (laugh) Third Impact occurs and it’s over! (laugh)

Interviewer: (laugh) Well, I hope you won’t let that happen…

–translated by Bochan_bird: “The Japanese for this interview can be found on P64 of the Photo File”Eve”. (Interviewed on February 14, 1996_28ya - before the initial airing of the TV series ended)”

• 1996-animerica-hideakipanel.pdf (French translation)

On the unique appearance of the Evangelion Units…

ANNO: There is a monster in Japan called the oni, which has two horns sticking out of its head, and the overall image of the EVA is based on that. I wanted also to have an image that beneath the image of that robot monster is a human. It’s not really a robot, but a giant human, so it’s different from other robot mecha such as those in Gundam.

On Gunbuster’s alternate future – is it dominated by Russia?

ANNO: There’s a Japanese Empire. In the year 2000_24ya, the U.S. and Japan had a war, and Japan occupied Hawaii. Sorry.

On the decision to have the final episode of Gunbuster in black-and-white…

ANNO: When you have color, you have an extra dimension of information. Color would have gotten in the way of the sense of scale we wanted to portray with the black hole bomb. Also – no one had ever done it before.

On the date 2015 which figures in both Gunbuster and Evangelion…

ANNO: The date is from an old show I liked as a kid, and it was also the year in which Tetsuwan Atom took place.

…On anime creators who inspired him…

ANNO: Outside of my staff, Mr. Yoshiyuki Tomino. Tomino’s Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Runaway Ideon are my favorite anime besides Yamato. Hayao Miyazaki, with whom I worked on Nausicaa, animating the scene where the God-Soldier fires, was also a mentor to me.

…On how the protagonist of Evangelion reflects Anno himself…

ANNO: Shinji does reflect my character, both in conscious and unconscious part. In the process of making Evangelion, I found out what kind of person I am. I acknowledged that I’m a fool.

On his religious beliefs…

ANNO: I don’t belong to any kind of organized religion, so I guess I could be considered agnostic. Japanese spiritualism holds that there is kami (spirit) in everything, and that’s closer to my own beliefs.

On whether he is a vegetarian like Nadia and Rei …

ANNO: I like tofu. I just don’t want to eat meat or fish. It’s not for religious reasons.

On expressing himself through animation…

ANNO: Animation makes sense to people in the process of their seeing it. So when people get confused by my themes, or cannot get the overall message, the connection is not really going through, because it didn’t satisfy that person. So there would be less meaning for that individual. There has to be a relationship that comes into being between the person watching and what the character’s saying in the animation itself.

…On Evangelion’s success…

ANNO: As for all the merchandising, it’s just a matter of economics. It’s strange that Evangelion has been a hit. Everyone in it is sick!

On his next project…

ANNO: Another TV show, probably some kind of space adventure.

…On the future of the anime industry…

ANNO: The creators have to change their frame of mind for the field to advance. And it doesn’t look too hopeful in today’s Japan. It’s in a critical condition right now. I don’t think there’s any bright future. That’s because the people who are producing it are not doing well. But there’s also problems in the people who are watching it. The people who make it, and the people who want it, they’re always wanting the same things. They’ve been making only similar things for the past ten years, with no sense of urgency. To get it going once more, you need to force people to go outside, to go out again.

…On his hobbies and interests…

ANNO: My hobby is scuba diving, and besides science fiction, I like to read romance novels written by women. Since I’m a male, I don’t really know the emotions of women. And because I want to understand their feelings, and create more realistic female characters, this is something I have to pursue.

To an American fan who boasted of having spent all his schoolbook money on anime goods…

ANNO: You’re a fool. Study harder. If I could go back in time and tell my college-age self something, I would tell him to study harder, too.

…On getting into the anime industry…

ANNO: If you want to get into anime, my best advice to you as a creator is to please have diverse interests in things besides animation. Look outward, first of all. Most anime makers are basically autistic. They have to try and reach out, and truly communicate with others. I would guess that the greatest thing anime has ever achieved is the fact that we’re holding a dialogue right here and now.

–“Virtual Panel! Meet Hideaki Anno,” Animerica 4:9, p. 27 https://web.archive.org/web/20020606012703/http://masterwork.animemedia.com/Evangelion/anno.html

“This was a one-page transcript of Anno’s remarks at Anime Expo ’96. This is hard to imagine today, but at that point (July 1996_28ya) the series had been over for two months, yet many American fans still hadn’t seen it–not because they didn’t want to, but because there was as yet no digital distribution of anime, fan or licensed–only by getting a physical copy of the tape could you watch it. This limited the speed at which an audience could grow, of course, and ADV’s version was not yet on the market. Anno said a few things at the AX’96 panel that have been remembered, but what I find most interesting is”when asked about Evangelion’s last two episodes, which upset many fans, Anno cooly replied, ‘I have no problem with them. If there’s a problem, it’s all with you guys. Too bad.’” I’m not absolutely sure (it may be in my transcription notes) but I think Anno might have said “too bad” in English, presumably for emphasis.”

–Carl Horn on the AX panel

• Aerial Magazine version of Anime Expo ’96 Anno panel, by Amos Wong

“Pen-Pen was a creation of Sadamoto, to soften the atmosphere. But I tended to forget its existence.”

“I’d say Asuka. She’s cute.”

“Last year I brought back some of your miracle drug, melatonin.”

– Some of Carl Horn’s (TODO: ask him for rest of 3 pages) random notes of things Anno said

This was excerpted from the Neon Genesis Evangelion Book Two:3’s letters page, featuring Q&A with Hiroyuki Yamaga from Fanime Con ’98.

And speaking of letters pages, Book One:3 had a question Widya asked Hideaki Anno at Anime Expo ’96:

WS: Would you consider yourself to be more of the John Lennon or Paul McCartney of Gainax?

HA: I don’t listen to the Beatles, so I don’t know.

–Fuuma Monou

There are too many painful things for people to go on living in reality.

Thus, humans run and hide in dreams.

They watch films as entertainment.

…If the director so desires, even malice toward others could be introduced straight into film. I guess that’s one of the attractive things about anime. Changing the tribulation of reality into dreams and conveying that to the people… is that what our work is? For the sake of people who forget reality until the bill comes due, who want to devote themselves to happy fallacies. I guess that’s our job in the entertainment and service² sector.

One of the distinctive features of Studio Ghibli’s works is that, even if there are obsessive actions, there are things which appear to have not forfeited their goal. Forfeiting ones goal leads to despair, and is a sickness that can prove fatal. I wonder if Miya-san and his people are familiar with that feeling of despair. Perhaps they don’t want to show that anguish to other people. I think they specifically don’t want to display the negative things called self-loathing and complexes to others. That’s why Studio Ghibli’s works can’t show anything but superficial happiness and a reproduction of reality with all the dirty things omitted. A fiction that imitates reality, and nothing more than a single dream. I suppose that is the governance of entertainment

…When I helped out as an animator for Nausicaa, there’s something that Miya-san often told me. It seems to have come from a Chinese sage, but “There are three conditions for accomplishing something. Those are: Being young, Being poor, and Being unknown.” And, “No matter what, make friends.” So I was taught. This was more than 12 years ago. Yes, I’ve known Miya-san approximately 12 years. In that time, I think Miya-san has achieved various things. However, he also lost many things.

…Postscript. Yesterday, when I was in a state of mental collapse after my latest work had ended [Nadia?], I was moved deep within my heart by an encouraging phone call I received. The words of concern proceeding from the receiver became joy on my end as, with an exultant face, my whole body was buoyed. In secret, I rejoiced in receiving some recognition for myself. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

–“A Dream World That Hasn’t Forfeited its Goal” –Hideaki Anno, Ghibli ga Ippai Liner Notes; apparently dates to before August 1996

“Evangelion is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give his/her own answer. In other words, we’re offering viewers to think by themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for many Evangelion viewers, they may expect us to provide the ‘all-about Eva’ manuals, but there is no such thing. Don’t expect to get answers by someone. Don’t expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find our own answers.”

“…Evangelion is my life and I have put everything I know into this work. This is my entire life. My life itself.”

“…For [my generation, after the political failures of the previous], there was nothing to speak of but what was within the ‘magic box’ (television). It’s pathetic, but we had no other options. I think admitting that is a start.”

…[Anno says something to the effect that he (consciously) identifies with Shinji, Asuka, and Misato, but Kaworu and especially Rei belong to his unconscious (Kaworu is his “shadow”).]

• the untranslated 11/96 Newtype (mirror) interview with Anno; translation sourcing:

  1. Protoculture Addicts #43, translated by Miyako Graham from 11/96 Newtype

  2. Protoculture Addicts #43

  3. Numbers-kun

  4. Numbers-kun

Protoculture Addicts #43; Anno, newtype interview: psychology (may be source of claim “Although Hideaki Anno has admitted to being influenced by Jungian psychology, this statement desperately begs a Lacanian reading of the formation of identity.”), ending, interpretation; but maybe it was actually PA63? TODO: when my back-issues finally come in, figure this out

Protoculture Addicts #39; Anno in Newtype interview: satisfactory ending, censorship

However - in Protoculture Addicts issue 42, the editorial speaks of a discussion with a Gainax employee at Anime Expo 1996_28ya (when Anno attended). It says, “[…] did confirm that the last episodes (from 19 on, but mainly 25-26) were censored following pressure from the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association; but no mention of any legal action) and that they had been botched.”

–https://web.archive.org/web/20080512150745/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/2001-August/040229.html; see also https://web.archive.org/web/20111117050807/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/2001-November/040705.html

Protoculture Addicts #39 excerpts

According to what he said, making EVANGELION was a very difficult job, as we can imagine. He really looked tired and his words were sometimes too harsh to be reported here.

…“EVANGELION is my life”, Anno says, “and I have put everything I know into this work. This is my entire life. My life itself!” As many fans want to know about the ending of this series, episodes 25 & 26, he says that he is making a different version and those two girls (Misato and Ritsuko) are dead in the end. He says, “I truly believe that sex and violence are part of our human life. These days in Japan, I think Japanese children need to know about those things more… instead of being protected too much from the society. Those matters are a little like a poison: we need to give them to the children little by little to establish an immunity, so they would have the ability and mental strength to resist. A lot of youth I know just don’t have this immunity, and when something terrible happens, they can’t deal with it. In a way, the poison can be the medication at the same time, and I believe that the more we know about those things, the more we can protect ourselves against specific matters.”

Among Japanese fans, Rei is the most popular character from this series, and I asked him why. He says, “Rei-chan is very popular… I think that she’s very quiet and doesn’t wish to talk very much, and doesn’t complain. In Japan, I suppose that girls like that are very much desired. They’re quiet, patient, and don’t complain and work hard. As for Rei-chan, she was created as a pilot for Evangelion… in other words, she is a clone of a human being. When we humans are born, in general, we just show up without having a purpose in our human life! Later, we find a purpose and choose our own way and decide how to live our life. Rei-chan’s case is not like that. She was created solely for the purpose of being an EVA’s pilot and I’m not quite sure if she’s happy.”

…Anno-san says, “Gendo is a type of person who can see and think about the welfare of an organization as a whole. In other words, he’d do anything to succeed. He takes drastic and extreme measures by fair means or foul, or by hook or by crook, in order to accomplish his own purpose. In some ways, he’s mean. He hardly cares about Shinji.”

…I asked him what kind of foods he likes, and he says, “For my daily diet, I eat and love tofu, and I like fish too. I’m not a strict vegetarian but I just don’t like the taste of meat, so I end up eating vegetables.”

…He also says that he has been trying to read romance novels. He says, “I’m kinda shy myself and I don’t know much about the feelings of young women. In order to write something like EVANGELION, to create Misato and other young women, I have to understand more about feelings and their behaviors. Reading romance novels seems to help a lot.”

Basically, he says he practices no religion, but he believes in the human spirit. He’s very much interested in studying Christianity, but personally he feels he hasn’t received much influence from it.

Now, this is Anno-san’s question: “Why has our animation become so popular in foreign countries?”

…To conclude, here is an extract from an interview of Hideaki Anno in the November issue of NEWTYPE magazine (1996-11, pg. 20-23):

I didn’t have any interest in studying human psychology in the past. I only took a course about it at university, but I suppose I always had something in my mind to analyze human psyche. I thought I wasn’t interested in humans very much, but then, when I started talking about myself, I needed words to explain. So, I started reading books on psychology. From Episode #16, EVANGELION’s story went into the direction to ask just what the human mind is all about inside. I wrote about myself. My friend lent me a book on human psychological illness and this gave me a shock, as if I finally found what I needed to say.³

Lately, due to the ending of episodes #25 & 26, some people started watching EVANGELION. They were not anime fans. In fact, many of them are females and they tell me that they really enjoyed episode #25, objectively. Most anime fans are furious. I understand their anger. I can’t help laughing when hard-core anime fans say that we did a very lousy job, with intentional negligence. No, we didn’t. No staff members did a lousy job. I feel sad that those fans couldn’t see our efforts. Personally, I think the original TV version we showed ended beautifully.

EVANGELION is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give his/her own answer. In other words, we’re offering viewers to think by themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for many EVANGELION viewers, they may expect us to provide the “all-about EVA” manuals, but there is no such thing. Don’t expect to get answers by someone. Don’t expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find our own answers.

–Miyako Graham, Protoculture Addicts #43 quoting Anno at AX96, and a Newtype

The design concept in Eva was that the characters themselves should lean towards a relatively subdued appearance. But the plug suits! Gaudy as hell. Embarrassing–I mean, they almost look like, y’know, body paint. Naturally, I thought the cos-players wouldn’t even consider attempting it.

But there were, at the December ’95 Comic Market, the February ’96 Wonder Festival, at the… You know, I hate crowds, so ordinarily the whole cos-play scene is no more than a distant reality. But this… this, I had to see. Specifically, I had to see the girls in sky-blue wigs, wearing white plugsuits. Mmmm. I had to see it.

–Sadamoto, manga vol 2 commentary

[The show had] a ‘live feeling.’ [cf. May/June 1996_28ya NewType] I [Anno] was creating everything in accordance with the situation at the time….The truth is, the ‘complementation project,’ up until about half-way through the series, I was doing things without having clearly decided [about] the complementation of human beings, [about] what is being complemented.

…I [Anno] really hate the fact that animation - or at least Evangelion, the work I’ve been doing - has become merely a “place of refuge.” Nothing but a place where one escapes from reality - by becoming deeply absorbed in it, [people] simply ran from the pain of reality, and from there was hardly anything that came back to reality. To that extent I feel like [the work] did not arrive [at reality]. Steadily the number of people taking refuge [in the work] increases, and if this keeps up, in the extreme case, it would become a religion. It would become the same [situation as with] the Aum adherents and Shoko Asahara. Perhaps, if I did things correctly, I would have had the potential to become the founder of a new religion, but I hate [that idea]. For clutching at straws [lit. “grasping at a spider’s web”], one person is enough.

–Translated by Numbers-kun; first quote, second quote; from an otherwise untranslated July 1996_28ya Animage interview with Anno and Yuko Miyamura: https://web.archive.org/web/20080127001226/http://johakyu.net/lib/2007_17ya/07/2007-07-27-000535.php

The sudden abandonment of the narrative conclusion and puzzles of the fictional world that had been constructed up until the 24th episode, brought about an intense shock in animation fans….

It’s fair to say that Evangelion is a story which depicts “anxiety without a cause” which exhaustively ends with a convincing feeling of tension. It’s clear that this kind of feeling is widespread when we look at the AUM incident and its repercussions. On this point, the work has a striking feeling of the present. However, the thing that we should pay closer attention to is the paradoxical whereby feelings of anxiety are always determined materialistically, but for the people who are caught in the center of this kind of anxiety, they can only experience it abstractly….

One of my friends who is from Poland described his completely accurate impression of Rei as being related to the problems of post-war, in other words Rei is linked to the problems of Bosnia, etc. At the same time I thought that the room overlaps with a science laboratory, particularly a medical laboratory. Therefore, ANNO intersected images of refugees/ trauma with the “scientific” – this is the only word that can accurately express the situation – motif of stark anti-decorativeness. (After all, this would be linked to questions about AUM, more specifically to the problem of “Satyan,” AUM’s scientific laboratories) Rei’s solitude is grounded in a completely tactile substantiality which gives us extremely realistic images of the discommunication that children of the present face. And these images of discommunication belong neither to Kogyal(“child girl”)-like autism nor to otaku-like autism which has been defined in opposition to Kogyal-like autism. (And these two types of autism are nothing more than the opposing gender extremities of post-modern decorativeness)

Motifs such as charming beautiful girls and hi-tech machines which has strengthened the barrenness of anime, and in the end became important elements in his [Hideaki Anno’s] work. It became crucial to articulate 90’s-like problems through stereotypes and abstract motifs. To begin with “Evangelion” is an extremely otaku-like work which was by lots of details referenced from former anime and science fiction films, from the design concept of cockpit to the brand of beer (Here in this aspect I don’t have time to treat it, although it’s important) In other words, it can be said that ANNO broke through the literary imagination of the 1980’s by strongly mixing and re-editting the motifs of the anime-like imagination, which had been completely barren for some ten years….

In the opening scene of “Evangelion” he already inserts a cut of a character which had initially been introduced in the 24th episode. The countless devices of this type means that Anno started the broadcast after conceiving the total structure pretty clearly [indeed?]. Actually, the speed of the narrative development of numerous foreshadowing in the first few episodes indicates that his work was made by reverse calculation of a precise, total construction. The flavor of the episodes of the first half is consistently the same. (Some comical episodes after the 8th episode are considered within this consistency). This story revived the genre of animation and at the same time, clarified the limits of the literary imagination…

According to Anno himself, this change of attitude came about while creating and producing the work. “Evangelion” was received enthusiastically among anime fans. He said that in noticing that autistic, enthusiast reception, he thought he should changed the entire conceptual structure of the work, and in the end that’s what he did. After all of the episodes were broadcast, in what looks like a self-tormenting, auto-destructive critique of anime fans that ANNO would repeat many times in radio interviews, specialty anime magazines, etc., he would clearly reiterate the personal intellectual history of MIYAZAKI and OSHII. All three of them isolated themselves from “anime-like things” owing to their hate of the autism after they achieved overwhelming success among anime fans. But ANNO is completely different from them on two critical points. The first difference occurs in “Evangelion” with its simultaneous deep absorption in the anime-like and it’s distance from it. In Anno’s case the change was terribly compressed. In Miyazaki’s case, the change occurred between the time of the success of “Lupin the Third, The Castle of Cagliostro” (1979_45ya) and “Totoro,” and in Oshii’s case he took about ten years between the time of the television version of “Urusei Yatsura” and “Mobile Police, Patlabor 2.”

In the second difference, as perhaps an inevitable result of that temporal compression, in ANNO the successful critique of anime was brought about by the logic of acceleration and multiplication, while in the case of MIYAZAKI and OSHII the critique of anime succeeded because of the logic of removal. The last half of “Evangelion” takes the form of a critique of previous anime works through developing all the narrative possibilities and anime-like expressions and pushing them to their limits; in other words producing a totality of the anime-like. Simply put, in the second half of “Evangelion” ANNO produces a super-complicated and super-high speed anime and thereby achieved a qualitative change. Several compositions were made for the purposes of constructing a 90’s savior narrative were rapidly inverted and were instead employed to tear to shreds the interactive communication among the characters. This means that for ANNO, he deliberately cut off communication with anime fans who supposedly can only appreciate works by identifying themselves with and investing their emotions into the characters….

There are no compromises in Anno’s second half. By employing difficult lines and the omission of mise-en-scene , quick scene shifts, and busy cuts with few frames (in animation this is extremely luxurious because it requires a new illustration for speeds less than one frame-per-second) he manages to condense the narrative which would usually have required several episodes into one. For example, Rei dies in the time of just two minutes. We are overwhelmed by its speed. On the other hand simultaneously Anno will one after another invert riddles in the second part of the story that had been solved in the first half. Therefore, if we only watch an episode only one time, the plot will be almost impossible to follow. (In other words this means that ANNO completely disregarded the age of the viewers who would have been expected to be watching at that broadcast time following the rules of the televisual medium. ) Nevertheless, in the last half of “Evangelion” in a dimension completely separate from that of the narrative logic, he was fairly successful at communicating the feeling of anxiety and the misery of the characters who are one after another wounded to the point of death. How did he accomplish that?

The last half of “Evangelion” gradually loses the co-ordination with the complicated foreshadowing that was installed in the first half and loses the science-fictional, simulational reasonableness of the composition of the fictional world. (Which is natural given by the change of direction) However, it doesn’t mean that the structure became careless. Instead a density and strange necessity arises. For example in episode #22 there is the unfolding of an incomprehensible story as Eva brings down the angel on a satellite orbit only by the throw of a special spear. A rational explanation is not even provided inside the story. But certainly the unfolding of the story possesses a certain inevitability with the flow of the scenes. That “inevitability” which exists especially independent from the narrative strategy is the true worth of the last half of “Evangelion.” That inevitability allows for the dissemination of despair and tension….

To put it boldly, from episode 17 until episode 24 (but especially in episode 18, 19, 22, and 23) at the moment when that condensed unfolding reaches its highest point, he several times makes me thing of GODARD. That is not an explanation related to the quality of cinema itself. That doesn’t mean that ANNO tried to cite or parody GODARD. Anybody can borrow stereotypical “Godard-like” images. (Of course ANNO himself does it. For instance using lots of subtitles)

– “Anime or something like it: Neon Genesis Evangelion”, Hiroki Azuma; the quotes from Anno are from an untranslated Hiroki Azuma interview with Anno: https://web.archive.org/web/20080127001231/http://johakyu.net/lib/2007_17ya/07/2007-07-27-000536.php. Numbers-kun translates part of the interview:

Azuma: Finally, only one question about the “set up” of the work. The enemy called “Angel” has no concrete image. It might be a pyramid, a ring of light, a virus…. in what way did you intend that?

Anno: They were paradoxically presented as things without form. For me the idea of an “enemy” is ambiguous, because my relationship to “society” is ambiguous….. The adults of the previous generation taught us that, despite fighting against the system, they were not able to accomplish anything.

Azuma: I felt it was awfully close to the image of the enemy [presented] by Aum Shinrikyo.

Anno: Aum is part of my generation. I understand them well.⁴

Azuma: Although I’m roughly ten years your junior, from my perspective there seems to be a strong sympathy with Aum from people of your generation. But if you say “an Aum-like thing,” you have to distinguish it from the reality of Aum, right?

Anno: We create works that “rationalize” or “sublimate” our “Aum-like” parts. The people who joined Aum did not do this. Hating society, they cut themselves off by their own volition. I wish Aum itself had “sublimated,” but I think instead it steadily came apart and finally collapsed, ending with this act of self-destruction. Even though there was, to a certain extent, some talent there, overall I had no sympathy for the organization.

Omori: However, [Ryu] Mitsuse-san is more governed by something like an Eastern sense of the transience of things, but the world of Evangelion is more along the lines of Western civilization……

Anno: I dislike Western civilization. I don’t place much trust in Western civilization.

Omori: That is, [you consider it] as something one must repudiate? Not positive -

Anno: No, it’s something like, because I don’t care that much about it, I can make use of it. If I were a Christian believer I couldn’t have inserted Christian elements [into Eva] in that way. I would have been scared to.

Omori: No question. Because you have no attachment to [Christianity], you can make use of the names of the angels without being concerned. Ah, [you can use] these names because the word makes a strong impression, for example. [You can use them] as you think appropriate.

Anno: Even if I received complaints from the perspective of Westerners about the equation of [the terms] ‘apostle’ and ‘angel’, I don’t think it would make any difference [to me?]. Well, there is a single American [see the Michael House interview for his version] in our company, and he scolded me about various things. “You can’t do this.” As I had expected. But I did those things [anyway], I think, without taking any notice of that.

–excerpt from discussion between Hideaki Anno and SF critic/translator Nozomi Omori; translation by Numbers-kun (full original)

• Johakyu.net’s (untranslated) Anno writings, statements, interviews, etc. 1983^–₂₇2010_14ya: https://web.archive.org/web/20080122121945/http://johakyu.net/lib/anno-interviews-year.php

The first film will be a feature-length edit of the first 24 episodes, the second, an all-new version of the final two which will provide, according to Anno, “the same ending, but from a different perspective.”

–The Anime Guide

Check the second last color page of the filmbook Vol.9. There it says “the smile of Shinji – who is complemented. And then this is one ending, out of many possible ones”.

–Patrick Yip

…here is the literal translation: [TV Filmbook Vol.9 (Ep26), p.95, seq.19 checkpoint]

“Congratulations” “Congratulations” “Congratulations” Shinji’s friends, acquaintances and parents unanimously congratulate him. Amidst the many words of congratulations, a smile appears at the corners of Shinji’s mouth. A happy/contented smile – that is the figure of the complemented/instrumentalized Shinji. This ending is just one shape, one possibility out of many.

–Bochan_bird

…that particular checkpoint at the bottom of Newtype TV filmbook #9 p25 has a big “maybe” attached. This is not the usual “appears” or “seems”, but instead an explicit “maybe” (ka mo shirenai). The literal translation is:

Misato stretched out her hand to Shinji. At this time she may have intended to offer her body to comfort Shinji. However, this was merely substitutive behavior in order to assuage her own loneliness.

–Bochan_bird

Becoming more and more emotionally intense in later episodes, the clever and intricate design work, otaku in-jokes and bouncey “fan service” expected from Gainax are in EVANGELION interleaved with bizarre, brutal, surrealistic and shocking scenes which caused much controversy and even calls for a boycott against the show. Public outrage over the ambiguous, mocking conclusion of the series - combined with the factor of EVANGELION’s vast popularity - led to the announcement from Gainax that a double-feature EVA “movie” would be released in the spring of 1997_27ya. The first film will be a feature-length edit of the first 24 episodes, the second, an all-new version of the final two which will provide, according to Anno, “the same ending, but from a different perspective.”

–The Complete Anime Guide: Japanese Animation Film Directory & Resource Guide (second edition) (1997-02-01)

Okamoto (O) said that he watched Evangelion twice though he watched the ending first. He said the reference material he received along with the video has “controversial” written in it. He did not understand at first but later knew why once he watched the whole series.

O - Gunbuster is easier to understand. The final episode in the second video is black-and-white. I think it might be done to make it stand out - I mean the “Okarinasai” at the end.

A (Anno) - My generation was the age when black and white moved to color. I would like people living now to see how great to have color. That was 35 monochrome.

O - I love black and white. Perhaps nearly half of my works are black and white?

A - Recently there are more black and white CM on TV. Poster too. Somehow it is getting popular.

O - And then there is partial coloring.

A - “Part Color”… Everyone is now so familiar with beautiful full color, so on the contrary they see that as unusual.

O - But development cost is high. In the past development solution for black-and-white was always available. Now you need to order it first and then they make the development solution.

A - If it’s color development can be done in the same day. For black and white, they told me to give them 2 days and it became a problem to me schedule-wise. If there is a rush, they would not get it done unless they have 2 days.

O - But that thing does not fade. Print is easy to fade as time passes by.

A - It becomes reddish…

Then some talk about Okamoto’s Nikudan. Anno watched it twice and Okamoto said it’s more than enough…Anno said he still remembered a lot of the scenes and how they are edited and linked.

But the ones he watched most are The longest day of Japan and Battle of Okinawa⁵. He even played it as BGV [background video] when he was doing storyboarding at one time, and then slowly his attention was drawn to the video and ended up spending 3 hours watching it.

Then Okamoto talked about his filming Battle of Okinawa in Okinawa and the problem with lack of manpower and resource, ended up doing one of the characters.

Then Anno said it’s easier in anime – if one more character is needed just draw him. But Anno said anime and real life both have aspects that the other side may envy. For example in anime, the camera does not move, and the shadow and body motion needs to be made realistic. Even with CG it has become easier, it still has that CG feel. Anno then said for anime the main work is still about fixing the motion. Scrolling and wrapping the background is particularly inefficient.

Then more flattery from Anno about how Okamoto’s tempo and scene cutting is suitable for anime. And then Anno talked about frame aspect ratio – love Cinescope and miss its disappearance. Hate standard ratio and also not like Vista. He loves the way when Cinescope aspect is used audience have to follow the scene by moving their heads which is something not possible with TV watching.

Skipped the part that talks about Blood and Sand [血と砂 (No English release - reads “Chi to suna”), 1965_59ya] and Sengoku yarou [1963_61ya], and use of long shots. Except that Anno mentioned the fun thing with anime is that the photographer doubles as the actor in anime and in real-life you never see cameraman doubles as actor.

Very technical talk about how many frames of films to use for one blink. Anno said 6-7 frames, if he does not want the scene to get noticed, he put 6, if he wants to make sure it gets noticed he put at least 9 frames. And he said that if it is familiar and static scene, even 2 frames can leave an impression. 3 frames may already make it too slow. But if it is fighting it needs 7-8 frames. Took 12 frames in film, cut may be 5-6, depending on how the pictures look. And of course in dialogue how to cut is already predetermined. He said he spent 12 hours to cut 20 min of animation. The longest time took him 24 hours.

Skipped the part about talking with the audience.

About line of eye sight:

A - In the case of anime, the acting and performance usually does not take that much into account. One reason could be the character design. The eyes of the characters usually stress on the details of the eyes and this make it difficult to put acting by using line of sight. However, in Eva the character design is comparatively easier to do such acting, so I put some effort into that. Like where the character is looking at in that scene, or whether the audience are going to see the eyes or not…

Because it is so fundamental I took great care about it. So unusually I put instructions in the storyboard like “Eyes are looking here”. As I am influenced by director Okamoto, I used camera line of sight more than usual

O - if possible, line of sight should be on somewhere close. And on direction, A would look at B and then speak, and B would look back at A in reaction. It has to be like that…

A - for me, camera line of sight is often on the front. The drawing staff usually hates it. Drawing frontal face is more difficult and often it could not be done well. But if the line of sight goes the other way, it becomes hard to use it to act.

O - There is power if the guy’s sight is close to you

A - yes, that’s it. That has energy in it.

A - I don’t like switching between front and side. It is easier to frame the position of eyes of the characters if it is a front to front exchanges between the lines of sights of two persons. Anime is at the end a 2D thing so the amount of information is limited.

When it is cut to a new scene, the audience will try to search for something to focus, and if it is a face, it will be the eyes they look first. So when the eyes have expressed the information, you can cut to another scene already. In TV anime, static scenes are many.

I think this is the proper way to go. Although I think acting by eyes is very important it is also very tedious. I don’t mind putting effort into doing it but somehow when I look at it later I have a feeling that it won’t get noticed, or nobody cares. And then I get a bit irritated.

O - Perhaps because eyes in anime characters are so big…

A - That has many physical reasons. If we do not make the eyes big and treat it as a symbol for the characters, it will become difficult for many to draw.

O - but one can act just by eyes. Like the position of the iris…

A - true, but as the end we only have the drawings to fall back on. If we overdo that kind of serious acting, it carries a risk of looking ridiculous. Character Design is a difficult thing.

About Director: Skipped the part about old time directors and struggles with studio about rights to edit. Except Anno said that for anime sometimes it needs to do editing without having all drawings. But he thinks editing is fun. Gather extra cuts and then try to experiment by switching the cuts or rearranging order and that is interesting. And even the question of whether to cut 2 frames or not can make a difference.

About Storyboarding: More flattery from Anno about watching Ghost Train and Okamoto said because of AD’s mistake he once needed to take 140-150 cuts in one day.

A - for movies, consensus is impossible

O - Director must be a dictator

A - He is a despot. Nothing can move forward if we have to wait until someone else makes a decision and approves. Also the personal character would not come out. In anime, an overall design called storyboard is made from the very beginning. And the production system is based on that design, so it is easier to unify opinions. On the other hand, there is an image that the director’s job is over once the storyboard is decided.

O - since we are on it, in Gunbuster and Eva last episode, there are parts in black and white, that flashback, that kind of stood out. It used quite a bit of sketch like drawings. Did the storyboard also cover that?

A - It was put in there.

O - Oh, those sketches were interesting. It somehow feels it’s moving.

Anime vs real-life film: Okamoto said real-life is not necessarily better. Anno said many anime directors want to do real-life. Many simply put drawings in place of real-life images and they seem to want to push anime to look closer to real life film. And both think it is not a good idea.

Final comment by Anno - Animation is a kind of static world, but there is a yearn for thrill when it switches from one static world to another static world and that cut to new scene is a most efficient way to get such thrill. And he thinks Okamoto’s style of film cutting has similar effect

A - in a TV anime, 30 min of video has a limit of 3500 pictures. So the images cannot move as much as I want. And how to squeeze out the best from the image in such lack of motion, it is all in the cutting.

–January 1997_27ya Animage interview/discussion between Anno and film-maker Kihachi Okamoto; Japanese source; translated by Patrick Yip/symbv; “In fact at the end of the article, it was stated the talk took place at the home of Okamoto in Ikuta-ku Kawasaki-shi Kanagawa Prefecture on Wednesday 1996_28ya Oct 16th.”

Nobi Nobita: “Evangelion reduced me to tears many times. It was truly the first time I cried out and my shoulders shook from weeping due to an anime. The first time it struck me was episode 14. I found the summary part well made too, but, after the commercial ended, there was the point when Rei’s monologue suddenly began. I was like, uwaaaaaa…. crying (laughs). It was like that was the first time it hit me. Up to that point I had thought it was just an entertaining anime, but I felt that this was my own issue.”

–Numbers-kun, June (original scan)

— Nobi-san was reduced to tears by Episode 14. How [did you compose] Rei’s monologue?

Anno: I had intended to recap the series in the first half of the episode. When I did the second half, I had long forgotten to explore what sort of person Rei was, so [I believed] it was necessary to develop her.

The script for episode 16 had been written before that. At first I had planned [a scenario where] Shinji and the angel would make “first contact,” but I wasn’t able to pull it off.

In the original conception, the languages of various countries and the cries of various animals and miscellaneous noises would appear on the screen; [selecting from] among these, the angel would finally hit upon Japanese. When this happens, there is a sharp noise, an image [suddenly] fills [the screen], and [the angel] asks if this is right for [Shinji’s] thought-language or thought-patterns; it would have started from there.

— That’s really cool.

Anno: As far as that goes, I thought it was fine, but then when [the angel] speaks Japanese that was the end [of my conception]. Kaworu-kun had been prepared as a “human type” [angel] from the start, and I wanted to hold on to the idea of [an angel] conversing in human language until then. When I wondered, well, what will [Shinji] do after he gets taken into the angel, I wondered if this might be [his] chance for self-reflection. Episode 16’s “inner space”-like environment was the first [of that sort]. That went relatively smoothly.

When it came to Rei, I was completely blocked. I couldn’t write anything at all. I had intended to make Rei a schizophrenic (分裂症的) character⁶, but when I tried to write, I couldn’t think of anything - nothing at all. Finally, I thought, when writing madness, one has no choice but to become mad. At that time I consulted a bit with my friends. When I asked if there was something composed by a madman, I was loaned a “Bessatsu Takarajima”⁷ volume on mental illness. It was an “easy and reasonable” book [イージーでリーズナブルな本] (laughs), but inside it there was a poem written by a madman.⁸ That was extremely good. When I read the poem I had a strong impression, as though this was the first time that I had come close. I had a feeling like a light glinting upon the tip of a sharp knife. It was certainly not the feeling of an ordinary man. That was good. If I think about it now, this sort of ‘capacity’ was [already] within me (laughs). ⁹ It’s mad to believe that the writings of a madman are of the highest quality. I read that [poem] and was filled with images; I was able to write [Rei’s monologue] in one sitting.¹⁰

It’s alleged that [the monologue] was based upon another text, but in all honesty, that’s not so. There was something that inspired it, but it was completely different. It’s alleged that it strongly resembles someone’s poem, and it that it was probably copied from it, but, “Ah, well, that man is probably crazy too” (laughs). It seems to be a famous poem. Being able to write something to the extent that it’s said to be the same, I can’t help thinking, “Don’t I have talent, too?” (laughs)¹¹

After the television broadcast finished, I became worse and worse, and went to see a doctor. I even seriously contemplated death. It’s like [I] was empty, with no meaning to [my] existence. Without the slightest exaggeration, I had put everything I had [into Evangelion]. Really. After that finished I realized that there was nothing [left] inside of me. When I asked [the doctor?] about it afterwards, [he said?] “Ah, that is an ‘identity crisis’ (self-collapse) [自我崩壊].”¹² It was a sensation as though I had taken something like extremely bad LSD. I was told, “It’s amazing that you were able to do that without medication.” Yeah, now, I feel very fortunate (laughs).¹³ In order to determine whether or not I really wanted to die, I went up to the rooftop of this building (the GAINAX building) and stuck my foot out, waiting to lose my balance and fall forward. I did it to personally determine [whether I wanted to live or die], [thinking,] if I really want to die, I should die here, and if I don’t want to die, I’ll step back. Well, it didn’t lead to my death, and so I’m here.

At first I was manic, but I rapidly developed a severe depression. I wouldn’t leave my office at work; I would leave only to use the bathroom, and I would almost never eat meals. A dilemma suddenly arose: I didn’t want to encounter other people, and yet I did want to encounter other people.

I don’t return home [at the end of the day], because the time and effort spent returning is bothersome. I just stay overnight here all the time; I don’t return home more than a few times in a year. At work, when I go to the bathroom, I go across the studio, I have to encounter people. I just wanted to think by myself, so I returned home for the first time in many months. My bed is never made, so there’s nothing to do but crawl into it. When I took my clothes off and lay down - I can’t put it any other way than extraordinarily terrifying, terrifying thoughts [怖い考え] - I had a sensation like my whole body was enveloped in such [thoughts]. When I was enveloped by this, I suddenly leapt to my feet and, in a panicked state, threw on my clothes, grabbed my bag, and went out onto the street, [crying,] “Taxi!” I went back to my workplace, I went back to my office at my workplace and slept. This is the “identity crisis.” I don’t have the feeling that I want to die, or anything like that. There’s nothing I can say [that can explain things]. On the other hand, that was how seriously I took “Evangelion.”

— I wonder why human beings require a meaning to their existence. [The lack of such] produces anxiety.

Anno: I think it’s more natural for human beings to be anxious. I think happiness is nothing but an illusion [錯覚].

–1996-08-22; first interview in June; scans (1 2 3) hosted by Lili & translated by Numbers-kun

[Numbers-kun’s paraphrases follow] This interview contains Nobita Nobi as a special guest. Nobi is a manga/doujinshi author and critic who writes doujinshi, shonen-ai, and criticism under the name Nobita Nobi and writes elsewhere under the name Nariko Enomoto (I assume, but I’m not certain, that this is her real name). She began working on Eva doujinshi during the series.

… 1. Anno’s Love of Shojo Manga

Anno wept a little when he read Nobi’s contribution to Karasawa’s book. Nobi cried many times during Evangelion, beginning with Rei’s monologue in Episode 14. Nobi is asked about her theory that the artists and viewers are locked in battle. She felt that she was in a battle with Anno. Anno thinks his first battle was with his staff¹⁴. In junior high school, Anno had a friend - nowadays, he says, you would call her a girlfriend - named Ritsuko¹⁵, who had a major impact on his life and introduced him to sci-fi and shojo manga. Aside from titles like “Devilman” and “Team Astro,” Anno was largely uninterested in shonen manga. However, Anno doesn’t think he would be able to do justice to a shojo manga in an anime adaptation¹⁶. Anno would read “Bessatsu Margaret,” “Ribon,” “Hana to Yume,” “Betsucomi,” and, at one point, even “Ciao.” Among the authors he likes, he mentions Fusako Kuramochi, Jun Ichikawa, Shinji Wada, Yu Azuki, Mariko Iwadate, Hideko Tachikake, Yukari Takahashi, Yumiko Oshima, and Taeko Watanabe. 2. Devilman and Evangelion

Nobi sees similarities between Devilman and Evangelion. This is due to the fact that Shinji’s mother is ultimately, or ultimately becomes, a kind of angel. As a result Shinji questions his self-identity. In the end, the foundations of human identity are overthrown. Anno says that the similarities to Devilman in this sense were unconscious; he noticed them afterwards. Evangelion follows the pattern of Ultraman and Devilman, in the sense that an enemy is defeated, but the power of that enemy is absorbed. Human beings make a copy of the angels, and then combine it with the human heart or mind. 3. Anno and Miyazaki

Anno was asked to write a commentary for the Studio Ghibli box set; however, in it, he criticized Miyazaki. Anno and Miyazaki are basically at one in their approaches; however, Miyazaki aims for a broad appeal, and Anno does not. Miyazaki risks ending up at “Sazae-san”. In Anno’s view, Miyazaki’s greatest work is volume seven of the Nausicaa manga. If I understood the next part correctly (Anno laughs a lot telling this), when Nausicaa was being serialized in Animage Anno used to visit Miyazaki’s office and ask to see the part of Nausicaa currently in progress; Miyazaki wouldn’t let him, so he would go in and look at them when Miyazaki wasn’t there. Anno wished that Miyazaki would stop making anime and focus on the Nausicaa manga. Miyazaki struggled greatly with how to end the manga; now, Anno completely understands how Miyazaki felt. According to Anno, Evangelion ended up being a cross between Devilman and volume seven of the Nausicaa manga. At an “ideological” level, Anno had to arrive at the same answers. Nobi was deeply moved by the Nausicaa movie when she first saw it, but less impressed after reading volume 7 of the manga. The darkness of the manga is eliminated in the film. However, for Nobi, Anno goes in the opposite direction, and is a kind of “black Miyazaki.” 4. The “Onanii Show”

Anno only makes works for himself, and not for an audience. However, making works is still the only way he can relate to other people. This relationship is like a “masturbation show,” because other people are watching him act to please himself. They decide by themselves how they react to it. He does not directly “pleasure” others. It requires some narcissism to be an author; someone entirely lacking self-confidence wouldn’t “expose” themselves. 5. Anno’s Vegetarianism

Anno’s vegetarianism is the result of the fact that he has no interest in ordinary life, including eating. When he was young his ideal sort of food was what astronauts would take into space. Today he regularly uses “Energy In”. He stopped eating meat at a young age. He wouldn’t eat school meals. When he was in his second year of elementary school, a teacher made him stay behind until he ate his meal. At 8PM the teacher gave up. Anno won’t do things others force him to do. He would rather have died than eat that meal. His parents couldn’t affect him, either. His body is no longer accustomed to eating meat, and now the taste makes him physically sick. He has few “worldly” desires. He has very little desire for food or money. His sexual desire is average. 6. Cel Anime and Expression

The interviewer feels that, behind the desire of women for “June”-like manga and stories, lies the problem of the family, and this is something Eva portrays. However, Anno feels he could not portray human relationships well because of the limitations of the medium, which he discusses. Precisely because of those limitations one must try to remain fixated on “human drama.” 7. The Production of Eva

When Anno thought of Eva, he wanted to create an anime that would surpass “Gundam” and “Yamato.” However, he became dissatisfied with his early ideas. The script for the first episode took half a year to complete¹⁷. He was stuck after that, so he wrote episodes 5 and 6, and then came back to episode 3. He felt he had to go beyond regular TV anime in developing realistic characters in episodes 3 and 4. However, the first six episodes left the staff drained and feeling weighed down by the heavy mood, so he felt it necessary to lighten the feeling of the series for episodes 7, 8, and 9. This early stage of production took 4 or 5 months in total; the storyboards were done in two months. However, the schedule became more and more constrained. The series was only finished thanks to the supreme efforts and talents of the staff. Episode 26 was completed in only three days¹⁸. Episode 24 was put together almost entirely by Masayuki alone in the space of three weeks.

8. Rei’s Monologue / Anno’s Depression

I made attempt at a translation here [Numbers-kun’s translation is quoted previously in this section]. When Anno was working on Rei’s monologue in Episode 14, he wanted to develop her in a “schizophrenic” direction, and wondered how to portray a kind of madness. He was loaned a magazine-like book on mental illness that contained a poem by someone who suffered from a mental disorder, and that triggered his imagination. Anno experienced a kind of nervous breakdown following Eva’s conclusion. He no longer wanted to see people, and climbed up onto the roof of the Gainax building to see if he really wanted to live or to die. In the end he wanted to live, but after making Eva he felt he had nothing left inside of him. 9. Asuka’s Period

Nobi is not sure that female manga writers will be able to match the imagination of the male authors. Anno wanted to do a longer story involving Asuka’s menstruation, but because he felt it was impossible for a man to write, he abandoned it. Only a single scene remained. He feels he can’t match the way Nobi portrayed Asuka in the doujinshi “Absolute Safety Razor” (or “Absolutely Safe Razor” - “Zettai Anzen Kamisori”)¹⁹. 10. Group Mentality

Nobi was irritated by male Rei otaku at Comiket. Anno emphasizes with her irritation. Anno says that Aum demonstrated that some people are driven to be a part of a group. Anno realized how easy it is to become a cult leader. However, the problem is that human beings also cannot live alone and must somehow depend on others. In addition, people nowadays, including Anno and Gainax, make and use film and anime as a kind of drug.

. The AT-Field At the bottom of one section of the interview there are a few quotes besides images of AT-Fields. I assume these quotes are from Anno, and also came from the interview. There Anno says that the image of opening an AT field is one of violation. It is based on the tearing of clothes. Clothes are the most basic form of protection for human beings. Originally the AT-Field was used to explain why only Evas could damage Angels. Later on Anno wondered what the meaning of it was. He later felt it was the barrier of the heart or mind. It protects what is most valuable to human beings.

– 1996-08-22; second interview in June; paraphrased by Numbers-kun

The difficult thing [when creating filmbooks] is to establish rules as to how much to write – How much information which is not explicitly stated in the work (secret settings, etc.) can be released? How far is allowed? This is because these criterion are rather subtle and vague. For example, there are cases where it is okay to publish facts (settings) [settai?] that are public knowledge among staff, and other cases where these facts absolutely must not be made public. This information control was particularly difficult with Eva, because the copyright holder’s (GAINAX’s) checks were much stricter than for anime works produced by other companies….

–translated by Bochan_bird, who gives the source as: “Osamu Kishikawa – Editor (structure/text), Newtype Eva TV/movie filmbooks and Eva Remix filmbooks Excerpted from comments at the end of Filmbook Remix, Vol.II”

Neon Genesis Evangelion OST II booklet has a statement by Otsuki? Asked on EGF

Bochan_bird, resident in Japan during NGE’s airing, included a partial timeline of the aftermath as background material for his translation of the Kaibunsho; the timeline is not sourced from the Kaibunsho, and all translations seem to be his own:

• 1996/04/14: Director Anno appears live as a guest on Megumi Hayashibara’s radio program “Tokyo Boogie Night” and says that fans should “return to reality.”

• 1996/04/26: Shonen Ace-A June issue article states that: “The video/LD vol.13 (Ep25-26) release will be a complete remake of the TV ending and will focus on the story elements. In addition, a complete and new cinema edition that differs from the video version is scheduled for release in summer 1997_27ya.”

• 1996/04/27: MEGU June issue becomes the first anime magazine to review the TV ending, and brands it a “betrayal” and “nightmare”.

• 1996/05/10: Newtype Magazine June issue contains the first in-depth interview with Director Anno following the conclusion of the TV airing, in which Anno criticizes anime fans and otaku in particular. [See excerpts later from full translation of this interview.]

• 1996/05~06: Eva remains a subject of interest, and various incidents of Eva fan obsession and “otaku-ness” occur such as the Mitaka City “Rei in kimono” posters and pencil boards mentioned in the kaibunsho.

• 1996/06/10: Animage (Anime Magazine) July issue includes a dialog between Director Anno and Yuko Miyamura (Asuka voice actress) in which Anno again criticizes anime fans (albeit tempered by self-deprecation and some jests by Miyamura) and makes a number of other frank remarks and criticisms.

• 1996/06~1997/02: Numerous review articles and interviews appear in anime magazines, some positive and some not so positive. Among these, the Quick Japan (music and sub-culture magazine) #9 issue features a lengthy Anno interview in which he once again criticizes the fans, but also makes some frank criticisms and observations about himself. He also mentions the harried production schedule and other behind-the-scenes talk. Various announcements are also made regarding the movie release schedule during this period.

This understandably can’t be used as a reference, because there is nothing to support it but my word, but I have mentioned before that I received a phone call from a Gainax staffer while episode #25 and #26 were in production, asking me to confirm where in the Book of Revelation the part about “I am the Alpha and the Omega” appears. I mentioned that it actually appears three times in different forms, and gave the citations. The implication was that they were considering quoting it in the final episodes. In any case, they did not use those verses, but if you’re skeptical that they would have considered such a thing, note that the booklets that accompanied the Japanese Evangelion I, II, and III soundtracks actually do have Biblical quotes as epigrams. These were some of the very first things ever released on the show; I believe “Eva I” hit the market even before the TV series had finished its initial airing. “Eva III,” as you might know (that’s the one with all the remixes of “Fly Me To The Moon”) would become the first anime soundtrack to go #1 in Japan since GALAXY EXPRESS 999.

–Carl Horn

Hideaki Anno: Originally, and even today, Japanese animation are products of ordinary [habitual/common] consumption, created for the Japanese public. It is indeed amusing to see the success of animation abroad, but I think that fans everywhere have the same tastes. Animation is an universal language.

…HA: Of course, it’s the same formula which made “Idols” just as popular. They are not really humans, they are only a sketch on a piece of paper, incapable of doing anything really, and [they are] out of the reach of their fans. For example, when a boy makes love with a woman in an anime, it is only part of a scenario, it is nothing more, and the fan knows, he steps back from what he sees.

AnimeLand: Yet, there are some fans that no longer go out with real girls…

HA: It is true that some fans of animation display unfortunate behavior.

AL: And yet you continue to create this kind of characters for them.

HA: You need to understand that Japanese animation is an industry that is, for the most part, male, and as is quite evident, everything is made for their gratification. Further, it is more gratifying for us to draw this sort of character, rather than old grandmothers.

AL: So actually, animators draw their ideal woman on celluloid?

HA: It’s much easier. Characters in animation do not cheat. They do not let you go for another. Animation is on certain points, very close to the pornography industry. All your physical needs are met. You can watch different animations and find anything you desire.

…AL: Have you received any complaints for using Christian concepts in your work? The angels are supposed to represent something good, benign, which doesn’t seem to be the case in Evangelion.

HA: I am not familiar with many things in Christianity, and I have no intention of approaching it or criticizing it either. Isn’t it said that Lucifer was an angel himself before having fallen?

AL: Imagine that a European company decided to buy the rights to Evangelion, and to change certain scenes because of religious concerns. Would you agree with censoring these scenes?

HA: I don’t know, it would depend on the circumstances. After all, this series was made for a Japanese audience.

…AL: American and European animation seem more and more smothered by their laws and codes of discipline, whereas Japanese animation offers more adult subjects and characters. Don’t you believe that the controversy and the problems that meet Japanese animation come from here?

HA: Actually, I think that some censorship is necessary, but it is not normal that we should be ordered by a conventional [literally, bien-pensant] minority. I do not think you can get away with anything for the so-called well-being and protection of children.

AL: Violence seems to be more admissible for these people than the notion of sex. Doesn’t it seem backwards to you?

HA: The legal context obviously differs between nations and eras. The only universal constant is the thirst of humans for sex and violence. We need to try to manage this without falling into the opposite extreme, and brainwashing. Films are extremely influential and powerful, especially as propaganda tools.

…HA: No, Gainax examined my project for Evangelion and told me, “OK, you have carte blanche.” I have never been limited on anything, except perhaps time and money.

…HA: I don’t know. I used components that I liked and that appeared to me necessary to advance the story. I also worked in concepts that were popular at the time. When I hear the criticism from fans about the end of Evangelion, I really wonder if we can say that I have as good a knowledge of the environment as you seem to say.

AL: Where did you get the idea of the EVAs?

HA: I was inspired by Japanese demons [oni]. I gave them a modern appearance, but such characters have been around a long time.

AL: It seems that there exists a sort of recurring message in your series, that one cannot live alone, or even separated from a group or ethnic identity. Why this message, addressed to otaku, who live at the same time in a relatively separate world?

HA: You can find whatever message you want to find in any film or series. I have not wanted to pass on this or that message in particular, but the fact that you reflect on this is a good one. I made Evangelion to make me happy and to make anime lovers happy, in trying to bring together the broadest audience possible.

– 1996-10-04? interview with Pierre Giner; published AnimeLand #32 (May 1997_27ya); original excerpt/translation September 1997_27ya; full sources: scan/French transcription/English translation. (The final Q/A pair has also been excerpted & translated from an interview published 1997-07-18 (“the day before the release of EoE”) in the Italian magazine Man-ga! #3. The connection is unclear - did Man-ga! translate into Italian & reprint AnimeLand’s interview?)

Our aim was to be the antithesis of all the giant robot animated shows around us. It’s not a world where the wind blows through your hair while you declare your purpose in a booming voice. Especially in the past one or two years, this type of refractive, feminine character has not been seen.

–Yoshiyuki Sadamoto Taken from Viz Comics’ Collected Evangelion Manga, Vol. 2

The Newtype Filmbook description for the scene states (literally):

Amidst the many words of congratulations, a faint smile starts at the corners of Shinji’s mouth (and spreads across his face). A happy face – that is the figure of the Complemented Shinji. This conclusion is also one form, one possibility among many.

–Eva FAQ; translated by Bochan Bird

Newtype Filmbook 8 rather straightforwardly says, “She [Naoko] throws her body down from the Command Center” (Kanojo wa mizukara no karada o, hatsureijo kara nage-otosu).

–https://web.archive.org/web/20130106165942/http://www.animenation.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-117875.html

Addition audio-drama; humorous audio drama, apparently with input from Anno; good for sarcastic commentary, such as Asuka calling Kaworu ‘homoboy’ - good for bad explanations of the angels?

Anno commented in various interviews after the conclusion of the series that “anime fans need to have more self-respect” and to “come back to reality”; in a Newtype interview on 10 May, after the announcement on 26 April of a new movie and re-edited versions of the TV series, he also stated that “computer networking is graffiti on toilet walls.”

–Fujie 2004_20ya TODO: Fujie is unreliable; I’d rather use the Protoculture Addicts issues

When I heard that EVANGELION was censored (see our article “Evangelion Controversy” on page 45), I was totally outraged. How this could be possible in our modern world? And all this (we speculated) in the name of religious belief? What about free speech? How could a legal system go along with this? Well, maybe it did not and the TV station censored the show itself to avoid offending certain sensibilities. We cannot really know where the truth lies. I was particularly confused when my friend Miyako read me Hideaki Anno’s interview in NEWTYPE of June. He avoided the subject of censorship and skillfully defended his work. His point of view made sense and he made some interesting comments about the Internet fans who excessively criticized the show.

“I think the people who are very much involved with the Net,” Mr. Anno said, “have very narrow views toward life and the world. They’re always in their rooms and don’t go out very often to communicate in person. Because of their information on the Net, they feel they know everything without searching the real truths.” They easily and anonymously say things that they would never say in person. “Their messages are like graffiti in a public toilet.” They attack other while they are staying in a safe place. “They don’t have anything certain to hold on… that’s probably why they watch anime shows. (…) I would like to add and say to those fans, hey, go out and visit towns. I am 35 now and I am realizing the importance of human contact little by little…”

(This interview, published in the June issue of NEWTYPE, was made by Mr. Shinichiro Inoue. He encourages people to send comments and questions to Anno-san by writing to: Mr. Hideaki Anno, Monthly NEWTYPE Magazine, Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 162-77, Japan.)

–Protoculture Addicts #41 July–August 1996_28ya, Claude Pelletier editorials

The development of Evangelion gives me the feeling of a ‘Live’ concert. Whatever the story or the development of the characters, I made them without a plan. During the production, whether listening to various opinions or analysing my own state of mind, I kept questioning myself. I got the concepts from this personal stocktaking [self-assessment]. At first I had intended to make a simple work featuring robots. But even when the main scene became a high school, it did not differ compared to other productions in the same style. At this point, I did not really think of creating a character with two faces, two identities: one shown at school, and the other inside the organization he belongs to [Nerv]. The impression of ‘Live’ concert that gives me the birth of Eva, was the team joining me in developing it, in the manner of an improvisation: someone plays the guitar and, in response, the drums and bass are added. The performance ended with the TV broadcasting ending. We only started working on the next script once the previous one was done. It took longer than usual. When we finished a screenplay, we went back and checked it against the previous ones. When we said: ‘Ah, I thought so, that’s wrong there’, we made corrections to the storyboard. In fact, with the last episode approaching, we have not even been able to finish on time.

…The reason why the main character is fourteen years is that he is no longer a child but not yet an adult. He lives alone, but is attached to others. In past centuries, he would soon celebrate his coming of age. Back then, life expectancy was fifty years, so people had to grow up in fourteen years. Today, we live more than seventy years, and although the age of majority in Japan is twenty years, most people still depend on their parents at that age.

…Speaking of improvisation, when I added the ‘Human Complementation Project’ that appears in the second episode, and which was going to become the fulcrum/pivot of the plot, I still had no idea about what it was going to ‘complement’. It’s just a verbal bluff [laughs]. In the world of Eva, the human population was cut by half, but as a rule, we can say that the worlds where the population has been decimated are typical of cartoons. I think worlds isolated and torn to shreds, where because of a past disaster humanity has been decimated, are characteristic of Japanese animation.

…whatever the viewpoint, Nerv is a group of amateurs. It looks like an army, but it is not one. I did not want to make a military group. I found it odd that anime magazines readjust the image of Misato in writing that she is a ‘skilled soldier’. I think she is more adept at many other things…Hence when we look at them, her strategies are a little haphazard. Nothing but luck. Honestly, the only person who plans her strategies a little bit is Ritsuko.

…About the problem of the heart, I did not realize it immediately, but part of Japan and America can meet most of their desires, right?…For example, some extremely materialistic people do not bother to consider whether they make themselves disliked by others or not. I think we should live more fundamentally [essentially]. In our current material security, the problem of the heart becomes a very current topic.

…in the course of making Eva, I got where I got for a number of reasons I could never really explain. But as far as the original stories of episodes 25 and 26 (the last ones), I managed to finish episode 25 as far as the script was concerned. Unfortunately, I had to abandon episode 26 while it was still at a very early planning stage. I’m reworking the episodes 25 and 26 that will be sold on LD [LaserDisc] and video next year, but as far as episode 26 goes, that’ll be a complete revision, so that it’ll be more ‘visual’. I’ll do it again by deconstructing the original plan. Episodes 25 and 26 as broadcast on TV accurately reflect my mood at the time. I am very satisfied. I regret nothing.

…At that point, the script for the last episode was not yet complete. It would be the following week. In essence, there remained three days in the schedule. But in the end/as a matter of fact, I didn’t need drawings to represent my vision of things. In truth, I would’ve been just as happy to explain myself by spoken word. I would’ve done it, but alas, it was rejected. Without cels, we made do by using the sketches of the storyboard in their place. It wasn’t a matter of having time to make them or not. In any event, we ended up doing without animation on cel. Cels are symbolic representations. After having drawn Asuka with a marker, as soon as Yuko Miyamura gave it her voice, it was more Asuka than ever. I even came to detest myself for having wasted time on cels at all [until then]. But that doesn’t mean never going through computer-aided drawing. I just wanted to show that, as far as animated drawings as a means of expression went, using sketches could work. I meant a message to those misguided fools who have expressions like: ‘since it is not on celluloid, it is unfinished’ or ‘because it’s not on celluloid, it is slapdash’. To destroy at all costs the kind of ideas that I myself had held. Once you hold the prejudice that you can’t use anything but cels to represent characters, you’ve finally become a fetishist… the first time we showed this was through what the ‘lines’ in episode 16 narrated. A cartoon is composed of simple signs and therefore from the outset, it is a fake world, right? Nothing but an optical illusion. Nobody would imagine that it’s a documentary. Trying to integrate a documentary aspect into the film, that’s my personal feeling of being ‘Live’. I think the deconstruction of these signs is rare in cartoons that are shown on TV. When we aired our line drawings, some people in the industry called our work shoddy, even though it was impossible to consider it such. Disregarding the intent of making that linework into a ‘representation’ [of something] implies that it doesn’t communicate any idea at all, any concept at all. Under these conditions, the last episode wouldn’t be any better than a jumble of slogans [aphorisms/sentences]… Me, I think that, by looking at it methodically, one can find other things in it, too.

…Among the people who use the Internet, many are obtuse. Because they are locked in their rooms, they hang on to that vision which is spreading across the world…On the message boards [Internet] someone can still make a rebuttal, but this remains at the standard of toilet graffiti. One does not need to sign it. It quietly arrives directly at your door. It’s so convenient that careless people use it without remorse, without stopping [for consideration]. Obviously, not all Internet users are not like that…I just want to say ‘come back to real life [réalité] and get to know the world’. For example, when it was decided to redo episodes 25 and 26, the news spread quickly from Gainax’s server across the Internet. If we had not set the tone, completely outlandish rumors would have emerged. But by revealing the information, plenty of incoherent statements like ‘they make it for the money’ were thrown in our faces. I realized my own hypocrisy when I let myself be convinced that, not knowing our financial situation, this kind of talk was only fair. Whatever they say, I do not think you can see other negatives in Evangelion! (Laughter) By not paying attention to childish ideas which they are subjected to, we take the anime-fans for being stupid. They do not leave their [comfortable little] world. They feel safe. They have nothing solid in themselves on which to rely. That’s why I tried to go to the rescue of Japanese animation. I do not say, like [Shuji] Terayama, to ‘throw away your books and flee the city’, but to go to town and meet people. Why can I say that? Well, I noticed what I was missing for me, in my heart. For twenty-one years I have been an anime-fan, and now, thirty-five years old, I notice with sorrow: I’m nothing but an honest fool (laughs).

–translation of May/June 1996_28ya interview by myself and others

To update on the EVANGELION controversy, nothing really came out from Anno-san at Anime Expo. He seemed embittered, and quickly lost patience with the fans. “If you don’t understand, it is your problem”, he said! He made many comments in such terms that our reporter on location couldn’t put them on paper. For more details, check our report on Anime Expo in the next issue. Anyway, someone who worked on EVANGELION did confirm that the last episodes (from 19 and on, but mainly 25-26) were censored following pressure from the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association; but no mention of any legal action) and that they had been botched. To be continued.

–http://www.protoculture.ca/PA/edito42.htm (Mirror; PA #43 doesn’t mention the PTA…)

Anno interview in June, mentioning draft material of Kaworu episode 24 (see previous section):

• translation: https://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/7611.html

• scans: https://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/7236.html

• Horn: https://www.evamonkey.com/writings/horn-carl-eight-books-of-evangelion.php

1996 S

The television broadcasts were finished two months ago. But “Eva fever” has not yet cooled down. As a matter of course, there was also a big reaction to the interview with Hideaki Anno in the June issue of NT (Newtype). It seems like bunches of letters are delivered to the editorial office daily for Director Anno, which he is reading little by little as his busy schedule permits

–‘From Newtype, July 7, 1996_28ya issue’ (“Note: this is still a rough translation.”)

Here’s part of a Neon Genesis Evangelion Wizard Manga Scene article by Carl Gustav Horn(the same guy in charge of the Viz EVA manga translation BTW.) It may give a glimpse into Anno’s personality.

Having gambled and won on ‘Evangelion,’ Anno can afford to dismiss his critics. But this ultimate ‘fanboy,’ who breaks into ‘Ultraman’ poses when in front of the camera, is as hard on himself as he is on his industry and its fans. ‘Evangelion’ was a struggle against four of his own cowardice - a hiatus from work where ‘all I was doing was simply not dying,’ said Anno to the American audience. ‘If I talk about the ’limitations of the industry, after all, what does that mean? Aren’t I really talking about the limitations inside myself? It is the creators who have to change their frame of mind .’Most people who make anime ,Anno said, have the kind of ’autism’ he himself has suffered from. ‘They have to try and reach out with their work, and communicate to others. What’s the greatest thing anime has ever achieved? The fact that we’re holding a dialogue right now. ’When a fan of the master asked for advice to those who’d like to break into anime, he shot back, ’Be interested in other things besides animation.’

–https://web.archive.org/web/20040330092906/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1996-November/000809.html

It’s the words of Anno’s translator at 1996’s Anime Expo.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20121227072318/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1996-November/000812.html

Possible NERV acronym:

The Newtype 100% collection has a sketch of the NERV logo with the words “NEO EARTH RETURN V……?” team. Can’t quite make out the V word.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20121210073358/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1997-October/006688.html

From the Newtype 100% collection book, i can barely make out in one drawing…“Neo Eath of Retarn Vererasion ….” (those of you who have it its on page 168)

–https://web.archive.org/web/20121205205435/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1997-October/006691.html

“I just looked at the book for the spelling, and the full title says”Neo Eath of Retarn Vercerasion team” which probably doesn’t mean a thing. I think the designer was just roughing out the NERV logo and perhaps at the time they were thinking of making an acronym, for an additional double meaning. In its place, they used the quote “God’s in his heaven, all’s right in the world” which (to me, anyway) works better than an acronym.”

–https://web.archive.org/web/20121112104641/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1997-November/001208.html

–Scan of the relevant NewType 100% page

“Neo Eath Of Retariv Vercerasion Team-Term” –https://web.archive.org/web/20110723090039/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-October/022081.html

[first email] I have a couple of friends who work in the Anime industry. They told me about the influence of “Evangelion.”

The most significant issue is that because “Evangelion” series had excessively atrocious and erotic scenes, and GAINAX presented/deliver incomplete products to the TV station, as the result, TV stations began to review the scripts before animated and also they began to order anime producers to present/deliver the products one week before on air. Not only TV-Tokyo*1 but also most of TV stations in Tokyo began these acts.

# TV-Tokyo broadcast “Neon Genesis Evangelion.”

In some sense, the relationships of mutual trust between Anime producers and TV stations were destroyed by “Evangelion,” and consequently, TV stations set up more strict rules for anime production to make it safer.

Due to the before-animated-review by TV-Stations, now that Anime producers have to revise scripts a lot. As the result, some anime productions suffer from the too tight schedule which had been carried out without problems before.

The friends of mine in the Anime industry say, “if GAINAX wished to make an atrocious and erotic Anime or an experimental Anime, it could have make OVA. More over, they must recognize the significant influence to the entire Anime industry by the fact that the coarse manner in the production resulted those two episodes” (They mean the last two episodes).

…[second email] Anyhow, the friend of mine who often tell me the story about the Anime industry are directors of drawings, and scenario writers who do the series construction and main-writing. They are at Toei Doga, Tokyo Movie, or at Sunrise, and are engaged in the TV Anime presently on air.

In order to prove my story, I think I have to show at least one fact. OK. You know the TV Anime series “Famous Detective Conan.” [Case Closed] By the influence from Evangelion, Nippon TV checked the scripts before aired which has never been done before. And the station ordered to retake the script because “The way of the murder is not appropriate.” As the result, the honorable schedule was much disturbed. (I sympathy with those staffs.)

Which part, do you say, has the questionable scenes? I watched each episode, 2,3 times, but I can’t figure out which.

Is that so? Don’t you think it is questionable if a woman’s voice at sex is aired in the TV anime around early evening. If you don’t think so, you have a very different point of view from mine, thus, I don’t want to discuss further.

What does not make sense even more is the part concerning “The incomplete film”. How can TV Stations evaluate the “incompleteness”?

It is hard to evaluate the “incompleteness” quantitatively. However, from the point of view of common sense, don’t you think it is natural to think that the picture-show like( or less than that in some scenes) last two episodes would be regarded as “incomplete.” It is their excuse that the schedule was too tight. GAINAX is responsible of the tight schedule. For the TV station, the delivered film is the only object to evaluated the show’s quality. That is the contract between companies.

I ask you a question. If GAINAX had had enough time for the making (in general it takes about one month to make a 30-minute TV anime show) and had enough manpower, had GAINAX made that kind a film?

–Junichi Toyouchi, posting to the fj.rec.animation Usenet newsgroup; original Usenet posting. Both emails translated by Kentaro Onizuka (also of Literal Translation Project) in rec.arts.anime.misc; the emails are consistent with the Kaibunsho

1996 T

If you’re a diehard EVA fan you might want to buy this month’s issue of Animerica, Anime and Manga Monthly(Volume 5 Number 11).

… There’s also a page long AV Interface article on the four-disc Girlfriend of Steel CD-Rom game set, an AnimExpress column for Genesis 0:8:Lies and Silence, and an End of Evangelion CD Compact View review. This issue also has that hilarious Planet Anime ad with the faces of Asuka, Shinji, and Rei superimposed on real life models. You’ve gotta see it to believe it. ^_ Oh, and there’s an ad from Rising Sun Creations for a Tsukuda Hobby life size(approximately 3 foot tall) pre-painted Pen-Pen model with stand! https://web.archive.org/web/20121118031949/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1996-December/005205.html

Let us study in detail one by one and try to piece together the personal relationships these frightened adults and children are fated to fence each other into. Let us also study how these small, ordinary relationships grow to be the power that changes the world.

… It would seem that all is clear between Shinji and Asuka. The situation with them has changed so they can express their feelings and, so to speak, become as close as childhood friends.

Asuka yells “Hot!”, splashing the morning bath water, rages over forgetting her lunch box, and openly states her feeling, like an incantation, of being frustrated with wanting Shinji as her partner; from these facts we may infer that her feelings for him as a man are less than they appear to be.

Shinji appears to be henpecked by Asuka. However, since he got very flustered when she slipped into his futon one night, and since he couldn’t look straight at her figure in a sexy bathing suit, we may read between the lines that Shinji has feelings for her as a woman. Before the split between Asuka and Shinji, when their friendship was turning into passion, possibilities for Shinji seemed good.

… TOUJI & KENSUKE & HIKARI

Where do broken dreams and wishes go?

… However, Touji was selected as the fourth candidate, and when EVA device #1 attacked Touji’s EVA device #3, this relationship was broken. Kensuke’s dream of being an EVA pilot was also broken, and Hikari’s feelings for Touji too…

The ‘promise’ of a personal relationship was seldom made in “Evangelion” and it made a touching picture that Hikari, an honor student and class president, was charmed by Touji, who had a bit of an image as a delinquent. Hikari was portrayed as a girl who was wishing, “I’m not yet able to confess my feelings, but I want to transmit them somehow,” and Touji, either knowing or not knowing about her feelings, promised to eat the leftovers of her box lunch. Touji, Hikari, and Kensuke; from here on we will not be able to take our eyes off of them.

GENDOU & REI, MISATO & SHINJI

… Concerning actual blood relatives introduced in this story, the only pair is the protagonist, Ikari Shinji, who meets with his father, NERV Commander Gendo. However, one very rarely sees “family feelings” between these two. Rather, we can observe more cases where unrelated companions form family-like ties.

… That Katsuragi Misato lets Shinji live in her apartment is also not merely from sympathy. If Rei and Gendo have exchanged smiles with the same mutual warmth, as peacefully as in a “husband and wife” relationship, Misato and Shinji have something spiritually like an “older sister/younger brother” relationship.

Shinji appears to be afraid of contact with others, and Misato can identify with this, since she continues to be troubled by the loss of her father in the Second Impact. Misato surely has experienced Shinji’s feelings of hesitation and pain. Therefore, she blames herself for not giving his feelings enough support at this important stage.

Having just come through such a path herself, Misato is capable of throwing Shinji off without hesitation when his heart is in torment. Misato is shown in this story to be the one with the greatest understanding of Shinji, the one who wants to be his guiding hand. Also, Shinji is the one who truly understands her pain.

–‘From Newtype, March 3 1996_28ya p.4, cover story: Stray Children.’

There’s a peculiar thing Shinji does with his Super - DAT Walkman as early as the second episode of EVANGELION: he keeps switching back and forth between tracks 25 and 26 - the numbers of the final two episodes - and when those two episodes arrived, they were undoubtedly the most controversial hour of anime television in recent memory. The uproar over #25, “Do You Love Me?” and #26, “Take Care of Yourself”, was somewhat reminiscent of that over the final two episodes of the British 1960s TV classic THE PRISONER - a series which EVA had already made reference to in episode 4, when Shinji resigns temporarily from NERV. Like the conclusion of THE PRISONER, EVA’s ending had a jerking, interrogative style, and seemed to suggest the show was about something else than what it appeared to be at the beginning - and even that the show’s legions of fans should re - examine their motives for liking EVA in the first place. Complaints were so numerous over the conclusion that even many Japanese who didn’t follow anime heard about the situation, and that this Gainax was a bunch of “bad boys.”

–https://web.archive.org/web/20010304203436/j-pop.com/anime/archive/feature/03_evangelion/end1.html

No sooner did EVA have its controversial TV ending that Gainax announced it would produce two more endings by the spring and summer of 1997_27ya: for the video and LD release, it would entirely remake the last two episodes, releasing them as a fourteenth two - episode volume after the first thirteen (as well as remake for the ongoing video release selected scenes in the latter part of the series it was dissatisfied with). There will be a two - part theatrical release to accompany it; one movie will be a compressed “digest” of the series’ plot - the other will be the two new episodes. In addition to this, there will be an EVA theatrical movie with an entirely original plot and a third ending. Anno indicated at the Expo that these “additional” two endings would in fact really be the same ending as the final TV episode, but from different viewpoints.

… Indeed, there seems to be evidence that Anno’s dissatisfaction with the original conclusion was more with its often minimalist (if interestingly - handled) visuals, a result of running out of time and budget, than its writing per se: Toshio Okada, in last issue’s “Return of the Otaking”, [LINK HERE - SUNDAY MORNING SECTION] spoke of Anno’s ambitious plans for a CG-enhanced battle sequence in the remake. Okada also pointed out that Anno has tended to give different rationales concerning the remake, and of late Gainax’s own publicity has rather coyly spoken of fan interest being the cause.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20010305211004/j-pop.com/anime/archive/feature/03_evangelion/end2.html

1997 P

• 1997-annotalkstokidspart1of2.wmv

• 1997-annotalkstokidspart2of2.wmv

• 1997-yamaguchi-2015thelastyearofryojikaji.txt

• Compared with your [other] works thus far, Eva was a work where your own thoughts were strongly projected onto it.

Anno: I think that, seen from the perspective of those who value suppressing one’s self and depicting other people, there is nothing more foolish than what I have done. But, we who have lived in the midst of a vague feeling of “blockage” for ten, twenty, or thirty years, can do nothing but call attention to ourselves. I think we are a lonely generation who can do nothing but get others to recognize [our?] individual existences, being unable to recognize our own existences.

–September 1997_27ya Newtype; snippet translated by Numbers-kun

The reality within the fiction
The hope within the “blockage”
In short, the dream
All I was doing was searching
For something with the same feeling.

–Anno’s Love & Pop postscript; snippet translated by Numbers-kun

As a matter of fact, Anno is a student of Leni Riefenstahl, and parodied her Triumph of the Will in the Nadia omake. In the spring 1997_27ya issue of Tokion he said regarding the dangerous potential of art: “Nazi Germany was a perfect example. Those guys were making great movies! Even the anti-Nazi propaganda films Disney produced, portrayed Nazis as being fashionable” (He also said of Evangelion in that same interview, “I’m obviously not from a Christian upbringing, so they will have to excuse me for borrowing certain Christian words and images.” He didn’t say, “They will have to ignore my borrowing them, because they have no meaning whatsoever within the story”).

–https://web.archive.org/web/20111017083058/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2009-December/005598.html

There’s also both Genesis 0:0 features (0:0 - IN THE BEGINNING and 0:0’ - THE LIGHT FROM THE DARKNESS) which are recap and making of pieces, neither very interesting although the first has very brief interviews with Sadamoto Yoshiyuki and Hideaki Anno. There’s also a series of brief questions asked of the voices of the three main female characters, Mitsuishi Kotono (Misato), Miyamura Yuko (Asuka), and Hayashibara Megumi (Rei). Also included is a separate collection of short TV spots for the End of Evangelion movie I’d never seen before which were QUITE interesting, I’ll put it that way.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20150211221918/http://www.mania.com/neon-genesis-evangelion-renewal-evangelion-dvdbox_article_75523.html; TODO find out what this was about; tentative assignment of Genesis 0:0 to ’96 or ’97

…in an interview, director Anno indicated that Misato’s character design is modeled after Tsukino Usagi. The hair style (sans odango), especially the front, is almost an exact duplication of Usagi. He has even used the words “Misato is Usagi in her 29th years” (I am not quoting the words here, as I forgot the exact wording).

Ref: Shinseiki Evangelion Kanzen Kouryaku Tokuhon, by Shinseiki Fukuin Kyoukai, ISBN4-380-97219-4

–https://web.archive.org/web/20121114232733/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1997-November/002387.html

The part about Misato being inspired by Usagi was mentioned by Sadamoto in the bonus disc of the Renewal as well but only in the regards of her hairs; in that interview he also said that he was inspired by Fujiko Mine from Lupin, he liked the fact that at the same time she seems to be in her 20s and in her 30s.

–HyperShinchan

In the notes accompanying LD 0:2, it was stated that during the storyboard stage of episode 4, a staff asked Anno what Misato is like, and Anno replied that Misato is just like Tsukino Misato. [error; should be ‘Tsukino Usagi’]

Anno is a Sailor Moon fans, and he had participated in drawing some cells in episode 46. [see also: “I recall reading one time that Anno himself worked some on Sailor Moon, animated the Outer Senshi’s transformation scenes, but I don’t know if that is really true or not.” https://web.archive.org/web/20110430151540/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1999-January/024692.html]

In the special EVA video dated before the TV series, Sadamoto stated that Misato’s front bangs was modeled after Sailor Moon.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20110727182148/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1999-January/024719.html

Some other interesting tidbit that Yamashita Ikuto put together:

Evangelion was first proposed as a project by Mr. Anno on Sept. 20 1993_31ya.

Almost 5 years ago.

The unique look and feel of Tokyo-03 was strongly influenced by the fact that in 1994_30ya GAiNAX relocated their office to the city of Mitaka (3 Eagles) which gave them a new environment to visualized the world of Evangelion. “Eva LD Movie Box Set”

–https://web.archive.org/web/20110713155002/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-December/023860.html

I’ve gotten curious enough to ask. Precisely what is Rei doing in that tank in central dogma? (I think it’s episode 15 or in that neighborhood).

Making backups of Rei’s memory. A member of GAINAX said that in an interview.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20121123173256/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1997-December/003255.html; from some anime magazine (TODO: but which & when?)

This was from Shonen A’s Sadamoto Yoshiyuki interview:

…there were a lot of holes in the plot. For example, I asked (Hideaki Anno) why only children pilot EVAs. His immediate response was ‘Right, I must get this sorted out.’, then he got all worked up.

–Leonard Tai; TODO was this really from 1997_27ya? Maybe there was an interview in 1998_26ya before Tai wrote in May 1998_26ya and I am unduly pessimistic about how old his information is?

• TV yearly chronology, from Neon Genesis Evangelion Artbook Photofile 02: Adam

Miyazaki: Anyway, I think it’s good that you had success with Evangelion. It gives you an opportunity to work and an influential voice. Besides that, escape from the ghost of Evangelion as fast as possible. You can’t be “that Mr. Anno who made Evangelion” 10 or 20 years from now.

Anno: I know!

Miyazaki: So, I think you should keep your hands off Evangelion entirely from here on out.

Don’t worry about that. The evil spirit has already gone. So, I’m going to do shoujo manga (His and Her Circumstances) for now. (laughs)

…Miyazaki: Isn’t that film (Love & Pop) something like an exorcism of Evangelion? (laughs)

Anno: To put it bluntly, yes, it is. (laughs)

–“もののけ姫　ｖｓ　エヴァンゲリオン　（宮崎監督と庵野監督：９７年夏の師弟対決を中心に）”; excerpts from an interview apparently during their Sahara trip

–Carl Horn’s description: “Miyazaki and Anno took a special plane journey through the Sahara together in the late 1990s in a vintage [red] plane, retracing the route of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (a book was written about their trip)”; CuSO4 discusses it a little & Patrick Yip describes it extensively and also provides a photo & video. Luna1883:

> ...the north African itinerary and attendant snapshots was documented in "quick japan" (or a sister publication). the feature basically says that Anno and Miyazaki wanted to follow the final flight of the author of the "little prince", Antoine de saint-Exupéry, who died in 1943;  and also pay their respects to a certain Oscar-winning epic (and Booker prize-winning novel) about the high-flying life of adulterous mapmakers in the Sahara during WW2--a quietly beautiful film that asked very pointed  questions about the concept of identity (national and otherwise)...what is extraordinary is that Miyazaki and Anno flew a vintage plane (a 2-seat Sopwith-camel biplane like the English patient's, i hope) across the  desert. (lets hope Anno wasn't the pilot). anyway, there is a picture on top of a dune with Miyazaki wearing a sensible hat and grey suit, pointing straight ahead, and Anno in a black pullover, no hat, doing an Ultraman pose!

[Ebj](https://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1999-September/031354.html):

> I have a shot I found in an Italian anime mag which is quite similar: there are Anno and Miyazaki again, the setup is an airport runway with desert landscape all around, there actually is a biplane, but it's big, with some windows for passengers (say 15 mt overall length), it's red, with a sign on the side which says "O.K - K.O", and Miyazaki is wearing a mechanic suit, leaning on the plane, while Anno stands on top of it (around 4 mt above) in a red 'tunic' and sunglasses doing the Ultraman pose. BTW, Studio Ghibli did the drawings for episode 12 of Eva...you can see that they did draw episode 12 looking at the hairstyle of the speaker of the propaganda-van for candidate Nozoku Takahashi (the name is derived by Nozomu Takahashi, producer of Studio Ghibli).^[<https://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1999-September/031363.html> for second quote]

From Bochan_bird’s background Kaibunsho material (see previous 1996_28ya quotation for discussion):

• 1997/03/10~: Quick Japan #9 and #10 issues contain interviews and a roundtable discussion by Gainax figures Toshimichi Otsuki (Producer), Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Eva character designer and manga artist), Hiroki Sato (PR Manager), Kazuyshi Tsurumaki (Assistant Director) and Masayuki (Assistant Director). The roundtable discussion covers topics ranging from Eva story contents to behind-the-scenes happenings, past activities, a personal critique/characterization of Director Anno, and so on.

In October 1983_41ya, Anno saw an advertisement in the magazine Animage. The anime film of Nausicaa was falling behind schedule, and animators were needed. On the Nausicaa DVD, Toshio Suzuki recalled Anno’s appearance: “One day he just showed up. Afterwards I realised how much guts it must have taken to walk right in and hand Miyazaki samples of his work.” Anno was hired, and set to animating the God Warrior. According to Suzuki, “Miyazaki wanted something with impact, very detailed, with an unique sense of movement.” Among the stories of Anno’s time on Nausicaa, it’s said that he suffered from terrible diarrhea, which his colleagues joked was the God Warrior’s curse. Miyazaki sent him a memo saying, “Use two colours for the smoke. If you use three colors, I kill you!” The director also forced Anno to restrict the number of frames in the God Warrior sequence. Anno wanted to die when he saw the final result. That the terrific scene didn’t satisfy him speaks volumes about Anno’s drive, his obsession with bringing titanic images to anime.

–quoted in “Anno’s Dominus: Andrew Osmond on the oddest casting decision in recent memory… or is it…?”; original: “The Birth of Studio Ghibli”, 1997_27ya? TV program included on the 2005_19ya DVD release

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone would just die?

ocean of hopelessness
fragile souls
devious smiles
morbid objects
self-destruction
cruel strangers
replacement of the opposite sex
immediate cure
spreading enfeeblement
wish for nothingness
imprisoned ego
fear for separation
one-sided mistakes
fright of strangers
dangerous thoughts
denial with strangers
aversion to harmony
arrogant understanding
pity for the weak
uneasy photographs
scars from the past
blurred borders
divergence of common sense
lonely people
question of value
fusion with desire
return into the womb
empty time
decline of yearning
needless me

beginning of fabrications
continuation of reality
that's the end of the dream

Then,
why are you here?

...do you really want to stay here?
The End of Evangelion Neon Genesis Evangelion The Movie Air/My Purest Heart for You

(Screen text:  So, everybody just go and die...)

Staff (in Japanese alphabetical order)

Random women's voices:
You don't really know if it's love until after the infatuation stops.
Men just want a mother figure who'll spoil them.
Men...You do it with them once and they think they own you.
Ritsuko?
Yeah, that's okay, too.
You'll be sorry for that.
That's not romantic in the least.
Men are all scum...
Don't think I'm going to forgive you!

 (Screen text:  Then, why are you here?)
(Screen text:  ...Is it okay for me to be here?)

Premiering July 19 (Sat.) Advance tickets including original poster on sale.
General admission: 1500 yen Students: 1200 yen
Created by the EVA Production Committee (Project EVA)
Distributed by Toei Studios, Inc.
This film is animated.

TITLE SCREEN:  THE END OF EVANGELION
Neon Genesis Evangelion Cinema Edition - Air/Sincerely Yours (My Pure Heart For You)
Premiering July 19 (Sat.)
Created by the EVA Production Committee (Project EVA)
Distributed by Toei Studios, Inc.

Toei Studios, Inc. logo in triangle

Eirin (Eiga Rinri Kitei Kanri Iinkai = Motion Picture Code of Ethics Committee) registration in circle

(Vertical screen text:  Neon Genesis Evangelion Cinema Edition)

1997 S

The re-run for Evangelion were aired on Saturday nights 1997_27ya.02.01–1997.03.15, at 26:55 (2:55 AM Sunday). They aired four episodes in a row, and after that they had some live clips. They were as follows.

Date	Ep	Extras
1997.02.01	1-4	press conference of the Evangelion movie
1997.02.08	5-8	otaku in lines waiting to buy tickets for the Eva movie
1997.02.15	9-12	main seiyuu commenting on the Eva movie: Ogata Megumi, Hayashibara Megumi, Mitsuishi Kotono, Miyamura Yuko
1997.02.22	13-16	video clips from some Evangelion events: Miyamura Yuko, Mitsuishi Kotono, Hayashibara Megumi
1997.03.01	17-20	inside Gainax studios: staff, cels, CG room
1997.03.08	21-23	30 minute special (narration by Tachiki Fumihiko)
1997.03.15	24-26

1997.03.08

The 30 minute special that was aired on 1997_27ya.03.08 gave information about how big a hit Evangelion was: 200,000 advance tickets for the movie were sold, 2,420,000 LDs and videos were sold, 880,000 CD singles were sold, 1,240,000 CDs were sold, (the 3^rd soundtrack reached number 1 in the Oricon charts), 3,500,000 comics were sold.

There were highlights from the TV series, live video of Hideaki Anno (creator and director of Evangelion), some clips of the main seiyuu (same clips that were used in the previous weeks), some interviews with fans.

–“Evangelion re-runs” (last updated 1997-03-03 by Hitoshi Doi); they ran on TV Tokyo

The cult anime named Evangelion. A forbidden anime about how a group led by morally/spiritually bankrupt individuals uses an autistic boy to wage pitched battles against incomprehensible creatures, and how through contact with the hearts of a mentally fragile, bandaged girl and an overly self-conscious, traumatized girl, that boy ultimately attains deliverance/salvation himself in the final episode. Some viewers became enraged, some despondent, some lost friends as a result of hysterical disputes, and some attained deliverance/salvation themselves.

… If memory serves correctly, when the plan arose they made up to Ep6 (despite Anno apparently saying in Quick Japan magazine that they had “made up to Ep7 in advance”) and sent out feelers in all directions, but were given the cold shoulder by every company. (laugh) Even Bandai snubbed them based on the past results of the huge failure of “Wings of Honneamise (Royal Space Force)”. (laugh) They had connections with a TV Tokyo producer, but if you can’t get sponsors it doesn’t matter. So after wandering lost by the wayside for a bit, Kadokawa Shoten finally picked them up. But the truth is that even Kadokawa just barely picked them up, and flatly rejected their budget requests, saying that they only intended to budget the same level and not a yen more than other anime Kadokawa had sponsored in the past (Tenchi Muyo, etc.).

… Anno himself also replied in an interview that, “We completely ran out of time partway through….” However, the direct cause was not the PTA or a lack of time, but the more pressing issue of “budget”.

… …finally moving his heavy arse, Anno vastly restructured the production system. First, 75% or more of the production staff from Ep16 onward were outsourced South Korean staff⁴⁴. In terms of the animation as well, when reusing sequences other than bank sequences or for still shots, instead of using the film, these sequences were instead dubbed in at the end using a video deck. This is why character close-ups and other shots that seemed to jiggle increased partway through the series. They even mixed stupid photographs and other stuff into the mental image scenes. In the worst cases some scenes just showed a still screen that lasted for a minute or more. But no matter how much they struggled, they had already exceeded their budget and time limits. And then to top it all off were those last two episodes.

Although budget issues were the main problem, Gainax had also quarreled constantly with TV Tokyo since before the TV airing over moral issues such as how the show would end and other details. These ranged from trivial points such as it being improper to show women’s underwear in the hanging laundry, to major items such as the brutal scene at the end of Ep18 “The Choice of Life”. It’s kind of letting the cat out of the bag now, but the truth is that “Asuka dies from madness (she lives in the TV version),” “Shinji dissolves but reforms,” and “Rei also dies” were already determined before the TV airing started, and Gainax had quarreled a number of times with the TV Tokyo producer and related parties over these plot devices. Furthermore, the ending was supposed to have been “The main characters die one after another, and the final battle is Ikari Shinji vs. Ikari Gendo,” although there probably isn’t any evidence left to support that now. (laugh) Well, except it seems that Hayashibara Megumi (voice actress for Ayanami Rei) said on a radio program something like: “I might end up fighting against Shinji.” I also heard talk that “Misato and Ritsuko both die fighting each other, and Misato’s death awakens Shinji(?)” Surprisingly, it seems the character who was the key to the climax was not Rei, but Misato. But then I guess it doesn’t matter what is said now. (laugh)

… When Ep20 aired, complaints poured in from the PTA. This infuriated TV Tokyo all the way up to the upper management, which made it impossible for Gainax to take any bold measures. Nowadays it’s pretty much taken for granted that the only people who complain over every little thing in children’s TV anime or manga are people like Kofuku-no-Kagaku* pulling a publicity stunt for their “evil book banning movement”…. Still, at that point the TV Tokyo upper management issued the severe notice that “Any anime that is deluged with complaints from the PTA even once from now on will be canceled regardless of the reason.” The anime “Bakuretsu Hunters” and “Fushigi Yugi” were airing on the same channel at the time, and these also caught flak and received strict warnings even though they had not done anything. (laugh) That’s why there were so many unnatural changes in the story contents from Ep20 onward.⁴⁵

So for these reasons, the Eva [TV] ending was made under conditions with Gainax’s hands tied in terms of budget, time and content. Considering that the last two episodes were made under those conditions, Director Anno might even be viewed as amazing…. Nope, I just can’t view him like that. (laugh) After all it was his own damn fault that things turned out that way.

… Anno said in some anime magazine that “Katsuragi Misato is modeled in part on my first love,” but do you know who he was talking about? It’s Hidaka Noriko, the voice actress for Jean in “Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water”. (laugh) When the TV version of “Nadia” launched, Anno confessed his feelings to Hidaka Noriko. This is a famous story in the industry. Apparently Anno told her that he “looked at her not as an object of adoration/longing, but as a serious love interest!” (ROTFL!) Apparently he was even seriously thinking of marriage. However, Hidaka Noriko refused him flatly, saying “I have no intention of marrying someone in the anime industry.” Wait, what? Don’t we know now that she was married to some anime-related producer at the time? (ROTFL!) But Anno would not give up, and told her, “Well, watch my next work, and then decide!” In other words Anno was proposing an affair to the already married Hidaka Noriko. (laugh) Anyway, Anno next work was “Evangelion”, so… Evangelion might be considered a work that embodies something of a stalker obsession.

… But it looks like there is no shortage of people willing to get paid and become famous for writing magazine articles on the subject. Isn’t that right? Okada-san? Takekuma-san? Otsuki Kenji-san?⁴⁶ (ROTFL!)

–The Kaibunsho; Carl Horn’s criticism of the above Kaibunsho (but see his article mentioning ‘gossip’ linking Anno & Miyamura): https://web.archive.org/web/20070110064716/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2006-September/003726.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070110065312/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2006-September/003730.html. Olivier Hagué gave in 2001_23ya the same story about Anno & Noriko, but it’s unclear whether he’s drawing on the Kaibunsho or whether that story had been circulating independently.

Mari Kotani’s Immaculate Virgin:

• Patrick Yip’s transcription of English section

• Gwern’s transcript

Dec. issue of NewType has an interview with Sadamoto Yoshiyuki. With my very limited skill in Japanese, I think Sadamoto talked about the fact that the differences between the TV and manga is something he did very deliberately-with a more traditional Shonen Manga approach . Maybe Patrick should translate that interview for us which I find will be much valuable… [wink to Patrick]

• George Chen

1997 T

The ending scene has burnt in my mind. It is a scene that is hard to forget…. I actually saw people sobbing at the end when I was at the cinema watching EoE. https://web.archive.org/web/20121114213807/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1997-October/006527.html

Anno, as late as the November ’96 issue of Newtype magazine, still denied that the last two episodes were a “lousy job” and argued that the Gainax crew worked incredibly hard to finish the series, which he thinks “ended beautifully.” He regretted that fans cannot appreciate Gainax’s efforts.

Asked about the violence and uncharacteristic sex scene in episodes 18 and 19, Anno said that the scenes were necessary to develop the story and “to understand real life.” He felt that children should be exposed early to the realities of life so that they do not grow up weak and sheltered and so that they will become immune to some of the harsh situations they will eventually experience. Many fans at the convention thought that this was an interesting viewpoint on his part.

Do you wonder why Eva got so dark and psychological near the end? After all, Anno is the guy who directed Nadia of the Mysterious Seas, one of the liveliest and funniest anime I’ve ever watched. According to Anno, from episode 16 on, he began reading books about human psychology and became very interested. He wanted to explore “what the human mind is all about inside.”

“I wrote about myself. My friend lent me a book on psychological illness and this gave me a shock, as if I finally found what I needed to say,” he says in the November Newtype.⁴⁷

–https://www.cjas.org/~echen/articles/spring97/05_03b.html / https://www.evaotaku.com/omake/anno.html

• NGE bibliography, c. 1997_27ya: Japanese magazines, newspaper, radio, TV; Google Translate

The original show ended in April, but EVA’s success has continued unabated, with bestselling sales on laserdisc and video- even its music has gone through the roof, with volume 3 of the EVA soundtrack being the first anime album to hit #1 on the Japanese pop charts since GALAXY EXPRESS 999, seventeen years before.

…

but its nontraditional structure, narrative techniques, and an ending that over ten million Japanese tuned in to, only to raise a national howl of protest by the time the closing credits rolled.

–‘Anno Mirabilis: The Triumph and Controversy of Gainax’s NEON GENESIS’; part 1

Much of the premise and many of the early elements of EVA are familiar, indeed stereotyped elements of Japanese TV science fiction: teenage boy is chosen to pilot a robot his father built and fight against the enemy. It’s reminiscent of anime from GIGANTOR to GIANT ROBO ( on which Anno was special - effects director ) , and the weird organic forms of the enemy, who attack one at a time, are reminiscent of the “monster of the week” tokusatsu shows such as ULTRAMAN ( Anno’s favorite television show ) . The director of EVANGELION began from an immediately familiar and recognizable template, but in an interview before the show first aired, put the question up front: “If a person likes robot or cute girl animation, can they still be happy with it after the age of twenty?” It may seem like an odd question for Anno, 36 year - old super - otaku, who created in EVA an anime full of robots and cute girls, to pose.

But the director was quite serious: his studio, Gainax is known as the otaku who examine themselves. The personal, allegorical nature of their work was treated seriously in HONNEAMISE and humorously in OTAKU NO VIDEO, and it emerges throughout the length of EVANGELION, many of whose multi - generational cast of characters are painted masks for the show’s staff and most especially for Hideaki Anno himself.

… but Gainax’s continuing challenge to the industry is in some ways more intriguing, as it attempts to effect a revolution from deep inside-its otaku building their intricate fantasy castles in a super - detailed style of obsessive detail, then dismantling them brick by brick to show their sense of an underlying and inescapable reality.

–part 2

Scott Rider, EoE review

If you’re on the newsgroup and read this, could you perhaps answer a question about End of Evangelion?

What actually happens in the movie is that as Nine Inch Nails’ “March of the Pigs” blares, Anno, backed by strobe lights, nude except for a tip of the hat to William Burroughs, and visibly aroused, blows away successive EVA characters with a 12-gauge Mossberg airsoft, the six millimeter pellets shredding acetate avatars. At the end, covered by flecked and filmy remnants, he inserts the gun into his own mouth, only to find the bore choked by wads of merchandising cash.

–Carl “I wear this crown of shit/Upon my liar’s chair” Horn

from rec.arts.anime.misc

1998 P

• 1998-animerica-sadamotointerview-fr-opening.txt

• 1998-animerica-sadamotointerview.pdf

“Feb/98 issue of Animage features Hideaki Anno…The Love & Pop feature in Animage is really wide-ranging: There are interviews with all 4 actresses, interview with Hideaki Anno (He got a special interviewer, who is a woman manga artist), interview with Ryuu Murakami (the original author of the eponymous novel), interview with Miyuki Nanri (the producer of the movie), interview with Yuki Masa (the casting of the movie, also director of Death and Rebirth: Evangelion), interview with Takahide Shibanushi (the film photographer of the movie), and excerpts of feedback from people (aged 16–30) who saw the premiere show of the movie. Finally there is a report of Anno winning the 18th SF Award of Japan. Altogether there are 26 pages covering the movie, a real tribute to Anno, especially one coming from an anime magazine.”

–https://web.archive.org/web/20140101181535/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-January/008175.html

from the May 1998_26ya issue of EVANGELION:

On Anno’s severe depression, his “crisis of the soul,” as a motive in the development of Evangelion.

YAMAGA: Well, I think Anno may have appeared in the Japanese media as you suggest; he’s made comments about wanting to die, and so forth, but at least from my perspective, things were never as serious as they appeared in the press. [LAUGHS]

On the reasons for use of Judeo-Christian symbology in Eva

YAMAGA: I don’t know exactly why. I suspect that Mr. Anno may have read some book on it, and there was some thoughts he wanted to express on it. I personally am glad that, rather than Christianity, he didn’t express some obscure Buddhist theme, because then it would have been linked more with Aum Shinrikyo. [LAUGHS]

On whether Anno and Yamaga are fans of David Lynch, and whether Anno is “the Kurt Cobain of anime.”

YAMAGA: As far as Mr. Anno committing suicide or anything like that [LAUGHS], I’m not really sure how to say this, but, while sometimes he might seem very emotional, when you get to know him, he doesn’t come off like that at all. [LAUGHS] As far as David Lynch is concerned, I don’t dislike David Lynch, but on the other hand, he’s not someone I’m a huge fan of, either. As far as Anno, there have been people who have called Evangelion the anime equivalent of Twin Peaks. [LAUGHS]

–https://web.archive.org/web/20080515161510/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2006-September/003693.html (see also https://web.archive.org/web/20110725173035/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-June/015609.html); these comments are sourced from the 1998_26ya Fanime panel with Yamaga; Peter Svensson confirms the ‘some book’ comment (see https://web.archive.org/web/20121211084649/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-February/010543.html and personal communication, but also later says “Well, at Fanime Con, Yamaga said that Anno was influenced(on the religious aspects of EVA) by a novel…”. A mistake or were 2 books discussed? TODO emailed Svensson again)

• Excerpts from the Introduction to Animerica’s Interview; Animerica Vol.6 #8 p9, 23, & 28

• “The following interview with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto was printed in ANIMERICA Vol. 6 No. 8, in 1998” https://web.archive.org/web/20070825130059/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1999-January/024322.html / https://forum.anime-club.ro/forum/index.php?showtopic=1677_347ya&mode=threaded&pid=30834

Asahi Newspaper publishes a weekly magazine “AERA.” AERA 08/31/1998_26ya issue dealt with an interview with Hideaki Anno.

As you know, he is 180 cm tall. He is a kind of giant for normal Japanese.

He always fears something. But he himself is a kind of fear.

He was born in 1960_64ya in Ube city, Yamaguchi Prefecture. In his childhood, Ube city has shipyards. His inside proto-landscape is like such a shipyard, say, NERV base. (Faculty of Medicine, Yamaguchi University is located at Ube city.)

His father Takuya Anno lost his left leg like Touji Suzuhara.

Hideaki Anno fears animal. Therefore he is a vegetarian.

He said, “I cannot break my own heart shell. However I think I can enlarge it because I completed EVA.”

He is shy in fact.

He made EVA as his private anime. After EVA, he escaped from work. He tried to kill himself⁴⁸. In order not to kill himself, he had to live at the building of GAiNAX, Musashino-city, Tokyo.

But he lost his everything because he wasted out his all inside to make EVA.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20071207235755/www.geocities.com/Tokyo/4081/file425.html#3 cf. https://web.archive.org/web/20120121060850/http://webspace.webring.com/people/cu/um_2708/colj089.html (the one leg is confirmed in Prano mention of his father’s deformity; for more on the details of how Takuya Anno’s leg was lost and his troubled abusive relationship with Hideaki Anno, see the 1999-10-03 interview in the Asahi Shimbun)

[Anno] The reason the game business prospered and grew so fast is because it was a venture. But games have finally tanked too. It happened pretty fast, didn’t it? Our generation is naturally a shallow one, and there’s no-one who’s trying to overturn things. There isn’t anyone trying to make “me-anime” now, is there?

…[Anno] The first time I saw “Virtua Fighter”[2], I thought, is this what anime is up against? It was quite a shock. That’s when I realized I’d have to level up somewhere other than the visuals, I guess right before I did “EVA”. Visual impact is anime’s strong point, but since games had followed on anime’s heels, it had become a time when a methodology no different from the others just wouldn’t cut it. All the cards had already been dealt, so we had no choice but to change the combination, or turn over cards that were thought to be taboo. That’s what I mean when I say that “EVA” didn’t use even a single new methodology.

[Ikuhara] Ah, like what the media talks about as creatorhood when discussing animated works. But that’s just an illusion, and actually in the anime business no such thing as a creator is anywhere to be found. All there are are people who were brought along by the founding of the system. The people who devise the form of the anime of today.

…[Anno] Recently I watched some “Kinchuu” (“Kingiyo Chuuihou!”)[9]. As research for “Kare Kano”. I thought that perhaps that was what gags and shoujo manga were. But it felt a little old.

[Ikuhara] Old? It feels like things are divided into the time before and after “Sailor Moon”. I feel like it really infected the tastes at Comiket. [Anno] Yeah. Whether something’s major or not at Comiket amounts to whether or not it gets made into erotic stuff. After all, the sex industry is strong no matter what era it is. As Tsurumaki (Kazuya) said, earnestly value all things equally. Both Hiromatsu Junko and Ayanami Rei. I can’t express it in words, but I feel the same chasm within myself.

[Ikuhara] I think it’s the feeling of anti-septicness. The impression that they don’t smell like anything is good.

[Anno] Yes, yes, exactly.

[Ikuhara] Apparently stuff like unnecessary hair, or nose hair, isn’t absolute. Of course, in pictures the characters don’t actually have nostrils (laugh). I bet everyone would start hating pictures of girls if we drew nostrils on them.

[Anno] Cel anime fans are more sterile than that.

[Ikuhara] The idols of a decade ago felt really sterile. But recently actresses and TV talents are feeling less remote and more realistic.

[Anno] Does that include us, by any chance? It’s an existence where courage and familiarity seem to be draining away.

[Ikuhara] If so, the place that the people who recognize the feeling of sterility are carrying with them in their thoughts will disappear.

[Anno] That’s why I’m going with the cel anime system.

[Ikuhara] There’s somewhere where we’ll give up, isn’t there. We’re trying to fulfill our own ambitions virtually. I suppose if we were doing it for real we should be trying to make more properly ideal cities and better human relations. I can’t really say it in anything but pedestrian terms, but, like with things like the Aum[*1] incident, I can understand the feelings of the people who want to reorganize the world.

[Anno] In order to see a made-up drama, there are even people who neglect their real lives, right? That kind of person does things like become a seiyuu fan.

[Ikuhara] I bet what they really wanted was to touch an anime character.

[Anno] For something that could connect the virtual and the real, I too turned to the seiyuu. But that was a mistake. That’s why I tried to show something different in “Kare Kano”. But altering the existing system is tough.

…[Anno] Yes, a world where something is done with the body alone. Nothing else befits a documentary. A world that shows nothing of creation.

[Ikuhara] Take “Utena” and “EVA”. They take a fragment of our work and talk about us introducing impact into our animation, saying it’s like Terayama Shushi[12]’s work or something. It’s nothing that narrow, is it? I think that what appears in our works is the complex about the body that people who make made-up anime feel.

[Anno] I use the word “lifelike-ness”. Compared to that, cel anime is pretty and virtual. Because I feel a sense of thwarted life in current cel anime, I want to try to peek at it from a slightly different direction. Like trying not to use any of the established seiyuu.

–Newtype October 1998_26ya interview (mirror); EML copy of original Usenet translation

“Is Anno sane?” (see also https://web.archive.org/web/20080511222536/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2006-August/003688.html and https://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2006-August/003689.html)

Horn’s affirmation that Peter Svensson really did ask at ’98 Fanime of Yamaga whether Anno was sane: https://web.archive.org/web/20080511222536/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2006-August/003688.html

“The May 1998_26ya issue would have been called”Book Two, Issue #3” on its cover (that is, it contained the third chapter from vol. 2, Stage 9). It contained a special feature transcribing some of Hiroyuki Yamaga’s answers to audience questions at Fanime Con ’98 after a screening of Evangelion: Death (True) and Evangelion (Rebirth). I believe Mr. Yamaga’s panel was also covered in Protoculture Addicts, but they may have included some remarks and not others (and the reverse is likely true for my piece).”

–personal email with Carl Horn

• Missing primary source books (listed in E-Mono):

‘As for the books by Hideaki Anno. They were not written by Anno. The Blue one “Sukina Evangelion” (EVA that I love) is supposed to be a very “detailed” interview with Anno. The yellow one “Barano Evangelion” (EVA like rose) is supposed to be a very detailed interview with the production staff “when Anno was not around”.’ https://web.archive.org/web/20121107233955/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-February/010670.html

‘I’ve checked the E-MONO book and now I know which two books you are talking about. The ones with blue and yellow cover respectively, right? Unfortunately, they were not “written” by Anno. The “sukina” (blue) book is supposed to be a “very detailed” interview with Anno; while the “barano” (yellow) book is supposed to be also a “very detailed” interview with the production staff “when Anno was not around”. I don’t have them in possession though.’ https://web.archive.org/web/20121228113115/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1998-February/010182.html

“the unforgiving other

the substitute opposite sex

the sudden humiliation

the anxiety of departure (from other)

the horror (scare?) of the other

dangerous thinking (wisdom)

the proud of taking chance (????)

mercy of the weak

the unhappy photo

the scar of the pass

the uncomfortable/embarrassing stage (?)

beyond common sense

question the value

combination of lust and love

return to the womb (!!!)

empty time ( the time here I think is being used as noun….so timelessness?)

the vision of distraction

the fictional beginning

the continuation of reality

this, is the end of the dream”

–The Symphony of Evangelion concert had a number of telops flashed during EoE pieces; George Chen made the preceding list.

Episode 23

A-Part

1. Cut 1-51 Added Ritsuko’s room scene. Corrections on various background.

2. Cut 52-118 When the Angel trying to get into Unit-00, added one “Monitor scene”.

3. Cut 139-163 The inner Universe of Rei. Huge corrections on the drawings (note: according to the newsletter anyway)

4. Cut 139-163, 335-378, 182-190. Here, there are a lot of new scenes. We are suppose to see a “Giant Rei” before Unit 00 explodes (note: Like I said, I will not be able to confirm these notes till Sunday night. ^_^)

B-Part

5. 191-223 Various corrections of scenes of Misato and Shinji.

6. Cut 223B-F Gendo and Fuyutsuki in front of the Dummy Plug. New scenes (Note: !!!!! Will see it Sunday night!!!!!)

7. Rei III. Various corrections but no new footage.

8. Cut 256-278 Agent’s room. The composition which Fuyutsuki’s in is different. Seele with the nude Ritsuko; composition of the scene is different.

9. Cut 279-303. Minor corrections in the elevator scenes with Ritsuko, Misato and Shinji. There seems to be more “space” after the modifications.

10. Cut 304-334. While Ritsuko describe the nature of Rei. There are added scenes of discovery of Adam, and creation of Eva.

Episode 24

A-Part

11. Cut 1-14. The scenes which Asuka learned that Kaji is dead is added.

12. Cut 15-58. The bathtub scenes are much more “clear” now due to the TV vs. LD (Note: no censorship).

13. Cut 71-79. The Rei and Kaworu scenes. New dialogue between the 2 added. (!!!)

14. Cut 319-337 Seele and Kaworu—Misato’s monitor (????). New Scenes. (Note: Since this is just notes….plus I am doing a literal translations of those notes….I will have to put this into context later on…again…Sunday night)

15. Cut 150-310. News scenes which Unit 02 descending into Central Dogma. Seele’s dialogue is new. Lilith started to grow legs. (Which in the original the scenes only contain Lilith without lower part of the body).

16. Cut 311-318. Light pole had been added to the scenes by the lake (Note: So? A_A ). Reflection on near the shore had been corrected.

Additional changes:

In the preview section: The original preview of TV 25, 26 are retained but also added the preview of “Air” and “My Pure Heart for you”.

–George Chen, describing the notes accompanying the Japanese release of Genesis 0:12 and describing the changes & additions made as part of the Director’s Cut

Anno: Before that I read Mr. Matsumoto’s Battlefield manga series, and I also liked Wadachi. I was hanging out in my neighborhood browsing through an issue of Adventure King when I saw the announcement for the first episode: “New series, Space Battleship Yamato.” The title caught my fascination immediately. In our house we had one TV and the rest of my family wanted to watch Heidi, but I wanted Yamato. That was how it first pulled me in and got me devoted. These days we call it a ‘hammer.’ I think that was the first work to give me such an experience.

Matsumoto: Well, one of the few people who was in our audience! Our ratings were close to zero.

Anno: I went out and proselytized for it. I told all my schoolmates, “watch Yamato!” They could always catch Heidi in reruns. Or maybe not. (Laughter)

…Anno: If not for that, I don’t think I’d be doing my job now. That’s for sure. I recorded episodes on cassette then, because there were no VCRs, so I think Miyagawa-sensei’s music was the only kind I listened to. (Laughter)

Yamato was an epic. It made us feel like we were seeing adult anime for the first time. It wasn’t directed at children. The music was very adult, too. Of course, it had a huge visual impact, but since I was in the generation that listened to Yamato on tape, it’s what gave me an ear for music. By the virtue of those two things, that’s why I’m here now.

Matsumoto: An eighth-grader, about 14 years old. That was the first age where you could really get into it. That’s how it was with my generation, too, but we drifted away when it didn’t suit us anymore. Yours is the generation that was assimilated into the screen.

Anno: The influence of Captain Okita was very big. Goro Naya’s voice telling us to overcome our fears and believe in tomorrow. I said, “Yes! That’s it!” (Laughter)

My view of life and the way I think about things was surely influenced by that.

…[Leiji Matsumoto]: Anyway, it [Space Battleship Yamato] was my first animation job. It was pretty hard. Honestly, I wasn’t concerned about the ratings. I brought it up, but I don’t mind it particularly.

Anno: It had a lot of energy. The work of [Animation Director] Noboru Ishiguro was very good.

Matsumoto: We’re the same age. We were about 36 then. The main staff was generally about that age. That was the generation that wouldn’t go down without a fight. We’d have shouting matches or turn a deaf ear and kick up a big fuss about things and stay up all night.

Anno: Ishiguro once asked me if I was over 30. I said I was already 32, and he said “you’ve got three more years. You’ll do the best work of your life at 35.” That’s about how old he was when he made Yamato, so it’s true.

I was 35 when I made Evangelion, so I guess that’s my best work. 35 or 36 may be the right age.

…Matsumoto: It’s a very powerful thing, a dream inspired by the feminine. It gives men a lust for life. To persevere through many hardships for the sake of a matchless beauty.

Anno: Like hearing the voice of Starsha and flying all the way to Iscandar? I’d go for her, but if it was some scruffy guy instead, I wouldn’t answer the call no matter how urgent. I wouldn’t believe him! (Laughter)

Matsumoto: Neither would I!

Anno: If there isn’t an incredibly beautiful woman at the end of the journey, there’s no use. I’d want to go just to meet the woman.

–“A Yamato Discussion with Hideaki Anno, Leiji Matsumoto, and Hiroshi Miyagawa; translated from the 1998_26ya Railway of Fantasy Concert Program”

Tell us about your feelings vis-a-vis your character.

As far as I’m concerned, Shinji is all grown up, as of the end of the movie. Everyone has their own feelings on the subject, starting with the director, but to me, he’s finished wandering from child to adult. Thus I was pretty stuck when it came to doing this game. You see, this is still Shinji at that time in his life when he’s lost, and it was pretty tough for me to recall that period. That may well have caused me to blank out at times, which might be just like Shinji, in some perverse way (laughs). To me personally, Shinji grew up, very naturally…and wouldn’t want to go back to the way things were. I may well have made him a different character from the way he was before, in fact. I’m sorry (laughs).

… –What was it like squaring off with other characters?

I only played off Hidaka Noriko, and the shows she worked on (Top and Nadia) had pretty different worldviews from Eva, which left me kind of stuck. Shinji was a very real sort of character, in that he didn’t act like an anime character, but typically talked very quietly and sparingly, and it was like he was suddenly thrust into an anime world (laughs). Here I was, talking with Shinji’s gloomy voice, and right next to me is Hidaka Noriko, with her positive, impassioned manner of speech. I thought that this must be what your average anime hero is really like (laughs). The gap in tension levels between these characters was so great that I’m worried that it might have put a crimp in her performance too.

…If you use Shinji, you’re likely to lose, so I recommend against it (laughs).

–Megumi Ogata, seiyuu interviews for Gainax website on mahjong game (likely translated by Michael House); that is the only translated interview available in IA, although an old email may imply that other interviews were translated. The more interesting of the other mahjong interviews:

• Gendo

• Mary (from Nadia)

• Rei

• Touji

On the 9th (final) volume of the film comics, the comments for episode 26 starts with several lines ending with “At last, the HCP has been executed. … How about the complementation of Shinji? How about the complementation of Shinji’s heart? Here the path of Shinji’s complementation is described. This is just one form” [katachi: shape, form; I am tempted to translate it as scenario, but I think I’d better preserve the original word as much as possible. The Japanese here “Kore wa mata hitotsu no katachi de atta” has the connotation that there are other “forms”, which I interpret as other possibilities, or other endings.].

At the very end of the episode, when Shinji is smiling and all that. The comment said, “Shinji’s blissful smile. This is the smile of complemented Shinji. This is just one form, one of the many possibilities.”

–Patrick Yip

1998 S

Everyone in Evangelion is “seriously messed up,” Anno’s translator at 1996’s Anime Expo offered. Having gambled and won on Evangelion, Anno can afford to dismiss his critics. But this ultimate “fanboy”, who breaks into “Ultraman” poses when in front of the camera, is as hard on himself as he is on his industry and its fans. Evangelion was a struggle against four years of his own cowardice - a hiatus from work where “all I was doing was simply not dying”, said Anno to his American audience. “If I talk about the ‘limitations’ of the industry, after all, what does that mean? Aren’t I really talking about the limitations inside myself? It is the creators who have to change their frame of mind.” Most people who make anime, Anno said, have the kind of “autism” he himself has suffered from. “They have to try and reach out with their work, and communicate to others. What’s the greatest thing anime has ever achieved? The fact that we’re holding a dialogue right here and now.” When a fan of the master asked for advice to those who’d like to break into anime, he shot back, “Be interested in other things besides animation.”

–Carl Gustav Horn, Wizard: Manga Scene; TODO: are some of these AX quotes otherwise unknown?

…Oshii Mamorou’s TV anime series Urusei-yatsura (81-8) was famous for both its cult appeal to otaku culture (absurd SF plot, pretty girls, queer-designed mechas, images borrowed from Japanese folk stories) and his approach as a director being influenced by 70’s Japanese underground theater (for example, Shuji Terayama). He frequently experimented using abstract images, fast cut- ups, (seemingly) philosophical conversations or overactive movements of characters, to deconstruct ordinary anime patterns…In addition, we also should note that Miyazaki, Otomo and Oshii’s in attempting to make animation closer to real films seems to stem their common detestation of the anime genre (“genre” here means no typical images or narratives but distribution system, fan’s acceptance and so on. Miyazaki and Oshii intended to separate themselves from both anime and anime distributions). It is very ironical that almost all the best results of Japanese animation come from such a (pseudo)self-hatred.

…In the first place Evangelion contains not only mechas and pretty girls but many kind of otaku “services.” Anno borrowed or sometimes parodied innumerable images from 70 - 80’s Japanese animes, SF films or comics as for example the protagonist father’s uniform is obviously designed as a parody of the costume aesthetic in Space Battleship Yamato (74). Gainax (formerly Daicon Film) started its career by making parody anime films in a typical “postmodern” manner. Evangelion succeeds in using a lot of cliches, only to invert their functions: For example, such characters as Asuka or Toji must not be seriously injured in an anime. Anno intendedly breaks such kind of implicit expectation/regulation.

…As Anno himself remarks [where?], in Evangelion he does not want to make animation film closer to real films. Instead, he attempts to make the most of anime’s abstractness (which results from an unavoidable limit of information’s quantity in one frame). Krystian Woznicki: So Anno changed the original plot of the story when he saw the news about the invasion of Aum’s hide out by the police⁴⁹. Did he change it because it was too close to reality?

Azuma Hiroki: Yes, he said so.

KW: But did why he change it? What is the problem with Evangelion being so close to the Aum case?

AH: Anno thought that the original scenario will not be suitable for broadcasting.

KW: So he feared censorship.

AH: A kind of censorship. But this is very typical of the anime situation. TV animations are supposed to be seen by youngsters under 15, 16 years old. And I think, if it this wasn’t the case, then Anno would have thought that its obvious similarity with the reality would decrease Evangelion’s imaginative potential. But anyway, the original scenario [the Proposal?] is so shockingly close to the political motivation of the Aum Shinrikyo group, they fight against the upshot of the enemy, without knowing what the enemy really is. The angels change their form for example into pyramids, into shadows.

I asked Anno about such abstract characteristics of the angels. He said that this reflects the feelings of his generation. For his generation the enemy is not political. It is also not definite. I mentioned to Anno that such abstract characteristics of the enemy are very close to the conception of Aum as enemy (eg. poison gas) which he admitted. He also admitted the similarity of Evangelion with Aum. Nevertheless it is too simple to conclude that Anno was sympathetic with Aum. He emphasizes the closedness and exclusiveness of this group. They lost any contact with reality. In Anno’s view this again is very close to the situation of anime fans. In fact Evangelion criticizes anime fans, and anime culture: it begins with ambiguous flirtations with conditions central to Aum, and ends with its critique as launched on the situation of anime fans.

KW: Why do you think that Evangelion’s flirtations with the Aum case are so essential to its “cultural meaning”?

AH: As you may know there was this particular case with Oe Kenzaburo. He is said to have been surprised when Nihon Seki Gun [Japanese Red Army] got Assama Sanso Jiken: in 1972_52ya the Japanese Red Army stayed in a house close to Mount Asama. They fought with the Japanese police and army. This affair was very close to the novel Kozui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi [The Flood invades my spirit] which Oe Kenzaburo wrote and wanted to publish at that time. However Oe had to change the plot as it was too close to reality. The original plot is said to have been partly changed. Although I am not sure that Anno is comparable to with Oe, it seems unquestionable that he is one of the smartest storytellers in Japanese culture of the 90’s.

KW: But do you really think that the parallels to Aum are characteristic of, or say, unique about Evangelion? For instance the case you just mentioned has occurred in various cases of recent film productions eg. in the case of Fukui Shojin’s Rubber’s Lover whose production goes back to 1992_32ya and which shortly after Aum came to fruition. Out of the fear to provoke misreadings Fukui changed some parts, as he feared those to be mistaken for a sympathetic account of Aum…Angel Dust made about two years before Aum happend describes certain conditions that became dominant in the Aum phenomena: again isolation, brain-washing, extortion. But the aspect of circulation, as it is linked to the mode of reception is perhaps unique about Evangelion and on this level also comparable with Oe’s case: Evangelion was broadcast at 6:30 p.m. in the afternoon on a major channel, reaching millions of people whereas the films just mentioned are usually seen by a limited audience…

…AH: I admit that the closeness to Aum is not the privilege of Evangelion. The point is that Evangelion is an intrinsic critique of Aum. Anno’s career is so close to that of Aum. The Anime fan is the typical type of Japanese otaku. The Aum affair tackled the cultural territory of the Otaku.

…Azuma Hiroki: I think that this phenomenon is very new in Japanese cultural scene of the 80’s: the multiplication in number does not mean that they socialize and get open. Anno is very conscious about such closeness. In other interviews [mit einschlaegigen Animemagazinen [Animage]] he says that in the beginning of making Evangelion he wanted to enlarge the number of otaku. It was some kind of master plan for “otakuzation” in order to break the closedness. But towards the end [of the production process] he had to break that pattern and to diffuse it. This change, that occurred in less than half a year is very important to Japanese culture, because it clearly shows that one typical strategy to implode a closed/specialized cultural terrain necessarily results in failure. The series Evangelion can be divided in 2 parts. The first part is a well made Sci-Fi anime. The characters are described as happy and communicative; typical Sci-Fi anime characters such as Asuka. Rei is of course very exceptional. The first part seems to develop into a happy ending, which is of course the most desirable plot for anime fans. The way they watch these films is a process of identifying with the characters. They want to be Shinji or Asuka. But the later part diverges from such a typical pattern. The reviews and comments of Anime fans published in their respective magazines show their disappointment with the later episodes, since there is no hope for a happy ending and no space for their identification with characters. The mystery of the Evangelion world gets increasingly critical and complicated. This is obviously not a typical Anime plot anymore. Another level is the level of imagery. The speed of cut ups is very high towards the end. When I asked Anno about influences he did not mention Nouvelle Vague, although I expected him to say Godard. He named Okamoto Kihachi, a filmmaker of the Japanese Nouvelle Vague, who was actually influenced by Godard. [Blue Christmas was by Kihachi.]

[AH:] …In episode 19 Evangelion punches the enemy, the black Evangelion. This scene is very violent and brutal. Such cruel imagery cannot be accepted by Anime fans.

KW: Was there a controversy about this particular scene?

AH: Anno didn’t speak about this issue clearly. He just said that somebody made a claim. TV producers, advertisers, … I don’t know. It seems a delicate matter.

KW: …In Anno there is a remarkable shift towards reduction. The imagery is very simplistic, yet sophisticated.

AH: Instead of multiplying information within one frame, Anno does multiply information by the speed and rhythm of cut ups. In Anno the information included in one frame is very limited.

KW: Sometimes we see a static image for 30 to 90 seconds or so. Sometimes there is a minimal, mechanical movement on the vertical, horizontal axis within this basically static image such as the descending movement of escalators on which people have “serious” conversations. The static mechanicalness recalls the beginnings of this genre where stories are narrated verbally to a large degree.

AH: A static image followed by fast, almost shocking cut ups is so characteristic for Anno. To him Otomo and Oshii’s style is very limited due to technical reasons. TV animators always work under difficult conditions. Either there is a lack of time or man power.

…AH: As you know Anno’s angels have such double character. You can see that the angels get the form of a virus in some of the episodes. Evangelion describes the concept of the enemy in the 90’s Japanese situation, such as Aum. In the 90’s the Japanese complain about things getting worse and worse in economy and society, etc. Many have a very critical feeling about the Japanese situation, while they can not trace the source of this development. Their feelings circulate in vain, without identifying what/who the enemy is. This condition is well described in Evangelion.

KW: There are so many mysteries in this Anime. My impression is that Anno constructed the story by implanting a deluge of details and sub-stories in order to confuse the regular Anime viewer, who usually sets out to follow and interpret the plot on all levels.

AH: In my opinion Anno began Evangelion with the idea to solve all mysterious points finally. I think he changed his mind in the middle. He decided not to solve the mysteries, but to multiply them, which would be another way of criticizing the viewing habits of his audience.

…AH: In Miyazaki’s film [Laputa] this element is central and reappears. Nadia was supposed to be the TV version of it, and on top of it, rendered with Miyazaki’s taste. Of course, Anno disliked this idea. He wanted to do an original work, but it was impossible to do that within the framework of this assignment. For example, he could not create any cruel scene. After that he decided to make an independent film with Gainax.

…AH: Okada is a critic now. The unconventional character of Evangelion’s latter part very much contradicts Okada’s point of view.

KW: Did he say something about Evangelion?

AH: As I heard, during a meeting with fans Okada said that he did not see Evangelion. (laughs)

KW: That’s a clear statement.

AH: Sure, but you have to understand that his complicated relationship with Gainax also makes it difficult for him to comment upon it.

…AH: At that time they [Gainax] began to produce computer software. The most successful result was a software called Princess Maker, which was a sort of simulation soft, in which you can educate a girl. The final goal within this program for instance is marriage. You could chose to make your daughter a scientist, designer, or a “naughty girl”. Many choices. In 1991_33ya this software was a big hit. People seemed to enjoy the idea to have a sort of a fictive, personal toy-girl. It was strictly Otaku business. Then another turn occurs. Anno went to his hometown and is asked about his profession. He was very ashamed to say that he was an anime director as his output was mainly commercial. There was nothing he could be proud of. Anno was very frustrated, and came up with the plan to make Evangelion.

…AH: You should not underestimate Doujinshi writer’s skills. Most professional comic writer come from the Doujinshi Market. Many producers and editors follow Doujinshi Market trends, where they would pick up some new talents. A friend of mine writes for an erotic magazine on the Doujinshi market. I was very surprised to hear that he sold over 3,000 books ..There are for instance many books on the Doujinshi Market which parody Evangelion. Gainax allows it. The committee of the Doujinshi Market, which may consist of some artists, pays a small amount to Gainax as a tribute. The expansion of the market is amazing though. As I just said, my friend sold a couple thousands of his book. A professional writer in the literary field in Japan can not sell so many.

…KW: Her [Rei Ayanami] room looks anyway like in a hospital. One reason is, because she is wearing a bandage and has always blood all over her clothes/body.

AH: In her apartment two images intersect. One is refugee, the other one is scientific dis-ornament. The intersection of these two motifs recalls the hide out of Aum called Satiyam. [Aum’s buildings were named “Satyam”, eg. “Satyam no. 7” was where the sarin was prepared.]

KW: I am trying to show that there are certain parallels and that Anno is just also not entirely disconnected from the sub-cultural movements of the last years.

AH: Of course such contemporaneity is very important. The point is that in Anno all these images and motifs are very convincing and somehow brought to the point.

–“TOWARDS A CARTOGRAPHY OF JAPANESE ANIME: Hideaki Anno’s Evangelion. Interview with Azuma Hiroki” “by Krystian Woznicki for BLIMP Filmmagazine” interview with Azuma Hiroki; Azuma is referring to his own interview of Anno in 1996 (that interview is not translated, but Numbers-kun confirms what a Google Translate suggests) The article seems available in Italian; the full interview is also available in Italian; it seems to differ somewhat:

1. part 1

2. part 2

3. part 3

4. part 4

This is a drama, and thus fiction.
It is anime, which means it is all told in drawings.
The production schedule is also impacted.
But it is my hope to fill this work to the brim with the sense that this is what we feel.
I hope that this work will touch your hearts and souls.
I hope that it will reach you beyond just a sense of cuteness.
None of us will ever truly understand anyone else.
The bigger our hopes, the greater our failures.
Reality has no mercy.
But if there is a tomorrow, we will think again on those who matter to us.
That means you as well as me.
In hopes that we may all meet and fall in love with someone wonderful.

–Karekano producer, Sato Hiroki; original Japanese

Anyway, I haven’t seen Karekano episode 2 yet, as I imagine most of you reading this haven’t, either. I feel a kind of shock at missing the show on the air already (there’s an unwritten law about GAINAX staffers having to watch it on the air).

–from the 1998-10-09 diary of Muramatsu Ryouko, asst. producer; relevant to EoTV - even producers don’t see the final product, and this from early in production when there are no problems? Gainax tradition indeed…

Changing the subject, there’s a window in direct line with the second-floor hallway of the GAINAX Building, with a chair right next to that window. It’s for those who want to take a breather, look outside, and have a smoke. When I passed by there this afternoon, though, there was someone just sitting on the cold floor of the hallway, smoking a cigarette. It was Hirose, who’s doing cel running for episode 8.

Muramatsu: Isn’t your butt cold sitting like that?

Hirose: If I get warm, I’ll fall asleep.

Seems he hadn’t had any decent sleep in a week, and was desperately fighting off fatigue. When I peeked in the production room about five minutes later, however, he was sleeping the sleep of the just. So much for that. I guess this just goes to prove that the people drawing the pictures aren’t the ones who have it rough.

–1998-11-06, Muramatsu Ryouko; the crunch continues. (In a similar vein, Carl Horn says that “Yamaga once asked an American fan who wanted to work at Gainax if she had ever seen the movie Das Boot, because he said that did a good job suggesting the work space”.)

1998 T

• 1998-animerica-allisonkeithinterview.pdf

Their best original works–Yamaga’s Royal Space Force, Takeshi Mori’s Otaku no Video, Kazuya Tsurumaki’s FLCL, and Anno’s Evangelion–display Gainax’s odd inside-out paradox of being super-obsessed fans who, through their meditations, nevertheless sometimes come to enlightenment about the nature of themselves, their medium, their industry, their times, and their world.

–Carl Horn, “Editor’s Note, Manga Volume 1”

Although Death and Rebirth has not yet had a commercial release on video or disc in Japan, it recently aired on the Japanese cable channel WOWOW, and this copy was the source for the public screening at Fanime – a screening believed to be the first in the United States.

Death and Rebirth came out in Japan on March 15, 1997_27ya. A month prior to the film’s Japanese premiere, Eva director Hideaki Anno called a Valentine’s Day press conference to announce that while “it was my intent to conclude (Eva) with (Death and Rebirth)… the story expanded far beyond the vision I had when we began production, and we went vastly over the planned running length and frames of animation.”

… Death is an edited version of the events of episodes #1-24 of the Evangelion TV series, yet it is no mere synopsis; besides containing several new scenes (it opens with secret UN footage from their Antarctic Base shortly before the Second Impact), Death tells the story of Eva in a completely different order that leads the viewer to contemplate director Anno’s choice of view and focus. Hiroyuki Yamaga compared Anno’s editing method to that of a DJ, “sampling” the episodes in a complex, non-linear mix. In another, literal sense as well, Death is a musical composition – the movie is structured as a string concerto in four parts, and we return at various points in the edit to the same mysterious locale where much of the events of Eva TV episodes #25 and #26 take place (thus strongly suggesting that despite the presentation of The End of Evangelion – of which Rebirth is of course the first part – as a “remake” of those final two episodes, it might be better regarded as another viewpoint on them instead) where various Eva characters perform, separately and together, musical selections from Bach, Beethoven, and Pachelbel.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20010219070024/j-pop.com/anime/archive/reviews/11_comp_graphics/picks0.html

I was flipping through the old Japanese classics “Genji Monogatari” (Tale of Genji) the other day. It’s been quite some time since I looked at the final part of this monumental work, and I found that the name of the hero in this part of the story is “Kaworu”!!

I did some more research on this name. These are the facts about “Kaworu” that I find out:

• The reason why “Kaworu” is written with a “wo” character is probably influenced by classics work like “Genji Monogatari”. In the Heian ages and medieval period, “wo” and “o” were quite separate words. At that time “Kaworu” was indeed written with “wo” character. The two characters merged in their pronunciation in the Edo period and thus created the confusion as to why “Kaworu” should have a “wo” character. It is possible that some Japanese may not even know this, and it has become common practice to write “Kaoru”. This creates more confusion.

• “Kaworu” is a serious but also romantic hero in the last third of the Tale of Genji. And literally the kanji for “Kaworu” means fragrance (of incense wood). Indeed in Tale of Genji, Kaworu was born with a very special bodily feature: His body bore a sweet fragrance smell. So the name “Kaworu” is commonly related to the idea of intelligent, handsome and romantic hero.

• And one more striking thing. “Kaworu” can be a girl’s name as well!!This adds to the ambiguity of sex implicated by this name. Put it into the context that Kaworu is an epitome of shoujo-anime bishonen (handsome boy) with ambiguous sexuality. Now it seems to me that Gainax actually put some thought in choosing his name.

• Lastly, it can now become clear that despite “Kaworu”’s Caucasian look, he indeed has a Japanese name.

–Patrick Yip (Interestingly, in Anno’s 2000 character name essay, he has no idea what the first name signifies.)

Well the PTA managed to stop Go Nagai’s Shameful School (Harenchi Gakuen) from being published. U-Jin’s Angel was pulled from publication a few years ago after loud PTA objections, but then it came back in a new 3-D stereogram edition essentially uncut. If EVA was a late night anime, the PTA probably wouldn’t have raised a ruckus, if it ever did. But since EVA was shown on primetime, when children (as well as adults) would likely be able to watch, concerned parents might have objected to it. From what I’ve gathered, EVA had more “mature situations” than any anime on primetime television. It also had religious themes (or those that could be interpreted as such) that are virtually nonexistent in the medium.

–Fuuma Monou

1999 P

…In an interview with Asahi Shimbun he said his father [Takuya Anno], who wears an artificial leg, has overcome the stigma of disability by working as a newspaper delivery man. Wounded soldiers in his animations reflect father’s influence, he said, adding, “Something broken or deficient comes more naturally to me.”

My father has only one leg. While working at a lumber mill he had his left leg seriously injured with an electric saw. He was 16 years old at the time. He wears an artificial leg below the thigh. He has trouble walking, so he used to stay at home.

He was running a tailor’s shop with his wife in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture. He became a tailor because he could work sitting on a chair. He had no trouble pedaling the sewing machine.

Father had an operation at a local hospital, but the surgeon did a poor job. I often saw an edge of the bone still peeking out of the flesh. And he felt pain because his artificial leg didn’t fit. After walking for a long time, he would take off the device and massage his thigh. So about the only time I went out with him was when there was a festival in town.

In my boyhood, father was melancholy. I often overheard him complaining to mother, “I wouldn’t lose out to anybody if I had two healthy legs.” As a small child I could understand how he felt about his handicap.

I think he was emotionally unstable. Maybe that’s why he beat and kicked me when I did something wrong. Sometimes mother came to my rescue and ran away holding me in her arms. Father also said something very cruel to me, though I don’t remember exactly what he said. It had the same connotation as what a frustrated mother might say to her unwanted child - “I wish you were not here.”

When I was in senior high school, low-priced ready-made suits hit the market, and father couldn’t make a living just running a tailor shop. So he began delivering newspapers. He made his rounds in the town on a bicycle. Maybe he wanted to show he could work like anybody else.

I think something in him changed after that. He stopped complaining around that time. He got a driver’s license and often made a short trip with my mother.

Father says nothing about my productions. Maybe he does not understand animations. I meet him perhaps once every two or three years. I feel distant from my family.

But there is no doubt that I have been influenced by father’s physical handicap. I cannot love anything perfect. To me, robots without a hand or leg look better. In my animation “Tetsujin 28-go” (Iron Man No. 28), the robot loses his arm. I love that scene.

While in elementary school I would draw a robot in my notebook or in a blank space of the textbook, and then I would rub out a part of the body and show something that looks like a bone.

The robots that appear in my productions usually get injured in battle and end up in bad shape with a part of the body broken.

Something broken of deficient comes more naturally to me. Sometimes that thing is the body. Sometimes it is the mind.

—“Disability Shapes Taste for the Imperfect: A Father’s Way”, Asahi Evening News, Sunday 1999-10-03 (transcribed by EGF Wiki from photograph of printed newspaper)

• “Hideaki Anno Talks to Kids” transcript

In 1997_27ya, shortly after the success of Evangelion and somewhere during pre-production of Kare Kano, Anno participated in a popular NHK show called “Welcome Back for an Extracurricular Lesson, Sempai!”, where popular personalities revisit the town they grew up in to teach a class at their old primary schools. For anyone who has peeked into the very, very dark current of thought he vented so readily in Evangelion, the thought of this is impossible not to snicker at.

… Before Anno arrives, they are to draw and write what they think he’s like, based on their thoughts from watching Eva. Puzzled, they just start coming up with silliness.

… “Why is that robot-thingy called Evangelion?”

“It comes from a Christian word meaning ‘Gospel’ and it’s supposed to bring blessings. It has some Greek roots. I chose the name because it sounds complicated.”

“What does Rei like?” Otaku boy asks. “I haven’t thought about it,” is Anno’s curt reply. He’s not exactly a verbal person, but he’s keenly aware of subtle things that affect how the kids might react to him, so he does things like maintain eye level with them. Anno admits he has a self-esteem problem. “I’m not crazy about myself. I’m often told that those who don’t like themselves have high ideals, but I think someone who says that doesn’t really understand the pain that’s involved,” he muses.

“Do you like the anime you make?”

“There’s parts I like and parts I don’t.”

“What parts do you dislike?”

“The parts that I’m in.”

… After a quick school lunch (Anno barely eats, and refuses all meat and fish) The kids are brought by bus into town to interview Anno’s parents and childhood friends. [cf. the ’96 anime panel]

… After the kids present their (much improved) animations, Anno wraps up by explaining the point of such free-form exercises. “In school tests, there’s only one answer for each question, and you might get zero or half points if you’re wrong. But in the real world, things aren’t so black and white, so think about things on your own and express them in words or pictures. That’s how you communicate with people. That’s so important.”

… The power lines, the landscapes of man-made structures – including many of Anno’s visual trademark shots – are so obviously influenced by these surroundings that we almost expect to see Asuka rounding the corner.

–“Buried Treasure: ‘Hideaki Anno Talks to Kids’”; picture of parents in Hideaki Anno Talks to Kids

When the very first meeting was held before the title had even been decided, Anno had already provided the theme of “a battle between gods and humans”. Both Anno and I – our generation – was influenced by Go Nagai, so making something on a grand scale meant it ended up like “Devilman”. The character design request from Anno was that “the lead character is a girl, and has an older-sister type figure like Coach next to her,” so it was structurally similar to “Gunbuster”. So I first designed an Asuka-type girl as the lead character, but after “Gunbuster” and “Nadia” I felt some resistance to making the lead character a girl again. I mean a robot should be piloted by a trained person, and if that person just happens to be a girl then that is fine, but I couldn’t see why a young girl would pilot a robot… So I remember saying to Anno, “It’s a robot story, so let’s make the lead character a boy.” And just about that time, I was watching the NHK [public TV channel] program “Brain and Heart”⁵⁰ and learned about the existence of the A10 nerve, and I told Anno about the idea that popped into my head at that time. That was the idea where “the dead mother is inside the robot, which is operated by mental/psychical bonding with the child. Moreover, parent-child relations are parched/strained due to the death of the mother at a young age.”

… An easily recognizable silhouette is also important, but I designed the characters so that their personalities could be more or less understood at a glance. For example, even the color and length of the hair expresses personality. I thought that Asuka would occupy the position of an “idol” in the Eva world, and that [Asuka and] Shinji should be just like the relationship between Nadia and Jean. And then I set Rei as the opposing “Ying” portion. It was my idea to have her wrapped in bandages. The most difficult was Misato. So I thought it would be interesting to have someone like the older girl next door as a military person.

We had talked a lot in the beginning about wanting a title like “Space Runaway Ideon (Legendary Giant God Ideon)”, so I think I did push that. And to tell the truth, the story composition is also similar. For example, Nerv can be considered the same as the Solo Ship fighting a lonely battle against both humankind and the Buff Clan, and then there are the incomprehensible robots that can only communicate with children and tend to go berserk, etc. It might not be an exaggeration to say that if you add “Ideon” and “Devilman” together and divide by two, you get “Evangelion”. (laugh)

–September Der Monde Sadamoto interview; partial translation, covering key character design. Interview was reprinted in Osadebon (“Book of Sadamoto”), a supplement to the December 2000_24ya Ace-A manga magazine. e writes that the contents of the Osadebon are:

• “Stage 1 of Eva manga (40 pages).

• Sadamoto Long Interview mentioned above (8 pages).

• Sadamoto My Favorites (5 pages - he writes about his favorite cars, bikes, idols, movies and anime/manga).

• Kotou no Oni manga (32 pages - originally published in Newtype in 1994_30ya, then in the Der Mond Deluxe Edition, art by Sadamoto, story by wife Takaha Mako).

• Otousan no Futsuu Seikatsu manga (9 pages - by wife Takaha Mako).

• 1 page listing all tankoubon (and related Eva books) by Sadamoto.

• 2 pages of all comments made by Sadamoto in the contents page of Shonen Ace since 1995_29ya.

• 2 pages listing Sadamoto’s main works, with short comments by Sadamoto.

• 1 page ad for volume 8 of the Eva manga.

• 1 page timeline of Sadamoto’s life, starting with birth in 1962_62ya.”

Go Nagai: I told myself that it was a good idea to create a hero who wasn’t necessarily good, that we could have a bad hero, that’s where the inspiration came. At that time I was watching movies like Godzilla and I was really identifying myself to him. Without knowing why, through the eyes of Godzilla, I felt the need to crush tanks or to disperse crowds of people with kicks, I found that entertaining… It’s in this same state of mind that I started writing Mao Dante.

[Hideaki Anno:] …In brief, I was following the manga, and I arrived to the part of the “big battle”. It was something unexpected, and for a child like me, it was shocking.

GN: And what marked you?

HA: For example, this scene where a character faced schoolgirl prisoners, whose clothes were torn, were hiding their breasts and the crotch, and tells them “Hands up!” It’s remarkable, like a comical scene. I think it was one of my first memories of your work. But your influence on me is incalculable, impossible to evaluate. After all, even in Evangelion, I couldn’t get away from the Devilman influence…

GN: Oh yes? I was told that there were similarities, therefore I went to see Evangelion in the cinema with that idea, but I didn’t feel that.

HA: No, but I think I didn’t do it consciously… After that, people made me notice: “Ah this is Devilman”, etc…

…[Interviewer] You both are from two different generations. What was your idea of a monster, when you were kids?

HA: I wasn’t a big fan of monster movies, not as much as Master Nagai… I didn’t hate it, but for me war movies was rather my thing. After that, I started on hero stories like Ultraman.

GN: You were not watching Ultra Q, Ultraman’s prequel?

HA: I saw it, but I couldn’t get a hold of it. We were seeing only monsters, and scary stuff… We can conclude that I prefer giant heroes over monsters.

GN: Someone told me that Evangelion was visually inspired by Ultraman, is it true?

HA: EVA is an “Ultraman-ian” character, sure. But to be honest, the visual inspiration also comes from Devilman.

GN: Really?

HA: There’s also some Shuten Douji in it. And also the idea that even demons and ogres with their scary faces. I think the thing we name “power” is something really scary. So when the design was to be made, I particularly insisted that he is scary-looking. If kids could start crying just by watching an episode, that would be ideal. To the point to make it an anti-hero, something which is scary. For that, Devilman was the perfect model. I had drawn a “rough” version of EVA which looked a lot like Devilman, with the curved back, la taille fine, a thick chest plate. It was the image that I made from Devilman. But EVA also has common points with Mazinger Z. He too has a scary demonic face.

GN: For what is Devilman and Mazinger Z, I didn’t have the intention to give them nightmare-esque faces, but that naturally came to me ! (Laughs)

HA: In Mao Dante, the ears of Ryo Utsugi become the eyes of a demon, right? In the first version of EVA, when we looked at its eyes closely, we also noticed an influence from Mao Dante. Before that I did the Gunbuster ova, and for the robot design, I told myself that giving it two eyes was a bit dull. So I made it like a cyclops, but later I realized it was a mistake. Even with their shadow, robots like Mazinger remained recognizable, even if the eyes were no longer just two white shapes. In Gunbuster, with its unique eye, it didn’t work well. I therefore told myself that next time, I will definitely make a robot with compound eyes, like an insect. For that, I coloured all of the body of the first version of EVA with a gloomy colour, except for the eyes, which I left in white, to attract attention.

…HA: Still concerning the face, I love Mazinger Z in profile towards the first episode in the prepublication. It’s his first appearance and Kouji discovers it with a stunning cry.

GN: The scene in the house of the grandpa, is that it?

HA: Yes, it really marked me. That must be why I gave the same kind of eyes to the first version of EVA. When I brought these rectifications on the original drawings, I couldn’t prevent myself from drawing the eyes in the style of Master Nagai.

And in the first episode of Evangelion, the first appearance of EVA is a big shot on his face, right?

HA: Eh yes, that’s it. (Laugh) Sorry.

GN: Fancy that? (Laugh)

…HA: The manga that was appearing in Terebi Magazine wasn’t bad, but however, it wasn’t the TV version… I was watching, but at that time when I was in 5th grade, me and my friends had the impression that it was for little kids, and that they were taking us a bit for idiots. It’s the same thing for the Getter Robo anime. The manga of Master Ken Ishikawa was like a bible to me. In the anime of Mazinger Z, there was only one episode that I liked, the #32 (“Three headed beast machine of terror”), where Mazinger Z was hurled in the sky by hanging on to the “breast-missiles” [Aphrodai Ace - NDT]. In my memory, it’s the only scene that fascinated my childish heart. And for Getter Robo, it’s the episode where they were forced to pilot by themselves… The one where the robot gets decapitated? (#30: “When the Phoenix resurrects”)

HA: That’s all. It’s the only episode I liked, the one where Getter Robo is defeated. That seemed plausible to me. Also, I really liked the opening song too.

…Toshimichi Otsuki: In your work, there are frightening images of disfigured characters, torn bodies or human-dogs, which were very scary, and in addition to that, there were frights that we prefer not to talk about, generally speaking. It’s the kind of things we prefer not thinking in our everyday life. In Devilman and Mao Dante, the memory that in the past, humans were the prey of demons, it’s really something terrifying.

GN: Whether it comes from our memories or elsewhere, we have this kind of memories in us.

TO: It actually exists by the way. There was a time when humans were preys, without a doubt. I think that’s why we started using our hands, making fire etc… so as not to be eaten! It’s something that we have forgotten, but something still says in our memory, as a species. At that time, we were simians, we were attacked by saurians, et since these beasts were a source of fear, we got used to the idea of demons.

HA: I like well the concept of “freaks” who counter attack, for example in Mazinger Z. For me, the mechanical beasts are like an army of “freaks”, also, they’re led by a crazy scientist! As a kid, I loved to see the crazy scientist who was oppressed and started shouting “Forward for the world’s conquest!”

GN: It’s a bit the same thing with demons, right? From a historic point of view, most of people who were identified to demons were tyrannised. I expressed that unconsciously… I maybe go that idea somewhere, to say … Who knows that can happen to me in another life? Anyway, whatever happens, I cannot be on side of those with power, I’ll naturally be for the ones opposing power. And even if Satan was identified as the big evil, I wonder if he’s as bad that. Et puis au final. At the end of Devilman, we can also reach a conclusion that God is the evil one. Satan too opposes power: He opposes God…

…HA: When we have characters hose lose their original form and mixes themselves with one another, that’s Ken Ishikawa. However, when we see bodies well cut in two with blood coming out, that’s Go Nagai.

GN: In the cinema version of Evangelion, your use of viscerality isn’t bad at all…

HA: That’s right… We also introduced the concept of cannibalism. But it’s hard to make it frightening in animation.

GN: I thought it was effective enough!

HA: What would be ideal is that kids who watch it start to vomit, but they didn’t even get a small nausea. That should have made them sick. Because if I think it’s better to show repugnant things just as they are. If we succeed to transmit the emotion that atrocious things are atrocious, it’s mission succeeded. When someone tells me “It’s too horrible, too violent”, that pleases me, because it’s a healthy and normal reaction. When they tell me “I cannot watch, it’s too much”, I say “Okaaaaay!” (Laughs).⁵¹

…HA: Actually (with Evangelion), I only thought of renewing the genre. At its core, it’s still Mazinger Z. I thought to myself how Mazinger Z would be if it was created today. With stuff like training the pilots in laboratories… However, this was quickly derailed.

…TO: No, nothing at all. But tell me, Anno, you will have to clarify me on a point: In the cinema version of Evangelion, the NERV fights against the army… As far as the intrigue goes, it reminded me of the war between the ministry of education and the shameless school, in Harenchi Gakuen. On one side, you got those who back up the total war, saying that it’s justified, and on the other side, there are those who say it’s going to be a massacre. When I watched the movie in the theatres, I told myself that this looked like a serious version of Harenchi Gakuen’s ending…

HA: Actually, since the time when we produced the TV series which preceded the movie, I was thinking of the image of the society as enemy. So, in the end, characters linked to the government are actually a form of authority, from our point of view. It’s a story which shows how adults destroy the lives of children. I cannot say I’m completely opposed to the system, but since my childhood, I always had this vague impression of being squashed by the pressure around me.

…HA: I ask myself at what moment people started to value virtual things over real things. Maybe kids today think that virtuality has more value.

TO: I think that’s the case. As a consequence, reality has less value in their eyes, they think it’s easy to kill people. So that if we give reality its adequate value, it’s hard to decapitate someone or do these kind of things…

HA: As for the images of girls, when I was small, I was more addicted to Yamaguchi Momoe (A Japanese “Idol” singer) than my girl classmates. People that we see on tv are more important than those who exist just two steps away from us. It’s a form of idolisation.

…HA: Yoshiyuki Sadamoto considers you simply like a God. His main reason for going to a party organised by Kodansha was to meet you. Me too, when I went to the ceremony of prize awards of Science-Fiction, that was for the same reason.

…HA: In our days, it’s undeniable that we ask questions on the validity of fiction. Also, documentaries are becoming more and more interesting. To the point where reality itself become just as chaotic just like fiction. I explain myself: the things that M. Nagai wrote about 25 to 30 years ago have already materialized. Recently, I was wandering in Shibuya quarters, around 21 hours. I had the impression of being there. The “infernal earthquake of the Kanto planes” didn’t happen, but it was as if I was in the slums of Violence Jack. There’s an atmosphere of desolation. People who were found there had no place of work, and when they worked, it didn’t bring them anything. It’s before everything else a spiritual poverty.

…GN: I partly wrote Devilman with the intention of alerting people. In our days in Japan, we are indifferent to armament compared to the past. I want to say that in this time, nothing other than talking about the problem of the army could cool down the ambiance. For some time, that’s no longer the case.

TO: It’s as if they were telling me earlier: It’s “virtual”. We’re “waiting for the war”, I think. I sometime ask myself if everyone doesn’t want war.

GN: And I have the impression that this want for war is becoming reality. How did it happen, again? … Yes, for the Japanese soldiers of the autodefense force sent to a foreign place can participate in military activities, we created rules of cooperation with the peace maintenance force from the UN. It will start like this. If we admit that it’s acceptable to send army forces in large quantities, we are two fingers away from approving armed aggressions. What scares me, it’s to extrapolate that.

–Interview between Hideaki Anno and Go Nagai, published in the 1999_25ya artbook Devilman Tabulae Anatomicae Kaitaishinsho; translated into French (full?) by JayWicky, and then into English

“I think my friend wanted me to do this” is the sole, mysterious explanation offered for his [Hideaki Anno’s] new, one-night old hairstyle.

…“Yeah, I fit into the otaku group-or at least I’m an otaku who has opened up. But maybe then I’m not an otaku any more because of that. It’s hard to define …”

…“I became an animator by chance, really-it didn’t happen by my will. Before I knew it, I was an animator. When I was a child, I wanted to be a bus driver or a train conductor; I never really had a specific vision or dream.”

…“Eva was a fluke …,” Anno pauses for a moment, almost reconsidering his reply, then adds, “I don’t think my stories are really meant for a wide audience. I guess what I felt at that time just happened to strike a chord with the youth.”

…“Japan is the only country in the world that actually has an anime industry, and can mass-produce animated works of a high quality for a large audience. It’s only natural then, that this product would be in demand from the rest of the world.”

“Japan is unrivaled in this sense. Disney is really no competition because Disney can only release one film at a time. They are not capable of handling the wide range of stories that we see in Japanese anime. Real anime exists only in Japan, and this is about the only original product Japan can offer to the world-anime, manga and computer games.”

…So, when asked directly about the future of Japan in the next millennium, Hideaki Anno becomes the dark visionary that the kids know so well.

“Whether it be a few years into the future or 10 years in the future, I don’t know, but there is going to be a radical change or event that will change Japan.”

“There will come a time when Japan is going to go through a big shake-up-so much so that Japan may no longer be able to survive. But it won’t be because of politics, and it won’t be the result of any natural disaster.”

“It’s the Japanese economy; the backlash of our economy. Right now, people are always telling us that our economy is on the upswing and all that …” (pause) … “but I don’t believe them.”

–“‘Opened-up’ otaku opens up: The nation’s - nay, the world’s - foremost cyberanimator comes down to Earth to talk.” (EML mirror); Asahi Shimbun, December 30, 1999

“PS We did manage to find out that it is Kaworu playing the violin in Death & Rebirth.”

–Saxon Heffernan, “Pilgrimage to Gainax”

Anno had planned to visit Aussiecon Three and then Ayres Rock; canceled when he fell down a Tokyo escalator during rush hour, “hitting his head seriously enough to require seven stitches in his forehead”.

1999 S

Japan Edge: The Insider’s Guide to Japanese Pop Subculture, 1999_25ya ISBN 156931-345-8; contributors: Carl Gustav Horn, Mason Jones, Patrick Macias, Yui Oniki, Matt Thor; ‘Anime: Overview; “As You Are, As You Were, As I Want You To Be”; Future Trend/Collection/Bio’, by Carl Gustav Horn:

Gainax’s Neon Genesis Evangelion would eventually become the national phenomenon to make the prediction come true. Gainax (their name even sounds like Gen-X) understood the culture of international postmodernism that draws everyday lessons from Bewitched and reserves the big, abstract issues for Star Wars. But what made Gainax special was their insistence that this was all, on some level, true and authentic. The ’60s generation claimed that a ninja comic was a Cliff Notes for Marx. Gainax had no need to plead a higher authority; they saw nothing wrong with finding guidance just in the ninja comic itself. They had a special kind of self-knowledge sometimes accessible to those who grow up playing not with the world but with other people’s models of the world, to those who contemplate not creation but artifice.³

3: Pauline Kael’s comments on Masculine-Feminine in The New Yorker fit Gainax’s conception of the otaku perfectly: “This community of unbelievers has a style of life by which they recognize each other; it is made up of everything adults attack as the worst and shoddiest forms of…dehumanization. It is the variety of forms of ‘Coca-Cola’ - the synthetic life they were born to and which they love, and which they barely make human and more beautiful and more ‘real’ than the old just-barely-hanging-on adult culture. Membership is automatic and natural for the creatures from inner space…they have the beauty of youth which can endow pop with poetry, and they have their feelings for each other and all those shared products and responses by which they know each other.” Gainax’s passion is, then, a French kiss-in-cheek, a tongue stuck out, but saying some lovely things. Hideaki Anno and Hiroyuki Yamaga, both born when the Beatles were still a Chuck Berry cover band, are the Lennon and McCartney of Gainax. At least, Yamaga maintains that Anno looks like the “smart one”, while personally disclaiming any resemblance to “the cute one”. (But neither of the two are fans, particularly; Anno loves the sound of retro-SF themes and classical music, while Yamaga has shown a penchant for the ’80s electronic of Ryuichi Sakamoto and ’90s trance-Goa pioneer DJ Tsuyoshi, both of whom Yamaga picked to score his movies.) “If anybody’s going to get shot, though, I would want it to be Anno”, he says, laughing as he speaks of his comrade of many years. “Supposedly he made Evangelion for a target age of fourteen, but I think he really made it for people his own age - about thirty-five.”

Like Miyazaki and Takahata’s political fables, Gainax’s know-thyself anime ran on a partnership of two directors. The critical detail for Gainax is that the “moment of clarity” - as American otaku Quentin Tarantino would have it - for Hiroyuki Yamaga (b. 1962_62ya) and Hideaki Anno (b. 1960_64ya), came at decidedly different speeds. For Yamaga, the perception came first, as a burst from deep space: illuminating with a brilliant, light-speed flash. Long years later, the shockwave arrived for Anno, cracking his private world apart.

Yamaga presented as a fairly respectable, athletic young man with an inner passion for creative and financial success in the film world, when he arrived at college in 1980_44ya - just like Kubo, the freshman protagonist of Otaku no Video, which Yamaga wrote under a pseudonym. The college he attended was no Todai or Gakushuin, but the arts university of Japan’s heavy industrial center, Osaka. Walking through the quad one day early on in his student career, he found himself suddenly in the midst of a live-action battle between wild costumed students, one side dressed as ninja, the other in SWAT gear. “When that becomes a daily occurrence, what am I supposed to say?” Yamaga exclaimed to American fans in 1997_27ya upon a visit to Silicon Valley’s massive annual anime gathering, Fanime Con. Then, a tall, gangling, and mysterious upperclassman introduced himself not with the customary hello but by confiding that he knew practically every line in Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers) by heart. “I think I forgot what was normal at that point”, recalled Yamaga.

Soon he found himself making 8 mm Power Rangers-type superhero films with Anno and his friends, and, of course, anime - cutting up industrial plastic sheeting into cels to save money. The anime shorts were not so much narratives as collections of pop-culture rhyming-and-stealing, as frantic as a Beastie Boys track. In an Anno-Yamaga student production, cities for A-bombed just for effect while Playboy bunnies crossed light sabers with Darth Vader. Yamaga, who, when he arrived at college, had no intention of becoming an otaku, much less an anime-maker, became both by the time his group incorporated in 1984_40ya as Studio Gainax.

It was the year of Nausicaa, and only three years later, Gainax would make an anime epic of their own - Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise.⁴ The concept for the film, said Yamaga, came to [pg19] him in that most Gen-X of cathedrals, the coffeehouse. It was a product of otaku consciousness. “I thought how [anime] should reflect society and what it should represent, and to me it seemed it should be like a mirror in a coffeehouse - a double space, an illusion. We have a limited time here in our lives, but we feel that through television and film, we can understand a great deal more… In school, you may be taught that the world is round, but with your own eyes, you’ll only be able to confirm, to directly experience, a very small part of that world, a very small part of what we’re capable of imagining… We wanted to create a world, and we wanted to look at it from space.”

4: At Fanime Con, Yamaga described how they raised the money for the film. One might say that Gainax decided to walk into Jabba the Hutt’s palace with a thermal detonator. Freshly dropped-out of college, they entered the corporate headquarters of Bandai, the multibillion-dollar Japanese toy giant that produces half the anime in Japan, including titles familiar to Americans, such as Sailor Moon. Gainax presented Bandai with a ten-year business plan they had drawn up - not for Gainax to follow, but Bandai! In the stunned silence that followed, Gainax president Toshio Okada (who went to college just to join the science fiction club and today teaches at Takahata’s alma mater) managed to fashion a movie budget with the help of a creative-minded young executive at Bandai, Shigeru Watanabe, who quickly became a fervent disciple of Gainax’s vision. Watanabe remains the patron behind some of Japan’s most progressive anime films - films that he and Honneamise took the blows to make possible. The thermal detonator bit proved no joke: the movie bombed. Honneamise was a classic example of the film too far ahead of its time that today everyone acknowledges as the work of genius. At least someone understood, though: Yamaga may have taken some paternal comfort from Miyazaki’s praise of his film in an interview in Kinema Jumpo in 1995_29ya (the year after Honneamise finally began to turn a profit). Miyazaki saw kindred spirits in the makers of Gainax’s breakthrough film; their approach reminded him of his work with Takahata on the making of Horus: “Honneamise is the proof [that] it’s still possible… Those who made it were amateurs in terms of experience. In their mid-twenties, they made it by themselves, living and eating together, with no distinction between the work and their private lives.”

Gainax made good on their ambition; under Yamaga’s direction, an explosion of twenty-something creative energy gave The Wings of Honneamise the most sophisticated and cosmopolitan art direction of any anime film made before or since. In an achievement beyond even that seen in the movies of Terry Gilliam or Ridley Scott, the team crafted an imaginary alternate world in every fascinating detail, from the bongs to the jet planes. It was a kaleidoscopic mirror, for the setting of Honneamise contained every element of our modern lives: class, faith, science, war, and of course, television - but all with the jumbled look of no particular country, or many countries, in an international visual language.

Yamaga imagined an ordinary young man in his early twenties, named Shiro, for the protagonist of Honneamise. However, in a brilliant plot conceit, the director turned the clock of Shiro’s parallel world back to a time when space travel was a dream few believed possible. Shiro always says he wants a simple life, but a childhood vision of flight flickers within him. Without the grades to get into aviator school, he falls in with a tiny, no-budget government program, whose mumbling commandant styles his bored young students the Royal Space Force, and talks of one day sending the first man into orbit. For no better conscious reason than to impress a girl who seems to believe in him, Shiro astounds everyone by volunteering. The story begins from there, as Shiro begins his long journey to the rocket.

His ill-considered decision changes him from a man content to stare, into someone who, for the first time in his life, must take a good look around. Before he will ever get to leave the ground, the would-be astronaut has to explore his own fallen world and the inner space inside him. What begins for him as a sci-fi joke becomes shadowed by assassination, terrorism, social unrest, and war, as both he and his mission become public sacrifice pawns in the global power game. Yet the question of whether the first man will go into space is to be decided privately, as Shiro confronts his own capacity for violence and delusion in moments without a witness. Few motion pictures of any kind have so well used the make-believe of movies in such a powerful and sustained metaphor as Honneamise. As an anime, it remains in many ways unsurpassed.

Anno had been the special-effects genius on Honneamise, and unlike Yamaga, Hideaki Anno never had any doubts that he was either an otaku or an animator. On the cusp of adolescence, he withdrew from the realm of senses into a world of watching anime and making 8 mm movies. Girls avoided him like the plague, and he avoided them - an entente cordiale of the kind portrayed in 1991’s Otaku no Video. It was oddly appropriate that after Otaku no Video strobelit Anno and his friends like a string of firecrackers, Gainax fell silent in the smoke for the next four years as they struggled fruitlessly with an abortive plan to make a second motion picture.

The reason lay in large part with Anno himself, who never had any doubts because he never asked himself any questions. When he at last asked, with an anime called Neon Genesis Evangelion, he was to change the face of anime once again, as Yamaga’s Honneamise had years before - only this time, the public would respond to the seeds Gainax had sown. And when Anno had the answer, it was a high school girl who got it from him. One day in August of 1998_26ya, while visiting students to research his next show, she came up to him, full of admiration, to say that she loved Evangelion, believed in pursuing one’s dreams, and intended to grow up and one day make anime herself. He warned her: “You’ve got it all wrong. This is the only thing I can do… I’ve managed to get this far because I gave up everything else.”

By the time he was twenty-four, while still a student filmmaker, Anno was being mentored by Hayao Miyazaki, who gave him key work on Nausicaa - and hailed as a rising star. After Honneamise, he directed and cowrote for Gainax both the 1988_36ya romantic space-war epic video series Gunbuster and the 1990_34ya TV anime Nadia, a Jules Verne-like adventure set in a fantastic nineteenth century (and a concept originally developed for Miyazaki). Then it was all over, not from a lack of success - Anno’s two directorial efforts had proved popular - but because he had broken quietly one day. For four long years he was unable to make anime anymore. It was when he realized that, in a world full of life, not making anime was for him the same as not living, that the shockwave hit. On October 4, 1995_29ya, he began at last to speak about it, with the premiere of a TV series four years in the waiting, Neon Genesis Evangelion - ancient Greek for New Beginning Gospel.

Evangelion takes place in 2015 - fifteen years after the second-to-Last Judgment. On September 13 in the year 2000_24ya, a massive explosion in Antarctica triggers a global catastrophe that leaves half the world dead. The official story is that the blast is caused by a giant meteor. The truth though, as they say, “is out there”, and there may be time to discover it as humanity makes its last stand in Tokyo-3, a super-tech fortress city under assault from the hideous, uncommunicative entities code-named the Angels.

Evangelion follows the course of this war and, most especially, the personal conflict between the three different generations at NERV: the fourteen-year-old “Children” who pilot the equally-monstrous biomechanical Evangelion Units against the Angels, their twenty-something commanding officers, and the Children’s parents, scientists who know far too much and tell far too little. The 1995-96 Eva TV show was a phenomenon in japan; ten million people tuned in for its final episode. The 1997_27ya Evangelion movies, which presented a different version of the TV show’s controversial ending, made about $28 million, the merchandising well over $200 million.⁵

5: Although Evangelion has remained strictly on video for now in the United States, it has been a considerable success, which has made the persistent rumor that it might be picked up by MTV seem credible. When Houston’s A.D.V. Films released the final episode here, their print ads, trading on Eva’s renown in the American market, were mysterious and text-only, showing no anime images at all - the first U.S. anime ad to dare such an approach. Some elements of Eva’s success needed no English translation, such as the visual design which Emmy-award winning CG programmer Allen Hastings (Babylon 5) has described as the most sophisticated of any anime TV series ever, or the attractive characters drawn by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto - most notably, the Zen beauty of Rei Ayanami, whose appeal as The Face in Japan during ’96 to ’97 proved portable when she appeared on a popular bootleg T-shirt worn by a character on NBC’s Veronica’s Closet. Like the majority of anime, Evangelion was made with no audience in mind but the one in Japan. Nevertheless, to the Westerners who see it, it has a special resonance. Eva’s use of Judeo-Christian symbolism, eschatology, and esoterica are exotic and fascinating decorations for the Japanese, but they are part of the actual culture of the West, most especially America, where fallen presidents have prayer breakfasts, citizens claim in polls to still believe in the God of Abraham, and many fear a millennial Armageddon - or seek to help it along with a little fertilizer and gasoline.

Anno claims no spiritual beliefs but the animism of Shinto. In fact, many of Evangelion’s religious elements - most particularly his use of the Kabbalah - come not through religion per se but the psychological theories of C.G. Jung, who considered the Kabbalah a valuable set of symbols with which to understand the human psyche. Thus, in Eva, the Angels’ and Man’s battle for their place in the scheme of creation becomes a dramatic and meticulously considered device that allowed Anno to stage spectacular fights and showcase fantastic technology, all in the service of his own personal lake of fire, a public burning every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. nation-wide.⁶

6: It is as much a metaphor for the real violence within the intricate depths of Anno, who speaks with a different aspect of his persona through every character - from his cowardly, desolate “son”, Shinji, who motivated him to create Eva in the first place to the cryptic, dictatorial “father”, Gendo, who the driven director was said to resemble as the series neared the wracking end of its production. “Your God is dead / And no one cares / If there is a Hell / I’ll see you there”, is the scream from Nine Inch Nails’ song “Heresy” off The Downward Spiral, an album that Japanese social critic Kenji Sato, late of M.I.T. and The New York Times Magazine, compares to the feeling of Eva as the series approaches the whirlpool of its end. Eva isn’t really about the end of the world, but the personal apocalypse. Some American fans had already made this association independently, or saw in Anno’s intimations of suicide not John Lennon but Kurt Cobain. Certainly neither Nirvana or NIN had any direct connection with Evangelion or the show’s musical style, but it’s natural that young fans tied into the U.S. music scene should associate the show that, for once, really meant it, with the songs that in the four years before Eva’s 1995_29ya premiere made pop music mean something again. Anno also made Eva as a comment on the desolation of youth and culture in Japan, but American teens don’t have giant robots to command in their rage. They have semiautomatic rifles. It is the emotion, too, of Evangelion, that needs no translation.

Today Japanese animation, in its search for the next Eva, populates its new series with the Eva look - the exotic technology called mecha in anime and a cast of sad tomatoes - without perhaps ever realizing what kind of commitment another Evangelion would require from its creators. Pretty faces and cool devices drew Evangelion’s initial audiences, but it was the unraveling of the strands of the life of a real human being who would never have admitted to watching anime before - that brought in the outsiders. In a savage irony, many hardcore otaku - despite the anime’s requisite portion of cute girls and hi-tech action - felt robbed by Eva, and wanted to know what kind of a show was ultimately about nothing more than a person’s unresolved soul.

Postscript. Somewhere/Anywhere

There isn’t likely to be “another Evangelion”. Nor is that particularly desirable. What Eva has led to is much better - its success has spawned an explosion of new anime shows in Japan on a level unseen since the early ’80s; it’s just like the exciting college days that encouraged Gainax to enter the industry in the first place. Some shows are taking chances and trying to move anime along. Others are simply providing anime with the diversity of demographics and themes that the medium so desperately needs to catch up with the success and respect manga already enjoys in Japan.

Gainax is not the Beatles; first of all, that was Ghibli’s generation. In a 1998_26ya interview with the author, Yamaga invoked the Fab Four not as history, but as myth, for he is well aware that to the Japanese -as well as to their American fans - he and Anno have themselves become myth as much as history. Yamaga accepts their fame with a cautionary wink: “The press is saying good things about us… If they were insulting us or saying nasty things - yeah, then I would [pg23] be motivated to go out and correct them. As I make my own living writing stories that aren’t true… Look at all the things they said about the Beatles. If you do, you’ll probably find a lot of stuff that was made up as well… Well, it would be great if we could be as successful as them… The main thing the industry has learned from Evangelion and Mononoke”, says Yamaga dryly, “is that there’s a lot of money to be made in anime.”

…Recently, Miyazaki and Anno took an extraordinary journey together, an air safari across the Sahara in a vintage plane, which retraced the path of aviation pioneer and author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Landing in the middle of that desert from whose winds Ghibli takes its name, the two posed for a picture on a dune, striking the statuary poses of bearded, bespectacled leaders of the revolution. Miyazaki, with the dignity of a grey suit, the shade of a sensible hat, points straight ahead. Anno, in a black pullover, his bare head covered with scraggly curls, raises his arm high in the air; after a moment you realize he’s doing an Ultraman pose. Sorry - it’s not “look upon my works, ye might, and despair”, because anime is just in the hands and the imagination; there’s nothing ever there to see but the man. And it’s not like they’re going to stick around waiting to be covered by the sand - father or son, they’ve got places to go still. Whatever place you want to put them, they’ll leave that somewhere behind. They prefer anywhere.

[pg26] Fortunately, I met two teens there, named Bruce Bailey and Brian Fountain, who ran a little refuge for their fellow runaways [pg28] from that scene. They would show me copies of Japan’s Animage magazine and play Agnostic Front’s Victim in Pain. Through them I began to understand that this was a vital, golden age for anime, that things were happening over in Japan. It was they who introduced me to shows like Lupin III, Dirty Pair and Fist of the North Star, which we watched with many a “huh-huh-huh”. They showed me that anime wasn’t just an all-male world; there was heterosexuality and lesbianism as well in an anime called Pop Chaser [Cream Lemon Part 4: Pop Chaser]. Years later, I would find out that Evangelion’s Hideaki Anno worked on it, although he has written that he only did the explosions. Which explosions, he didn’t specify.

Taking him to the airport after Fanime one year, I asked Hiroyuki Yamaga about Anno and Miyamura, whether it was true they were going out (which was the story I had heard–not the story that she rebuffed him). If you’ve ever seen THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO, he was kind of reclining back in the car seat at the time like Jigen was, just before they blew the tire. He sort of gave a “where’d you hear that?” response. Mr. Yamaga is usually not shy about gossiping about Anno, which leads me to believe either 1. they were never going out (90% possibility) or 2. they were but jealousy forebade him from confirming it (10% possibility).

… It’s quite possible that this struggle was interpreted instead as a struggle with Anno, which certainly made for juicier rumors. Nor was it all that far-fetched, as there was at times a great deal of tension within Gainax over the making of EVA.

Anno was also at one time romantically linked with Ayako Fujitani, whose novel “Shikijitsu” he, of course, adapted into film. They apparently first met when she was starring in the remakes of the GAMERA series (Yamaga claimed at one time the real reason Anno walked away from KARE KANO was because he was too busy editing his “making of GAMERA” documentary). Ms. Fujitani is, of course, also the daughter of Steven Seagal, making the rumored relationship not without great personal risk.

–Carl Horn, https://forum.evageeks.org/post/16516/a-new-manga-about-Hideaki-Anno-and-his-baby/#16516 TODO: the year is a guess; also, perhaps Yamaga counts as Primary?

Continuing the topic of Anno & Miyamura:

Realistically – I have to question the authenticity of such a story⁵². The director, in this case Anno, really didn’t have to go along with what the VA wanted. Gossip linked the two romantically, but even in this scenario I don’t think Anno would be willing to compromise the screenplay unless he preferred her suggestion. He could always have used another actress (it is almost a whispered line) or even said the line himself (which is actually what several people thought happened).

–Bochan_bird

“…in regards to the rumor that Yuko Miyamura (Asuka’s VA) and Anno were an item, it seems that this was more than just a rumor for a time, although there is little information as to whether the relationship is continuing. However, the latest gossip/scandal surrounding Yuko Miyamura is an adult video which she appeared in before becoming famous as a voice actress. This video, which has actually been out for quite some time, is of course in Asuka’s voice…And it’s being sold as a set with the Eva Hentai video/VCD on Yahoo! Japan…”

–Bochan_bird; more information, 2011_13ya “Don’t Let a Little Thing Like a Sex Video Slow You Down” Kotaku article:

“As the voice of Asuka Langley Soryu, one of Evangelion’s principle characters, Miyamura grabbed a brass ring in Japanese voice acting. The anime took the country by storm during the 1990s, and Miyamura scored other major roles, such as Kazuha Toyama in the Detective Conan anime. She also released CDs and picked up game roles like Chun-Li in the Street Fighter Alpha and EX games as well as Akane in Pokémon. But in 1997_27ya, a porno, dubbed Experiencing Erotic S&M as a Couple, surfaced. The video was apparently from when she was in her early 20s. It wasn’t until the following spring that Japanese tabloid Friday ran a story on the video. Fans were certain that the woman in the video was Miyamura, who was still riding high with Evangelion. But the video, combined with her marriage, quick divorce, and second marriage changed the way fans viewed her. By 1999_25ya, Miyamura was in the hospital from fatigue (it was later discovered that she suffered from Graves’ disease). Outside Evangelion and Conan, the voice work slowed, and the TV appearances came screeching to a halt. The music CDS, always a good indicator of an idol’s popularity, stopped. Her image had been changed.”

Sankaku Complex includes NSFW screencaps in “Which Are Worse - The Seiyuu or Their Creepy Fans?”:

“Fans managed to identify her (by her teeth and other characteristics) in”SM Erotic Experiences for Two,” an old amateur fetish AV from her student days. Her image amongst these fans was irreparably ruined, although she managed to retain the Asuka role….[pictures]…Her personal life, resembling that of a normal person and involving the full gamut of marriages, divorces, children, illnesses, etc., also contributed to her losing most of her work.”

Bryan was taking some video of the people walking by as a snapshot of everyday people. Because it was Saturday afternoon, some of the people traveling through the station were school students returning home after a half-day at school. Of course, they were wearing uniforms of the style we learned to expect in anime. Although it may appear obvious and natural to some of you, my impression of everything we saw in Japan that matched what I had seen in anime was changing my impression of the country and its culture. What I came to realize is how accurately anime portrays many elements of Japanese culture. This means that I had to reevaluate the impression of Japan that anime had given me, and look more closely at what I had previously not considered accurate portrayals of everyday life: the sound crows make, the layout of city streets and railways, the hustle and bustle of daily life at a train station, the zoning laws, what people wear, what they look like, how they color their hair (^{^), what they eat for breakfast, the size and thickness of one slice of bread (^}), and so on.

… Note: I’m not absolutely certain these are the reasons, nor are they necessarily the sole reasons, for Anno’s departure from the production of Kare-Kano.

Anno objected to the restrictions placed on TV anime by TV Tokyo after the Pocket Monster incident, so in protest, he decided to have nothing more to do with TV Tokyo and left the production of Kare-Kano in the hands of Sato, who joined Gainax after having worked for the government in a public works management position.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20040203105028/http://nausicaa.net/~michj/tokyo/990203.html In 2001_23ya, Olivier Hagué agreed:

“Anno wanted to write an original story for the second half of the TV series. You can find several mentions about that plan in”old” issues of Animage or Newtype (ie. before the TV series aired). That’s why the “rhythm” of the first half of the series is that fast: they intended to adapt most of the manga in 13 or so episodes. But TV Tokyo got cold feet and feared that Anno would go back to his old ways (ie. the last TV episodes of Eva…), so they asked Gainax to stick with the manga… Anno was obviously frustrated/infuriated… ^^;”

Actually, there is ‘canon’ that can ‘disprove’ this. Nationwide parental (PTA) objections against Eva’s content are a known fact. These objections reached such a level (even receiving Japanese newspaper coverage) that TV Tokyo was forced to set up a screening panel including PTA members which effectively ‘nixed’ the original episodes 25 and 26 that were currently under production. (ie: The ‘intended’ script/storyline was submitted for review but rejected.) Being forced to redo two entire episodes from a late stage led to the time and budget restrictions which resulted in still images, stick figure animation and telops.

– Bochan_bird on the censorship that forced changes from the ending being proto-EoE to being the actual EoTV; repeats claim elsewhere, eg. November 2001. In August 2002, he said that Boogiepop Phantom suffered under the PTA, and Brian Shea concurred with “Cowboy Bebop too, so bad that 14 of the 26 episodes never aired on the first run. Including the first episode and the final 8. With all the talk about Eva’s influence on the genre (although I’ll admit here and now that I’m one of those who thinks it was very little), the biggest influence it had may have been the censorship atmosphere…”

What was I agonizing over, you ask? Well, when the subject of buying drapes came up, I asked Anno if he had any color preferences, and he replied, “Red.” If I were buying scarves, that would be one thing, but come on… (Translator’s note: If you get the “Red Scarf” reference, go to the head of the class, and explain it to someone who doesn’t–if you dare.–MH) There really isn’t much in the way of red curtains, at least, not off the shelf. So I settled for a color mix that would at least show that I’d made a hard try to meet Anno’s request.

–1999-05-07, Muramatsu Ryouko, asst. producer of Karekano

[Shinji Ikari:] “He and his father Gendo have lived apart for at least a decade. A sudden message from Gendo brings Shinji to Tokyo-3, and on that very day, an”Angel” attacks the city. As a chosen Evangelion Operator, he fights on, though thoroughly agonized. He is referred to as “Third Children” (a term meaning “the third qualifier”). In personality, he is a quiet, overachiever type.”

–https://web.archive.org/web/19991127120613/http://www.gainax.co.jp/anime/eva/chara-e.html

1999 T

• 1999-corliss-times-honneamisepraise.txt

• 1999-mangamax-spookyjaneway.pdf

• 1999-mangamax-whatsitallaboutshinji.pdf

• 1999-schilling-contemporaryjapfilm.txt

I read in an old animation magazine “Animefantastic” IIRC, an article by J. Lamplighter, that Gainax/Anno had some influence on the ADV TV dub for special vocabulary, & had to approve what was done before it could be printed. https://web.archive.org/web/20120605200514/http://www.mania.com/aodvb/showthread.php?p=1502313

The magazine is Animazement & it has Rei on the cover, with the title “God in 3 Robots”“. Animefantastique”Summer 1999_25ya. Vol.1

https://web.archive.org/web/20060518011106/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2005-April/002629.html

The first EVA article breaks down the series into plot, character conflicts, religious references, fan reaction, the end: movies vs TV, and voice actors. It also contains several EVA lingo as well as reaction from the AD vision Eva staff. An other EVA article relates to END OF EVANGELION (contains spoilers). Basically what it tries to do its explain what happened in EoE and what major plot knots were resolved. There’s another one that covers the Manga version. Nothing special here but still some cool info about differences and stuff. Finally there is an article that takes you through the history and creations of Gainax. https://web.archive.org/web/20110723011837/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1999-April/027834.html

“However, its violence and surrealism will not be new to those who have seen the TV show; neither will its view of a society of broken souls, where men and women are grains of flying sand, blasting each other to bone. Playwright Kenji Sato, who does not like Evangelion, compares it to Nine Inch Nails’ album The Downward Spiral; it is an excellent comparison, and I agree, except that I like Eva. It’s only a cartoon; it’s only a life.”

“The End’s main characters are a man and a woman, Shinji and Asuka, and director Hideaki Anno when he does not present himself through Misato, Gendo, or every other character in the series identifies with them both (gossip links him romantically with Asuka’s voice actress, Yuko Miyamura). As Anno explained at the outset of the series, in an essay reprinted this month in Viz’s collected Book One of the Evangelion manga, he began this because he felt sick, and the final line of The End, spoken by Asuka back to Shinji, could not put things any more plain.”

“This is The End of Evangelion. It is the same ending as that of the television series. It is told big-budget, stitched with bullets, limned with guts, and tagged with blood, in case it was too subtle the first time. But it is the same ending. You will see all this: a man, stunted in emotion, has a special gift within him. He can move his human hands and feet with the stride and reach of a giant. Because he knew love once, and lost it, he sketched one map on his floor where he stood and one in the sky above, until he had drawn between them a world of mysteries and wonders, a world of things to love and of those in love. But when they put their hands towards him, he drew away; when he put his hands on them, they were cold and still. In his frustration, he tightened his grip to take satisfaction by force: a load shot to nowhere, a stranglehold on beauty, clenched fists battering down his creation, until there was nothing left but himself again.”

–Viz Communication website ‘MY EMPIRE OF DIRT: The End of Evangelion; Carl’s Anime Pick’ (mirrors: 1, 2) TODO: Sato’s full remarks

By breaking with the long-standing tradition of basing their animated works on pre-existing stories and folk tales, GAINAX has been credited with freeing animation from the constraints which have allowed it to be perceived as a derivative medium. In so doing, they have established animated film as a self-sufficient art form (Time Magazine, November 22, 1999_25ya).

–https://www.evamonkey.com/writings/gleicher-marvin-recent-newtype-review-of-evangelion-death-and-rebirth-and-the-end-of-evangelion.php

In a recent issue, Rolling Stone proclaimed Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain to have been, for western popular music, the Artist of the Decade. I have no problem with that assessment, any more than I have in saying Evangelion’s Hideaki Anno should hold that title for Japanese animation. But both made their statement when there was still plenty of Nineties left: Cobain killed himself in 1994_30ya and Anno’s pop culture suicide happened in either the spring of ’96, when Eva had its controversial TV ending, or in the summer of ’97, with its even more talked-about movie ending-you may take your pick. Therefore, the reason Cobain and Anno deserve the title is not that their talent bestrode the decade like a headless colossus, but because they posed the question of what will you do, now that you know to all those that came after them. Evangelion suggested, as Nirvana did in both their first and last song, “you could do anything, you could do anything…” Yet it seemed that few in TV anime chose to respond to Eva’s example of freedom of expression. In 1998_26ya, serial experiments lain (the title is in lower-case) came and went from Japanese television in a mere thirteen episodes. But it was enough to show that lain’s creators, scriptwriter Chiaki Konaka (whose previous Armitage III was also produced and released by Pioneer) and newcomer Ryutaro Nakamura had understood the possibilities and chose to seize upon them.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20010219070334/j-pop.com/anime/archive/reviews/14/05_serialexplain.html

Evangelion is an ambiguous product. On the one hand it strongly appeals to otaku’s sensibilities, (2) but on the other it implies radical criticism against otaku’s mentality….

In a sense, Evangelion is extremely interior and is lacking in sociality, so that it seems to reflect pathology of the times. I think for some people it is nothing more than a bad product which is simply to increase otakus.

For instance, some Japanese critics, such as Eiji Otsuka and Tetsuya Miyazaki, criticized Evangelion TV series on the grounds that the last two episodes, in which interior monologue of Shinji, the hero, went on all the time, were like brainwashing or psycho-therapy, and it was only a self-affirmation of otaku’s autistic tendency for escapism. Yoshiyuki Tomino, who had once directed several epoch-making animes such as Gundam and Ideon, (3)-these animes had a great influence on Hideaki Anno, the director of Evangelion-also criticized Evangelion bitterly on the grounds that it is something like clinical records of a morbid person who confines himself to the world of information and cannot realize actuality….

The latter half of Evangelion TV series, especially the last two episodes clearly had intention to break the closed domain of anime that keeps on offering narcissistic pleasure to otakus, that is, Evangelion had intention to crack the closed domain of anime, not from the outside, but from the inside, remaining within it, just as its purity is highest, or to make joy of anime self-destruct at the utmost limits.

The last part of Evangelion TV series-in which the progress of the story was stopped by Shinji’s interior monologue and he came to affirm himself groundlessly, saying “I can stay here!”-was not a play for the salvation of the self-some people misread it so-like brainwashing or psycho-therapy, but something like harassment with malice and irony to some anime fans. I think the last message of the last episode of the TV series-“Congratulations to all the children!”-was a quotation from the last scene of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s anime movie The Ideon (1982_42ya), as many people have already pointed out it. In the last scene of The Ideon, after the human race had died out, the souls of the dead characters were drifting in outer space and they heard the singing, “Happy birthday dear children!” That is ironic, in short, the last episode of Evangelion TV series implies that closed and self-sustained interiority is nothing other than a kind of “death.” It is death of the self as loss of the other. It also implies that the world of joy for otakus such as the first half of Evangelion TV series cannot help coming to a death on account of its closeness….

The world of the first half of Evangelion TV series, which had been full of joy of anime, collapsed gradually in the latter half: In the 18th episode, Evangelion Unit-01-Shinji was inside it-attacked Evangelion Unit-03 as an “Angel,” and Touji, the pilot of Evangelion Unit-03 and Shinji’s classmate, got badly wounded and lost a leg. In the 22^nd episode, Asuka, the pilot of Evangelion Unit-02, became as good as the living dead because of Angel’s psychic attack, getting non compos mentis. In the 23rd episode, Rei, the pilot of Evangelion Unit-00-in the episode it was found that she was something like a clone created from Shinji’s mother-blew herself up in order to protect Shinji from Angel’s attack, and the city Shinji lived in-Third New Tokyo City-became a ruin. In the 24th episode, Shinji was forced to kill Kaoru, a boy who was Shinji’s beloved friend, as an Angel, or enemy. In the last two episodes, the progress of the story was stopped and the work Evangelion itself broke down as if to reject a completion of itself as an anime. It is, as it were, closing of the world, or “death” itself….

The latter half of Evangelion TV series, in which a world of joy was collapsing and closing because it was simply hedonistic and regressive, reminds me of Mamoru Oshii’s anime movie Urusei Yatsura 2 Beautiful Dreamer (1984_40ya). (4) In Beautiful Dreamer, an endless slapstick comedy at a high school like Urusei Yatsura TV series-Oshii himself had directed the TV series-is depicted as an ideal world to Lum, the heroine, or an occurrence in Lum’s inner space. In the world, the progress of time has stopped and one and the same day-the day before the school festival-is being repeated over and over. In the inner space, the people who were hindrances to Lum vanished one after another, and the town she lived in became a ruin except for the house Ataru Moroboshi-the hero and Lum’s “darling”-lived in and a convenience store nearby. The more the purity of the world as Utopia to Lum is enhanced, the more the closeness and fictitiousness of the world become prominent. Ataru wandered about in the world of inner spaces like this and then tried returning from the infinite chain of the inner spaces like “dreams” to “actuality.”

The End of Evangelion presented the thesis that actuality is the end of a dream. Concerning the thesis, Oshii’s Beautiful Dreamer precedes Anno’s Evangelion. If the world of Urusei Yatsura TV series had switched suddenly to the level of Beautiful Dreamer, it would have been similar to the last two episodes of Evangelion TV series. The reason that Evangelion TV series seemed to break down at the conclusion was that the shift-from fiction to meta-fiction-was too sudden and self-destructive. It may be that the people who showed rejection reaction to the last two episodes of the TV series could not bear its irony and self-referentiality.

The world where Shinji operated Evangelion Unit-01 and fought against the Angels, the world of a comic love story at a junior-high school, in which there were no Evangelions or Angels (the last episode of the TV series), the world where the people congratulated Shinji and he came to affirm himself groundlessly, and the world where Shinji, Asuka, Rei and Kaoru were rehearsing a string quartet at a hall of school (Evangelion: Death)… It can be thought that each of these worlds was an occurrence in inner space, or one of parallel worlds. The theme of Evangelion is, so to speak, the world as interiority.

…Maybe Evangelion gave up being a story at a certain point in time, I think. In the 6th episode of the TV series, Shinji and Rei, who were “closed-minded children,” fought together against an Angel and “opened their minds,” exchanging smiles with each other. Although this scene was probably first climax of the series, maybe Neon Genesis Evangelion as a story of “growth and independence of a boy”-like a Bildungsroman-ended there once. Evangelion as a story has stopped there.⁵³

…The End of Evangelion, released as a movie, is a remake of the last two episodes of the TV series, and it is the last program of Evangelion series. I think the largest point in dispute connected with the evaluation of this last program is this. Did Evangelion only end in a self-affirmation of closed interiority, or did it show the way to get out of prison of self-consciousness?

It seems some people anticipated that the movie version of Evangelion would end as a story of “growth and independence of a boy,” like a Bildungsroman, but The End of Evangelion avoided such a popular ending and was completed as works that renewed the last two episodes of the TV series in another way. The End of Evangelion is a repetition and variation of the theme presented in the latter half of the TV series. It is not an ending of a story.

…This EoE ending can be regarded as criticism against religion, because it avoided an ideological/aesthetic solution and faced the ugly reality. It is highly ethical. The people, who equated Evangelion with motivational seminar or the Aum Shinrikyo cult and called it ‘techno-mysticism’, should be ashamed of their thoughtlessness.⁵⁴

In my view, The End of Evangelion ended on the phase when Shinji, the hero, found Asuka as “the other.” For Shinji, Asuka is an ambiguous existence. On the one hand she lectures and inspires him because she minds him, but on the other she is also an existence beyond his control-the other that can never be interiorized. Asuka’s ambiguity is also the ambiguity of the work Evangelion as it is.

The last two episodes of Evangelion TV series and The End of Evangelion have a relation like a Möbius strip. They are the two views of one and the same theme. The discovery of the other in The End of Evangelion is the reverse expression of the loss of the other in the last two episodes of the TV series. The unsophisticated people who could not read the irony in the last two episodes of the TV series will probably overlook the critical essence of The End of Evangelion as well.

–“Prison of Self-consciousness: an Essay on Evangelion”, Manabu Tsuribe, February 1999

“Actually, there is ‘canon’ that can ‘disprove’ this [that ”They had problems, they surely were short in budget”]. Nationwide parental (PTA) objections against Eva’s content are a known fact. These objections reached such a level (even receiving Japanese newspaper coverage) that TV Tokyo was forced to set up a screening panel including PTA members which effectively ‘nixed’ the original episodes 25 and 26 that were currently under production. (ie: The ‘intended’ script/storyline was submitted for review but rejected.) Being forced to redo two entire episodes from a late stage led to the time and budget restrictions which resulted in still images, stick figure animation and telops.”

–Bochan_bird

A week or two ago, the Japanese Tax Agency displayed the ‘evidence’ foudiscoverednd during their investigation of GAiNAX. In other words, they are so confident that they went public with the evidence. (Of course, finding ¥500 million [about US$4 million) in cash hidden in a secret safe, among other things, would probably make me confident, too…)…This evidence has also been used on TV specials concerning tax evasion as an example of ‘tax evasion by a particular anime production company’.

–Bochan_bird, 1999-07-7

It is now official. Today (July 13) at 10:00 am, the Japanese Tax Agency officials entered the GAiNAX offices/shop and the private residence of GAiNAX president Takeji Sawamura with search warrants, and arrested GAiNAX president Sawamura and one other person (whom they are now questioning/interrogating as to the whereabouts of the remainder of the money).

GAiNAX is being charged with hiding ¥1.5 billion (about US$12.5 million) in income, resulting in the evasion of ¥580 million (about US$4.8 million) in corporate taxes. This evasion took the form of faked transactions with related companies and paper accounts in order to overstate production expenses.

Given the amounts involved and the obvious intent to evade, it seems that the Tax Agency is ‘making an example’ of GAiNAX. The authorities have already publicly displayed the evidence found (including ¥500 million (about US$4 million) hidden in a safety deposit box), and are making sure that the case receives as much publicity as possible. The two arrestees will probably not have to serve actual jail time, but will have to undergo detention/questioning and court time, pay all evaded taxes plus some hefty fines, and upon admitting their guilt and expressing the proper remorse, will receive guilty sentences with suspended jail time.

–Bochan_bird

Gainax posted an official statement 1999-07-19; George Chen translates/paraphrases it

Mainichi Shimbun reports that Takeji Sawamura, 40, allegedly evaded paying corporate taxes by reporting fictitious costs for company software during the years of 1996_28ya and 1997_27ya. Tax accountant Yoshikatsu Iwasaki was also arrested on similar charges. According to prosecutors, Gainax allegedly faked the costs by paying fees to software companies under false contracts. The companies then refunded the money back to Gainax, minus a premium.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/1999-07-18/gainax-president-arrested-for-tax-evasion

Gendo and EoE borrow from Yukio Mishima? Notice the white gloves Mishima wore…

Hideaki Anno’s TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995_29ya) has a soundtrack that is so Japanese it will be decades before Occidental forms of audiovisual entertainment begin to successfully mimic it. Not only does Evangelion have many memorable vocal performances (Shinji, his father Gendo, the other ‘children’ Rei and Asuka) but there is a total logic to the sound design which both typifies its ‘Japaneseness’ and qualifies the role of the recorded voice within its aural netting. In fact, it should never be forgotten that ‘sound design’ is the creation of a sonic logic wherein all elements are orchestrated in accordance to our peculiar and precise understanding of how an imagined reality would acoustically operate and psychoacoustically resonate. To understand how any one element - a voice, for example - appears, happens and/or is rendered in a narrative form, one must wholly investigate the narrative’s sonic logic. Neon Genesis Evangelion exemplifies 4 primary categories of audiovisual narrativity which define the sense of its soundtrack: mecha design, musical eclecticism, spatio-temporal rupture, and emotional compaction.

The design of mechanical devices and machines - known as mecha design - is an important area of pre-production in Japanese entertainment. In manga and anime , objects are imagined, envisaged and designed as if they have to be used. That is, their logic is based less on their ‘look’ (a very Western notion that joins DaVincian optics and modernist sensibilities) and more on their tactility. Virtually all Japanese design promotes an erotic relation between user and machine, between object and hand, between shape and body. This pervades everything from a Kawasaki motorbike to Sailor Moon’s skirt. Most importantly, the ‘look’ of objects in Japanese design is accepted as a separate and auxiliary aspect of the objects’ purpose and function. Bank machines can be based on the look of tomatoes; skyscrapers on milk cartons; cars on deep sea crustaceans; perfume bottles on carburetors. They each will do what is required of them, so there is not real reason for them to speciously prove their existence through their look. (This is but yet another aspect of the ‘calligraphic’ in Japanese culture, where an image or a look is embraced as pure visual substance with no referent to the real.) The design of machinery in Japanese manga and anime is therefore a prime textual layer in the many futuristic scenarios wherein man and machine exist in a complexly modulated harmony. It is no surprise then that Japanese sound designers for anime obey the logic of the mecha design, carefully analyzing issues of weight, density, force, energy and mass before they even start to imagine the acoustic and transmissive properties of the machines.

…Secondly, each of the Angels (the diabolical threat to Earth) has their own look and an equally distinctive sound. This is especially noticeable due to the design of the Angels whose visuality references a series of modernist and ancient archetypes of biomorphic form - from Aztec wall paintings to Miro’s murals to Donald Judd cubes. Amazingly compounded sound effects accompany their terrible force, based on the power of violence they unleash on Tokyo 3. And despite the problem in designing sound for such impossible imaginings, an effective ‘mismatching’ of unexpected sounds with unexpected forms/shapes/beings runs throughout Neon Genesis Evangelion .

…Japanese anime has consistently offered alternatives to the Wagnerian leit motiv approach to serially repositioning a melodic refrain or theme throughout a film score. While this approach has typified both romantic and modernist film scoring, anime employs a string of motifs which effectively cancel each other out - or at least render their significance fluid and unfixed. Americans have often commented on how the Japanese place their music cues in the ‘wrong’ place - as if George Lucas and John Williams control the universal imagination. The use of New Jack Swing in Blue Seed (1995_29ya), Electro-Ambient in Please Save My Earth (1995_29ya) and Prog Rock in La Filliette Revolutionaire [Revolutionary Girl Utena] (1997_27ya) as score rather than sourced songs further typifies this seeming ‘wrongness’ about anime. The European orchestral machine is employed in anime for pure effect - not because ‘that’s how movie music should sound’. Further, there is usually no governing or determining style in any one anime. Shiro Sagisu’s score to Evangelion at varying times sounds like The Thunderbirds, FM-soft rock, Steve Reich and Ken Ishii. but the result of this eclecticism is not arched, strained or postmodern: it simply mutates and evolves in response to the surges and pulsations in the location and dispersion of dramatic energy.

While the score to Evangelion seems to simulate a radio station programmed in a chaotic random fashion, there is a purpose behind such chopping and changing. For the future in Evangelion - like the post-apocalyptic continuum which paves the way for Japan’s unsettling existence - is on the brink of destruction, and all that is calm is merely the potential for radical destabilization. Spatio-temporal rupture thus rages throughout Evangelion. Often we are caught in the claustrophobic mind of young Shinji as he grapples with an aching existential dilemma of how to live alone, divorced from social and human contact. The screen will go black, white, or assault the eye with Pokemon-style strobe-cutting; radical shifts in sound density will accompany these visual ruptures. Silence screams and pierces the soundtrack; detonations capitulate to a soft roar; all energies are continually inverted and reversed to complement and counterpoint their dramatic weight. Sometimes complete sections of plot disappear to convey Shinji’s loss of consciousness inside an Eva. Sometimes his psychic sensitivity teleports him unexpectedly to ill-defined locales and spaces. The musique concrete collage of sounds and atmospheres which play with these spatio-temporal ruptures is never gratuitous. If the sound design - like the music - in Japanese anime sounds ‘wrong’ it is not simply because we aren’t listening carefully enough, but that we are not cognizant of the way that Japanese sound reflects narrative, rather than neutralizing it as does Western audiovisual entertainment.

…Not that Japanese characters behave ‘differently’, but that the schisms which we perceive as corrupting and interfering with a character’s identity are acknowledged as the substance of a character’s identity. In the West, we will crudely designate the hero, the buffoon, the cynic, the sage, etc.; in the East, characters are founded upon their schizophrenia, established through their multiplicity, and defined by their inability to be grounded. Evangelion’s characters - especially the three ‘children’ who complexly represent Japan’s own problematized Generation-X - are formed by means of emotional compaction. Joy harmonizes grief; suffering prompts laughter; compassion folds violence; hatred suppresses innocence. Evangelion’s characters are quintessentially good, bad and ugly. Music, sound and voice dance in intricately orchestrated lines that map out these characters not as containers or vessels of emotion, but shimmering and shifting apparitions of emotional complexity - not ‘rounded out’ by authorial conceit, but unrefined as befits the prickly irrationality which dictates our everyday exchanges.

–“Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Tyranny of the English Voice in Anime”, Philip Brophy, Real Time No.31, Sydney, 1999

Of all the places in Japan, why did the Japanese government pick Matsushiro (Nagano Prefecture) for the site of the new Capitol? Well, aside than the fact that the rise in sea level caused by 2^nd Impact happened to submerge most major Japanese cities (which are located along the coasts), there is also the underground complex in Matsushiro which dates back to WWII.

This unfinished tunnel complex is hewn out of solid bedrock and consists of two portions: a ‘functional’ area consisting of a tunnel grid several hundreds of meters in each direction, and separate Imperial quarters complete with shrine and emergency escape tunnel.

The complex was constructed during the late WWII years as Japan came within range of bombing raids, and was intended as an emergency bomb shelter (it would be difficult to destroy even with a direct nuclear blast) capable of supporting government functions should Tokyo become uninhabitable.

–Bochan_bird; see Wikipedia on those bunkers. The location is yet another WWII reference in NGE.

“I remember talking to Carl Horn about EoE and about the hospital scene in particular. His feelings on the hospital scene is that Anno was sending a message to the otaku. The fact that the main character, who most of us (the fans) identify with, jacking off in front of their acetate avatar, was NOT OK. What Shinji does in front of Asuka SHOULD NEVER be considered fan-service. Considering that Anno also uses the same unflattering self-portrait in Love & Pop, I have a feeling that there is some truth in that statement.”

–Avery Davies

“Actually, although Anno is listed in the Mecha design too, his initial sketches are quite distant from the final Evas we got in the end. As an example of the fact that Anno was in charge of the project but didn’t do it all by itself, not even on a story level: influences from Kiichi Hadame for episodes 3 and 4, expert in presenting teenage problems (Gundam) graphically, Shinji Higuchi directing the humorous or lighter episodes, supported by Shin’ya Hasegawa’s drawing style, Keiichi Sugeyama’s direction and storyboarding of”A human work” resulting in the interlocked scene shifts, Ghibli’s handiwork in co-direction and drawing of episode 11 (but let’s not forget Masayuki’s hand too), etc. I agree with the fact that Anno was the one who came up with the idea, but the final product was the result of his coworking with others at all levels.”

–Ebj

“1995 (IIRC), and I am pretty certain that the cult had no influence whatsoever on Evangelion. However, they did show scenes and episodes from Evangelion (introspective scenes, etc.) at recruiting/training seminars. In fact, that was part of the draw for the seminars – the cult would distribute fliers saying that there would be an airing of Evangelion at a certain place and time (ie: piggy-backing on Eva’s popularity), and then when unsuspecting (and mostly younger) victims showed up they would try to equate some of their teachings with the soul-searching in the show and ‘recruit’ them.”

–Bochan_bird

“I have seen some of these weird fliers when I was in Japan 2 years ago. Now, what I am curious about is what’s the name of the group that produced these fliers. I hope that’s not the infamous Aum Shinrikyo…

Yes, Aum Shinrikyo is the cult that used Evangelion in its fliers. They don’t use Evangelion outwardly (eg: fliers) any more because it received attention by the media and also probably because GAiNAX threatened with a lawsuit. As for internal use, who knows…”

–Bochan_bird (his discussion of Fumihiro Joyu is interesting in light of subsequent events)

2000 P

Komatsu: There’s something that I was a bit curious about in the work Anno-san directed, “Shin Seiki Evangelion.” The word “Evangelion” itself [connotes] a way of thinking that appears in Christian eschatology. but what was the reason you appended a title with that sort of connotation to your work?

Anno: The truth is, it didn’t have such a deep meaning. (laughs) Although I seem to get attacked when I say this. The meaning of the original word, if I’m not mistaken, is something like “the cry of victory.”

…Anno: The truth is, the image of hearing that “cry of victory” came first. [The title] was appended with a vague reason, something like, “please bring about happiness.”

Komatsu: For what reason did the “eschatological” elements appear [in the work]?

Anno: They were made up as I went. (laughs)

Komatsu: That’s terrible, really. (laughs) But, it’s certainly amazing that you completed a story that serious from within.

— [Interviewer]: Up to this point various things have been said about Evangelion, but you could say that it is the anime which deals with things like “theology or evolutionary theory” in the most up-front manner.

Anno: [It was] just pedantry.

Komatsu: So, it’s not as if you had a particular interest in Christianity……

Anno: No. I guess it was convenient material for structuring the story. I think that, generally, religion is out of place in Japan. Nothing has grown [in Japan] but “indigenous-feeling” or animistic religions. At first glance, there are parts of daily life that seem to be rooted in Buddhism, but in actuality Buddhism is not useful for much more than funerals.

Komatsu: It’s said that the native religion in Japan is a kind of animism, but it’s not just a simple “pan-animism.” It’s like this: in the mountain there is a god of the mountain, in the river there is a god of the river. Its characteristic is that everything in the world becomes an object of religion. The opinion that this was something primitive and embarrassing that we should stop first emerged in the Meiji Era, and then again just after the war.

—Anno-san, you say that it was just convenient material [for structuring the story], but what do you think about that structure? Although Nietzsche said “God is dead,” if that’s the case, isn’t the “SF-like” way of thinking “Let’s create a God”? There are parts like this in Evangelion as well.

Anno: Because originally God is something created by human beings. I think that there is a transcendent being, but that image was only something fabricated. I don’t think it matters that each person has their own God. In short, I do not at all intend to repudiate religion. Only, I don’t think it’s necessary for everyone to have the same God.

Komatsu: And then there is Darwin’s evolutionary theory. It’s the foundation of modern science; however, it also [indicates that,] in the end, the most advanced [lifeform] is of course the human being. But I wondered if human beings were really that great. Because of that, and thinking that there may be something greater besides [human beings], I ended up writing “science fiction” stories where alien beings appeared. [The phrase] “cry of victory” came up previously; what does Anno-kun think about salvation?

Anno: Evangelion also includes a “salvation-like” story, but it’s not true salvation. It was a work where, thinking about the destination of mankind, I began by borrowing elements from Christianity. It’s like, thinking about something like the evolution of mankind or the meaning of existence, I tried to make something concerning the destination of mankind.

—In Anno-san’s work, a type of alien or lifeform appears which is painful for human beings to come in contact with.

Anno: It’s more real that the aliens be incomprehensible. The aliens you see on television even show that they can speak Japanese on an earth that they are supposed to have come to for the first time. I don’t think that something like that is an alien. (laughs)

—I wonder if Eva and Lilith were intelligent life-forms.

Anno: What concerned me more than [them having] intelligence was whether they had a kokoro or not. In short: the problem of the soul [tamashii]. Regarding the kokoro and the body, there are many things that have been said by dualism, but I think that they are two faces of the same thing.

—Komatsu-san, what do you think about the problem of the soul [tamashii] or the kokoro?

Komatsu: The kokoro, I think, is something that mammals are surprisingly able to share. However, in the case of an alien race, then things are different. Regarding intelligence, it’s possible that there are intelligences incapable of contacting human beings. Thinking this through is the appeal of science fiction. It would be nice if the world was convenient in the manner of Star Trek; however…

Anno: When I really think it through I think that’s how it is. I don’t hate Star Trek, but I’m not that into it. You can see something of the arrogance of America [in it]. There is a story of influencing or enlightening the native people of the destination planets, or there is a romance with their most admirable woman in a front-line base. I feel like this is American imperialism itself.⁵⁵

Komatsu: More than imperialism, it’s the imposition of a Christian sense of justice.

Anno: Somehow this way Marxists are portrayed as being primitive people. I can’t get used to that kind of American worldview. I think the Enterprise is cool, but…

–Hideaki Anno & Komatsu Sakyô (Japan Sinks; Japanese SF author & organizer, see The Notenki Memoirs) roundtable (original transcript); translation by Numbers-kun: “On the main interviews page (here) it’s listed as being from 2000_24ya. It seems to have been transcribed from this book, published in April 2000_24ya. So, the interview was probably from early 2000_24ya or some time in 1999_25ya, maybe two and a half years after EoE.”

—During the Eva Boom books such as “Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls” came out. Did you anticipate that?

Anno: I could somehow understand that. When I was in middle school, because I loved the anime “Space Battleship Yamato,” being interested in the wave motion gun, warp drive, and so on, I would buy “blue books”⁵⁶ [Kodansha books on popular science]. (laughs) My knowledge of the theory of relativity and so on was due to the influence of Yamato. I feel it’s fine by itself if people become interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls because of that [because of Eva]. If through that they get interested in psychology and move on to that direction, it will also be interesting. As for the elements relating to Christianity, I just researched them quickly using dictionary-like books. Because these sort of convenient things exist in the world, (laughs) around the time when we were students, the anime “Macross” was showing on TV, and there was a “catalog generation,” a generation interested in nothing but “specs” and catalogs. They would only evaluate things on the basis of “catalog-like” elements.⁵⁷ They didn’t care about “interior” elements but were only caught up in what was on the surface. So, you can extend that [idea]. [In Eva] there are various “keyword-like” terms but, in truth, these are just symbols. They don’t really have meanings taken individually. As they are mixed together, for the first time something like an interrelationship or a meaning emerges. If you investigate each one individually you will very quickly reach the bottom.

…—You previously said you have an interest in psychology, but in Eva things like Kierkegaard’s “The Sickness Unto Death” are cited as well…

Anno: I didn’t read it.

—Eh‽

Anno: I just quoted it.

—I thought you must have liked it.

Anno: In no time at all I lost my interest [in it]. I didn’t understand it. I made guesses based on skim-reading, and so on. And, I would seem intelligent if I remembered a phrase [from it]. (laughs)

—It wasn’t that you based [Eva] on Christianity because you liked it…

Anno: It wasn’t at all because of that. I don’t understand Christianity at all. It was because of the atmosphere. (laughs)

…Anno: If the planned relations had worked out - the plan was that the ‘unconscious Shinji-kun’ would be Ayanami Rei, the Shinji-kun who appears on the surface would be Ikari Shinji, and the ‘ideal Shinji-kun’ would be Nagisa Kaworu-kun. [Kaworu was] supposed to be an ideal male but when I tried putting him together he was just a strange fellow (laughs). That was something of a lack of capability on my part.

–Excerpt translated by Numbers-kun(first excerpt, second excerpt, third excerpt; full original); 5 December interview ‘with a member of Waseda University for the purpose of “character study.”’

“…Gendo is borrowed from another anime project before Eva that was aborted. [Aoki Uru?]

Ikari is the same as before. Yui sounds similar to Rei, and it’s also a little pun on yui [唯, “only one”].

Keel is also a component of a ship. Lorenz is named after a zoologist or something, but I can’t remember clearly. Am I just getting old? Oh, well.

Super straightforward naming [for Pen²], but I thought the repetition sounded cute. His name has officially become the 2^nd power of Pen [Pen²]. I was reluctant at first, but we thought we needed a mascot character, so we had an animal appear in the show. As it happened, the show is set in Hakone, which one associates with hot springs, which in turn are associated with monkeys. But that is no fun, so we decided to make it a penguin, the animal least suited to a hot spring. I’m positive that Sadamoto came up with the idea of a “hot spring penguin”.

… [Kensuke Aida] Also from Murakami’s novel. By the way, I was just interested in a character “Zero” in this novel, rather than the story about revolution and dictatorship itself….

This character was named by the screenplay writer Akio Satsukawa. Nagisa [shore] is a word related to the sea. Also the kanji nagisa 渚 consists of katakana SHI シ and kanji SHA 者, therefore he’s SHISHA シ者 [messenger 使者]. He said it also comes from the movie director Nagisa Oshima. But what is Kaworu? Sorry, I will ask him next time. [Anno discussed Oshima in a 1997_27ya Newtype?]”

–Hideaki Anno, personal website; original translation by massangeana on Japan.Anime.Evangelion, December 2000_24ya. (It’s striking how random and meaningless many names seem to be.)

Oguro: The relation between the fan and the work.

Anno: Right, right. So, they can’t meet the real Rei Ayanami, but because, as an act of compensation, they can meet the voice actress who does her voice, they go to events [where she appears]. Or, they get that picture signed by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, the man who drew it.

Oguro: As a substitute for the real Rei Ayanami.

Anno: I believe that anime character merchandise sells well simply because it is a means of getting close to the character. You can’t express your love for Rei Ayanami except by putting her poster up on your wall. So, character merchandise sells well because of that.

Oguro: Express your love?

Anno: Everyone understands that it’s a fiction, but precisely because it’s a fiction you have a pure feeling, you fall for the character to an even greater extent. You assume that an anime character will not betray you. Iku-chan said [to me], “in the last episode, please have Rei Ayanami get married and become pregnant. Just please betray the Ayanami fans. The Rei Ayanami they are thinking of is not real. The real Rei Ayanami gets married, and her belly…”

Oguro: (laughs) Ah, if Ayanami really existed.

Anno: He told me something like, “please, make them realize that, If she were real, she would get married, become pregnant, have a child, and grow older.” I was thinking, “we don’t have to go that far…” (laughs).

Oguro: (laughs) Iku-chan is a wicked man.

–Translated by Numbers-kun based on 2chan excerpts and scans; this extract is from an April 2000_24ya interview published in Monthly Anime Style (in-depth magazine, successor to Anime Style), which was reprinted in the 2011_13ya interview anthology アニメクリエイタ-・インタビュ-ズ　この人に話を聞きたい２００１-２００２ (Anime kurieitā intabyūzu: kono hito ni hanashi o kikitai; ISBN 9784063648515). See also the 1996_28ya Animeland interview.

Anno: […] I want to focus on contemporary Japan. Since we [my generation] doesn’t have the post-war period or anything else, there is nothing but the present. The worthy past was outside of our formative experiences, so even if we base something on the past, it only becomes more deficient. On the other hand, to the extent we depict the future, it is without optimism. If we depict the future, today it will surely only be in a pessimistic way. This being the case, I want to confront what is right before my eyes, but when I do so, my empty self comes into sharp relief, and I merely become perplexed. In the case of Evangelion, I thoroughly presented this emptiness, but now beyond that - I am empty, so what should I do? - that’s what I have to do, but I’ve been struggling to find [what that is], and so come to a standstill. At such a time I saw “Taboo,” [and thought,] “Ah, this old man is giving his all, [but I] ….”

Oshima: (Laughing)

Anno: Feeling this way, I have been driven into a corner. I am struggling to find an exit. I think that is common to [my generation]. For people now in their forties and below, since there is no joint struggle or anpo [toso], seeing those things on television, a negative feeling, a so-called “shirake mood” [feeling of apathy] like, “even if I do something it won’t make any difference,” has taken root. I think that we who have been “blocked” since the time we were children will always be haunted by [the question of] what we should do in order to be able to move forwards.

–Untranslated copy of the dialogue is available online; excerpt translated by Numbers-kun; M Arnold, Miyazaki ML (public mirror) summarizes it:

The current issue of Eureka, a literary/art criticism magazine, is about Japanese film director Oshima Nagisa. Among a score of other essays and articles it includes a transcript of a dialogue between Oshima and Hideaki Anno. I haven’t read the whole thing, but they talk about Oshima’s new film “Gohatto” (which is great, by the way) and the difficulties (well, Anno’s difficulties) in finding motivation and issues to tackle in films now.

At the end, I asked the question: “You’ve started out doing Science-Fiction (Gunbuster, Royal Space Force, Nadia) and now you’re doing Shoujo, why is that?”

Yamaga’s answer: “We’ve always worked in both sci-fi and Shoujo. EVA was a combination of both.”

–Peter Svensson, Fanime 2000_24ya; in 2001, Svensson described the question as “Is the Gainax of today, which makes the Shoujo series Kare Kano, the same Gainax that made Royal Space Force?”

American fans enjoyed the [Daicon] film’s broad parody, but its Japanese creators have fixed feelings. “They’re a source of pride and something you want to strangle,” said Yamaga, who is more interested in new projects. “I don’t want to see them for a long time. Just thinking about them sends shivers down my spine,” added Akai, saying that he wants to produce better films than the old ones.”

… “Somehow, the conversation turned to the animated films the two created for the Daicon conventions in Japan. Those films are known as the first Gainax films - and remembered for the all-conquering bunny girl character. American fans enjoyed the film’s broad parody, but its Japanese creators have fixed feelings.”They’re a source of pride and something you want to strangle,” said Yamaga, who is more interested in new projects. “I don’t want to see them for a long time. Just thinking about them sends shivers down my spine,” added Akai, saying that he wants to produce better films than the old ones.

–From a Fanime panel: https://web.archive.org/web/20070707233248/www.fansview.com/2000_24yaa/022400d.htm

I met Mr. Yamaga at Carl’s party after Fanimecon 2k, and he said (as one might assume) that Eva was Anno’s thing, not his, so we talked about Honneamise. You wont get the answers you want from him.

–Sean McCoy

It’s [Revolutionary Girl Utena] directed by Ikuhara, one of Anno’s good friends. I call it the Shoujo EVA.

Ikuhara actually called it that himself at Otakon this year. He made the Utena movie as revenge against Anno. He wanted to make something seriously dented, and I think he accomplished just that…

–Vera LaPorte

The manga ideas came first, though I don’t think the author really produced much before the anime. Ikuhara tempted the author away from GAiNAX (I wish I could remember the guy’s name…Hasegawa? I know he was the character designer for the anime) and they worked together rather stealthily on the anime because Ikuhara was still under contract for Sailor Moon (and he didn’t want Anno to find out). So I guess my answer is the Utena manga idea came first, but the anime took hold and then the real manga began.

–Vera LaPorte

Did that ending scene (EOE) seem a little euphoric to anyone else? Is there any evidence that Anno was on crack or LSD while writing this?

Funny you should mention that… At the Utena panel at Otakon this past August someone asked that of Ikuhara (a good buddy of Anno, colleague, and sometime co-worker, as well as director for Utena and Sailor Moon), and Ikuhara simply replied, “I was born like this.”

–Vera LaPorte

Been away for a while for the classic Lucca Comics Expo here in Italy…Ikuhara said that he did NOT substitute Anno at the direction of the latest episodes of Kare Kano, contrarily to some rumors that have been going on for a while.

–Ebj

I remember Kunihiko Ikuhara coming to a convention here in Italy (one in Lucca, 2001_23ya or 2002_22ya possibly), and being asked about his collaboration with Anno (didn’t like it, he was presenting the Utena movie back then), and he too did say that the Christian symbology was, as far as he knew/had been told by Anno, coolness factor. The conversation went there because a weirdo tried to get him to admit there was a parallel between the Utena movie and Gnostic doctrines - don’t ask - and while Ikuhara just laughed nervously and mumbled about not even knowing the word, it was clear from the face of the translator that such embarrassments weren’t welcome anymore.

–Ebj

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto: The staff loved (the work) while they were making it. The film version was really planned to be a completely different story that would only use the characters from the original.

Hiroki Sato: We really had planned it so that people who hadn’t seen the TV series would be able to enjoy it as well, but the staff said that they were worn out, and we didn’t think we would be able to do it any more. Well, since the film [became] a remake of episodes 25 and 26, we decided to do it along the lines of the left over original script. But the original film collapsed.

Sadamoto: Right. [The staff] were worn out. I wanted to see the originally planned film.

Sato: If I was to say which [direction it was heading in], it would have been a return to the earlier science-fiction [oriented] story. In the plan which fell apart, we wanted to seriously create a world in which giant robots would exist. The design team constructed this idea, which would have been another side of - well, if I had to say, something like a “hard-gelion” (laughing).

SD: But, having worked endlessly on the TV series, the staff had already run out of steam. “You’re telling us to keep up this brutal work for merely one more year?” The entire staff was worn out, Anno-san included.

ST: After Anno-san rehabilitated for half a year, he had work on the video version start up again. Since doing that worked out scheduling-wise, we had announced it around when the TV series had first ended, but we were also thinking about an original film. [???]

SD: Eva takes place in a “summer world.” It was planned that [the film] would completely change the art style, so that suddenly snow-covered mountains, and Misato and the others wearing coats, would appear in a “winter world.”⁵⁸ Thinking that would be very cool, I was a little bit excited inside. That became the remake [instead], and [it was then like,] “What? There’s no job for me?”

–excerpts translated by Numbers-kun; SF online #35, 2000-01-24. Note that the ‘snow world’ is consistent with both Okada in “Return of the Otaking” part 4 in 1996_28ya and with Olivier Hagué’s April 2001_23ya comments:

But did they ever state that there would be no more Eva? After all, they intended to make the Summer 97 movie an original story, independently from the alternate ending (first supposed to be released on video only)… And there are still some Gainax members who would like to make (or at least, to see ^^) that one.

It was supposed to take place in snowy landscapes (instead of the “endless summer” setting), to have new characters, and overall a more realistic touch (some of the Gainax members called it “a sort of Hard-gelion” ^^). Who knows?… In a few years, maybe?…

2000 S

• 2000-animerica-essaytomino-noeva.pdf

• 2000-animerica-tominointerview.pdf Tomino interview where he slags on NGE: Animerica, Vol 8 #2 (March 2000_24ya) “Interview: Yoshiyuki Tomino”, Animerica 8:2 pg 12-13, 34-37

Tomino: For instance, Brain Powered came out after Evangelion did, so I am often asked questions similar to yours about the connection between them, but in reality the plans for Brain Powered and the overall story had all been completed before Evangelion came out. I never meant Brain Powered to be an antithesis to Evangelion. I knew when I saw Evangelion that Brain Powered would be called an antithesis to it, but I didn’t want to change my plans any, so I just resigned myself to that.

This is connected with my wish for more animators to see themselves as entertainers. I don’t think I succeeded with Brain Powered, and I don’t think it was very good with entertainment–but there was one thing I did try to do with it. If 100 people come to see an anime with giant robots, then chances are that not every one of those 100 people will be a huge fan of robot anime. What I wanted to do was to make an anime that had a truly interesting story that wouldn’t cause the people who watched it to have a nervous breakdown. I also tried to make a story that would tell anime fans that there were often other things out there better than anime. That’s the goal I challenged myself to do. I don’t think the series itself was a success, though, I have to admit that. 1 So I was very upset when I saw Evangelion, because it was apparent to me that the people who made it weren’t thinking at all about making fun for or gaining the sympathy of the audience. Instead they tried to convince the audience to admit that everybody is sick, practically in the middle of a nervous breakdown, all the time. I don’t think you should show things like that to everybody. It’s not entertainment for the masses–it’s much more interested in admitting that we’re all depressed nervous wrecks, I thought. It was a work that told people it was okay to be depressed, and it accepted the psychological state that said if you don’t like the way the world works, then it’s okay to just pick up a gun and attack someone. I don’t think that’s a real work of art. When people see that, they begin to realize they are the same way. I think that we should try to show people how to live healthier, fuller lives, to foster their identity as a part of their community, and to encourage them to work happily until they die. I can’t accept any work that doesn’t say that.

Animerica: Is that different from your downbeat endings?

Tomino: I make sure my audience knows it’s fiction and that what happens to my characters doesn’t necessarily say anything about their own lives.

–https://forum.evageeks.org/post/71301/Help-with-quotes-please/#71301

2000 T

• 2000-routt-stillnessnstyleineva.pdf (https://web.archive.org/web/20050209120629/http://www.evangelion.ca/faqs/essay7.html copy of Routt stillness and style essay)

• http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/july00/grant.shtml “A Moment of Your Time, Madame President!: An interview with Tiffany Grant”

• https://web.archive.org/web/20050213014306/home.comcast.net/~hasshin/evacomm.html (EoE negative review)

‘Evangelion’ deploys otaku clichés with mechas and girls, with parodies and quotations from the history of the genre all the way back to ‘Space Battleship Yamato’ of 1974_50ya.(20) At the same time, Anno criticizes the closed nature of the Otaku circle, and its division into ever-smaller, strictly separated areas of interest.

The otaku would appear to be successfully escaping the shackles of one prison named society only in order to build themselves a new housing composed of technological mediatedness and self-referentialism. As Toshio Okada writes in his book ‘Our Brainwash Society’ (Bokutachi no sennô shakai, Asahi Shimbunsha, Tokyo, 1995_29ya), he too detects the main problem in this closing off.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20071204000038/waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck/Texts/otaku00_e.html

2001 P

Some of the jokes, gags, and elements in FLCL are subcultural, and if it was very difficult for him to explain some of the elements to the staff, it may be even more so to Americans - or so is his assumption. Tsurumaki told the Otakon panel, “Honestly speaking, I’m very happy that Americans like my work, but the Eva TV series and movies, Kare Kano, and FLCL are basically made for the Japanese audiences. So when I hear that they are being well received by American audiences, I feel very happy; but at the same time I feel a little awkward.”

When PULP asked him what he meant by that, Tsurumaki said, “For example, in Eva, I thought Shinji’s character would only be understood by Japanese fans of this generation. But I was very happy - or actually, shocked - to find out that his kind of character is also understood by Americans.” I appreciated the director’s implied vote of confidence in us, but wondered whether the oft-remarked-upon Japanese sense of cultural singularism was strong enough to cancel out the universal fact of youth disaffection, let alone the worldwide reporting on incidents such as the murders at Columbine.

Another person at Tsurumaki’s press conference took up that question. Tsurumaki averred that Shinji’s character was based personally on that of Hideaki Anno. Tsurumaki’s version of the metaphor was that Shinji being summoned by his father to pilot the Evangelion stood for Anno being “summoned” by Gainax to direct their first anime in four years, and his in five - he traced Anno’s ambiguous feelings about his craft back to Nadia. At the same time, said Tsurumaki, Anno felt, “But maybe by doing Eva I can change, I can grow.”

Most of the Gainax shows are also targeted, Tsurumaki said, for an audience “that tends to be rather weak and has problems with their family” - and the directors at Gainax are those kind of people. “A lot of families in Japan a generation ago - and perhaps even now - had fathers that were workaholics and never home. They were out of their children’s’ lives. My own father was like that, and I hardly ever got to associate with him until quite recently. I’m the same sort of person as Hideaki Anno. That probably influences the type of anime I create.”

Nevertheless, if Tsurumaki feels that he will never be safe, he will never be sane, he wanted to express that frantic inside in a comedic mode, rather than with the violent convulsions of Evangelion. Simply put, he personally was ready for a contrast to that apocalyptic darkness. Tsurumaki compares the bizarre robots popping forth from Naota’s head to stir up the town in FLCL to the bizarre ideas popping forth from his head during its production, stirring up the post-Eva Gainax. For someone involved with such a talked-about film, Tsurumaki hardly ever watches movies himself, telling the panel he receives influences instead from Japanese TV dramas and manga, his favorite being those of Leiji Matsumoto.

…None of the Evangelion production staff are themselves of a Western religious background. Tsurumaki, for his own part as assistant director, said at Otakon that he always envisioned the extensive use of Judeo-Christian iconography in Evangelion to be more of a way for the show to distinguish itself visually in the mecha field. Evangelion’s eschatology is in fact too well-developed to be regarded as a mere motif, however if it is a syncretic, symbolic and esoteric approach, it is not an ignorant one. Tsurumaki remarked that Eva, being a show only meant for Japan, allowed Gainax to creative freedom in the use of Western elements, removing any concern about how their interpretation might cause offense. By the same token, Yamaga has expressed a sense of relief that Gainax couldn’t be easily smeared with the media hysteria over Aum Shinrikyo, since Evangelion’s own high-tech cultists used Western, not Buddhist, revelations. It should be obvious that if this is viewed as an armor for Evangelion to comment on contemporary Japanese events, it is an effective one - an applicability many Japanese critics in fact accepted.

–“FLCL is the formula: 4. emerging from the head of Gainax”, PULP (archive)

P: Do you think, then, that the distinctive Gainax projects are the ones which actually originate from within the studio, rather then their adaptations of someone else’s work?

KT: It depends on the time in which it was released, but yes, works like Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise, Gunbuster, Nadia, and FLCL would be considered the ones with the true Gainax flavor, their milestones.

–“FLCL is the formula: 5. and so the Pulp interview”, PULP (archive)

Tsurumaki said he was surpassed [surprised] that Shinji Ikari was understood so well by North American Evangelion fans, and admitted that Shinji was modeled after the director Hideaki Anno. “Shinji, he gets summoned by his father to ride a robot, and Anno was summoned by Gainax to make a big animation show after he had had a problem with Nadia of the Mysterious Seas and didn’t know if he still wanted to direct.” Some fans think that the extreme violence in End of Evangelion was inspired by fans’ disapproval of Anno, but Tsurumaki said that was not the case. “It wasn’t a bitterness toward the fans. A lot of people think anime should always have happy endings, but that’s not always the case. We wanted to educate the fans that anime can have bitter endings.”

–Tsurumaki Otakon panel

#2. Why were the Director’s Cuts made and how important are they to the story?

(answer: they aren’t that important to the story, they were made as an apology to fans for delaying the release of the video so long. And also to help understand the later episodes, which he admitted were made quickly and roughly).

…He mentioned that Anno was working on Nadia when the Eva opportunity arose, and that he took the job because he thought he could change. Tsurumaki compared this to Shinji being summoned by his father to control Eva…another parallel of staff and fiction!

MDWigs summary of Tsurumaki Otakon panel. Tsurumaki was also asked whose soul was in Unit-03 (much discussed - Toji’s mother? sister? random third party?); he was just confused. (Brendan Jamieson tells the story in 2004 but of Unit-00; he says he was probably just mistaken.)

fuller transcript: “Amusing Himself to Death” part 1; part2; part3:

Why does Evangelion end violently, and somewhat unhappily?

KT: People are accustomed to sweet, contrived, happy endings. We wanted to broaden the genre, and show people an ugly, unhappy ending.

Why is the character of Shinji portrayed as he is?

KT: Shinji was modeled on director Hideaki Anno. Shinji was summoned by his father to ride a robot, Anno was summoned by Gainax to direct an animation. Working on Nadia [Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, one of Anno and Tsurumaki’s earlier projects] he wondered if he still wanted to work like this. He thought that working on Eva could help him to change.

Is there any particular reason why so many Gainax series feature very anxious, unhappy young male protagonists with no parents?

KT: Yes, the directors at Gainax are all basically weak, insecure, bitter, young men. So are many anime fans. Many Japanese families, including my own, have workaholic fathers whose kids never get to see them. That may influence the shows I create.

Could you explain the mecha bursting from Naota’s head in FLCL?

KT: I use a giant robot being created from the brain to represent FLCL coming from my brain. The robot ravages the town around him, and the more intensely I worked on FLCL the more I destroyed the peaceful atmosphere of Gainax.

Why doesn’t FLCL follow one story?

KT: In the third episode Ninamori was almost a main character, a kid who, like Naota, has to act like an adult. After episode three her problem was solved so we wrote her out. She has many fans in Japan and we got plenty of letters about that decision. For FLCL I wanted to portray the entire history of Gainax, and each episode has symbols of what happened behind the scenes on each of Gainax’s shows. Episode one has many elements of Kare Kano; episode two, a lot of Evangelion references, etc.

Where does the title FLCL come from?

KT: I got the idea from a CD in a music magazine with the title Fooly-Cooly. I like the idea of titles that are shortened long English words. Pokemon for “Pocket-Monsters” for instance, and an old J-pop band called Brilliant Green that was known as “Brilly-Grilly.”

Is there any reason why the extra scenes added to Eva for the video release were cut in the first place? Did you think the story would mean something different with them intact?

KT: The scenes that were added to Eva for its video release aren’t that important. We added them as an apology for taking so long to get the video out. Maybe they’ll help people understand things, because the episodes were done under tough deadlines the first time around.

Earlier today you said that you were trying to broaden the genre by giving Eva a sad ending. Does the sameness of much of today’s anime bore you?

KT: First of all we didn’t use a sad ending to annoy fans. When they’re upset, that really bothers us. Personally, I think a happy ending is fine, but not if it is achieved too easily. That’s no good.

Can you explain the symbolism of the cross in Evangelion?

KT: There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us. Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious. None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians. There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool. If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.

Sadamoto says Nadia=Shinji pic is joke, but close to truth: https://web.archive.org/web/20071214081843/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2006-November/003857.html

At the Gainax Live! event in Nagoya a few years back, Sadamoto said that he wished the manga was over so that he could move on to new things since he had been doing nothing but Eva for 6-7 years.

–Bochan_bird, 2004_20ya; guessing 2001_23ya, as 2001_23ya − 1994_30ya = 7, and see also a Tsurumaki quote

You mentioned previously that Japanese animation is not in a good situation right now. Why not?

MO: Unfortunately, anime is generally rated low by the Japanese public. One reason is that many people still think anime is for small children, which is no longer true. A series of very abnormal murders of small children that occurred in 1989_35ya can be another reason. Because the criminal was over 20 years of age, and a devotee of anime and video games, the whole nation started persecuting and discriminating against anime and its fans. Those feelings still remain. Creative teams now must make anime within very small budgets - this includes voice actors. Furthermore, the ongoing recession makes it more difficult to train good actors and artists to create good works. We are now facing a hard time and therefore we are given fewer opportunities to use our high abilities and techniques; and the situation is getting worse every year. I feel that we must do something about it.

Do you think shows for children in Japan are more sophisticated than American or European shows?

MO: I think that is true in some ways, but it isn’t always true. I think Disney movies are wonderful. I cannot believe that “Fantasia” was made that many years ago. But the situation of the Japanese animation industry in which the best techniques and abilities cannot be fully utilized is something that we are ashamed of. If we had the support of big sponsors from abroad, the situation may turn out differently. It’s a shame.

…You are probably best known in the US for playing Shinji in “Evangelion.” Some of Shinji’s speeches sound like they might have been ad-libbed. Did you get to ad-lib and experiment when you were working on “Evangelion?”

MO: I’m delighted that you think I sounded natural as if I was doing ad-libs. I don’t remember doing anything experimental. There was a time when I actually pushed Yuko Miyamura to the floor to strangle her during the last scene of the “Evangelion” movie in which Shinji strangles Asuka. I couldn’t act very well in playing that scene. I was so agitated that I strangled her too hard, making it impossible for her to say her lines for a while. Of course, I apologized to her for doing that. I almost killed her.

A censored version of “Sailor Moon” has been airing in the US. Haruka and Michiru were turned into cousins and much of their dialogue was changed. When the show first aired in Japan, was there any contention coming from parents or religious leaders?

MO: When I was cast to play Haruka, I asked director Kunihiko Ikuhara, “Are they gay?” He answered, “Act as if they are married couple.” And I asked him again, “Married couple? You, mean, with two ladies?” He replied, “Yes.” So they are husband and wife. Their appearance on TV was sensational, something unheard of in TV cartoons. And the show was aired every Saturday at 7 p.m. when every member of the family would be gathering around the TV. Even so, it seems that we were able to grab the viewer’s heart. The program’s rating continued to rise, and I received a lot more fan letters than before. Because many people watched the show with their family, not only the anime fans but also small children and their mothers became our fans as well. There was a time I was called “a madam killer” [a term used to describe a person so charming that they can get any woman, usually applied to men, however Ms. Ogata’s seiyuu career stands as a testament to how appropriate the term is for her].

I’m sure that the anime also appealed to gay people, too. I heard that “Sailor Moon” was the talk of the town in Shinjuku 2-chome, a famous gay street in Japan. Of course, it may have caused controversy in some strict, religious families, but the entertainment won a victory over the religious fanatics. Maybe it’s because Japan is not as religious a country as the U.S. But the anime is not only about girls with mini skirts and gay couples. It also has a very interesting story. It focuses on very important aspects of human behavior, and it is very well written. The anime deserved popularity. Of course, the sexiness is also an important thing. Perhaps the most important. I am attracted to anime with a touch of sensuality - without being too indecent like X-rated movies - because sexy things are simply entertaining. [With the voice of Haruka Tenoh] “Don’t you think so too, my cute little American kitties?”

– From a Megumi Ogata interview (note that strangling-Megumi story is confirmed by the Megumi Livedoor interview and her later Australian interview): single page (part1, 2, 3)

• EVENT CALENDER

• 04/10 Term starts [Presumably the beginning of the series]

• 04/25 Field trip

• 05/early 3^rd Angel Sachiel

• 05/late 4^th Angel Shamshel

• 06/early ID card

• 06/middle 5th Angel Ramiel Rei is hospitalized

• 06/late 6th Angel Gaghiel Asuka’s first appearance

• 07/03 Asuka arrives in Japan and begins school

• 08/early 7th Angel Israfel

• 08/early 7th Angel Israfel rematch

• 09/middle 8th Angel Sandalphon If this occurs before 09/12, the Eva pilots go on the field trip with the rest of the class. If not, they go to the hot springs (as we know, the canon event is hot springs)

• 09/14-6 Hot Springs

• 09/middle 9th Angel Matarael Battle

• 10/late 10^th Angel Sahaquiel Battle. Later, they go out for ramen.

• 11/middle 11th Angel Ireul

• 11/middle Eva 00 goes berserk

• 11/late 12th Angel Leliel

• 12/21-3 Secret harsh training (possibly when Rei starts using LoL)

• 12/24 Christmas eve

• 01/01 New year’s

• 01/middle 13th Angel Bardiel Battle

• 01/middle 14th Angel Zeruel Battle. Eva 01 goes berserk, Shinji

• revives a month later.

• 02/late 15th Angel Arael

• 03/24 16th Angel Armisael - Rei II’s Ending

• 17^th Angel Tabris [Arrival]

• 03/27 Rei III is released from hospital

• 03/29 Events of ’24, Shinji vs Nagisa-Kun

• 03/30-31 Events of EoE (??)

• Rei Ayanami Raising Project chronology (apparently inconsistent with the Episode 04 dates cut in Evangelion ORIGINAL)

Besides, Anno-tachi worked on Macross, which had episodes delivered to the studio minutes before airtime… So says Yamaga…

–Peter Svensson (Fanime 1999_25ya/2000_24ya; Svensson is unsure which)

“I felt my career as an animation director had gone as far as it could, and decided I would like to try a new creative media. I am not complaining about the animation industry, but I felt I couldn’t get any more satisfaction from making animation and I needed to try something new to stimulate my creativity. I knew Ayako Fujitani and I loved her book when I read it. So I decide to try and make it into film.”

The style of Ritual is not dissimilar to your animated work?

“Yes, there is some similarity in the two, but it isn’t direct copy. Though I used some special-effects, I was trying to make the images in the film look painterly. It’s odd that when I used to do animation, I would try hard to realise the characters as if they were in a live-action movie, but when I did Ritual I put a lot of effort in making the image more graphic!”

Why you choose Shunji Iwai to act in the film?

“Two reasons. First, the profession of the main character in Ritual is a director, so it seemed ideal to get a ‘real’ director to do it. Secondly, I think Shunji Iwai is really cool, so I thought he could capture the quality of the main character.”

–Hideaki Anno, Look@Ritual (Shiki-Jitsu)

Anno: However, if I was to speak just of anime as an artform, I believe it is rapidly declining. I find the anime of twenty or thirty years ago to be overwhelmingly better [than today’s]. […] Of course, even now, although we have skillful people, I feel we have a ways to go before we match the movement of the older anime.

• What is the cause of that?

Anno: It’s a problem of the quality of the Japanese people themselves. To express it in the style of Shiba Ryotaro, the voltage of Japan is decreasing. It’s not just anime; novels, films, manga, no matter the kind of culture, they are all surely declining, I believe. It’s not simply a matter of the old times being good. We[, my generation,] and those after are already a “copy culture”, so there’s nothing else we can do. As copy piles upon copy, they quickly become distorted and diluted. […] In this situation, things can hardly be improved. It’s difficult, I think. From here, Japan will probably rapidly reach an impasse. Perhaps years from now, or perhaps longer, someone will figure out something, and perhaps things will just keep declining. In Japan as a country, culture has already become “blocked.” Korea, China, and South Asia have been able to produce exemplary works, and the day may arrive when they do away with Japanese things. I believe the intention to break down this “blockage” is essential.

–the August 2001 issue of Eureka, on Miyazaki’s Spirited Away; translation by Numbers-kun

2001 S

Carl Horn interview with (former) Gainax General Products USA head Lea Hernandez; coverage of Otaku no Video section which depicts & insults an American otaku (Craig York):

• part 1 (archive):

LH: I was originally in Texas, but they wanted to have the business in San Francisco.

P: Why?

LH: You know what? It’s because, the truth is, they just wanted to say they had a business in San Francisco. There was really no other reason.

P: Did it have a cachet?

LH: Yeah, it had a cachet. And I think it was also because Toren [Smith] was here. But eventually it became, “We have a business in San Francisco, and we have a very-good looking vice-president.” [laughs]

P: Speaking of which, they later put you into a manga. [produces copy of Comic Weapon Cyber Comix Special Edition: Comic Gunbuster Vol. 2, an anthology of “official” Gunbuster doujinshi released in May of 1991_33ya through Bandai]

LH: Yes, they did. That’s me. There’s no doubt. It’s my glasses, it’s my hair, it’s my dress. I had a shirt-dress, with an elastic waist that was gathered in.

P: Does this manga story have any basis in reality?

LH: Somewhat. I remember [laughs] they were the biggest bunch of perverts. They went out to Manga no Mori⁵⁹ right after the release of Gunbuster and saw that someone had already done a dojin of it. And from what I could gather from their reaction, they saw it as evidence of “We’ve caught fire among the fans”–we’re gold. [laughs] In their imaginations, they were gold. “We can sell them anything.” Shon [Howell–today active as an artist published through Radio Comix], who took over for me later, described their reactions, where they got one of these really raunchy dojin, and [Yasuhiro] Takeda [founding member of Gainax and today its president] opened it and went, “Mooohhhhhhhhhh!” and his feet came off the floor of their own accord. I was like, “Let me see.” And they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no!” And I’m like, “I’ve seen this and worse by people who were a lot less talented.”

• part 2 (archive)::

LH: And they didn’t want to show me any of this stuff. Even when I went over to [anime studio] Artmic, and Kenichi Sonoda was showing me all these covers for all these dojin, and all these cute little girls, I said, “Can I open it?” and he slapped his hand down and said, “No.” [laughs] “No, no, no, no.” And I think [the manga] might have also been referencing that, even though it doesn’t show Sonoda-san doing it.

P: There’s a scene here where the guy gets humiliated when you see his Gunbuster dojin.

LH: And I love the way they drew me here, with these gigantic boobs.

P: He’s especially upset that it’s a foreigner who’s seeing this. Before giving in, he briefly draws himself as a shonen manga hero, “The Japanese Who Can Say No,” as opposed to The Japan That Can Say No. [politician Shintaro Ishihara’s controversial contemporary treatise on US-Japan relations].

LH: Yeah, it’s funny. As if there wasn’t ample evidence all over Gunbuster that they were a bunch of perverts [laughs]. Like it’s a big secret, when there’s this cel lying in a box on the floor there, and it’s this up-shot of Noriko, this crotch-cam on her little gymsuit. And I’m like, “Guys, I know how you think.” But they were like, “Oh, it’s our pretty vice-president, and she wants to look at the porn!”

…LH: Viz, among others. I was actually doing Urusei Yatsura at the time. So I got to hear all these stories about how “Urusei Yatsura wrecked my life!” It seemed that for anybody who worked on it, it was like The Monkey’s Paw. Bad things happened. People’s lives got fucked up while working on Urusei Yatsura. Everybody wanted it, and nobody who got it was happy. It was just the way things were going at the time. And Toren [Smith] told me, “You know, the guys from Gainax need someone to run their American division. They want me to do it, and I don’t want to. Do you?” And I’m like, “Yeahhhhh! Yeah! I’ll live in San Francisco! And be a vice-president! And be rich! Yeahhhhh!”

P: It does sound very Otaku no Video.

LH: Yeah, some of it is referenced in Otaku no Video. Not very flatteringly, I might add. The gaijin they “interview,” “Shon Hernandez” [the pseudonym given to Craig York, another American who worked for General Products], with his line, “Ah, to be born in this golden land!” Half of me was kind of flattered that they even remembered that I was there, since they seemed to want to forget once I left, and half of me was like, “Fuck you! Fuck you, man! Fuck you fuck you fuck you!” ’Cause it was really very insulting. They knew they had a live one in this fellow Craig York. They knew they had a total, total geek. And they just turned on the camera and let him talk. And he was pouring out his heart, and they took the piss on him. I felt really bad for Craig, and I was like, “You guys are really being dicks. This is really very unkind and very ungrateful. We all worked very, very hard for you. We were very sincere, and we wanted the company to succeed, and you’re just making fun of us.” I was a little disappointed.

P: Although Gainax was a little hard on themselves, as well.

LH: Yeah, I guess everyone got shit on in that video.

LH: I was V-P for almost exactly a year, before I couldn’t take the nonsense any more. Nothing was working, and every move I made was wrong, and they frequently forgot to send me my operating capital–and my paychecks. And, you know, it wasn’t really uncommon for my check to be two weeks to a month late at least. And it was heart-stopping living out in California, which was more expensive than we ever suspected or imagined. It was hard to find housing, it was hideously expensive to buy anything and everything here…And I really was very serious. I came within days of just putting it all on a van and leaving in December, after about three months of that.

P: Was the problem that General Products wouldn’t let you create the business plan, that they were trying to create it from the other side of the ocean?

LH: I don’t know. I think part of the problem was–and I’m guessing here, because I don’t know what was going on, this is purely, purely speculation on my part–that there was never anybody at General Products Japan whose only job it was to run GP-USA, which they needed someone to be doing. And they found out they had all this stuff they wanted to sell, and they found out that Artmic [the studio behind the original Bubblegum Crisis series] put the skids under it, and they couldn’t get any of the anime merchandise they wanted to sell. They I wanted us to sell things from, what was that thing called? A.R.I.E.L. And I was, like, “Nobody knows A.R.I.E.L., and nobody wants stuff from A.R.I.E.L. They want stuff from Dirty Pair.” And they were, “Why do they want stuff from Dirty Pair? It’s so over!” I said, “It isn’t over in America.”

P: They couldn’t grasp the fact of the time lag.

LH: They could not understand that things took years sometimes to get over to America, and especially in those days. It’s almost instantaneous now, but in those days there’d be a year or two gap, at least. They didn’t understand when we said we wanted this, this, and this. There were a lot of things they didn’t understand, how anime fans and business worked over here, and we just could not bridge the gap.

TODO: Part 2 says there is more, but digging around reveals nothing; Carl Horn on 2009-12-01 said (but hasn’t replied since):

I’m not sure. My original Word file of that interview does have two more questions (and answers) after what appeared in print, but the transcription doesn’t seem to end at a natural point (ie. no concluding remarks, or such) suggesting to me that perhaps there was more to the interview that wasn’t transcribed from tape–maybe something else came up at the magazine and it wasn’t followed up on. I’ll try to see if I can find the original tape, and check.

2001 T

• 2001-azuma-otakujapansdatabaseanimals.pdf

• 2001-napiersusan-animefromakiratoprincessmononoke.pdf

“The question of what worked and what didn’t therefore doesn’t seem a pertinent one to me; to me the show is about dysfunctionality: of the artist, of his creation, and of his artistic attempts to phrase and portray that creation. If Evangelion”worked” it would be Gasaraki or Brain Powerd. Less flippantly, it might be Gundam or Getta Robo G. But what would have been the point of making them again?”

….

“We’ve seen instances, from Anno in interviews, to the pseudo-exposes of Otaku no Video, to comments by people we know, that they eventually got tired of the grinding unreality of anime, which became quite as oppressive as the grinding reality they thought to escape by becoming an otaku. The problem with that explanation for me is that I don’t believe one ever escapes from reality, the challenges of existence, the issues of having been born into this world: of being a human being.

Rejecting the otaku and his works isn’t going to teach you how to see, any more than the rigorous motions of otaku culture will make you go blind. Upon embarking upon his post-Eva project Kare Kano, Anno remarked as an epigram for the show that “reality has no mercy”. He based his approach to the series in large part by talking to students in contemporary Japanese high schools: trying to restore the conversation he had cut off when he was their age.”

… “The complaint may certainly have some validity within Gainax itself. Anno himself foresaw this in”What Were We Trying To Make Here?“, when he said,”I know my behavior was thoughtless, troublesome and arrogant. But I tried. I don’t know what the result will be, because I don’t know where life is taking the staff of the production. I feel that I am being irresponsible. But it’s only natural that we should synchronize ourselves with the world within the production.” The synch rate wasn’t always 100%. Masayuki, Kazuya Tsurumaki, and Yoshiyuki Sadamoto had their own ideas; Ikuto Yamashita, the man most responsible for the distinctive mechanical designs of Evangelion, had his detailed scenario for how the story should end (it would have involved the “emergence” of the Eva units). ”

–Carl Horn, “I Discovered the Word”

https://web.archive.org/web/20071103111305/www.cjas.org/~leng/hikiko.htm “The current status of”otaku” and Japan’s latest youth crisis”

Much has been made of the fact that the sense of anger, disgust, and confusion pervasive to Studio Gainax’s smash-hit series NEON GENESIS EVANGELION wasn’t something done simply to follow the tradition of anime’s angst-filled robot jocks, but was rather a personal emotional confession of its director, Hideaki Anno. Not only did Anno frighten and shock new audiences when they glimpsed an intense, reflexive honesty anime creators rarely think (or, perhaps, think better than) to put on display, but towards those converted to hardcore fans, Anno displayed a sometime mocking attitude towards their obsessions and expectations for EVA (and as an otaku himself, this was of necessity also self-mockery). Horrified or vilified, it didn’t matter?audiences ate it up with a soupline ladle, and EVANGELION became the greatest commercial success in Gainax’s history.

But Gainax had tried this once before, and it was their greatest commercial failure. It was a different time, 1991_33ya, and the approach was satire, not drama. Some have even gone as far to say it was the chilly reception of their forth production, 1991’s OTAKU NO VIDEO, which ushered in the four-year absence of the studio from new anime ventures, broken spectacularly with EVANGELION. Actually a compilation of two videos released separately in Japan in that same year, OTAKU NO VIDEO 1982_42ya and MORE OTAKU NO VIDEO 1985_39ya, AnimEigo’s release of OTAKU NO VIDEO is an unique document in anime: Studio Gainax’s confession of their feelings as obsessed fans, or “otaku” – part satire, part autobiography, and part wish-fulfillment. OTAKU NO VIDEO’s structure cuts back and forth between anime and live-action. The anime portion, with unforgettable character designs by Ken’ichi Sonoda (BUBBLEGUM CRISIS, GUNSMITH CATS), tells the story of Kubo, a clean-cut young university student who gets gradually sucked into the otaku lifestyle and, subsequently rejected by society, vows to become “Otaking,” and attempts to “otakuize” the human race through building a mighty corporation that will sell “otaku culture” to the world. The live-action portions contain mocking, purported interviews with “real otaku” whose identities are concealed in the style of a tabloid-TV “true crime” show.

… But OTAKU NO VIDEO hardly bore an auspicious name as it sat on store racks. The name of Tsutomu Miyazaki – a serial killer arrested in 1989_35ya whose otaku background was exploited as a media circus (in a manner not unlike the live-action segments of ONV) – was still fresh in the public mind, and made Gainax, to any potential mainstream audience, appear to be merely exposing a distasteful pathological subculture. Which, of course, is what they were, in fact doing, for the purpose of laying all their cards on the table. American anime fans are often concerned about the image the mainstream media may present of their devotion; in the light of such fears, ONV was a pre-emptive strike. The black-comedy truth is that any mainstream-media exposé could not possibly put otaku in a worse light than the one Gainax shines on itself. Yet ONV’s satire also branches out to encompass the larger society, as it portrays scenes of “normal” people who would never fall prey to obsession and bad culture like an otaku, standing in line for hours to buy a designer-label sweatshirt or going to quality fare like a revival of KRAMER VS. KRAMER. And of course, respectable corporations in ONV are quite happy to take over and market the creations of otaku operating out of six-mat offices and give those same creators the old heave-ho.

… And Gainax was clearly out to bite the hand that fed them?the bent-over, twitching, hentai computer game-otaku, socially paralyzed, hiding from the sun, has got a card from Gainax’s own NADIA on his PC-98, and is activating his manual hand release to Gainax’s own dirty on-screen program, “Cybernetic High School.” The contrast between ONV’s anime portion – upwardly-mobile, world-striding anime otaku designed by Sonoda, overcoming every setback to make their culture the culture of all mankind – and the otaku of ONV’s live-action portion – stark, low-res, poorly lit, crudely obscured, and not likely to ever leave that room – gave ONV a schizophrenic quality that must have made it difficult for many hardcore fans to bear.

–“Carl’s Pick: Otaku no Video”

“There’s an interesting chapter on Evangelion as well. I think the author respects Anno’s work more than just about anything else she researched, but there is a degree of ambiguity in interpreting the show’s conclusion. Is it showing the benefits of women entering”men’s” society and taking power roles, destroying the structure of the “men’s country” or is it simply showing how women fail when they try to join in? I don’t think there’s anything on Takahata’s work in the book.”

–M Arnold, Miyazaki ML (public mirror), describing the 2001_23ya anime criticism book Kouitten ron

The title of Movie Episode 26, “Magokoro wo kimi ni” is the Japanese translation of “Flowers for Algernon.” How they translated that to “Pure heart for you” is beyond me…

Actually, it’s the Japanese title of “Charly”, the movie based on “Flowers for Algernon”. The Japanese title of the novel is just “Algernon ni Hantaba o”. Anno most probably chose to use the movie title because episode 26’ was a “theatrical episode”.

Anno has been using SF novel/short stories titles for final episodes of his series for quite some time, now… The 39th and final episode of “Nadia The Secret of Blue Water” was named “Hoshi o Tsugu Mono…”. That was the Japanese title of “Inherit the Stars”, by James P. Hogan. The 6th and final episode of “Gunbuster Aim for the Top !” was named “Hateshi Naki Nagare no Hate ni”. That was the title of a novel by Komatsu Sakyô.

–Olivier Hagué

I’d much rather see things you way. For me, the end of EVA is not a sad ending, it is not a tragic ending, it is a pointless ending. From what I can see, everyone is dead and thus there was no point to anything that went on. Your interpretation makes things much happier. People will be climbing out of the soup any minute now, then they’ll start putting the world back together. Your view makes it a sad ending but with a hope shining bright in the distance, a hope that the world could be put back together. Actually, gives it a similar feel to the old Macross episode, the big battle for earth. Just about everyone on Earth was killed in the Zentraedi bombardment. Rick rescues Lisa from the ruins of the Grand Cannon base. They’re sitting on the ground outside the base discussing what has happened. Rick mentions that they have to consider the possibility that the SDF-1 was destroyed and they’re the last two people left alive on the planet. Not too dissimilar to EoE. Then they see the SDF-1, battle-scorched but still under control, descending into a blast crater. The SDF-1 survived. Macross city survived. There would be a chance to start over. Rick fires up his Valkyrie and they fly towards the super-dimensional fortress.

The major difference between this situation and EoE is that we see visual proof that there is hope. But o well.

–Greg Muir; note that Anno worked on Macross, is surely familiar with it, and this interpretation tracks with the ending of Space Runaway Ideon and Tsurumaki’s various comments

2002 P

• The Notenki Memoirs, Yasuhiro Takeda

“It seems like all [older?] men see younger girls as better than anything else. I guess it’s because of their age. They have this incredible energy which older men are lacking. In fact, there’s no energy left in Japan.”

–Japanorama, season 1, episode 02; Hideaki Anno interview:

• Anno’s participation in drawing & publishing doujinshi/hentai as part of the Chosen Ame doujinshi circle: https://forum.evageeks.org/post/408293/Hentai-Doujinshi-by-Hideaki-Anno/#408293; description of phonecards Gainax released, described by Bochan_bird as hentai:

  “…priced at around $145.26^$80₂₀₀₀ to $181.57^$100₂₀₀₀ per set. The only problem was that you would need to be 18 or over to buy them. Asuka was posed buck naked sprawled out face down, Hikari was feeling herself with her face contorted in pleasure, Rei was semi-naked on hands and knees with a bandaged arm and eyepatch, Misato was wearing some rather skimpy black lingerie, Ritsuko was also in lingerie which was even more suggestive than Misato’s, and Maya was having fun like Hikari. The artwork was done by various GAINAX staff, and the style could be best described as semi-hard hentai doujinshi – ie: things were peeking out all over…”

  These phonecards may or may not be the same phonecards printed (along with some of the previous ecchi calendars) in a book Gainax published in 2005 with erotic Eva artwork.

  Yoshiyuki Sadamoto has been rumored to be the hentai artist ‘YS-11’; Carl Horn, discussing a painting included in Sadamoto’s Der Mond of Asuka & Rei together

  “Sadamoto painted it as the cover to one of the very first EVA doujinshi, one edited by Hiroyuki Utatane (the artist of SERAPHIC FEATHER) which was sold at the Winter 1995_29ya Comic Market.”

What is your usual day at work like?

‘The production of anime is very hard, time-consuming work. There are times where there are more things to do, and times where there are less. During the production of Evangelion, I was only able to sleep six hours a night and spent the rest of the time working. I slept at the studio and only went home very rarely. Evangelion was an extreme case, I normally work twelve hours a day.’

…Does it surprise you that Evangelion, Nadia and OMG are considered “classics” in Germany? Do you occasionally hear of the reactions from Germany in Japan?

‘I know that anime is very popular in America. I wasn’t aware that this also applies to Europe by now. There is almost no information or feedback about fans in Europe. We get a lot more information from America.’

How come that one Episode of Kare Kano was not produced with drawings, but with “paper figurines”? Wasn’t that very laborious?

‘This is something only Gainax could do, since it’s very unusual to produce an episode in such a different fashion. At Gainax, we have people who like live action movies, Science Fiction and special effects, as well as others who simply want to produce ordinary anime. Another group likes to mix different stylistic elements, which was very apparent in Kare Kano. Hideaki Anno already used to produce “amateur animes” with special effects before he started working at Gainax.’ [This is an understatement; Gainaxers were much more heavily involved in that sort of thing, see The Notenki Memoirs.]

…Ikari Gendo is a very controversial character. How do you see the role of Ikari Gendo in Evangelion?

‘Ikari Gendo is not exactly popular in Japan. Many think that he is too stern with Shinji and that he generally exudes the aura of a hard, traditional, strict father. Gendo was meant to be a strong father who should have a positive influence on Shinji so that he could grow to be more confident and adult-like. [!] Many modern fathers in Japan are “mollycoddled” which was another reason to make Ikari Gendo into a strong father.’

…What meaning does the cross symbol hold in Evangelion?

‘We didn’t think that using this Christian symbol would lead to problems outside of Japan. In Japan, there were none. It’s meant to make the series look more exotic and mysterious, there isn’t any particular religious aspect to it. We thought that the mixture of science and religion would make the series more interesting.’ [cf. Tsurumaki and Yamaga’s other statements on this topic]

…Who killed Kaji? What’s your version of it?

‘This is a question that many Japanese fans also wonder about. Kaji wanted to investigate a deeper part of NERV (SEELE) and learn of its secrets. He was tricked by one of his informants and then killed. It wasn’t Misato or Ritsuko.’⁶⁰

…Is the scooter in front of the Gainax shop really the vehicle from the FLCL ending?

‘Yes, it’s the Vespa from the ending, and it’s mine. Alas, it cannot fly.’

Why are the male protagonists in Gainax-animes often “wimps”?

‘There are animes like Dragonball where the protagonists keep getting stronger and stronger, but we at Gainax tend to base the protagonists on Otakus, and that’s why we can’t make a story where the characters get stronger and stronger.’

…What do you think of Anime Music Videos that are often made by fans?

‘I own a small broadcast station in Japan and I really like music videos. I don’t have any problems with such videos - FLCL is already pretty close to a music clip, anyway.’

Do you know the Fan-Video “Kodomo no EVA”? There are rumors that Gainax employees were involved with it.

‘No, these were real Otakus, not Gainax employees.’ (grins)

–FUNime interview with Kazuya Tsurumaki, English translation by Kendrix; issue 27 (3/2002_22ya). (FUNime appears to be a German magazine published by “Society for the Promotion of Japanese popular culture in Germany”.)

Maejima Satoshi presents a number of definition attempts of [sekaikei] in his Sekaikeito wa Nani ka: Posuto-Eva no Otaku Shi…A more specific delineation of what is meant by ‘extension’ in Uno’s definition can be found in a statement of anime studio GAINAX co-founder Okada Toshio on the television program “BS Manga Night Talk” broadcast on 2002-10-28, where he defined ‘Post-Evangelion Syndrome’ as follows: “One’s own inner problems end up drawn along the same line as a world-scale catastrophe, such as a war or that sort of thing.”²⁹ [Maejima pg 29]

--["'You Cannot See Yourself Unless There Are Others': _Sekaikei_ as Exhortation of Societal Participation", Thomas 2016](http://fansconf.a-kon.com/dRuZ33A/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/SekaikeiArticlePhoenixPapers2015.pdf)

2002 S

2002 T

• 2002-napier-whenthemachinestops.pdf

• 2002-orbaugh-sexandthesinglecyborg.pdf

In addition, the September 2002_22ya issue of Animerica has a cover article on the launch of the Evangelion movies, including an interesting interview with Amanda Winn-Lee.

–https://web.archive.org/web/20110723132240/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/2002-August/041506.html

Otaku no Video commentary

I think Production I.G’s Yoshiki Sakurai sums it up best.

“Influences or copying could be seen commonly within Japanese anime itself as well. Evangelion succeeded in utilizing and expressing the situation. It was, as it is often said, FULL of parodies and influences or sometimes even exact copies (on purpose of course) from some scenes of various anime, manga and Japanese modern novels and WW2 warship names etc etc etc not to mention the Bible. Anno-san himself says it was a huge collage of past works. The older generations who understood the original, enjoyed the parody. Younger generations who didn’t know, enjoyed the piece as it is. The brilliant balance of Evangelion is that it could be enjoyed both ways.”

–https://forum.evageeks.org/post/198735/Eva-fans-your-thoughts-on-RahXephon/#198735; https://www.evo.gg/#post7122209; Apparently from Production IG forums: https://web.archive.org/web/20080513032224/http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/2002-December/041932.html points to https://www.productionig.com/?act=ST&f=33&t=861&s=25ff4325918b4df2a7f03c170068d1f4 but I have failed to find any copies of the forum after much searching.

“To be fair, Eva does seem to contain a host of personal symbols. It is said that the troubled relationship between Shinji and his distant manipulative father is based on Anno’s own childhood. But the lasting success of Evangelion seems to indicate that by somehow trying to create a very personal work, Anno wound up tapping into something very universal.”

–Animerica, July 2002_22ya, Vol.10 No.7: “Animerica Spotlight: Neon Genesis Evangelion”

However, before everyone rushes to buy the DVD (or get the fansub), it should be noted that Mahoromatic is a 180-degree reversal from the epic film Wings of Honneamise (Royal Space Force). Not only is the artwork and animation quality quite simple due to the limited budget and production time for a TV series rather than an animated movie, but the show is also quite possibly the biggest glob of fan-service that I have ever seen in a TV series (albeit satellite TV).
The first episode of Mahoromatic was screened at the Gainax Live! event held in Nagoya on January 20, and to be honest the fan-service (otaku/hentai) was so flagrant that it was quite embarrassing to watch. Most of the audience visibly squirmed in their seats throughout the episode (I know I did), and the applause afterwards was polite but muted…It resembled some of Gainax’s computer games…

–Bochan_bird

Director Yamaga himself described Mahoromatic as essentially a “bespectacled, serious and innocent young boy meets overly-friendly girls/women with big tits” show, with no real mention of anything else.

–Bochan_bird

2003 P

“…The other thing I thought of was about copying. Quite aptly, Anno declared himself a copy, saying, ‘I’m a copy of a copy’. But this is a ‘copy of a copy of a copy’. In the future, there will undoubtedly be ‘a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy’, and undoubtedly, this chain of copies will continue. Animation has also already entered this world, and there no longer as such things as originals…”

–Mamoru Oshii, section ‘Whether One is Aware of Being a Copy or Not’ of “Talk About RahXephon: In Search of Fantasy and Details” in RahXephon: The Motion Picture; see the extended Izubuchi/Oshii quotes in 2003 Tertiary

[Miyamura:] At first I didn’t… how do I put it? I’ve never played a role of a character like her, so I tried really hard to find ways to connect to her. By now, she’s already become a part of me. Now, she’s absolutely adorable. Um, now, she’s the… girly part of me that I haven’t been able to express before….My Asuka had a sad ending in the anime series, so I’m hoping for something different in this movie.

…[Sadamoto:] Having a necktie or not, even with the same white shirt, could change his [Shinji’s] whole character. I drew him wearing a regular shirt, in just an ordinary school uniform so he seems like an average character.

[On Misato] There’s a character called Mine Fujiko in an old series called Lupin. And when I was young, I was… err… thought it was really interesting. She looked like she’s still 20, but she also seemed like she’s in her 30s. As for her bangs, well, I just stuck Usagi-chan’s bangs on her. It started as a joke. But now having the voice actor, Mitsuishi-san and all, it’s no longer a joke. [On Rei] One of my favorite bands is called the Buff Girl Team and in one of their songs, there’s this line “a white girl in bandages.” I had an image of her even before I started Evangelion. Like a girl with a dark past. I thought it’ll be interesting to have a girl in bandages. And maybe she’ll have the antibacterial smell like hospitals. If I had known her when I was 14, I would have hesitated to get close to her. She’s cute, but her world’s the farthest away from mine. But I end up admiring her. In the anime, I designed her as kind of an idol figure.

[On Ritsuko] I got a rare request from Anno-san to make a hot girl. He wanted a sidekick girl for Nishimura Shinobu. He wanted her to be really girly, so I took that and added my own ideas to her. Matsushita Yuki-san in the drama “He’s there when I turn around” is wearing… not a miniskirt, but hot pants under her white lab coat. That left a really strong impression on me, so I thought I’ll try making Ritsuko wear a miniskirt under her lab coat.

Not just with designing characters, but when I’m making a Gainax story, I can influence the story quite a bit. For example, this time, my most influential work was called… Mind and Soul, one of the shows on NHK. I got my themes from that, and I tried to convey my idea to the fans. When they ask me why are the main characters are only 14 year-olds, or why is it that only kids can ride in it, I actually didn’t think of a reason why at first, so I got those ideas, and others, from that show.

My very first characters were Gendo and Shinji. I made those two quite easily. I was aiming for a character that’s both realistic and ordinary. I wanted a character that’ll be hard for others to make.

…Q. What role does school play?

[Assistant Director Tsurumaki Kazuya:] By having it pre-exist, it makes the story as a whole more cheerful… or rather… less serious. By inserting a school-setting, or a romantic comedy, like more teenager-like aspects, it makes it easier for the audience to connect to the story. But actually…parts of it have become like…a school anime, and other parts have…gone a bit off the original intent.

[Hideaki Anno:] There are certain things that only work on a TV show. In the closed world of animation, there’s a feeling of closure and suffocation among those who’ve been locked in together. Some people feel it, and others don’t. At least I felt it. And you want to express that feeling somehow, but it’s a little hard to do in movies. That’s where you realize there are some things only TV can do. The main character this time is both an introvert and righteous. He also tends to categorize things. And those kinds of characters usually have something hidden. Like a way to escape from that closure. Not suicide though. Suicide is what’s left after hope is gone. It’s not loss of hope. Well, I don’t think humans can lose hope. We might be living, trying to see what losing hope is like.

So the question becomes, how can an introvert like him change? Well, all the characters are introverts by nature. Like they don’t last long in team work. Their loose human relationships are reflected in the movie. Some people feel sympathy for them, and others might feel threatened by them. But we’re prepared for that. Well, we expect that.

“New Era” becomes “Neon Genesis” in English. The “Era” is translated using its alternate meaning. On the other hand, its Japanese counterpart has another meaning. This is done to express both meanings. The word doesn’t look very good in Katakana, so we used English and Japanese to play on the pun. This comes from our desire to make something new from the anime.

That’s all.

It means both the new era and the new genesis that marks that. That’s what the title means.

–Renewal bonus extras, Brikhaus’s subtitles sourced through Hyper Shinchan

The main difference in the GAINAX of today compared to the past is stability in animation production. “For a dozen years or so, we just kept going without much planning,” says Yamaga–it’s the ‘without much planning’ part he wants to drop. “I guess we didn’t really start thinking about how to run the company more effectively, like a company should be run, until maybe two or three years ago. Seriously.” It’s a matter of taking on work, defining the goals and checking to see if they’re being fulfilled. “I mean, none of this is anything new,” he remarks. “I guess normal people do it that way from the start.”

…Of his thoughts regarding Evangelion, Yamaga replies, “Before then, we were aware that this thing called ‘anime’ was making waves, but it wasn’t the kind of thing where famous personalities would get up on TV and say, ‘I watch anime’–I doubt KimuTaku [Takuya Kimura of the group SMAP] would just suddenly go ‘Evangelion!’ you know.” Yet he found the series was continually being mentioned and incorporated into TV drama material at the time. “From that point on, the distinction between ‘someone who likes anime’ and ‘a normal person’ began rapidly disappearing. That’s the thing that impressed me the most.”

The series was not only a landmark in the industry and for GAINAX; financially speaking, it was the first anime production to actually make money for the company. “Not making money is one thing, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t hits,” stresses Yamaga of their pre-Eva works. “The others were certainly hits, but the contracts were at fault.”

“We never had very good contracts,” he admits. “In fact, we didn’t have a very good contract for Evangelion, either, but it was just so popular. So basically we made money on the products we put out ourselves. They said on the news how Evangelion had passed the 30 billion yen mark, so even if the contract only gave us 1% of that, it’s still be 300 million yen!”

Until then, the games division kept GAINAX running. Yamaga recalls that Takami Akai, who’d been with the group since their college days, suddenly bought a computer and announced, “Let’s do games! If we do games, we can make money.”

“According to him, at that time with Japanese computer games, the art was done by the programmers, so it totally sucked,” Yamaga explains. Since Akai was a painter, he’d be able to create decent images, even with the limit of 16 displayable colors at the time. “He was like, ’If we do this, there’s no way we can go wrong!”

Akai’s concept was literally on the money. “Princess Maker (1991_33ya) was a big hit, and that paid our salaries for quite a while,” Yamaga says on the princess raising simulation. “Unlike the anime and films, we make the games all in-house and sell some of them ourselves, so it’s not just that we have the rights; we get to keep the take in those cases, so hit or no hit, the amount of money coming in is totally different.”

…Highly anticipated by GAINAX fans is Yamaga’s grand project, Aoki Uru, which some say is a sequel to Honneamise. Yamaga says there’s nothing he can impart on its development just yet, though he assures us that the project is maturing and moving forward. It’s tied in with how GAINAX will evolve, their position with respect to the industry and the position animation occupies within Japan.

…A regular US convention guest, he observes that compared to Japanese fans, overseas fans–especially the ones also studying Japanese–tend to approach anime intellectually, akin to how Japanese study European film or foreign literature. As an example, Yamaga mentions the dictionaries and reference books created by fans. “It’s such an academic atmosphere.”

…“That debate’s been going on for a long time, but we’ve gone along ignoring it, making things that target Japan, and they’re still very popular overseas. Sen to Chihiro was an extremely ‘Japanese’ film, wasn’t it? There were parts that even Japanese viewers couldn’t understand without some research.” He stresses the point with an analogy: “I really like French wine from Bordeaux, so do I want something that the businessmen over there have whipped up especially for Japanese? No–give me the stuff the French people like.”

…Among the production materials on Hideaki Anno’s desk is an area occupied by various toys from Thunderbirds, UFO, and Space: 1999. Anno is a big tokusatsu (special effects film) fan–he shot a live-action Ultraman parody on 8mm film during his student days–so it’s not surprising to also spot a collection of the ultra heroes standing in formation, as well as a set of similarly arranged Kamen Rider figures. Although he hasn’t been getting into recent movies and music, tokusatsu hero shows remain a favorite viewing of his. “I’ve been watching Kamen Rider 555 and AbaRanger,” he says. When asked about the long-running Kamen Rider series’ evolution over the years, Anno replies, “I haven’t seen them all, but I think change is a good thing.”

The acclaimed director of anime has shifted gears in recent years, with credits that include two live-action films, Love & Pop and Shikijitsu, adaptations of novels by Ryu Murakami and Ayako Fujitani, respectively. While tight-lipped regarding details of a new live-action work he’s currently directing, Anno says it’s an action movie, due to wrap toward the end of the year. In the meantime, Shikijitsu is slated for DVD release this summer in Japan. “It’s the story of a man and a woman meeting, and what happens during their one month together.” Author Fujitani also stars as the lead, and director Shunji Iwai (of Swallowtail Butterfly fame) is also cast in the film.

Anno believes that his first feature, Love & Pop, was visually very light in comparison. Shot on digital video with experimental camerawork and a documentary-like presentation, it depicts schoolgirl Hiromi’s foray into the world of subsidized dating to acquire the funds for a much coveted ring. “It didn’t have any tricky elements to it or have a heavy feel,” he states. “Following that up with something with the exact same feel would be boring. That’s why on Shikijitsu, I tried to liven things up by using 35mm film and Cinescope, and by threading the images together in a visually appealing way. I wanted to shoot some really good-looking images.”

“The novels were interesting, but there was also the more realistic aspect of it: that I could do this,” Anno says of the factors that drew him to develop the novels for the screen. He didn’t know how much money he’d be able to round up, but believed the projects could be realized with relatively small budgets. “I assembled a staff of very talented individuals, from one person who did a couple of films out of his own pocket when he was at university, to another who’s an incredibly gifted producer. I think that’s why, even though I was heading into uncharted territory, I was able to make the transition from anime director to live-action, and make movies with a minimum of problems.”

Comparing the two mediums, he remarks that live action offers more freedom. “Anime is an altogether different story; you have to create the visuals in order to move ahead. With live-action, you can end up with visuals that you hadn’t expected, or that are different from those you’d imagined. Actually, the part about live-action that I liked was that it didn’t turn out as I’d planned.” We comment that Love & Pop seems to exude spontaneity from the cast’s performance to the camera work, freed from the rigidity of anime once the storyboards have been set. Anno agrees. “It was all about that.”

He suggests that budding live-action filmmakers should reference both anime and live-action works and incorporate the best of both worlds. Indeed, anime-inspired shot compositions lend an unique feel to Love & Pop’s visuals.

…Regarding his other early works, we mention a 1991_33ya Japanese interview with manga artist Kazuhiko Shimamoto, in which Anno remarked that when he saw Nadia in its entirety, he was sad because he felt it was too geared toward children.

“I don’t think it was ‘sad’” he clarifies. “The nuance was a little different when translated into English. NHK’s vision for Nadia was very, very strong. I was able to do what I wanted within that vision, but I couldn’t change the basic parts. I was able to do a lot of the things I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do everything that I’d really wanted to do. Which, I think, gave it the nuance of being a more child-oriented work. And that’s why, even though I did everything I possibly could, Nadia is a work that I still have regrets about. I wonder if that’s the nuance that came across in English.”

…Then there’s Oruchuban Ebichu, a hilariously perverted series brimming with dialogue (mostly from its diminutive star) and containing situations unprintable in this publication, There’s a misconception that Kotono Mitsuishi (Misato’s voice actress) originally brought the manga to Anno’s attention during the production of Evangelion, which led to him planning the anime adaptation–it was actually another friend who introduced him to the work.

…The same friend introduced Anno to the Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo (“His and Her Circumstances”) manga. When we comment on its deft balance between comedy, personal struggle and drama, he replies, “I didn’t really care much about the underlying struggle; the comedy was what was interesting. The story relied on comedy as its base, and it was very east to turn the atmosphere of the original into the anime.”

…“Now, seven years later, the show has been a hit, so they gave us a bit of money and time [for the Renewal remix of NGE]. Both the picture and sound are radically different. Different, but also the same as was present in the original.” The extra audio channels courtesy of Dolby Digital 5.1 opened up new sonic avenues. “It’s a remix, with us fixing parts where the sound wasn’t good enough before,” he comments. “We fixed over 100 parts of the picture.” The remaster boasts sharper, jitter-free visuals with intensified colors; the enhanced audio is palpable as soon as the opening song fires up, when percussion elements and back-up vocals are introduced via the surround speakers in an enveloping effect. Action scenes give subwoofers a noticeably increased workout.

–Newtype USA, July 2003_21ya, Volume 2, Number 7, Pages 8-19 https://www.evamonkey.com/inside_gainax.htm

There was a special Newtype magazine issue (December extra issue) devoted entirely to Evangelion, which also contained a DVD with samples of Eva2 game scenarios. In addition to spotlighting Eva2, this magazine also contained a 1-page summary of each TV episode with “checkpoints” which are like the Newtype TV filmbook checkpoints but with even less information. IMO the only thing worth noting was the Ep25/26 checkpoints which stated quite clearly that EoE (mainly “Air”) was the originally intended TV ending, but could not be made due to production schedule and other reasons.

–Bochan_bird; was the extra issue December 2002_22ya or 2003_21ya? Could be either. (EGF request)