Anno Hideaki's Evangelion: Interview with Azuma Hiroki

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Xard
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Postby Xard » Thu Sep 03, 2009 1:08 pm

Eva Yojimbo wrote:Edit: Well, I read it... Hmmm... :chinscratch: It's quite interesting. The disorienting (I think that was the word you were looking for) camerawork is certainly one of the most outstanding features and it definitely makes sense that it provides such a contrast with the "normality" of these girls' lives. I might have more substance to add later.


I delibirately used word nauseating, you know. It was that first times when I saw it (not so much nowadays)

BTW, I tested the Shiki-Jitsu DVD and it works fine. It doesn't have *the best* picture quality, but with my awesomesauce DVD player I can tweak the image to make it quite a bit better and cut down on some of the grain and visual noise. I should be able to watch it soon (I also have those 3 Mizoguchi films).


ah yes, sadly that DVD isn't in as great quality as it could be.

I think SJ sunk in when I saw it third time or something (then again first time was without subs...) like that and looking back to it now I think I undervalued it even with my 10/10 review of it. I've also discovered/studied many more things about it... that may be the reason.

I guess I should write someday big essay/analysis of the film: it is worth it.

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Postby slothen » Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:55 pm

interesting read
God, Apparently you all have been discussing Q since November. Catching up on the discussion is harrowing.

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Postby NAveryW » Mon Oct 05, 2009 9:52 pm

Anno is very conscious about such closeness. In
other interviews [mit einschlaegigen Animemagazinen] 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.
Puru puru pururi~~n!
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Postby gwern » Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:04 pm

View Original PostXard wrote:I just found something entirely new - BBC interview of Anno about Love&Pop


I can't say I was hugely impressed when I got around to watching and transcribing it: http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2010-October/006586.html

Anyway, the relationship of Evangelion to Aum Shinrikyo, such as it was, was not one way - Aum Shinrikyo apparently made heavy use of Evangelion.

This was quite surprising to me. I had assumed that after the sarin attacks they were extirpated and obliterated utterly. But Bochan_bird, still resident in Japan in 1999, is quite clear about it:

http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1999-December/032976.html wrote: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.


http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/1999-December/032993.html wrote:> 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 then discussed Aum's second-in-command, who I looked up (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fumihiro_Joyu). His description of him as ambitious would seem to be correct - he split from Aum in 2007. Perhaps Asahara was not giving him enough control... All in all, an educational pair of emails.

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Postby 1731298478 » Tue Aug 09, 2011 10:03 pm

That's interesting that Aum apparently made some use of Eva. Of course I knew they made some use of Yamato and other anime, but the use of Eva itself is certainly surprising.

There is a comment by Anno on Eva from this interview that somewhat relates to that. I have attempted a translation of it, but there may be mistakes.

アニメーションっていうものが、少なくとも僕がやってきた「エヴァンゲリオン」っていうのが、ただの“避難所”になるのが、すっごいヤだったんですよ。現実逃避の場所でしかなくて、そこにどっぷりつかることによって、現実のつらさから逃げてるだけで、そこから現実に帰るものが、あまりなかったんです。そこまで行き着かなかった感じがするんです。どんどんどんどんそこに逃げ込む人がふえてきて、このままだと極論してしまえば、宗教になる。オウム信者と麻原彰晃と同じになる。ここでうまいことやれば、僕は多分、新興宗教の教祖になれる素質があったと思うんですけど、それがヤだったんですね。クモの糸にすがるのは、おれひとりで十分だと。

I 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.


Also maybe related is a brief comment made during a roundtable conversation between Shinichiro Kurimoto (of homopants.com~!) and Shunsuke Serizawa on Aum that was translated in Japan Echo (Autumn 1995). I wonder if this was typical of the discourse of that time?

Serizawa: I'm inclined to see this as a crime planned and carried out by otaku, maladjusted young people immersed in solitary pursuits. I wrote as much in a recent newspaper article. That one word clarified an awful lot, I thought.

Kurimoto: Otaku out for revenge against society. That's my theory.
Last edited by 1731298478 on Wed Aug 10, 2011 7:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Postby gwern » Wed Aug 10, 2011 6:58 pm

View Original Post1731298478 wrote:There is a comment by Anno on Eva from this interview that somewhat relates to that. I have attempted a translation of it, but there may be mistakes.


For those interested, I believe Numbers-kun previously translated a snippet from that roundtable at http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?p=420652#420652

Also maybe related is a brief comment made during a roundtable conversation between Shinichiro Kurimoto (of homopants.com~!) and Shunsuke Serizawa on Aum that was translated in Japan Echo (Autumn 1995). I wonder if this was typical of the discourse of that time?


It certainly reminds me of statements from around the time of Tsutomu Miyazaki.

BTW, where is that translation from? I look around and your Japan Echo seems to be http://www.japanechoweb.jp/ but I didn't see any hits for Shunsuke Serizawa or Shinichiro Kurimoto and googling your excerpt didn't turn up anything.

If it's yours, there seems to be an error - 'that one word clarified an awful lot' makes more sense to me than 'that one world clarified an awful lot'. (World? What world?)

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Postby 1731298478 » Wed Aug 10, 2011 7:18 pm

View Original Postgwern wrote:BTW, where is that translation from? I look around and your Japan Echo seems to be http://www.japanechoweb.jp/ but I didn't see any hits for Shunsuke Serizawa or Shinichiro Kurimoto and googling your excerpt didn't turn up anything.

If it's yours, there seems to be an error - 'that one word clarified an awful lot' makes more sense to me than 'that one world clarified an awful lot'. (World? What world?)

Ah, sorry about that! That's my transcription error. Japan Echo is a magazine that publishes translated articles of political and social interest from Japanese magazines and newspapers ([url]http://www.japanecho.co.jp/en/company/index2.html[/url]), so the translation was theirs. It's from the physical copy of the magazine.

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Postby gwern » Tue Sep 27, 2011 11:30 am

Today I discovered that the interview is also available in Italian; it seems to differ somewhat (eg. the ending is broken up a bit differently and Kristian's question omitted?):

1. http://erewhon.ticonuno.it/arch/1999/scena/manga/manga1.htm
2. http://erewhon.ticonuno.it/arch/1999/scena/manga/manga2.htm
3. http://erewhon.ticonuno.it/arch/1999/scena/manga/manga3.htm
4. http://erewhon.ticonuno.it/arch/1999/scena/manga/manga4.htm

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Postby Xard » Fri Sep 30, 2011 2:45 pm

View Original Postgwern wrote:I can't say I was hugely impressed when I got around to watching and transcribing it: http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2010-October/006586.html


oh shut up. It has Anno putting a cam on his head and looking like a complete dork as a result. That makes it totally worth it :lol:

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Re: Anno Hideaki's Evangelion: Interview with Azuma Hiroki

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Postby gatotsu911 » Sun Jul 10, 2016 6:27 pm

Half-decade necrothreading just to mention that Eva's influence from Aum Shinrikyo is super interesting to me and this is one of the only concrete sources I can find attesting to it. The connection seems very convincing to me based on what (admittedly little) I know about Aum's ideology: their paranoid apocalyptic worldview, conspiracy theorism, and above all their obsession with Western Judeo-Christian mysticism. That Anno may have taken inspiration from their worldview would also explain (by several degrees of separation) the parallels between plot elements surrounding SEELE and the antisemitic conspiracy theories endorsed by fringe ideologies like Aum, a parallel that's always given me a nagging discomfort in my assessment of the series.

Note that acknowledging the inspiration is in no way the same as suggesting that Anno has (now or ever) personally endorsed the actual beliefs and practices of Aum Shinrikyo. If anything, I would guess he found their outlook a source of bizarre and disturbing creativity, and perhaps an unintentionally poignant fantasy to evoke the culturally specific phenomenon of alienation, fear and fractured identity which afflicted the sorts of young Japanese men who became involved with Aum, and needless to say more than slightly influenced the themes and direction of Eva.
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