SPOILER: Show
More than a child, not yet an adult….”Fourteen years old” symbolizes problems of the heart.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a great wave which was born, around ten years ago, in the sea of anime. Already 17 years since the birth of the first series of Kidô Senshi Gundam. An epoch when adolescents filled the movie theaters to see Uchû Senkan Yamato or Ginga Tetsudô 999. That is to say: The years which formed the anime boom of 1980. For the most part, our current readers weren’t born or were still infants, and in that time, all young people accepted anime without reticence. A little while later, among young people, watching an anime became something “special.” In the middle of the 80s, with the appearance of the OVA, Japonese animation began to adapt itself to the needs of the fans and, insidiously, become a medium that the general public couldn’t partake in. To be sure, Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball are popular. But they are works that one considers “strictly for children." To be sure, the films of Hayao Miyazaki (and of studio Ghibli) draw viewers to the theaters each summer. But they are always films that one goes to see with complete confidence, like “a lover.” That is to say, the general public, like all anime fans, considers them first-rate. And each release of these films is awaited with impatience. Not only anime fans, but also “normal” children, sensible adults, and the fans from ten years ago who have returned to animation, all have supported Eva with enthusiasm. And still, when the airing of the TV series has finished, the movement continues to spread. It has been a month since the end of the series was aired, since the very controversial final episode, without the mysteries being clarified. Having passed the time dedicated to a certain routine, we have been able to interview the director, Hideaki Anno.
“My mood at the moment?...I am very tired. (laughs)”
Having told us this, Anno began to speak to us, choosing his words with prudence.
"The creation of Evangelion gives me the sense of a “live” concert. Whether the story or the creation of the characters, I did it all without a theory. During the direction of the series, all the while hearing different opinions, all the while analyzing my state of mind, I questioned myself. I went in search of concepts in this inventory to start out from. In the beginning, I thought I would produce a simple work about robots. But when the principal setting became a high school, this didn’t change anything in relation to other productions of the same style. In that moment, I thought I would really create a protagonist possessing two faces, two identities: at school and in the organization. The impression of a live concert, that the birth of Eva gives me, it allows me to catch up as I go along, like an improvisation: someone plays the guitar and, in the refrain, adds percussion and bass. The concert finished with the end of the airing of the TV show. We would not enter into the next script until the previous one had been finished. This took more time than a normal work. When we would finish a script, we would check it for continuity with the previous ones. When someone said “I don’t know about that there…” we would rectify it on the story-board. In fact, when the last episode approached, we did not even finish on time."
In conclusion, Evangelion has two sides: a narrative side, and one which would be like a documentary on the mind of Hideaki Anno himself. This refusal to lie to himself about the things which he wants to accomplish arose from his iron will.
The director Anno influenced Eva by bringing to light his “problems of the heart…”
"The reason that the main character is fourteen years old is that he is no longer a child but not yet an adult. He lives alone, but attached to others. Several centuries in the past, he would soon have had his majority. In that time, the life expectancy being fifty years, one had to become independent around fourteen years. Today, people live more than seventy years, and although the age of adulthood is twenty years, most people still depend on their parents at that age. One may wonder if it is not the parents who make them dependent, or for the parents, when they ought to fix the age of adulthood. Since I consider fourteen years to be the age when an independence of spirit arises, I found an opportunity to include that in my work."
The “Human Instrumentality Project is an allegory for the world of animation.
"Speaking of improvisation, when I came up with the “Human Instrumentality Project” which appeared in the second episode, and which would become the center of the story, I did not have any idea what would be "complemented.” (Note: the Japanese term is “Hokan,” which literally means “fill a void.”)
It was just a verbal bluff (laughs). In the Eva universe, the human population was cut in half, but by way of aphorism, one can say that worlds where the population has been diminished by half are typical of anime. I think that worlds isolated and cut into pieces or where, because of a catastrophe in the past, humanity has been decimated, are characteristic of Japanese animation."
On that subject, Mr. Anno already made an analogous comparison two or three years ago.In the world of “Gundam,” imagined by the director Yoshiyuki Tomino, Charles, who, like Don Quixote, struggles to free the people enclosed in the universe of the Space Colony (the animation companies), is the avatar of the director. In Eva the generals of the regular army are not able to destroy an approaching life form, and appeal to Nerv, a group of amateurs (the director Anno at the center of Gainax)
"Really?...well, whatever the point of view, Nerv is a group of amateurs. It resembles an army, but it isn’t one. I did not wish to create a military troupe. I found it strange that the anime magazines readjusted the image of Misato by writing that she is a “skilled soldier.” I think that she is more suited for other things…if she is competent, it is not as a soldier! However you look at it, her strategies are haphazard strokes of chance. It is nothing but a gamble. Really, the only person who plans their strategies at all is Ritsuko." Concerning Misato, she is a being combining the object and the subject, and in arranging things, she resembles me in certain points…despite what Masami Yuki, citing episode 7, wrote in your February issue, she is not so uncompromising, just like Nerv.
Neon Genesis Evangelion is a great wave which was born, around ten years ago, in the sea of anime. Already 17 years since the birth of the first series of Kidô Senshi Gundam. An epoch when adolescents filled the movie theaters to see Uchû Senkan Yamato or Ginga Tetsudô 999. That is to say: The years which formed the anime boom of 1980. For the most part, our current readers weren’t born or were still infants, and in that time, all young people accepted anime without reticence. A little while later, among young people, watching an anime became something “special.” In the middle of the 80s, with the appearance of the OVA, Japonese animation began to adapt itself to the needs of the fans and, insidiously, become a medium that the general public couldn’t partake in. To be sure, Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball are popular. But they are works that one considers “strictly for children." To be sure, the films of Hayao Miyazaki (and of studio Ghibli) draw viewers to the theaters each summer. But they are always films that one goes to see with complete confidence, like “a lover.” That is to say, the general public, like all anime fans, considers them first-rate. And each release of these films is awaited with impatience. Not only anime fans, but also “normal” children, sensible adults, and the fans from ten years ago who have returned to animation, all have supported Eva with enthusiasm. And still, when the airing of the TV series has finished, the movement continues to spread. It has been a month since the end of the series was aired, since the very controversial final episode, without the mysteries being clarified. Having passed the time dedicated to a certain routine, we have been able to interview the director, Hideaki Anno.
“My mood at the moment?...I am very tired. (laughs)”
Having told us this, Anno began to speak to us, choosing his words with prudence.
"The creation of Evangelion gives me the sense of a “live” concert. Whether the story or the creation of the characters, I did it all without a theory. During the direction of the series, all the while hearing different opinions, all the while analyzing my state of mind, I questioned myself. I went in search of concepts in this inventory to start out from. In the beginning, I thought I would produce a simple work about robots. But when the principal setting became a high school, this didn’t change anything in relation to other productions of the same style. In that moment, I thought I would really create a protagonist possessing two faces, two identities: at school and in the organization. The impression of a live concert, that the birth of Eva gives me, it allows me to catch up as I go along, like an improvisation: someone plays the guitar and, in the refrain, adds percussion and bass. The concert finished with the end of the airing of the TV show. We would not enter into the next script until the previous one had been finished. This took more time than a normal work. When we would finish a script, we would check it for continuity with the previous ones. When someone said “I don’t know about that there…” we would rectify it on the story-board. In fact, when the last episode approached, we did not even finish on time."
In conclusion, Evangelion has two sides: a narrative side, and one which would be like a documentary on the mind of Hideaki Anno himself. This refusal to lie to himself about the things which he wants to accomplish arose from his iron will.
The director Anno influenced Eva by bringing to light his “problems of the heart…”
"The reason that the main character is fourteen years old is that he is no longer a child but not yet an adult. He lives alone, but attached to others. Several centuries in the past, he would soon have had his majority. In that time, the life expectancy being fifty years, one had to become independent around fourteen years. Today, people live more than seventy years, and although the age of adulthood is twenty years, most people still depend on their parents at that age. One may wonder if it is not the parents who make them dependent, or for the parents, when they ought to fix the age of adulthood. Since I consider fourteen years to be the age when an independence of spirit arises, I found an opportunity to include that in my work."
The “Human Instrumentality Project is an allegory for the world of animation.
"Speaking of improvisation, when I came up with the “Human Instrumentality Project” which appeared in the second episode, and which would become the center of the story, I did not have any idea what would be "complemented.” (Note: the Japanese term is “Hokan,” which literally means “fill a void.”)
It was just a verbal bluff (laughs). In the Eva universe, the human population was cut in half, but by way of aphorism, one can say that worlds where the population has been diminished by half are typical of anime. I think that worlds isolated and cut into pieces or where, because of a catastrophe in the past, humanity has been decimated, are characteristic of Japanese animation."
On that subject, Mr. Anno already made an analogous comparison two or three years ago.In the world of “Gundam,” imagined by the director Yoshiyuki Tomino, Charles, who, like Don Quixote, struggles to free the people enclosed in the universe of the Space Colony (the animation companies), is the avatar of the director. In Eva the generals of the regular army are not able to destroy an approaching life form, and appeal to Nerv, a group of amateurs (the director Anno at the center of Gainax)
"Really?...well, whatever the point of view, Nerv is a group of amateurs. It resembles an army, but it isn’t one. I did not wish to create a military troupe. I found it strange that the anime magazines readjusted the image of Misato by writing that she is a “skilled soldier.” I think that she is more suited for other things…if she is competent, it is not as a soldier! However you look at it, her strategies are haphazard strokes of chance. It is nothing but a gamble. Really, the only person who plans their strategies at all is Ritsuko." Concerning Misato, she is a being combining the object and the subject, and in arranging things, she resembles me in certain points…despite what Masami Yuki, citing episode 7, wrote in your February issue, she is not so uncompromising, just like Nerv.
