NemZ wrote:No, I meant that his looks are of the 'it will destroy you if you get close' type. For example, 'terrible beauty' is a great description for an atomic detonation.

Hmmm... that's an interesting comparison. But as far as I can tell, it seems more along the lines of terrifying as in chilling/unearthly/ghastly/hair-raising...

I went ahead and put these into the wiki (that was kind of annoying):

http://wiki.evageeks.org/Resources:Episode_24_Draft_1_(Translation)
http://wiki.evageeks.org/Resources:Episode_24_Draft_2_(Translation)

The translations are missing, of course. They're just placeholders for now.

^ What was annoying?

I thought I'd ask... did you ask for permission from the original website owner? (I worry people over there will get mad at the "Western Fans" again and start pulling down stuff... )

Just in case, I thought I'd mention - no summaries/translations of mine on the wiki, please. I've been explained that once my stuff is up there it belongs to the wiki and I lose any control whatsoever over it.

It was annoying because the speaker and the dialogue were in 2 different columns, so they weren't associated with each other at all in the HTML (imagine that all the speakers were at the top of the file and all the dialogue at the end of the file). Also, because I had to convert the SHIFT-JIS to UTF-8 in order to put it in the wiki.

I didn't ask the website's owner, since the website doesn't even exist anymore. I didn't ask the magazine either. If they have a issue (they probably won't even care) they'll email us and it'll get removed. Having this as a resource online is worth whatever miniscule risk there is. Just like the EoE stuff that was originally on that website. Incidentally, a good chunk of the wiki's traffic is now from residential IP addresses in Japan utilizing those transcripts. I don't think there's anything to worry about.

I didn't put your translations in the wiki for that reason. There was a bit of miscommunication with the "what's in the wiki belongs to the wiki" with the 2.0 subtitles since that doesn't apply to credited works (like translations), and it was more trouble to try to explain it than it's worth so I just didn't bother.

Talking about drafts:

http://ameblo.jp/tetsuyasan/entry-10351913360.html

Didn't quite understand this, but might be part of a draft for ep#8?

^ Maybe it's from one of those books published in Japan with, reportedly, somewhat WIP versions of the NGE scripts?

Speaking of scripts... Updating/editing the WIP summary links/posts with links to my LJ where the latest versions are.

:EDIT: Done! Not having to triple post every time I make an update will be great!

Xard wrote:

I just now found this thread (I've been kind of lurking the boards for the past few weeks due to other interests taking priority), and I'd like to thank Xard for summing up exactly what I was thinking as I read the first few pages. ;)

If anything, I think the final draft of 24 was written after the meds kicked in, because these early drafts containing a soul-shattering level of trollism. Not to come across as homophobic or anything, but DANG... That'd be like if when I was a kid, I saw Return of the Jedi and it ended like this:

Timstuff wrote:a soul-shattering level of trollism.

This is Anno we are talking about, remember.

By comparison though, that description made the Eva 2.0 spoilers look like a pleasant sTroll in the park on a sunny day.

Timstuff wrote:I think the final draft of 24 was written after the meds kicked in, because these early drafts containing a soul-shattering level of trollism. Not to come across as ROBOphobic...

Mr. Tines wrote:This is Anno we are talking about, remember.

A Troll is what he is, sTrolling is what he does.

You just need to look @ 24 with eyes unclouded, a wise man(?) used to say...

He probably spent good time huddled in a corner, crying over the missed opportunity to shatter some crunchy souls. Then he made EoE, and at least got to do the IMPALING right there on the big screen. A small consolation.

Must hide Anno's meds before he's done with RoE!

:EDIT:
@Timstuff: PSSSST, don't forget to wear your spoilertags here! They can see your naughty bits!

Timstuff wrote: these early drafts containing a soul-shattering level of trollism... Seeing her create a self-fulfilling prophecy that indirectly causes Shinji to go gay for Kaworu.

Andwhat exactly would be wrong about that, if that's the case I hope the latest works mean that Anno's kicked the meds for good...we may yet get to see Kaworu tuck the puppy in bed

LiLi wrote: A Troll is what he is, sTrolling is what he does.

You just need to look @ 24 with eyes unclouded, a wise man(?) used to say...

He probably spent good time huddled in a corner, crying over the missed opportunity to shatter some crunchy souls. Then he made EoE, and at least got to do the IMPALING right there on the big screen. A small consolation.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the scripts at all, they certainly would have fleshed out unfinished elements from the show. I guess the part about Shin-chan becoming Tabby-kun’s puppy might have bothered the viewers and the network but it wouldn’t have damaged the plot and things might have fit in better(Shinjuliet killing Kaworomeo kind of explains why that might have been enough for a full breakdown).

Poor Anno, I’m sure the “Committee” vetoing his project, and tightening his funds must have put him in a bad mood for by EoE

What really would have pissed people off though, is that after viewers spent most of the show either projecting themselves onto the show's protagonist or identifying with him, to have him turn gay near the end would have felt like felt akin to being hit on by someone of the same sex, and given that the show's primary audience was teenagers-- I think it's safe to say things would have gone downhill really fast, probably even worse than it did with the real ending. Also, Shinji's confession about having "never been in love" before meeting Kaworu would have mutually pissed off both the Asuka and Rei fanbases, so overall the fallout would have been beyond disastrous.

The one thing we've learned from all this is that this gives us a hint as to what limitations there might be on Anno's trollishness. At some point, someone saw the early drafts for this episode and pulled in the reins on it and we ended up with the final episode 24, so I suppose the question is ultimately whether Anno caved under external pressure (the network, the studio, fans, etc.), or if this was simply not the direction he wanted the story and character to go in and he pulled the plug on his own.

Timstuff wrote:What really would have pissed people off though, is that after viewers spent most of the show either projecting themselves onto the show's protagonist or identifying with him, to have him turn gay near the end...

You see, I think that's sort of the reason most people refuse to look at the actual episode 24 with eyes unclouded...

The homowhut elements are still there for those willing to see them, IMHO: you're just given more of a way out, a chance to refuse to, so to speak.

Also, AFAIK it would have anticipated the ep. 25 and 26 debacle by just one week...

Synapsid wrote: they certainly would have fleshed out unfinished elements from the show. I guess the part about Shin-chan becoming Tabby-kun’s puppy might have bothered the viewers and the network but it wouldn’t have damaged the plot and things might have fit in better(Shinjuliet killing Kaworomeo kind of explains why that might have been enough for a full breakdown).

I'm afraid I agree that whatever the reason that got Anno/Staff to change their plans, the end result was that some aspects of the show felt like they had failed to develop adequately: for example, I think Draft 1 would probably have made it easier for the audience to understand how shattered Shinjuliet felt after killing Kaworomeo.

It would have trolled the viewers something fierce - sure. But I don't think it would eventually have pushed away the audience for good: Eva Fans are clingy things, they complain and send death threats, but still end up buying the goodies!

Or, the fujoshi would have replaced the escaping fanbois! ;)

After all, it would have anticipated the WTF factor/reactions caused by episodes 25 and 26 by just one week...

Either way, it might have gone down in history as even more of a classic pioneering work, anticipating the times.

I think that ultimately, what they went with is what they should have, because the early drafts lacked any of the sort of ambiguity that the rest of the series is known for, and actually stripped away a lot of room for interpretation that previous events in the show had. In the final version, it's certainly up for debate as to whether Shinji saw Kaworu as being like a brother, or if there was something more to it than that, but in the early drafts it's pretty much an open-shut case of sexual experimentation, and even goes so far as to pretty much directly say Kaworu was the first time Shinji "fell in love."

That would have drastically changed the nature of his relationships with the women in his life, because then it calls into question whether or not Shinji even likes girls at all (even though there are plenty of (yaoi) fans who will argue that he doesn't regardless), and is simply a gay teenager who is still in the closet. Even if it was meant to portray Shinji as experimenting with his sexual orientation, the fact that his other relationships in the show are depicted as so ambiguous and yet the early drafts took such a direct approach with Kaworu is out of character for the show's writing style, because as I said before, it would have presented everything with no ambiguity and expected us to take it all at face value, with little to no room for interpretation.

Personally, I think they made the write call in going the direction they went in. The episode hints that Shinji might be confused about his sexuality, along with pretty much everything else in his life, but it doesn't try to shove the idea that Shinji is sexually attracted to Kaworu down our throats (pardon the expression). The real test of all this, I suppose, is what Anno does with the final two Rebuild movies. If his original design was that Kaworu was going to be Shinji's gay lover then it's quite possible to come out in the movies (again, pardon the expression), but if it was merely an over-embellishment of some of his notes by some of the writing staff, and the final version of e24 is his "corrected" version, then my guess it will be left up in the air (or possibly shoved into the background due to time constraints, as was much of Shinji's relationship with Asuka in 2.0).

I don't dislike e24 - I mostly think it felt too rushed and failed to deliver its potential to the fullest. But it certainly did have its merits, such as fuelling a decade + of debates!

I think we need to differentiate between what is "bad"/OOC and what makes us uncomfortable or we simply don't like though.

I like certain het relationships in the show - in fact, I'm a longtime Rei/Shinji fan. Rei is probably my favorite character in the whole show.

I feel some het-type retconning was literally shoved down our throats in view of/with EoE after the original series aired - even though there's still plenty of room for ambiguity there. It's just perhaps that people tend to be more forgiving if it's het?

Personally, I can appreciate subtlety and ambiguity - even though I've had enough of that with Japanese anime, TBH. It's gotten a tad old by now, especially since Yuri or het relationships are more often shoved down our throats with an unpleasant lack of grace, IMO.

So at times I'd like that safety blanket called ambiguity to be taken away to expose what lies underneath for a change.

I also fail to see how Shinji and Kaworu in e24 could be described as "like brothers" in the conventional sense of the word though.

I'm a bit partial to Draft 1 (vs Draft2) as of now, because while it's pretty obvious where Shinji's interests lie, it all has a certain grace, a certain way of not shoving the relationship down your throat too forcefully, it takes its time to develop the interaction and unveil the nature of the attraction. And Kaworu's feelings for Shinji are a bit more ambiguous, I feel. Draft 2... IIRC doesn't say anything about whether Shinji has an interest in the ladies in his life or not. So you have some ambiguity there even though the bath scene and the kiss scene are even more blatantly sexual/romantic than what you get in Draft 1. My main problem with Draft 2 though is not the lack of subtlety but its somewhat rushed pace, presumably due to their having to shove more events external to the relationship into the same timespan...

But the trolling 'eye-opening' and experimental value might have been worth it, IMO. Making people uncomfortable by subverting their expectations of the genre would have been very fitting, I think. The shocked reactions I have seen only serve to reinforce this impression. I realize this is weird coming from a R/S fangirl but, trolling the fans of both the main het!shinchan pairings simultaneously might have had some merit too...

I don't think Eva was ever about making you feel safe and comfortable - actually, IIRC, some Japanese commenters (I had posted an interview with one of them) said it was about lullying the otaku in a false sense of security in the first part of the show only to subvert it all in the second part. I think in this sense KawoShin would not have been OOC or out of place.

Also, EoE and the IMPALING.

I think the fact the often decried K/S fans actually had something of a point in their analysis, is bound to cause some discomfort in the fandom at large since they have been treated like visionaries by many for over a decade now...

As for Rebuild... it seems to me we're in a very interesting place right now so I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes us! ;) I'd like to add some more commentary on that but I'm not sure whether I should go crazy with spoiler tags or make a new thread?

:EDIT: I made a new thread for DraftsxRebuild-related discussion.

Ok, I think people just shouldn't yet call the drafts worse than the episode 24. First off, there's only summaries of the drafts translated, not the full drafts. So we actually don't yet see the whole picture, so IMO we can't compare them very well yet.

Secondly, of course the drafts were not produced. They're drafts, no aniamation or anything. So that way, it can never compare to the ep. 24.

So can we please get over the "omg, Shinji can't be gay"-phase now?

Because I don't think they changed the feelings. Shinji is still sexually confused by Kaworu like he was in ep. 24 and the manga. Kaworu is still mysterious, but I like how these drafts make him more of a character. I really think they intended to make Kaworu have a bigger role (as he has in the manga and maybe in RoE).

Besides, there is some really good writing right there. Sometimes it's so good that it makes me think that they very much intended to use them.

@Lament: I love the writing especially in the first draft... I know I've said it many times, but to me it reads almost like a short novel... :sighs dreamily:

Something a lot of people seem to get confused about regarding early drafts is that they seem to think that the first draft is the original vision, and that it's usually more faithful to what the story's architect wanted than the final product. In my own writing experience, I must say I usually hate my early drafts, because the vision of what I actually want to do with the story doesn't actually become clear until I've gotten the chance to see what options I have to work with. With some writers, they intentionally make each successive draft wildly different from the last so that they can pick and choose what they like best about each. I don't know what the process of Anno and his writing staff was for Eva, but whatever the case, just remember that early drafts need to be looked at as what they are-- early drafts, not lost pieces of canon.

LiLi wrote:I feel some het-type retconning was literally shoved down our throats in view of/with EoE after the original series aired

QFMFT.

The TV ending of Shinji's self-actualization didn't need any of that mushy stuff, and it just felt bolted on (imposed from without?), especially when stepping straight from On-Air to EoE.

Mr. Tines wrote:The TV ending of Shinji's self-actualization didn't need any of that mushy stuff, and it just felt bolted on (imposed from without?), especially when stepping straight from On-Air to EoE.

Would you mind elaborating on this? (I'm just wondering whether we're thinking of the same stuff... ;) )