Category: Weeb Shit Page 2 of 3

The Hymns of Evangelion

On September 6, 2023

In Animation, Evangelion, Science Fiction, Shinji Aramaki, Tadashi Hiramatsu, Weeb Shit, Yuhei Sakuragi

Hideaki Anno loves animation. More than that, Anno has positioned himself similarly to his mentor and friend Hayao Miyazaki as the guy with enough clout and money to pay his animators a decent wage, foster new talent, and put the fear of god in major anime production studios by showing how amazing and innovative animation can really be. To that end, Anno has used the Evangelion IP as a means to get promising newcomers involved in major projects, just as Anno got his start in Miyazaki’s Nausicaä.

The Japan Animator Expo then makes perfect sense as something Anno and Miyazaki would do. A weekly series of animated shorts, during its brief period of existence the Expo paid up-and-comers in anime that most coveted of all currencies: exposure. And since Anno and his Studio Khara were fronting the bill for the Expo, of course sooner or later they would give animators a chance to use the most popular toys they had in their catalog. During its run, JAE would drink from the Evangelion well three times. So, before we hunker down and conclude this Eva retrospective, let’s take one last detour and check those shorts out.

until You come to me.

Pretty straightforward, this is essentially just a series of pretty pictures, but what pretty pictures they are. It’s also the only one of these shorts where we directly see Eva characters we know, most of the runtime focusing on Shinji walking around a beautiful, barren landscape, and Rei appearing briefly as well. Given the plugsuits and background, this is clearly set some time during the latter half of the Rebuild films, but where exactly in the timeline is a bit fuzzy. If I wanted to fan-theorize, I’d say it was most likely a dream sequence Shinji experiences during his hibernation, with some premonitory foreshadowing in the imagery. However, while the short is possibly a premonition, it’s probably just pretty. I don’t think you need to think too hard about continuity or the short’s place in it, because the ultimate aim is most likely just to give you a little extra Eva. You don’t need to watch it, but you’ll probably enjoy yourself if you do.

Evangelion: Another Impact (Confidential)

Even simpler than its predecessor, this one is really just an extended launch sequence of a new Eva unit before it goes rogue and blows some stuff up. You hear Rei’s voice at one point, hinting that some deeper machinations are afoot, but there’s really very little to this other than seeing a really cool robot being really cool. I wish there was more I could say about it, but that’s about all there is to say. Pretty colors robot smash. Yarg.

Neon Genesis: IMPACTS

This has the most ambitious plot of the three shorts, and explores a side of Eva that was always present but usually in the background. One of the strengths of NGE was how it didn’t ignore the impact frequent kaiju attacks had on the civilian population of Tokyo-3. And in this story, we see three young girls whose friend group is split apart, as their families move away one by one in the wake of Angel attacks. Said friend group had put together a band, and when the second girl moves away, she promises the last remaining girl that one day the group, and the band, will be reunited.

All that is sweet. Seeing a group of friends trying to soldier on even as the world is ending is truly compelling, and listening to one of their songs while images of happy memories flash on the screen drives home how precious this friendship is, and what Shinji and the other children are fighting to protect.

And then the short cuts to a shot of the last girl alone and miserable in a shelter, as explosions reverberate in the background. If that had been the downer note the short ended on, I would have been bummed out, but still on board. But then the screen goes black just as an extra-loud explosion sounds off, heavily implying that the girl was blown to bits and died. It all leaves the short feeling like an especially mean-spirited joke, the punchline being “Oh, did you want to see these kids happy? Well fuck you! LOL, butthurt!” And man, fuck you! Fuck off with that kind of shit, man. I know innocent people die in war and disasters and shit, but don’t structure that death like it’s a god-damn punchline. It all left me distinctly cold, and was a shitty note for the experience to end on.

So I guess now there’s only one thing left to watch.

The Apocrypha of Evangelion

By Mark

On August 16, 2023

In Animation, Comedy, Evangelion, Weeb Shit

Super-deformed parodies of popular anime IPs are nothing new. Indeed, they’re actually quite common. As to the question of why, my personal theory is that it’s a great way to sell even more merch and media, while also weaning a younger audience on an IP that they might be too tottish to take in till they’re older. I know that when I was a wain, I was far too young to be watching some of the more mature iterations of the Gundam franchise (and to be quite frank, I wasn’t all that interested). But the lighthearted and goofy antics of SD Gundam Force appealed to me greatly, and made me curious to check out other Gundam shows.

As such, it made perfect sense for Evangelion to get its own super-deformed parody show, given how popular and iconic it is. And given my own experience with SD Gundam, alongside the stills of Petit Eva that I’d seen before diving in, I had a general idea that I was in for a fun, lighthearted romp. I mean, what else could the show be?

The Forerunner of Evangelion

By Mark

On July 16, 2023

In Books & Texts, Evangelion, Kaiju, Weeb Shit, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

The popular image of a creator is that of Howard Roark, a lone genius who strives against those who would stifle or misinterpret his creative vision, such as fatuous editors who demand cuts or snobbish critics who only say mean things out of envy. And if there are other people involved in the production of Roark’s work, they are merely puppets carrying out his vision, their own talent judged by how much they dilute or distill the creator’s genius.

This is, of course, nonsense. Even in something like prose fiction, perhaps the least collaborative media, there are still publishers, proof-readers, and other people who help the writer come up with the final story we see on the page. And as for something like filmmaking, there are so many different moving parts in the process that it’s impossible to credit the final product to any single person, even if the screenwriter or director help steer the ship in a cohesive direction.

This is also to say nothing of how stories and art survive, not by being told, but by being retold and reworked with each passing generation. This is why the griots scoff at the idea of books, and why even the biggest King Arthur fan won’t defend the notion that the Icelanders are a slave race fit only to lick their English masters’ boots (even though that’s very much a part of early Arthurian stories). Even within the same generation, adaptations from one medium to another often involve different creators with different perspectives on the subject matter. That’s why Jack Torrence goes from a sympathetic character to a more villainous one in the film adaptation of The Shining. That’s why people fondly remember M.A.S.H. as a heartfelt tv drama and not a wildly sexist book. And that’s why I’m interested in checking out the manga version of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The Resurrection of Evangelion

By Mark

On July 6, 2023

In Animation, Evangelion, Hideaki Anno, Kaiju, Weeb Shit

The ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion is not the ending Anno originally wanted. After real-world tragedies forced the animation staff to rewrite the finale, and deadlines forced them to cut corners, the last two episodes of NGE ended up being the best they could do under the realities of tv production. Audience reaction to these episodes was mixed. While it’s commonly assumed that fans overwhelmingly hated the NGE finale, a better description is that most people were simply confused. They weren’t quite sure what to make of the ending, and like myself, while they still loved the show, the last two episodes coloured their overall experiences.

However, controversy attracts attention, and with the already sizeable fanbase that had developed over the course of the show’s run combined with newfound publicity from the controversial finale, home sales of NGE on VHS generated a massive profit for GAINAX, to say nothing of the money made from merchandise, manga, and mmmvideo games (I’m sorry I couldn’t think of an appropriate alliterative aaaa… y’know what let’s just move on).

The point is, Hideaki Anno was now in a position to do something few artists get to do: have another go at the ending of his story. He had the money, he had the audience, and he had the passion for the project. All he needed was to get to work. But with this opportunity came expectations; expectations from studios that they would get a return on investment, expectations from fans that they would get the ending that they wanted, and expectations from Anno himself that he had the ability to see his vision realized. And with these expectations came pressure.

The Genesis of Evangelion

By Mark

On June 26, 2023

In Animation, Evangelion, Hideaki Anno, Kaiju, Movies & Television, Weeb Shit

This article can also be read at AJET Connect here.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is a phenomenon. Like Sherlock Holmes or Gundam, even if you’ve never seen a single episode of the show, you’re probably at least aware of it on some level, due to the sheer ubiquity of media, merch, pastiches, and parodies out there. If I tell my students most of the anime I watched when I was their age, they stare at me blankly, or even gasp at how old I am to have watched such ancient animation. But if I say that I watched Evangelion, my students light up as they gush about their own love of whatever piece of Eva media they first encountered. That is the ubiquity, the longevity, that is enjoyed by Evangelion in Japan, to say nothing of its popularity outside its home country.

Given the sheer scope of NGE’s popularity though, it raises the obvious question “Why cover it here?” What more is there to say about a show that has already been so thoroughly dissected and discussed? What new insight could I, Marco Cian, possibly lend to the series? It certainly is a daunting task, and one that gives me slight trepidation.

And yet, after I recently bit the bullet and watched the last two Rebuild of Evangelion films (something I’d been putting off for some time), the ending of the series left me with a morass of emotions, which I found difficult to process and put into words. Whenever I thought I’d settled on an opinion, some new aspect of the movies would remind me of itself, and my feelings would once again be cast into chaos. The only thought that remained consistent, the one conclusion I was able to come to, was that I needed to go back and explore the whole series. And not just the original tv show and Rebuild films, but everything Eva I could get my hands on. It felt like, if I could just see the full picture of Eva, I might be able to come to terms with its ultimate conclusion.

More than that though, I’m a different person now than I was when I first watched Eva over a decade ago. I’ve changed, my tastes have changed, and perhaps my perspective on NGE has changed in new and interesting ways. It’s certainly something I’m interested in exploring, and as any content creator will tell you, if you’re going to make content out of something, it better be something you’re genuinely interested in.

So, to start out with, let’s take a look at the show that started it all.