Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Wed Aug 23, 2017 5:54 pm

Anime, even the good stuff, is designed to its core to be a cheap pulp fiction product. If a budget is overblown, it's probably easier to get another budget quickly for those projects than it would be for most other projects. TV Tokyo and Sega probably would have shelled out without too much of a thought given simply because whatever money that was needed wasn't going to be an impressive amount.

Hell, Watanabe said that Cowboy Bebop had its entire funding pulled from Bandai after Episode 4 due to content issues. Watanabe shopped the project around and got another patron in very little time simply because, financially speaking, Japanese TV animation is a very low-risk investment to a lot of companies. The show didn't skip a beat until IRL violence caused the show to take a pause.

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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby TheCarkolum » Sun Sep 10, 2017 2:16 pm

Thanks gwen for your thread. I see for the stuff you guys send that production scheduling was the problem number 1. Problem number 2 seems to be money, at least for me. I mean, animators in NGE were hardly getting paid and the truth is behind every production problem there is a money problem involved. If more animators were paid well maybe the scheduling wouldn't have been so bad...
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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby Evangelion217 » Sat Aug 21, 2021 7:48 am

Yes, they ran out of money because the toy revenue not doing that well. So Anno basically went back to the basics in the final two episodes. And there are many scenes that go on for a long time with nothing happening, because of a lack of money. And episodes 21-24 were fantastic episodes, even with a lack of money.
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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby Blockio » Sat Aug 21, 2021 6:38 pm

I've seen some interviews to the opposite, do you have any sources for that? I'd love to read them
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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby Szmitten » Sun Aug 22, 2021 8:07 am

Budget is never really an issue in anime or productions. The concept of being overbudget exists because people exceed budgets, but they clearly still get the money. It's always scheduling issues, indecisiveness, and other factors beyond finance.

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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby eldomtom2 » Wed Sep 08, 2021 9:39 am

View Original PostBlockio wrote:I've seen some interviews to the opposite, do you have any sources for that? I'd love to read them

Especially about the toy stuff - I'd always heard that because none of the main sponsors were toy companies, they had a lot more freedom with the Eva designs (hence why they're tall, thin, and unsuited to making a toy that can stand upright easily).

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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby Into the Eva-Verse » Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:15 am

View Original PostNahash wrote:The lack of ideas is less proved, but probable.

About the series finale: if memory serves, End of Evangelion is based on the original ending for the series. Due to the lack of money and time, episodes 25 and 26 became what they are. (I never even heard of the gas attacks at the time until now, and that does explain some things regarding the quality of the second half of the show.) So it would seem that ideas were not lacking, at least for the ending. Of course, if there were no production issues and we got the original intended finale, it would have been way tamer than what we got for the movie with likely no hospital scene, graphic violence and deaths, or GNR's lady parts on her forehead and palms. :tongue:
Last edited by Into the Eva-Verse on Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby Blockio » Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:37 am

I refer to what Szmitten, our local expert on everything Eva production, has to say on the matter of budget.
Szmitten wrote:Budget is never really an issue in anime or productions. The concept of being overbudget exists because people exceed budgets, but they clearly still get the money. It's always scheduling issues, indecisiveness, and other factors beyond finance.

As for ideas - yes, at least parts of EoE were planned from the beginning, so the broad outline was definitely there and it's not a "lol Anno just ran out of ideas for TV end"
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Re: Did Evangelion really run out of budget?

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Postby Szmitten » Fri Nov 05, 2021 12:57 pm

Yeah, the story of Eva production is less about budget and more the challenges of auteur driven original IP with a TV schedule. To recycle a few posts of mine from other threads:

I don't know when or precisely why Anno made decisions, I can only speculate with what I have and the facts that I can observe and the various quotes. Back in the proposal days, episode #25 was intended to involve authority figures raiding HQ and attacking the heroes; but episode #26 remained vague as "the conclusion". Even in July 1995, when that #25 summary still exists and #26 still doesn't, Anno expressed a lack of conclusion. Towards the end of 1995, an episode #25 that reflected the original proposal was written, but #26 was still writer's blocked. Per the scheduling and anecdotal evidence from future Revolutionary Girl Utena staffers, #26 as we know it was worked out by January 1996. Per quotes from Anno, Tsurumaki, and Sadamoto, they stated that a previous episode #25 had been written, and once they decided to make #26 be introspective like the Leliel episode, they went back and dumped what they had of original #25 and rewrote it to be more like #26.

Adjacently, the sarin gas attack is one of those things people claim had an effect on Evangelion without much detail or context, however, there is a possibility that the following is the only possible direct connection between the two and might be its sole contribution, but it is 100% speculative and shouldn't be repeated anywhere as anywhere vaguely factual:

[I suspect that around November/December when episode #25 would have entered drawing production, someone (channel, studio, Anno, who knows) realised that #25's airdate was the first anniversary of the sarin gas attack. What happens on anniversaries? News programs, documentaries, retrospectives, and, as part of the story, they'd inevitably show footage of this criminal pseudoreligious organisation's HQ getting raided by authorities. And what was the original concept of episode #25 from the very start and "as intended" per EoE and staff statements? The protagonists' pseudoreligious organisation's HQ getting raided by authorities. Whether by pressure (I doubt this since they never faced outside pressure before or after) or by fear of being misconstrued (absolutely this), I think the episode was changed and the OVA-movie idea was born (Anno verbally committed to the staff they'd remake the ending before they'd even finished the episodes).]


And also, as with all anime productions, the opening episodes always have months and months of production time, but as the weeks go by you suddenly have less time to do the same amount of episodes at the same or higher quality, and the date for the start of an episode's production and the airdate for that episode gradually start to collide. The first two episodes of Evangelion easily had nearly a year spent on them, and the next few easily had over 6 months, but in the second half that 6 turns into 5 then 4 then 3.

To highlight the absurdity: It's not impossible to argue that the first few episodes had more production time spent on them than Rebirth and End of Eva combined.


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