Guillermo Del Toro did a Reddit AMA yesterday

Jayfive · Postby **Jayfive** » Sat Jul 12, 2014 9:47 am

Well, I am a huge anime and manga fan, as is my daughter. In fact, I have an entire cabin in my office in the garden dedicated just to manga and anime, where I keep my books and my movies. I have never seen Evangelion, I love the designs and am very familiar with the designs of the EVA robots and Angels, but I have never actually sat down to see the series. Some people pointed out - I don't know if Travis who wrote Pacific Rim saw Evangelion - they saw the gel that connects the people to the robots, I came up with that myself, without seeing Evangelion. I however fully acknowledge the influence of Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell, Tetsujin 28-go, Space Giants, Mazinger Z, and many many other anime that I have watched and enjoy. I love very much the work of Osamu Tezuka, whose work influenced me growing up as a child, and I love quite a bit of the work of Mamoru Oshii, Katsuhiro Otomo, Satoshi Kon (big big time, whom I think was the finest narrator in anime other than Miyazaki and Takahata).

Whole thing is here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2agklw/i_am_guillermo_del_toro_director_writer_producer/

The Eva Monkey · Postby **The Eva Monkey** » Sat Jul 12, 2014 11:25 am

He said the same thing months and months ago, do we already have a thread about that somewhere?

Postby **Sailor Star Dust** » Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:52 pm

It might be mentioned somewhere in the Pacific Rim thread but long that thread is long.

Nice official catch, thanks!

Jayfive · Postby **Jayfive** » Sat Jul 12, 2014 8:11 pm

The Eva Monkey wrote:He said the same thing months and months ago, do we already have a thread about that somewhere?

We might do, for a start there's a convention panel of GDT where one of the first questions essentially goes:
Audience member: Eva?
Del Toro: No.

But I thought people might like to see the whole AMA rather than me just quoting the Eva-relevant bit.

Also the vehemance in which people maintain that GDT and the makers of PacRim were influenced heavily by Eva but refuse to admit it is confusing as it is annoying.

Postby **FreakyFilmFan4ever** » Sat Jul 12, 2014 10:16 pm

I think the writer, Travis Beckman, said somewhere that he saw Eva. Or, at least del Toro said that Travis may have seen Eva. (The quote escapes me.) So, some sliver of influence might be there from Travis’ involvement. But, if it is, it’s nowhere near prevalent enough and certainly does make the movie “heavily influenced” by it.

Honestly, Pacific Rim feels like Pacific Rim to me. Some of that might be because I haven’t seen much mecha anime, and the ones I have are very less grand than Pacific Rim. But I saw a lot of Kaiju, the other inspiration for PR, and, while I can certainly see call-backs to the genre, PR still has a very distinct style and feel to it.

Ray · Postby **Ray** » Sat Jul 12, 2014 10:27 pm

There was also the fact he worked at Weta with Peter Jackson for some time. Which was to helm the LAEM a few years back but that fell into development hell. Which seemed like more evidence that Guillermo took a few aesthetics from the LAEM preliminary stage and incorporated it into his work.

Postby **Gendo'sPapa** » Mon Jul 14, 2014 3:05 pm

The writer, Travis Beacham, is into anime. Big time. Before Del Toro re-shaped the picture his first draft included a bar where the Pilots hang out & the walls had giant flat screens that played Giant Robot scenes from famous anime series on a loop. It definitely mentions Neon Genesis Evangelion & then a bunch of other robot series like Gundam or what not.

It was cute. But definitely felt too much like wearing your influences on your sleeve.

Guillermo Del Toro did a Reddit AMA yesterday

Guillermo Del Toro did a Reddit AMA yesterday

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