TV Production Timeline

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UrsusArctos
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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby UrsusArctos » Mon Jun 07, 2021 5:34 am

For what it's worth, I found a 1998 interview between Krystian Woznicki and Japanese cultural critic Azuma Hiroki that features Azuma's take on the entire Evangelion-Aum situation. According to Azuma, it was the fear of being misconstrued and "lowering Evangelion's imaginative potential" - not sure if those were Azuma's words or Anno's, because Azuma had spoken to Anno about it.

Krystian Woznicki: So Anno changed the original plot of the story when he
saw the news about the invasion of Aum's hide out by the police. Did he
change it because it was too close to reality?

Azuma Hiroki: Yes, he said so.


It's from this site-
https://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/ ... 00101.html

I also found this, which I remember reading AGES ago -
http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic01 ... uma_E.html

Going by what Azuma said, your speculation seems to be entirely on the money about why Anno decided not to air something of the sort, especially around the anniversary of Aum getting raided.
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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby Szmitten » Mon Jun 07, 2021 9:11 am

View Original PostFelipeFritschF wrote:This is all quite fascinating... at some point I'd still like to put this on the wiki, but I'll need all the sources. Production is probably the single most common area that, ahem, births misconceptions since it's shrouded in lots of myths, like the ever enduring death threats once. Then again, to a lot of people the truth can never get in the way of a good story...

Some time ago someone mentioned to me finding an interview mentioning, for isntance, that the Director's Cuts episodes consisted of stuff they had to cut due to the time issues, not anything they truly thought of ad hoc. This would shut down the argument that they consist a form of retcon and maybe that they aren't the "original intention" - I can already see a sourced mention to that on the Common Misconceptions and What is Canon page. Alas, that person never returned to me with that interview...

View Original PostCarl Horn#414765 wrote:Tsurumaki has also said that the extra footage in the Director's Cut isn't all that important, and was mainly put in to apologize to the fans who waited for the video release--yet there are still plenty of fans who use that footage to help them understand the series. Tsurumaki also said that fans shouldn't "drag the past around" and become fixated on Evangelion, and that we should "find the next thing that interests you." And yet, in 2011 here we are--and for that matter, here is Tsurumaki, still making new Evangelion.


I don't think he mentioned where Tsurumaki said this, but I trust him to be accurate.


It's selfish of me, but I'm resistant to this information being presented on the wiki due to its totally scuffed and unsourced state. A lot of it is accumulated corroborations from many sources to create a canon factual soup in my mind, and parsing everything back out again is tricky, but there's usually two or more sources from within the production team itself or something empirical. As an example, I spent a long time wondering about TV ratings and the existence of a "Rebirth isn't complete, sorry" announcement, and those were eventually found by something as simple as switching the Wikipedia page to the Japanese one (with the english one for example at times stating the exact opposite for some information), among other Japanese fansites to back it up and seeing various quirks of the cultural zeitgeist. (As an aside, Eva's 6:30pm run had high ratings and did better than every Gundam before and since with the exception of Zeta, which had the benefit of being advertised as the sequel to the hit movie trilogy Gundam, Eva is an original IP; the 2:55am reruns in the lead up to Death & Rebirth were lower but steady and good. And the press conference regarding D&R is fascinating because I found a Japanese Eva collector who acquired a press release with "Rebirth 2"; posters with "The End of Evangelion" on it despite it not being named that yet; a diagram showing how the TV series, Death, Rebirth, and Rebirth 2 are placed and overlap (Rebirth 2 stretches beyond EoTV hrm); and the runtimes of the movies showing that EoE was extended by 16 mins.)

Death threats are overstated and are mainly representative of the mainstream attention they received and attracted weirdos who weren't actually talking about Evangelion at all, and most/all of the material you see flashing in EoE are reconstructions by the production team. I don't doubt that there were some, but anyone can say they'll kill anyone over anything.

I'm extremely Japan centric for this information because it gets messy once we leave Japan, but we have to understand the quirks of Eva's Japanese release. There is no "Director's Cut" in Japan, those are the literal first and main versions released on video, with the "on-air versions" (not actually versions released on-air) coming later in collections. These versions primarily received animation fixes and redraws, and received a bunch of footage made for Death. Due to this (primarily trying to milk Death, why Death true exists as a TV edit without the new scenes so fans couldn't just record them and skip buying more videos or skip Revival Of Evangelion) there was a 14 month gap between the #18-19 videos and the #20'-#21' videos. They were originally monthly-bimonthly. I can't overstate how trash the home release was, if you started with VHS/Laserdisc you'd have had to consider starting again with DVDs halfway through or seriously buy dead formats to complete your collection in 1999.

View Original PostUrsusArctos wrote:For what it's worth, I found a 1998 interview between Krystian Woznicki and Japanese cultural critic Azuma Hiroki that features Azuma's take on the entire Evangelion-Aum situation. According to Azuma, it was the fear of being misconstrued and "lowering Evangelion's imaginative potential" - not sure if those were Azuma's words or Anno's, because Azuma had spoken to Anno about it.

Krystian Woznicki: So Anno changed the original plot of the story when he
saw the news about the invasion of Aum's hide out by the police. Did he
change it because it was too close to reality?

Azuma Hiroki: Yes, he said so.


It's from this site-
https://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/ ... 00101.html

I also found this, which I remember reading AGES ago -
http://www.ntticc.or.jp/pub/ic_mag/ic01 ... uma_E.html

Going by what Azuma said, your speculation seems to be entirely on the money about why Anno decided not to air something of the sort, especially around the anniversary of Aum getting raided.


Considering the stuff that's alluded to re: Misato, Ritsuko, Asuka, elements were clearly there, but the timeslot and immediate memories of that date were clearly the problem. The fact that they got away with it in uncut extended format twice over with Rebirth and EoE on the second anniversary shows that. Or rather, Evangelion was accepted and a phenomenon and not a theoretical that might fall apart before the end with the addition of that controversy.

We have to remember that despite knowing how it turned out, at the time everything ahead was uncertain. It's tempting to think the original #25 would resemble #25', because we know that retroactively and have a 25' to compare it to. But in reality, while it would have had Misato dead in a hallway and Ritsuko floating in LCL and Asuka in her plug, the circumstances would had to have been different. At least different enough that there wasn't an obvious #26 to be born of it.
SPOILER: Show
I get the impression that everyone would be unambiguously killed without a tang analogue, and where the hell do you go from there? Set #26 in their minds and redo #25 to gloss over the apocalypse.


edit/addendum: A problem with a lot of Eva discussion is that there's a lot of talk of "original intent" and "true vision" with the implication of these things being compromised. Like most productions, ideas change naturally and the final product is created with these changes. As viewers, just because we see the final product first and hear news of previous/alternative versions, we like to think of that version as a concrete thing that had to changed due to outside influence, when in reality it's totally normal and all works in progress are fluid.

So Anno changed the original plot of the story when he saw the news about the invasion of Aum's hide out by the police.

Like many things, this sentence gives the wrong impression of the timescale. The gas attack happened while episodes 1, 2, 5, 6, and possibly most of the first half was in some stage of active production, and the raids happened in the weeks/months after that. But #25 wasn't changed until later, in fact #25 was rewritten after #26 had been worked out, from an Anno quote, and those two episodes were done in the last few days the schedule allowed. For context, that doesn't mean a few days before broadcast, it's the last few days of the writing schedule, which I believe is this repeated "3 month before broadcast" timing. I know this because despite quotes assserting that #24 was made in 3 weeks and #26 in 3 days and such, these quotes are out of context and not referring to the entirety of their productions, it's only a part of them. We know this because, from a quote about the VA's and animators having a party, #25 was dubbed and #26 was being animated in February. And Kaworu was decided to be important enough to be included in the OP storyboards by August 1995 despite 24 not being worked on proper until just before 25/26 were.

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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby eldomtom2 » Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:45 am

View Original PostSzmitten wrote:Also, Leliel was 100% not digital, it's a painting.

I'm sorry, but where is your source for this? Art in the Production Art Collection has notes saying that Leliel's patterns "will be done on a Mac" and so the animators should not worry about drawing them.
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.

You should be more clear with what is speculative then, especially since you're also claiming to have sources for everything.

And re: the sarin gas attack, yes, the similarities to raids was what I was getting at.

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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby UrsusArctos » Mon Jun 28, 2021 11:56 am

View Original Posteldomtom2 wrote:I'm sorry, but where is your source for this? Art in the Production Art Collection has notes saying that Leliel's patterns "will be done on a Mac" and so the animators should not worry about drawing them.


It is quite possible that Leliel's patterns were done on a Mac as a reference for the animators, but there's no doubt that the Leliel seen in the show is traditional hand-drawn animation. Do you have an exact page number or citation for the Production Art Collection notes? We have a couple of folks here who might be able to translate it and clear any confusion on that point.

You should be more clear with what is speculative then, especially since you're also claiming to have sources for everything.


He was already quite clear that some of his material was speculative, and I don't recall him claiming he had "sources for everything"? Perhaps it would help if you quoted the parts that you wish clarified, because it seems that you misunderstand his intentions in this thread. Szmitten is trying to be helpful with the information he has, and is not trying to make inflated claims or pass off speculation as fact.
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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby Szmitten » Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:27 pm

The Production Arts Collection is one of those things I'd like to have a hold of but don't, and something that if people have it I'd appreciate every date attached to every drawing (whether AD or Heisei) in that thing because as it stands the dates are wiped off of everything past the midpoint of the series and all I have to go on are low-resolution flipthroughs on Youtube.

Re: Leliel, I spend a lot of time looking at cels and am very aware of the transition to digital and am very familiar with how they look. It's a painting. Leliel is entirely static too so there's no reason to go digital instead of painting anyway. Maybe they intended it to animated with rorschach swirls at some point but it didn't happen? At first I actually wasn't sure if you were referring to Leliel itself or it's shadow effect - which has more reason to be done digitally.

To be entirely fair, I should have made a bibliography during the process, but this also wasn't/isn't intended for public consumption. I did the wrong thing and, by checking, corroborating, and discounting various sources, created a generic "fact soup" in my head with which to approach everything. It's inconvenient for everyone else, but it's more useful to me to be able to know that: a) the future Revolutionary Girl Utena guys drank with Gainax animators in January and was told the ending would involve the characters standing up on stage from an interview I can no longer find, and that b) episode 25 was fully dubbed before 4th March 1996 because of a caption on a photo I've never seen, because I can then c) completely discount an Irish journalist who worked for Gonzo who sounds authoritative but is clearly full of shit when he suggests #25 was made in a week and thinks that #24DC's #25 preview was contemporary.

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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby Lacissal » Tue Jun 29, 2021 5:36 am

View Original PostSzmitten wrote: but it's more useful to me to be able to know that: a) the future Revolutionary Girl Utena guys drank with Gainax animators in January and was told the ending would involve the characters standing up on stage from an interview I can no longer find, and that b) episode 25 was fully dubbed before 4th March 1996 because of a caption on a photo I've never seen, because I can then c) completely discount an Irish journalist who worked for Gonzo who sounds authoritative but is clearly full of shit when he suggests #25 was made in a week and thinks that #24DC's #25 preview was contemporary.


It's hopefully this very long interview with the BL magazine June Anno did:

SPOILER: Show
Anno: No, although that’s there, too. But that’s the methodology to the end. The
idea of a play within a play and making it like a stage came to me at the last
moment, but Shinji-kun went on looking at not only the surfaces of strangers, but
their pasts… No matter what kind of person it is, is it not the case that they have
filthy aspects?
----
Interviewer: It wasn’t a dramatic thing in the original plans?

Anno: We worked in a little more drama. We were still doing things as we’d intended
to do them up until that point around Episode 25, though. If we did the one with the
Misato and Asuka that Shinji saw, that’d be okay for the time being. Also, the plan
was for Asuka to get back on her feet in Episode 25. No good, isn’t it. Difficult,
isn’t it.

Interviewer: What about in relation to Father?

Anno: The old man is, well, it’s the ending, isn’t it? The parts with the friends
and strangers come in Episode 25, and the parts with the blood relations come in the
final episode, etc.

Interviewer: So you’re not particularly out to kill him? *laughs*

Anno: I don’t know. Well, we used it once, so it’s kind of tight, wouldn’t you say?
Whether or not we can do the same thing once again is… People don’t forget and a
laser disc has two episodes, so I can’t repeat the same idea.

Interviewer: You mean to say that you hadn’t planned to broadcast the scene from the
beginning?

Anno: No, I’d planned to broadcast it. I said to put the play within a play part
into the scene in the end. In short, a drama meeting coming out on TV—is that what
you’d call it?

Interviewer: Is that so… So, was it as though you, yourself just went and filmed it
on the spot, Anno-san?

Anno: I thought about doing it, you know. But I was told, I couldn’t, and… No,
though I was saying that I’d seriously do that—a half part. From the department, I
was told to cut that out. We knew even before December that, past episode 22, the
quality of the visual aspects couldn’t be maintained. About three months prior, when
we went to cut out the calculated schedule that would follow, we realized, “Ah! It’s
too late!” In those situations, there are a number of options available, you know.
Among those, I think we chose the tightest one.


Source: https://17th-angel.tumblr.com/post/62760437979/anno-hideki-long-interview-part-1-i-think-that

^as for episode 25 being made in a week I thought there was a quote from one of the Eva staff that it was assembled in something like 3 days, though I could be mistaken.

UrsusArctos wrote:For what it's worth, I found a 1998 interview between Krystian Woznicki and Japanese cultural critic Azuma Hiroki that features Azuma's take on the entire Evangelion-Aum situation. According to Azuma, it was the fear of being misconstrued and "lowering Evangelion's imaginative potential" - not sure if those were Azuma's words or Anno's, because Azuma had spoken to Anno about it.



similar to the Woznicki interview, there was one with (I think Sadamoto) reproduced on a Yahoo page that got 404'd when I went to re-read it last year where he said a similar thing that after the police raid Anno didn't so much scrap the 'Nerv is raided by the security forces' plot but just 'postponed' it (to EoE), though this last part didn't sound particularly convincing. In that interview he seems to be referencing an earlier version of the finale as he mentioned one idea for the ending was to be a Gunbuster-like scene of 'the children being told to "Live!" followed by a timeskip and a message written on the surface of the moon'

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Postby Szmitten » Tue Jun 29, 2021 8:58 am

I don't think that was it. I also found that source painfully selective about what they had translated.

There's a lot of weird "Masayuki made #24 singlehandedly in 3 weeks" and "#26 was made with 3 days left in the schedule" quotes which have to be taken out of context and are talking about something specific because they're impossible taken at face value.

I do recall several instances from Anno wanting the protagonist being a girl again to a Gunbuster ending again to a Nadia ending again and Sadamoto being identified as the one to constantly push him towards something different.

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Postby Lacissal » Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:51 am

View Original PostSzmitten wrote:I don't think that was it. I also found that source painfully selective about what they had translated.

There's a lot of weird "Masayuki made #24 singlehandedly in 3 weeks" and "#26 was made with 3 days left in the schedule" quotes which have to be taken out of context and are talking about something specific because they're impossible taken at face value.

I do recall several instances from Anno wanting the protagonist being a girl again to a Gunbuster ending again to a Nadia ending again and Sadamoto being identified as the one to constantly push him towards something different.


I think the discussion with the Utena staff comes from here:

I think it was January 1996 when the LD commentary staff got together for drinks.
There were some people from Gainax with us, and they explained to us the content of
the final two episodes. That was the first time we learned of the contents of the
final two episodes. According to the explanation at that time, the main characters
would each take turns appearing on the screen, and we would be told why [or maybe in
what way?] that character had to be complimented. The individual characters were
samples proving that human beings were an imperfect existence. Since we had already
had a few drinks, we thought this was some kind of joke and didn't take it
seriously.


http://www.style.fm/as/05_column/animesama58.shtml

I half remember an interview where Anno said something about wanting live action in the last episode, something like 'the walls falling back and exposing the nature of the production' (this was possibly in Schizo/Parano). You can see from interviews around the end of the broadcast he was quite taking by the idea of producing an anime like a live performance/live theatre. The statements on Masayuki putting together ep 24 in 3 weeks and ep 25 being done in 3 days seem to come from here (see '7. The Production of Eva'), a summary of the translation of the second half of the June interview which I can't seem to find online

https://forum.evageeks.org/post/425333/NGE-Ep24-Script-First-and-Second-Drafts/#425333

The 'protagonist was going to be a girl' interview but Sadamoto had them change it as they had female leads in Gunbuster and Nadia is I think from Der Mond/Die Sterne or was included in the manga, though I think I'm mentally mixing up several interviews which I found I unintentionally do a lot.

Sadamoto: I think that we expected the "grand finale" of the initial planning stages
to be more conventional. In the finale, there was going to be a scene with a fight
against angels on the surface of the moon. And then, after a number of years had
passed, a message would be written on the moon's surface. We discussed something
like that, something along the lines of "Gunbuster."

貞本 実は最初の企画段階でも、最終話の構成案、あったんですよ。そこでのセリフって、まんま『ナディア』でしたからね。セリフまで同じで。なんてセリフだったかな。

佐藤 「生きろ」とか。

貞本 そうそう、親父が「生きろ」とか言うんだ。そんな感じでした。

Sadamoto: The truth is that in the initial planning stages, there was a draft
outline of the final episode. There were lines in it that were exactly the same as
"Nadia." Even the lines were the same - what were the lines?

Sato: "Live!" and so on.

Sadamoto: Right, the father says "live!" and so forth. It was something like that.

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Postby Szmitten » Tue Jun 29, 2021 11:46 am

An important aspect that doesn't get discussed often is actual anime production. I recommend watching Shirobako to give a basic idea for modern anime, but Evangelion, in addition to using cels and photography, was also far more freelance and less in-house than even Shirobako implies (which already has a lot of specialised freelancers working from home and studios book their expertise and have production assistants literally hand delivering materials back and forth).

As much as Gainax is(/was) credited, Eva is not a Gainax anime. At the time, it was primarily a video game studio, with apparently only 3-4 animators at a time working on Evangelion. Tatsunoko did the bulk of the work. Outsourced episodes like the Korean(?) #6, Ghibli's #11, Production IG's #13 and #18, due to professionalism, generally would get those materials sooner than in-house so that they could be given a few extra months grace to work on them.

But Tatsunoko isn't an all-in-one studio either. Background paintings are provided by another studio. Animators and painters are not going to be near each other because they're different skill sets. The cel photography is done in a completely different company who specialise in it. Dubbing is done off-site. It's many people and many companies. And sometimes stuff gets lost in transit too (Asuka Strikes, and the effects of losing its genga contributed to her new entrance in 2.0).

It's a lot of work with a lot of moving pieces, and regardless of reused footage/cels, hand-drawn pen and paper, slideshows, or any other visual compromises, any suggestion (even from official sources or Anno's mouth) that a 20 minute episode can be slapped together in less than a few weeks is either crazy talk or the statement has been recontextualised. Especially when we know some things had to exist at certain points.

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Postby Lacissal » Tue Jun 29, 2021 4:02 pm

View Original PostSzmitten wrote: and what was Anno/everyone doing from March-September 1996 since I'm not convinced they were working.


Here's two passages from an interview with Sato and Sadamoto, largely about the planned original film that fell through.

Sadamoto: But they had been working forever on the TV series, and the entire staff
needed to catch their breath. "You're telling us to keep going on with this
difficult work for just one more year?" The whole staff was worn out, Anno included.

Sato: Because of that, when the TV series was finished Anno-san announced that we
would take half a year off to rehabilitate before resuming work on the video
version, and that we could work out the schedule to accommodate this. However, he
was also then thinking about an original full-length [film].

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Postby Szmitten » Tue Jun 29, 2021 5:24 pm

That makes sense. That time has been alternately described as a deliberate break but also Anno running away for 6 months. That said, he still did a bit of publicity for Eva once the ending was broadcast, because of course it did.

They'd have to have been working on some scripts, and I wish that leaked one was dated, but it is pretty funny that from all production records they really did start up 6 months later. They legitimately thought they could make a feature film in the same amount of time it took them to make most episodes.

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Postby eldomtom2 » Wed Jul 14, 2021 5:07 am

View Original PostSzmitten wrote: with apparently only 3-4 animators at a time working on Evangelion.

What's the precise source on this? I've heard it before but IIRC it could be interpreted differently.
Korean(?) #6

Also what's the source on this? I remember reading something about Korean studios in the famous anonymous article, who's legitmacy we still don't know.

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Postby Szmitten » Wed Jul 14, 2021 8:46 am

View Original Posteldomtom2 wrote:
View Original PostSzmitten#925572 wrote: with apparently only 3-4 animators at a time working on Evangelion.

What's the precise source on this? I've heard it before but IIRC it could be interpreted differently.
Korean(?) #6

Also what's the source on this? I remember reading something about Korean studios in the famous anonymous article, who's legitmacy we still don't know.


I tried to look them up but I've apparently lost both.

My understanding is that Gainax The Animation Studio, after having made Nadia, was in the shit because they didn't own Royal Space Force, Gunbuster, or Nadia (Bandai and NHK) and that despite the success of Nadia, they actually lost money. In the downtime between Nadia and Evangelion, Blue Uru also fell apart, so they had nothing to do for a few years. In the interim, Gainax The Video Game Company and Gainax The Model Kit company were doing well and were making what little money they could get to stay afloat. In the event of Evangelion's failure, Gainax would have had to shift entirely to games and abandon anime. But yeah, my vague memory is that there were a few dozen employees in the other departments, including some of the anime teams (since the appeal of the games is that they were being made by actual anime animators) and the reason Anno wasn't going to have Gainax work on it in the first place, and the reason Tatsunoko had to be brought in at all, is because Gainax would only be able to contribute a handful of animators, some dedicated to the series, and some they'd have to rotate in and out from the game department. You can generally see this on the credits page on animenewsnetwork clicking on random animators; most are not dedicated Gainax employees, and seem to be freelance generally.

Per the question mark regarding Korean studios, I'm not sure if it actually is; I do know that Gunbuster and Nadia had Korean studios working on them, and Nadia had Korean directors for episodes which bothered some at Gainax, so it's not unprecedented. I'm not certain, but I think the general fucky appearance of episode 6 generally led people to believe this in the first place. But also, they're not literally shipping an entire episode's materials and having it entirely outsourced, every episode is a collab. There's half a dozen background painting studios, Shaft painted cels for 8-9, Studio Deen did in-betweening, etc. Anime is rarely all in-house.

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Postby eldomtom2 » Wed Jul 14, 2021 5:51 pm

View Original PostSzmitten wrote:My understanding is that Gainax The Animation Studio, after having made Nadia, was in the shit because they didn't own Royal Space Force, Gunbuster, or Nadia (Bandai and NHK) and that despite the success of Nadia, they actually lost money.

From Michael House's interview, they didn't own anything except the Daicon Film stuff, which obviously was worthless.
But yeah, my vague memory is that there were a few dozen employees in the other departments, including some of the anime teams (since the appeal of the games is that they were being made by actual anime animators) and the reason Anno wasn't going to have Gainax work on it in the first place, and the reason Tatsunoko had to be brought in at all, is because Gainax would only be able to contribute a handful of animators, some dedicated to the series, and some they'd have to rotate in and out from the game department. You can generally see this on the credits page on animenewsnetwork clicking on random animators; most are not dedicated Gainax employees, and seem to be freelance generally.

I have seen the claim floating around various times, but always sourceless and with a tendency to mutate between statements. The most that I think can be comfortably claimed is that a relatively low number of the animation staff was from Gainax. Pre- and post-production staff is a different matter.
But also, they're not literally shipping an entire episode's materials and having it entirely outsourced, every episode is a collab.

Yes, but you placed it with stuff like Ghibli doing episode 11. I've never seen any source for a Korean studio doing key animation on Eva.

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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby Szmitten » Wed Jul 14, 2021 9:54 pm

I have seen the claim floating around various times, but always sourceless and with a tendency to mutate between statements. The most that I think can be comfortably claimed is that a relatively low number of the animation staff was from Gainax. Pre- and post-production staff is a different matter.

I mean, the statement I read that I can't find again was that "Gainax was only able to contribute 3-4 animators to Evangelion at a time" which is consistent with Gainax's lack of animation activity at the time, their focus on non-anime projects, the fact that they weren't Anno's initial choice, and the fact that Tatsunoko was their partner and provided the bulk of the base workforce. But also, anime isn't always like video game studios or offices where they nail down employees, in anime it's much more freelance. Do a background check on any key animator from any episode of Evangelion and they either rarely work on Gainax projects or they jumped over to help Sunrise with Outlaw Star when Eva ended.

But yes, I can't re-find the original "3-4" statement.

Yes, but you placed it with stuff like Ghibli doing episode 11. I've never seen any source for a Korean studio doing key animation on Eva.

I had a question mark because there is certainly something up with that episode and that was a thing I had heard, but I still doubt it and can't find any Korean staff. Hence the (?).

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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby UrsusArctos » Wed Jul 14, 2021 10:42 pm

Yeah, the sheer number of off-model character designs and animation bloopers in Episode 06 is pretty awful.

According to ANN Studio Ghibli was uncredited for the animation work in Episode 11 (you'd have to scroll down that page some distance to see the entry: Animation: Studio Ghibli (uncredited; ep 11) ). It's fairly possible that whatever studio was responsible for Episode 06's bad animation was left uncredited, whether on purpose or by accident.
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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby Szmitten » Thu Jul 15, 2021 8:25 am

Also worth keeping in mind the production order was 1-2, 5-6, then 3-4, and the staff finding it too dreary pushed the tone to lighten in time for 8. So they were still probably finding their feet in terms of style (and honestly don't find it until 15/16, with 17 being the weird last gasp).

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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby eldomtom2 » Fri Jul 16, 2021 5:35 am

View Original PostUrsusArctos wrote: It's fairly possible that whatever studio was responsible for Episode 06's bad animation was left uncredited, whether on purpose or by accident.

Which, of course, does not necessarily mean it was Korean.

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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby TMBounty_Hunter » Sun Jul 10, 2022 4:46 pm

I guess this is mostly related, at least enough that I don't think it warrants its own thread. Lately I've been finding myself digging through 90s physical media and it got me curious as to what information was officially publicly available at the time leading up to the series.

Let's call it the TV Promotion Timeline. This is what I've managed to cobble together so far and would appreciate if anyone has any more info.

SPOILER: Show
NOTE: Magazine issue numbers and their street date usually don't align, sometimes being as far as 2 months difference.


June 1994 - GAINAX-NET fan letter announces new animation project. (Taken from Japanese wiki, anyone have more info?)
????? - Haven't been able to find in this date range
26 November 1994 - January 1995 issue of Monthly Shonen Ace magazine announces Sadamoto's manga will start in the next issue
26 December 1994 - February 1995 issue of Monthly Shonen Ace debuts 1st chapter and continues monthly
10 February 1995 - March 1995 issue of Monthly Newtype magazine has a preview of the April issue at the end with Eva-01 settei promising new information about Gainax's new Evangelion anime
10 March 1995 - April 1995 issue of Monthly Newtype magazine comes with a cover of Shinji and Eva-01 drawn by Suzuki Shunji. Article inside features main characters drawn by Takeshi Honda as well as some material from The Proposal while announcing the voice cast for Shinji, Rei, Asuka, Misato and Ritsuko
10 May 1995 - June 1995 issue of Monthly Newtype magazine has some character settei, promises more information in the next issue
10 June 1995 - July 1995 issue of Monthly Newtype magazine has an article with an illustration by Yoh Yoshinari and screencaps from episodes 1 and 2
22-23 July 1995 – Gainamatsuri Gainax Festival at Itako, Ibaraki, screens the first two episodes.
6 August 1995 - Wonder Festival 1995 Summer garage kit event showcases Eva-01 full model and bust sculpted by Haruki Yoshiyama to be used as references for animators
9 August 1995 - September 1995 issue of Monthly Newtype magazine has interview with Sadamoto about manga Volume 1 being published. Promises more info in the October issue.
9 September 1995 - October 1995 issue of Monthly Newtype magazine has Misato on the cover drawn by Suzuki Shunji. Inside is a 25 day countdown article featuring illustrations by Takeshi Honda and screenshots from episode 1-3. October issues of Animage and Animedia magazines also run articles (These two I know from the Die Sterne artbook they had articles, but don't have the magazines themselves to confirm the content).
25 September 1995 - November 1995 issue of Hobby Japan magazine has an event report for WF95S featuring the Eva-01 animator reference model
27 September 1995 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles airs its final episode and promotes Evangelion with shots from episodes 1, 5, and 8.
4 October 1995 - Episode 1 airs
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Re: TV Production Timeline

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Postby Szmitten » Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:09 pm

Gainax-Net is/was Gainax's official website with news, and I used it as a source for a number of announcements via Wayback Machine. Unfortunately for everyone else but fortunately for me, the extent is October 1996, where they reconfirm a May 1996 movie announcement and announce another, as described in my timeline. Going further back doesn't seem possible.


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