Anno's Suicide Attempt(?)

[NAveryW]

Hideaki Anno's autobiography on his blog says nothing of an attempted suicide. Actually, the only reference to it I've ever seen is on this page quoting a 1998 interview with the magazine AERA, and other pages which use that page as a reference. I decided to check the other information in the summary, particularly that Takuya Anno lost his leg "like Touji", by rewatching the scene of the Extracurricular Lesson video featuring Hideaki Anno's parents. The best I could do is determine that every single person in the video is wearing shorts except Takuya Anno, who wears long pants covering his entire legs. Going by Evangelion analysis logic, that means yes, he is definitely missing a leg.

The line about Anno being a vegetarian, however... Anno is quoted as saying "I eat and love tofu, and I like fish too. I'm not a strict vegetarian, but I don't like the taste of meat, so I end up eating vegetables." This was apparently from Anime Expo '96. Another source covering his same appearance quotes him as saing "I like tofu. I just don't want to eat meat or fish."

So anyway, I'd like to know if there's any more information on Anno's apparent suicide attempt that forced him to live at the GAINAX building.

[Xard]

We have nothing to go by to determine if Anno attempted suicide after completion of NGE or not. He has said on different occasions that he collapsed/lost his will to live after NGE was finished but obviously this does not automatically hint at attempts of suicide.

Besides, Anno has said something to the extent of "just staying inside his house" after eva was completed, not going anywhere. Obviously he couldn't live at GAINAX building at THAT point.

And later - before work on End of Evangelion began in earnest - he went to trip, IIRC to scuba dive in southern Japan (Okinawa mayhap). If Anno ever lived in GAINAX studio around the eva period it was either during making tv series or End of Evangelion.

So it's hard to say for sure. I'm most interested in the whole deal with leg of Anno's father but we don't have anything definitive on that either.

Once again, the miniscule amount of late90s Japanese sources we have avalaible hampers the progress towards higher knowledge :P

[The Eva Monkey]

Rumors about Anno and Evangelion are over-exaggerated in my opinion.

Remember the "Four Barons of Hell"?

I have never heard anything credible about Anno in regards to suicide. I think the most telling account comes from him:

I tried to include everything of myself in Neon Genesis Evangelion-myself, a broken man who could do nothing for four years. A man who ran away for four years, one who was simply not dead. Then one thought. "You can't run away," came to me, and I restarted this production. It is a production where my only thought was to burn my feelings into film. I know my behavior was thoughtless, troublesome, and arrogant.

Source: http://www.evamonkey.com/writings_anno01.php

It does sound along the same lines. But I would point out that it is more along the lines of apathy than anything else. I imagine he shares similar views on death/suicide as Shinji, that it would be convenient to "get in an accident and die", but otherwise being incapable of actually committing the act.

People see Evangelion, and they think some messed up, suicidal person made it. They see FLCL and they think some crazy crack head made it. People just can't understand that otherwise sane people just need to vent certain things in a constructive, creative manner. So they have to come up with something out of the norm to explain it, and that develops a life of its own. Ever heard that Evangelion was Anno's way of dealing with his father's death? Totally bogus.

[NAveryW]

Rumors about Anno and Evangelion are over-exaggerated in my opinion.

I'm skeptical that they even exist.

[InstrumentalityOne]

Gah, you just scared the shit out of me for a second or two.

I thought that the thread was about recent events.

[Sailor Star Dust]

I remember ages ago, I read about a rumor that Anno's wife and child (lolwut) died in a car accident during or after Nadia, supposedly explaining why he was depressed during NGE.

It just goes to show that you can't trust everything you read and SAUCE is a good thing.

[backseatjesus]

So, what about the lyrics of Komm, süsser Tod? I read that the lyrics were taking from his "suicide note." I don't remember the source though.

[gwern]

So anyway, I'd like to know if there's any more information on Anno's apparent suicide attempt that forced him to live at the GAINAX building.

I wonder if it's a distorted echo of when he was living in a house ('GAINAX House') with other Gainaxers, described in The Notenki Memoirs? This was the start of their move to Tokyo, so well before Evangelion.

(I've been thinking that I ought to type up TNM. It's very useful, but the scan is too damn hard to search or distribute. EDIT: I ultimately did work up a very nice e-book of TNM. Google for it.)

So, what about the lyrics of Komm, süsser Tod? I read that the lyrics were taking from his "suicide note." I don't remember the source though.

I've never heard anything like that as I've researched it; nor do the Japanese lyrics make sense outside of an EoE context, IMO. If they were based on an actual suicide note, it must have been very loosely...

[1731298478]

Anno actually talks about this at length in one of the JUNE interviews discussed here some time ago. (Many, many, many thanks to Ilari for scanning them, and to LiLi as well.) That conversation includes Nobita Nobi, a.k.a. Nariko Enomoto, a manga/doujinshi author and critic, and deals with Eva generally.

The general idea is that Anno suffered a kind of breakdown after the series finished. During this time he continued to live at Gainax and didn't want to return to his home. The story of the "suicide attempt" comes from Anno climbing up to the roof of the Gainax building and sticking his foot out over the edge to see if he would jump off. He wanted to figure out whether or not he really wanted to die. In the end he didn't jump off, so deep down he wanted to live.

If I can at some point figure out how to render this story in at least a semi-accurate way I'll try to post a translation of it.

[NAveryW]

Very good to finally have some concrete information. Does "after the series finished" mean before or after End of Evangelion? If it's before I probably won't be able to look at the opening scene of EoE (pre-hospital) as anything other than the aftermath of a suicide attempt, futile as trying to drown oneself in such a manner is.

[1731298478]

Very good to finally have some concrete information. Does "after the series finished" mean before or after End of Evangelion? If it's before I probably won't be able to look at the opening scene of EoE (pre-hospital) as anything other than the aftermath of a suicide attempt, futile as trying to drown oneself in such a manner is.

It was, indeed, before EoE. The interview is dated August 22, 1996, about a year before EoE was released. The TV series finished, I think, in March 1996.

[child of Lilith]

Thanks for the information, 1731298478. I'd always been wondering what the story behind his supposed suicide attempt was.

[esselfortium]

Very good to finally have some concrete information. Does "after the series finished" mean before or after End of Evangelion? If it's before I probably won't be able to look at the opening scene of EoE (pre-hospital) as anything other than the aftermath of a suicide attempt, futile as trying to drown oneself in such a manner is.

The whole movie is a metaphor for suicide; an actual attempted suicide would be severely redundant.

[NAveryW]

The whole movie is a metaphor for suicide; an actual attempted suicide would be severely redundant.

When I first read this I thought you were joking that Anno actually attempting suicide would be severely redundant and I laughed.

[esselfortium]

Lolol. Either way, while he undoubtedly put himself into Eva, I don't think we should be taking it as his video diary.

[gwern]

It was, indeed, before EoE. The interview is dated August 22, 1996, about a year before EoE was released. The TV series finished, I think, in March 1996.

Besides the date of the interview, I would point out that internal evidence suggests pre-EoE - Anno wouldn't need to live at Gainax after the series was done and they were considering D&R and EoE. From the testimony of Takeda, Gainax's then-building wasn't the most comfortable place to live.

[Six Winged Angel]

Anno actually talks about this at length in one of the JUNE interviews discussed here some time ago. (Many, many, many thanks to Ilari for scanning them, and to LiLi as well.) That conversation includes "Nobita Nobi," a.k.a. Nariko Enomoto, a manga/doujinshi author and critic, and deals with Eva generally.

The general idea is that Anno suffered a kind of breakdown after the series finished. During this time he continued to live at Gainax and didn't want to return to his home. The story of the "suicide attempt" comes from Anno climbing up to the roof of the Gainax building and sticking his foot out over the edge to see if he would jump off. He wanted to figure out whether or not he really wanted to die. In the end he didn't jump off, so deep down he wanted to live.

If I can at some point figure out how to render this story in at least a semi-accurate way I'll try to post a translation of it.

Excellent find! Thank you very much for the information! Could you please name the exact interview and it's origin? I want to try and include it as a resource for a case study I'm doing around NGE. Thanks

[gwern]

Excellent find! Thank you very much for the information! Could you please name the exact interview and it's origin? I want to try and include it as a resource for a case study I'm doing around NGE. Thanks

Look through http://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/tag/june and for context find the thread on the Evageeks forum discussing all this.

The date of the interview is already given, so you can infer that it was probably the September or October issue of _JUNE_, since IIRC magazines usually published a bit in advance, so any interview conducted in August would have to be published after August. But probably the date is when it was published, in which case we should look for any interview in the August _JUNE_.

This seems to be the case if you look at http://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/622.html which mentions interviews in August and November issues of _JUNE_, one conducted with that mangaka, and looking at a scanned interview http://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/7236.html , not all the pictures are of Anno but some are of a pudgy-looking woman... Unfortunately only a few snippets seem to've been translated: http://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/7611.html

[Six Winged Angel]

Look through http://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/tag/june and for context find the thread on the Evageeks forum discussing all this.

The date of the interview is already given, so you can infer that it was probably the September or October issue of _JUNE_, since IIRC magazines usually published a bit in advance, so any interview conducted in August would have to be published after August. But probably the date is when it was published, in which case we should look for any interview in the August _JUNE_.

This seems to be the case if you look at http://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/622.html which mentions interviews in August and November issues of _JUNE_, one conducted with that mangaka, and looking at a scanned interview http://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/7236.html , not all the pictures are of Anno but some are of a pudgy-looking woman... Unfortunately only a few snippets seem to've been translated: http://the-liliquarium.livejournal.com/7611.html

Many thanks m(_ _)m Your post totally covered what I needed!

[gwern]

Lolol. Either way, while he undoubtedly put himself into Eva, I don't think we should be taking it as his video diary.

As ever we do need to be careful. But this interview changes my appraisal of a number of things. I had lowered my belief in a few sources because they had mentioned or alluded to an attempt or plan on Anno's part, in part because I thought I could trust Yamaga when he said (2 years after Anno publicly talked about a suicide attempt to _June_):

YAMAGA: As far as Mr. Anno committing suicide or anything like that [LAUGHS], I’m not really sure how to say this, but, while sometimes he might seem very emotional, when you get to know him, he doesn’t come off like that at all. [LAUGHS]

Well. 2010 has certainly been a year for damaging the credence I put in Yamaga. Our most voluble Anglophone primary source (who frequently visits the US where we can ask him questions in person), too.