NGE Ep.24 Script First and Second Drafts

[kuribo-04]

別冊JUNE 1996年9月号


Bessatsu JUNE September 1996

So can you now confirm who wrote the drafts?

[Literary Eagle]

別冊JUNE 1996年9月号


Bessatsu JUNE September 1996

Cool! Thank you so much!

[hui43210]

I have only managed a cursory glance so far, but one thing I hadn't realized before is that it came with illustrations by Nobi Nobita (if I am not mistaken). IIRC there is also one of the kiss scene.

I'd be a lair if I said I didn't want to see those....

[LiLi]

So can you now confirm who wrote the drafts?

It looks like on the color page before the actual drafts, Satsukawa Akio is credited for the script (and Nobi Nobita for the illustrations).

BTW, There is also an illustration of the scene feat. Kaworu and Shinji swimming...

[Literary Eagle]

It looks like on the color page before the actual drafts, Satsukawa Akio is credited for the script (and Nobi Nobita for the illustrations).

It's so cool that there are illustrations. Most exciting thing I've heard all day!

Sorry to ask another question, but does this issue of JUNE have some kind of ISBN or ASIN, or any other type of identifier that will make it easier to track down? I must add this treasure to my collection! (I own 28 Evangelion artbooks, and I still want more! I can't help it; I love pretty much every Evangelion character.)

[kuribo-04]

It looks like on the color page before the actual drafts, Satsukawa Akio is credited for the script (and Nobi Nobita for the illustrations).

See? That´s what I´ve always heard. But sometimes people state that Anno participated in them. Maybe you could help me with this. I really want to know if Anno collaborated. It seems that in Evangelion scripts, often "objet d´art" is used to describe something. I always assumed that Anno was the person that used this.
Take for example the script of episode 3 of the series. It´s credited to Anno and Satsukawa. "Objet d´art" appears. The End of Evangelion draft, only credited to Anno, uses "objet d´at" too.
In both scripts this expression comes up, and the only person that worked on both was Anno.
In the second ep. 24 draft it is used again:

The crucified upper body of the seven-eyed giant.
The bizarre, objet d'art makes Shinji flinch for a second.

Does that mean that Anno participated or does it mean that many people in Gainax used this expression, also Sasukawa?
Please, if you can help me with this.

[LiLi]

Let me tackle this issue first...

Sorry to ask another question, but does this issue of JUNE have some kind of ISBN or ASIN, or any other type of identifier that will make it easier to track down?

I don't know about any helpful identifiers, sorry... Basically, what I did (after much google-fu and some actual Real Life searching and stammering in bookstores... ) was to identify some internet shops that deal in old books and used magazines - including back issues of June - and [s]stalk[/s] periodically search their inventory for any issues of "June 1996".
I think I started looking over three years ago... Finally, I pretty much narrowed it down to a shop called suruga-ya, and kept checking periodically until a copy popped up (a narrow miss led to me having the issue of June with the Anno interview). Hope this helps?

Perhaps these Eva-related issues of June are finally popping up again in used book stores courtesy of Q...

[Merkaba]

Is there any chance you'd be able to post the illustrations here on this thread?

[gwern]

See? That´s what I´ve always heard. But sometimes people state that Anno participated in them. Maybe you could help me with this. I really want to know if Anno collaborated. It seems that in Evangelion scripts, often "objet d´art" is used to describe something. I always assumed that Anno was the person that used this.
Take for example the script of episode 3 of the series. It´s credited to Anno and Satsukawa. "Objet d´art" appears. The End of Evangelion draft, only credited to Anno, uses "objet d´at" too.
In both scripts this expression comes up, and the only person that worked on both was Anno.
In the second ep. 24 draft it is used again:

Does that mean that Anno participated or does it mean that many people in Gainax used this expression, also Sasukawa?
Please, if you can help me with this.

Not just episode 03. The wiki http://wiki.evageeks.org/Special:Search?search=objet&fulltext=Search includes hits for episode 02 http://wiki.evageeks.org/FGC:Episode_02_Cut_111 as well as episode 03 http://wiki.evageeks.org/FGC:Episode_03_Cut_326

The authors for 02 are listed in the wiki as 'Hideaki Anno, Yoji Enokido', and for 03? 'Akio Satsukawa, Hideaki Anno'

So, I guess that makes a pretty good case that Anno, for whatever reason, rather likes the phrase "objet d'art". We have 4 uses of this highly-unusual phrase for multiple works where Anno is the common factor.

[Literary Eagle]

I think I started looking over three years ago... Finally, I pretty much narrowed it down to a shop called suruga-ya, and kept checking periodically until a copy popped up (a narrow miss led to me having the issue of June with the Anno interview). Hope this helps?

Cool, I'll keep an eye on sites like that. Thank you so much for answering my questions, and for sharing all this cool stuff with the Evangelion fandom! You're awesome!

[Caliburn]

That´s what I´ve always heard. But sometimes people state that Anno participated in them. Maybe you could help me with this. I really want to know if Anno collaborated.

Anno almost certainly did some of the rewriting in the second draft of Ep. 24

From [URL=http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/13091/Hideaki-Anno-JUNE-Interview-August-1996/]the June interview[/URL]:

Interviewer: Did you stop Satsukawa-san when it looked like he was going to go berserk, Director Anno?

Anno: No, nothing like that. Satsukawa-san’s atmosphere remains in the script. Satsukawa-san’s original script had more of that sort of meaning and was JUNE-like.

Interviewer: For example?

Anno: I’m the one who went and set it in the bath, though. In the original script, the two of them were swimming naked in a river. *laugh*

The change from the river to the bath occurred between the first and second draft. I do not think Anno is saying he requested this change and then had Satsukawa rewrite it; I believe he is saying he did the bath rewrite himself.

I don't know how it works in Japanese animation, but on U.S. television shows, it is extremely common for the showrunner (which is essentially Anno's role on Evangelion) to do uncredited rewrites of other people's drafts. The showrunner is also heavily involved in defining the plot of the story. So even when we don't see Anno's name on a script, it should not be assumed that he had nothing to do with the writing of it.

In the same June interview, Anno talks about his role in rewriting scripts:

Interviewer: Usually, Anno-san, you and one other person are credited with the screenplay, but what sort of a relationship do you two have?

Anno: I had him do the plot after we spoke together, and I fixed up what took the form of the script once more to get it ready for animation.

Well, at that point in time, we were writing the script to send out, and so you could also say that the stories, drama, characters, and so forth that we’d thought of during previous meetings were starting to lose consistency at the time that that script finished.

We have to fix those so that they line up, so. I’m unifying it, so it’s becoming uniform, though. I help with the drama parts and so forth.

Anno is talking about his role in rewriting in general and not just about Ep. 24, but combined with the comment above about the bath rewrite, not to mention your interesting observation about the use of the phrase "objet d'art," I think it's safe to conclude that at least some of the second draft of Ep. 24 was done by Anno, even though his name does not appear on the cover.

As for the first draft, Anno and Satsukawa would certainly have discussed the intended plot outline before Satsukawa did his writing. So the structure of the story would have been worked out by the two of them together, but the descriptions and dialogue and some of the smaller decisions about what happens within a given scene are probably all Satsukawa's. I can't say that for certain with the current evidence, but it seems quite likely given Anno's above description of how things usually worked.

Hope that helps answer your question, kuribo.

[LiLi]

Is there any chance you'd be able to post the illustrations here on this thread?

Hi, the main problem would be that I am not overly familiar with the local copyright infringement laws...

@Literary Eagle: Thank you! And, you are welcome!

[kuribo-04]

Hope that helps answer your question, kuribo.

Yes. Thanks. I had read the interview, but I hadn´t thought that maybe Anno had rewritten something. So that would mean the second draft has some Anno writing.

[ath]

Hi, the main problem would be that I am not overly familiar with the local copyright infringement laws...

If you're worried about uploading the scans directly from Japan, we can set up an encrypted connection and then upload them here on the Wiki or host them on a server somewhere around the world.

[Mr. Tines]

Copyright still subsists, even for abandonware. However, as with most fan activity, we can't make much progress without taking a liberal approach to fair use. *cough*the commentary*cough*

[FelipeFritschF]

Hope it's alright to bump this thread now as I have found some interesting information.

Anno almost certainly did some of the rewriting in the second draft of Ep. 24

Anno is talking about his role in rewriting in general and not just about Ep. 24, but combined with the comment above about the bath rewrite, not to mention your interesting observation about the use of the phrase "objet d'art," I think it's safe to conclude that at least some of the second draft of Ep. 24 was done by Anno, even though his name does not appear on the cover.

As for the first draft, Anno and Satsukawa would certainly have discussed the intended plot outline before Satsukawa did his writing. So the structure of the story would have been worked out by the two of them together, but the descriptions and dialogue and some of the smaller decisions about what happens within a given scene are probably all Satsukawa's. I can't say that for certain with the current evidence, but it seems quite likely given Anno's above description of how things usually worked.^

I find it quite interesting to notice that Satsukawa also worked on many other episodes (eight or so I believe) including Episode 15 and Episode 9. Some people think that he was hired specifically for Episode 24, but this is not the case at all, and I don't see why some people think he was only a writer because of Anno's remark on his homoerotic ability. Rather, although Satsukawa seemed to have that intention, or at least interpreted it as such as he wrote the draft after initially discussing it with Anno, it is clear that on the final version of the story, Anno himself decided to change it considerably, as he states that...

as might be expected, this was what you’d call above my tolerance level. *laughs*
[...]
Anno: That’s right. It’s not that Shinji-kun was particularly inclined toward carnal desires there, you see.*laughs*
[...]
It’s normal to have two people be naked together in the bath, after all.
[...]
Anno: Well, when it comes to male baths, it’s a world that you can’t peek into, after all. It might have the atmosphere of a forbidden territory. But, no matter how you look at it, it’s a public bath.*laughs*

And he makes a point, repeatedly, about how normal and casual public baths are, specially in the countryside, which he is from.

I have also found this and this interview, which seem to indicate that, indeed, Kaworu's change from his earlier self in the Proposal to the more, ahem, sexualized final version was mainly Satsukawa's influence.

M: That interview in which he pushes all responsibility to Satsukawa is interesting. But when we came up with the original idea, did it start out as such?
H: eh?
M: Not that level of homo, did Satsukawa up it?
H: His descriptions are def top-notch.
M: In JUNE it shows that the scripts originally had skinny dipping, musical duets and stuff (laughs)
A: Skinny dipping?!
M: Yeah, completely naked. I didn’t want to draw that, like to a “If thats how it is I’ll quit” extent.
A: Isn’t that basically porn?
M: So when I stated we must change it, it became Anno’s expert bathing.
A: His favourite public baths.
H: Why hand-holding though?
M: Because thats what the script said.
H: (flips to the relevant page of the script) it says “touched his hand”. Isn’t it touched, but you drew “hold” (laughs).
M: Because thats what the artist drew and I wasn’t really too concerned and ok-ed it. (laughs) there was basically no time

Anno also mentions in the JUNE Interview that the producer and staff also rejected it (as Masayuki mentions above), apart from whatever objections he himself also had. I don't think Anno necessarily saw or cared if these scenes could be seen as sexual, but just having two naked children swimming in a river would of course be too much for what was, at the time, a show aired at a children's time-slot. As some people have noticed before, however, these drafts are clearly very early in production and even contain material that would eventually be shuffled to other episodes like 22 and 15 (not to mention how for instance the first draft featured a scene with Shinji lamenting that he should have died instead, which is absent from the second draft but present in a modifed way in the final script, but I'll get to that later...), so I do not think we need to blame censorship or lack of time on that, specifically. Not to mention, even in 1995 Japan already had plenty of what we could as well call LGBT media for decades (contemporary examples would be, say, Utena and Sailor Moon), as it does today, so even the "shock value" argument seems to be looking at this from too much of a Western perspective. Consider, also, that the reason the network got irritated and eventually moved Eva to another time-slot wasn't the (not so explicit) nudity in Ep 24 as it was aired, but rather Kaworu's death being gruesome. Not that this makes Japanese society less homophobic and conservative, but I digress.

I: But it caused female audiences in front of their televisions to shriek with joy.
M: We never thought it will turn out like that.
T: Was it not planned?
M: We really only realised it afterwards and never thought of much at that time, after all we were going berserk

This could also indicate that Kaworu's popularity was unexpected after all and not deliberately engineered like some people theorize. Then again, they didn't expect any of Eva to really become popular, and, well... it did.

A side-note about Anno and "Kabbalah stuff", those interviews are a goldmine:

SPOILER: Show

I: Lilim and lilith and all that, its from judaism isn’t it?
S: Even though all that bible and Kabbala stuff was unexplained, there was no mention of Lilith, I think that hurt Anno-san’s pride a little.
I: Ah so thats why all this was thrown at us without explanation.
S:”I have to mention it, don’t think I forgot” and hence it was put in. That must be it. (laughs)
M: I think it started around half way.
Z: Since conception, and during world-building, there were two intense study sessions. Should be because that was the only opportunity to show off the results (laughs). Actually the information load is really heavy as well. It turned into a “did we really squeeze all that in?” episode. Since we already realised we probably cannot do 25 26, we stuffed 5,6 episodes worth of content.

Finally, yet another interview from Sadamoto which seems to further reinforce this:

The conclusion is that it probably was Akio Satsukawa. Nagisa can also be read as Messenger, perhaps he came up with the name when he was writing the script. We all think it fits Akio’s taste. What struck me most was how Akio expanded the world, he made Kaworu a JUNE character……Or I should say a male/male tanbi(“aesthetic”) romances character that went berserk. The first script had more sparks: Kaworu and Shinji swim naked in the river under the setting sun——I hear that they really considered make this kind of scene at the moment.
——Is this what they called the dreamy first script?
Yes, Yes. In the end, Anno changed it to the bath scene. Anno took Akio’s idea into a very unique perspective, which end with this Kaworu who give you a decadent feeling, in my option. There is one thing that doesn’t need to cover up: they wrote EVA’s script as long as possible. In other words, the script they gave Anno had two Eps length, then Anno modified it into a story. So I think he probably cut off a lot of Kaworu’s story.

So while it seems certain that Draft #1 was 100% Satsukawa, it remains unclear how much Anno contributed to the second one, apart from kuribo-04's observation and apparently the bath scene - though who knows if Satsukawa didn't do his own additions to that scene when he finished the second draft. Perhaps Anno simply suggested a change to the bath but didn't actually rewrite it until the "Anno do-over" in Evangelion Original III which is actually credited to him. One scene that picks my curiosity is the one in which Shinji wakes up and Kaworu questions him about his cello playing, proposes that he plays the piano with him on the cello (and sure enough, this was rescued in 3.0!) and then kisses Shinji. I am guessing this one was by Satsukawa... however it goes further than that.

Sato: Hmm, he had a cello, right? Together… “I’ll play the piano, so you play the cello!” he said. At night, in a classroom, Kaworu went first, and he was playing; when Shinji softly peeked in on him, “Can you do something, too?” “Next time, let’s do it together.” It had that sort of feeling. “I’ll sing a little, so…”
Anno: That’s right, that’s right. There was a scene in a music room after an evacuation, when no one was there.
Interviewer: What is the connection between Kaworu-kun and this image of music?
Anno: I don’t think it was words. It was as communication, when he’d first come.
Interviewer: Shinji also played the cello, and played music once, didn’t he? Or else, was that a variety of therapy, or something?
Anno: No, I don’t know. That was the scriptwriters’ idea. Well, it was just that the character gave off the feeling of a cello.
Interviewer: Did that first script do anything like take on that sort of form?
Anno: It didn’t. It just went as far as the scenario.

Interesting, Anno seems to make a distinction between "draft" and "script". This could also be a translation issue, because as mentioned earlier, Japanese doesn't seem to have separates words in this case (neither does Portuguese!). Unfortunately for us, the JUNE Interview doesn't seem to make mention of "the second draft" at all.:

As SSD mentioned, uh... nine years ago.

I apologize if something like this was discussed already. Awhile ago Reichu and I were talking about the script process in a PM:

Reichu wrote:
#1 - Akio Satsukawa's treatment ()
#2 - Anno's do-over （credited to Satsukawa and Anno, published in Evangelion Original III)
#3 - Storyboards (絵コンテ, published in Storyboard Collection... 5, I think)
#4 - ??? (refined script handed out to staff and seiyuu?)
#5 - The #24 script published on the DVDs (modified from #4??).

I have no idea if Japanese has different ways of referring to the draft and finalized script-thingies. According to Evangelion Original, the draft is 脚本, and Wikipedia treats 脚本 as equivalent to the English term "script" for the performing arts. So... yeah.

Drafts 1 and 2 of episode 24 were Akio Satsukawa's treatment, yes? (Just like the rest of the drafts of the series?)

Wouldn't that help explain on why certain things are absent from those drafts, such as Lilith? Espeically considering the Second Angel isn't mentioned anywhere in-series until the "big revelation" while the First Angel Adam is. And there is the idea that Anno intentionally kept the identity of Lilith a secret, which is why Satsukawa and the other staff wouldn't know until much later on in the process.

An older, incomplete translation, makes that sound more likely, but take it with a grain of salt.

Anno: No, I don’t know. That was the scriptwriter’s idea. Well, it was just that the character gave off the feeling of a cello.

—— Did you make the first draft?

Anno: No, we just have the script.

The more recent translation also makes this further clear that Anno didn't have anything to do with the first script besides telling Satsukawa his general ideas, and of course Satsukawa's interpretation of them didn't completely make it to the final version. Finally, I do find it interesting that while this scene focusing on Shinji's cello playing and a kiss was removed from Episode 24, it was shuffled to another Satsukawa episode... Episode 15. In which not only does Shinji talk about his cello playing in a similar manner, he is also kissed, but by Asuka instead of Kaworu.

Additionally:

Interviewer: In the video edition, is there nothing like getting a power up from that sort of thing?
Anno: I’m thinking of adding a few scenes. I had the feeling that it’d be good to focus on Shinji and Kaworu-kun’s story. However, I also think that, if I have the extra time, I have to make Kaworu-kun with just Misato. The truth is that Kaworu-kun just greeted Rei by chance and he’s only spoken with Shinji, hasn’t he? There’s no need for him to meet other people, but if the only one that I haven’t made him meet up with is Misato, I kind of wonder whether that’s awkward.

Which indicates that, while Anno considered expanding Kaworu's relationship with Shinji on the Director's Cuts, he still prioritized the scene that eventually became Misato spying on him talking with Shinji, which, of course, changes Kaworu's character's motivations significantly. Compared that to Episode 22, which changes Asuka character's significantly and makes her attraction towards Shinji a lot clearer. Moreover, the (unfortunatey obscure!) information in the second half of the JUNE Interview about Anno basing that on a doujinshi is even more curious once you consider that Nobita's doujin was ambiguous about whether Asuka's lines were about Shinji or Kaji, yet when Anno put it on Ep 22 DC, he expanded her lines and made them very clearly about Shinji.

[kuribo-04]

∆ Wow, tons of info. Thanks.
Cool that the storyboard interviews are translated.

[FelipeFritschF]

Frankly, I'm not sure if this should go into a separate thread, since it does not concern just Ep 24 or the drafts. Anyway...

I found this on gwern's source anthology, seems to be an article of some sort about the production of Eva:

https://webcitation.org/5mYowhERa

"New Century Evangelion / Neon Genesis Evangelion" is a television anime that was broadcast from October of 1995 through March of 1996. The design, original story, and production was done by Gainax, known for "Royal Space Force (The Wings of Honneamise)" and "Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water". It is a work that was supported by many fans and also left a large number of topics behind as well.

This book is a collection of scripts of that "Neon Genesis Evangelion" but the scripts that included here are written in a style that is a bit different from the usual TV scripts and are the ones that became the final drafts.

In TV anime, as the staff meetings between producers and the directors proceed, the screenwriters write the script. The manuscript goes through the "first draft", "second draft", and the script becomes the "definitive draft." The director draws the storyboard based on the script that has become the "definitive draft". The storyboard is the movie’s blueprint, which has been filled in with the composition of each cut, acting, lines, second count and the like. In anime, the greater part of the director’s "directing" process occurs in the phase of drawing this storyboard. It is not unusual for the contents to change in the storyboard stage. There are also cases when it becomes almost a completely different story.

Among all 26 episodes of the TV version of "Neon Genesis Evangelion", Director Anno himself wrote the scripts for five episodes, and is credited jointly with other screenwriters for the scripts of 20 episodes. The number of scripts that were jointly credited are the definitive drafts of scripts based on plots by director Anno written by screenwriters and gone over directly by director Anno. The only time where director Anno’s name isn’t credited for a script is episode 4 "Rain, after escaping (Hedgehog’s Dilemma)" based on a plot by Mr. Satsukawa. Just by looking at these numbers, you will understand how much director Anno pulled the series together by his personal authorship.

Further, if you look at the following pages, you’ll understand that both in the scripts solely written by director Anno and the scripts of the episodes that are jointly credited, the directions in regard to the filming and also the action and staging have been meticulously and concretely represented. A storyboard that was written by letters drawn. That is to say, there is strong "wordboard-al" hue. Usually, director Anno conducts the process of dramatization, which occurs in the storyboard stage, to the degree that it is the script stage. Because of that, in the case of "Neon Genesis Evangelion", the script and the completed film are not that greatly different.

However, no matter how much the director goes over the script himself, it doesn’t mean that it is filmed completely as it is. While undergoing the process of storyboarding, photography, dubbing, and production, the contents continue to change subtly. This book, in order to respect the material, includes the definitive drafts in as they are. There are annotations in the margin about the parts where there are major changes in the final films.

In reaching the film’s completion, it might also be interesting to try reading about things like how the drama was put together and how the staff’s ideas continued to change.

It adds more credence to the idea that what we call Draft 1 and Draft 2 are the "first draft" mentioned here and the "second draft" with some input from Anno and the staff at large, whereas the version in Evangelion Original would be the "final draft". It also fits with what we can see in the Sadamoto and the Masayuki interviews from my previous post. Anno might have had input, made suggestions, small corrections or even wrote parts or the whole bath scene (and that thing with the objet d'art), the interviews don't make this clear enough as far as Draft 2 goes, though it seems unlikely he'd write the scene from scratch since that's what he has Satsukawa for. And while not impossible, there is no indication he was involved in anything else since the typical process would be for him to only involve himself in this "definitive draft", in which he is indeed credited. One of the translator's notes say:

-There was an interesting term "ketteikou" which bascially means the "decisive manuscript" and at first I translated this as "final draft", but going over the text, there were numerous times when the script was referred to as being the final draft. This seems rather redundant in English, so I finally opted to use "definitive draft" to reflect the Japanese in that the scripts included in the book are the ones used in filming and so could be considered "canonical".

Also fits with:

Anno: I had him do the plot after we spoke together, and I fixed up what took the form of the script once more to get it ready for animation. Well, at that point in time, we were writing the script to send out, and so you could also say that the stories, drama, characters, and so forth that we’d thought of during previous meetings were starting to lose consistency at the time that that script finished. We have to fix those so that they line up, so. I’m unifying it, so it’s becoming uniform, though. I help with the drama parts and so forth.

Another source from gwern:

https://www.gwern.net/otaku#s-15

Anno and the rest of the Gainax team had been pushing production of the various episodes up closer and closer to the deadlines issued by their TV station, to the extent that they were actually biking episodes over to the broadcast center on Beta tape only minutes before the broadcast time77. This was tolerated, because Eva had some of the highest ratings of any show ever - until Episode 24.

Episode 24 arrived at the station so late that it couldn’t even be watched before being broadcast - it was slapped in a Beta drive and transmitted directly, without being reviewed by any staff at the station. Episode 24, you’ll recall, is the Kaworu episode, which aside from the homosexual overtones (probably not actually an issue), ends with, er, a pop. Bear in mind that this was broadcast in a 6.30pm weekday slot on Japanese national television.

The network went apeshit - it may have been in silhouette, and he may have been technically non-human, but you can’t show a 14 year old popping his 14 year old friend’s head off at 6.30pm on TV, even in Japan. Gainax, and Anno specifically, were accused of deliberately holding back the episode to prevent the network from seeing it before broadcast - and the network staff demanded to see the storyboards for the next two episodes.

Which indicates with the final version only really being decided relatively late into production. Also matches with Kaworu's changes from his earlier Proposal self I've mentioned earlier. As well as the clear, often massive discrepancies with the larger plot present in both drafts. Finally, it seems clear to me that the interviewer from JUNE probably had not read the drafts at the time of doing the actual interview, since she makes some questions like "where there any scenes like X" and Sato and Anno gives examples from both drafts (I am saying "she" because she says "we, as women" in the interview). I am guessing this is why the JUNE interview does not differentiate between a first and second draft - the interviewer did not know which one to specify, probably she did not even understand there were two of those, and Anno and Sato talk about them pretty much interchangeably. For instance, when asked about the cello (something the interviewer could gather from Episode 15), Sato mentions a scene in the music room, which is present in Draft 1, but then mentions lines mentioning the cello from Draft 2 and a vague "It had that sort of feeling" in the same answer.

As anyone minimally familiar with sourcing for academics, history or journalism knows, people tend to be vague and even self-contradictory all the time, not because they are lying or trying to troll (not that that doesn't happen!), but because people tend to remember things poorly or hazely and mix up details, exaggerate, misremember, overstate etc(which is why one seeks multiple different sources on the same subject/event if possible), instead of precisely reciting every single line, details or scenes from things like this, which in this case would have been something Anno and Sato saw for the last time at least some five months year earlier, probably much longer (could be even over a year considering Eva's notorious delays in production). Anno explains that "Satsukawa-san’s original script had more of that sort of meaning and was JUNE-like." When the interviewer first asks Anno for an example he mentions the river scene. The interviewer asks if it was in broad daylight (again, indicating she doesn't know), and Anno says he doesn't know (doesn't remember?). He says it "might have been at night". Again the interviewer asks if it was in midnight, he says he doesn't know again. Nonetheless, if we see it in first draft, the river scene starts at dusk, after school, and the two following scenes are still set in the river, with the final one clearly saying it was already night. That is to say, Anno and Sato are remembering the drafts and trying to explain them to the interviewer, instead of talking about something she already read and knew about.

Notice that the interview was published in June's August 1996 issue whereas the drafts themselves were published in the September 1996 issue (『別冊JUNE』1996年9月号). This suggests the possibility that JUNE had not even received the drafts from Gainax when they released the interview, or possibly even when they made the interview themselves, since it is extremely common for magazines to conduct interviews weeks or even months in advance. Particularly because yet another common practice is to allow interviewees to amend or edit what they say, due to all that stuff regarding imprecision poorly expressing oneself I mentioned before (though that doesn't necessarily happen, and doesn't seem to have been the case here? Maybe because they couldn't amend to the fact that these interviews were conducted without the interviewer having read the drafts?). A notable example is Anno saying this happened in Schizo and Parano and it getting misreported as him writing the whole book, lmao: http://forum.evageeks.org/post/758915/A ... al/#758915

EDIT: Duh, the interview actually ends with "(April 25, 1996; at GAINAX)" Episode 24 was first aired in March 13, one and a half month earlier. So it's almost certain June hadn't had access to the drafts by then. Regardless, the discrepancies between major plot lines even in Draft 2 couldn't have been removed so late, there is stuff there that contradicts some episodes from much earlier. It's not really possible to try and make an educated guess about when Draft 2 was written (though Draft 1 contradicts stuff even from as early as Episode 15!), when we have so many reports of the episodes being written so earlier and then changed again and again. I am guessing they were mid-way through the series when Draft 2 was done, but it could have taken months before it got Anno's treatment, which we would later find in Evangelion Original, and finally Episode 24 itself was made probably in February 1996, as it took "about a month" according to one of those interviews I linked earlier(Numbers-kun's summary of the second half of the June interview says three weeks, though, but this might refer just to Masayuki's part), and the other source from gwern's says Ep 25 and 26 were made in less than a week, both.

This gets a bit more complicated when Okada, notably, says that even the ending wasn't decided on until 3 months before it was aired and they pretty much wrote the episodes sequentially.:

But Mr. Anno's style on EVANGELION was not so. He wants to put it together episode-by-episode. It's just like the style of a manga. In your typical manga, the artist doesn't have any picture of the last scene, or the last episode. They just think of building up on past episodes. And finally, the manga artist, and his assistants, and editor...[BURIES HEAD IN HANDS], they work out an idea about the last sequence. If it's a good idea, the whole episode is very good. If they can't make a good idea, the whole episode is not so good. It's an unhappy story. And I think that's what happened with the last two episodes of EVANGELION. Mr. Anno and his staff couldn't make a good idea for it. He told an anime magazine in Japan that he couldn't make what he wanted because of schedule or budget. But that's not correct. I talked with Mr. Yamaga and Mr. Anno. They said, "It's not only a problem of schedule or budget. It's a problem of what the ending is going to be." Mr. Anno couldn't decide. Mr. Anno's and my own style of production are very different.

https://web.archive.org/web/20001217044 ... ing10.html

But if he refers to the way the episodes would eventually go to the storyboards (presumably with lots of changes mid-way), I can only think he means the "definitive draft", particularly because those would have to be finished still some time before production on the actual episode began (normally two or three months, I suppose, but given Eva's tight schedule in later episodes it would probably be some 50+ days for most episodes, 40 or so for the latter ones and 30 or so before Episode 24's broadcast). But this is assuming it being actually Adam down there wasn't known by Satsukawa, which is unlikely, so he would have had to write that no later than Episode 15's "definitive script", which featured the Lilith reveal and like I mentioned was another episode of his, since as mentioned earlier one of the drafts for ep 15 still featured no Lilith review post/364688/NGE-Ep24-Script-First-and-Second-Drafts/#364688 . This would push Draft 2 to mid 1995, almost a year before the JUNE Interview.

[Xard]

10. Group Mentality
Nobi was irritated by male Rei otaku at Comiket. Anno emphasizes with her irritation. Anno says that Aum demonstrated that some people are driven to be a part of a group. Anno realized how easy it is to become a cult leader. However, the problem is that human beings also cannot live alone and must somehow depend on others.

Nobu: Many boys who want to pilot Eva appeared, right. That's how the situation is, but I was thinking Anno-san probably felt some ill will towards that. At Comiket when I saw men in front of me going on about how"Rei-chan is all about bandage form after all" I passed them by while casting curses on them. (laugh) I was thinking Anno-san's feelings aren't too different from mine.

Anno: Hmm, well, quite... but well, our feelings do resemble each other in a way. I also thought "drop dead!" (both laugh.)
To summarize, I realized there really exists people who can do nothing but flock around something. I came to personally understand the Aum system. "Oh, it's this easy to become a cult leader." I hate it when people flock around me. If it's because there's some part people admire I also dislike that. But even as I say that getting flocked around can't be helped. I cannot become a lone wolf. If I became a lone wolf I wouldn't be creating anime.

Source:



p. 35 from here

[FelipeFritschF]

/\ this is part of the the second part of the June interview which Numbers-kun summerized here post/425333/NGE-Ep24-Script-First-and-Second-Drafts/#425333

Might I suggest to staff if maybe the relevant posts should be separated into another thread? Most people I've talked with don't realize the second translation was summerized and now partly translated, probably because it's kinda "buried" in this thread.