Evangelion and Gravity's Rainbow

[drinian]

A friend of mine asked me to post his essay here:

http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2012/01/19/gravitys-evangelion/

Personally, I don't remember Gravity's Rainbow well enough to discount it entirely. I expect I'm not the only one on the board who has read Pynchon before.

[EvangelionFan]

Mugwump and I have read Gravity's Rainbow - I read it around this time last year, and IIRC Mugwump read it around August/September.

Like you, I don't remember it well enough to support or discount any comparisons. At the least: both are experimental works, and both are ambigious about the exact nature of their 'doomsday' device. I'll check out the article sometime later in the week.

[Bagheera]

I haven't read the book, but the comparisons made in the article are not particularly compelling. I mean, NGE exploring sexuality and sexual deviance? Huh? There's a lot of sexual imagery in the show (particularly in EoE), but in terms of plot? Not so much. The other comparisons seem even more tenuous.

The comparison might make more sense when actually reading the book though, I dunno.

[Javik]

Evangelion does seem like the kind of anime Pynchon would like.

[party foul]

i actually just finished reading Gravity's Rainbow and then by chance came across some NGE dvds that i had in storage.
there are enough similarities in the book and the show to lead me to believe he may have been influenced by it.
very rad

EDIT: I actually found this forum because after noticing so many similarity's between the book and the show i was really interested in figuring out if Anno had read the book. My google search of 'Gravity's Rainbow Neon Genesis Evangelion' lead me here.