I just watched the show for the first time (as a teenager who has had similar issues to the characters, mainly Asuka) and I've been reading up on all these theories as everyone does after finishing the show. And I keep seeing people say the show was created as a way of telling Otaku's to stop living in their dream world and that Anno once said it is useless for non anime watchers to see End of Evangelion. I whole heartedly agree that people should live in the real world but I also believe in the modern day it is impossible to not live in this escapism due mainly to the internet. I myself avoid using the internet as much as possible because I am sickened by peoples over use of it however in a way this can be seen as living in my own fantasy because others aren't living in the world with me.

So please tell me what you think, do I make a good point or do I sound pretentious because I have no idea.

I think the point Anno wanted to make was never to abandon otaku culture (he is an otaku himeself after all), but to "geek responsibly", if that makes sense. Don't miss out on life.
That's only theme in Eva too I'd say. There's a lot going on in the show.

kuribo-04 wrote:I think the point Anno wanted to make was never to abandon otaku culture (he is an otaku himeself after all), but to "geek responsibly", if that makes sense. Don't miss out on life.
That's only theme in Eva too I'd say. There's a lot going on in the show.

I was thinking more about it and it seems there is no definition of living to him (or atleast when he was making Eva). If you take Refuge in media you are wasting your life, if you believe in an afterlife you are kidding yourself, if you pursue sex then you are a hedonist etc.

BritKnee wrote:And I keep seeing people say the show was created as a way of telling Otaku's to stop living in their dream world and that Anno once said it is useless for non anime watchers to see End of Evangelion.

Despite what people say, this isn't "the message".

Szmitten wrote:

BritKnee#935224 wrote:And I keep seeing people say the show was created as a way of telling Otaku's to stop living in their dream world and that Anno once said it is useless for non anime watchers to see End of Evangelion.

Despite what people say, this isn't "the message".

Now I'm intrigued considering how often it is perpetuated as "The True Meaning Of Evangelion" and how Anno hates all the fans and the like. What would you consider the meaning?

Yeah, a lot of that comes from old, badly done translations that went through a long game of telephone.

The message of Eva - and so Anno has gone on record saying himself - is ultimately something that everyone needs to decide for themselves. I personally consider it to be along the lines of "don't let life get the better of you, you are loved and worth it", as well as the previous sentiment of "don't miss out on the good things that are there".

BritKnee wrote:

Szmitten#935232 wrote:Despite what people say, this isn't "the message".

Now I'm intrigued considering how often it is perpetuated as "The True Meaning Of Evangelion" and how Anno hates all the fans and the like. What would you consider the meaning?

Evangelion is a very personal work driven by one man with contributions from a consistent team of people that tried to make something under increasingly difficult but self-inflicted circumstances, and stumbled into making something that a lot of people connected to, and they're very open to audiences reading into it what they will.

That's a very lame and diplomatic response, but it's a lot more accurate than what the english speaking fandom has parroted online for 25 years.

Szmitten wrote:

BritKnee#935235 wrote:Now I'm intrigued considering how often it is perpetuated as "The True Meaning Of Evangelion" and how Anno hates all the fans and the like. What would you consider the meaning?

Evangelion is a very personal work driven by one man with contributions from a consistent team of people that tried to make something under increasingly difficult but self-inflicted circumstances, and stumbled into making something that a lot of people connected to, and they're very open to audiences reading into it what they will.

That's a very lame and diplomatic response, but it's a lot more accurate than what the english speaking fandom has parroted online for 25 years.

Okay now I feel this is clearer, I didn't like the idea of a man as creative as Anno saying such strange things and people accepting it as fact. It just didn't seem right and is a bit of a snake eating tail, but if it is just neurotic western fans saying it then it makes a lot more sense.

You can rest assured with the knowledge that this goes for pretty much any anime/manga or other local cultural thing. It's supposed to be accompanied with the proper context, that being, culture, tradition, language, popculture etc, all the things that make Japan what it is. So when you stumble upon on some reddit article, written by some western fanboy, explaining what the "true message" is, then you should take that with a big bucket of salt from the get go.

I'm a white male from europe, I dont pretend to be some kind of purist or pretentious or whatever, but I do know that when I read a western article about Japanese media, I do realize its just an opinion. All of it is, all our discussions and theories on these boards, they are interpretations and opinions. Very rarely are they facts (which are even more rare in fiction anyway since things can be retconned). So when an article has an attitude of "knowing the true...<insert clickbait>" then thats all you need to know how to treat such an article. No matter if you can find the information everywhere, that doesn't make it fact. Most likely it's been echochambered around for decades instead (and this has happened A LOT with eva). In any case, its likely near to impossible to interpret it correctly without all that context (I guess thats where claims like "it is useless for non anime watchers to see End of Evangelion" come from, not just non-anime watchers, but non-jap in general). But even then, it's still just open to interpretation and opinion.

In case of Evangelion, I'd say theres only one true answer, the one Blockio mentioned, and thats that its different for everyone, that there isn't actually just one answer.
Vague and ambigious? Welcome to eva! hehe

Just dont worry too much about it, who really cares when and how you enjoy your fiction, right?
There's no right and wrong, you are free to believe what that "message" is (personally, I'm not looking for any messages at all).

But be careful when you are looking for answers to just believe whats being perpetuated on the net.
You can always ask for clarification on boards like these and then make up your own opinion.

I'm mainly on these boards to read about interesting theories, most of it will turn out to be bs anyway, but it's still entertaining. If you are looking for a definitive answer or explanation about anything eva related, I'd say this is entirely the wrong franchise to be expecting anything clearcut as that :p

Zoop wrote:

SPOILER: Show

You can rest assured with the knowledge that this goes for pretty much any anime/manga or other local cultural thing. It's supposed to be accompanied with the proper context, that being, culture, tradition, language, popculture etc, all the things that make Japan what it is. So when you stumble upon on some reddit article, written by some western fanboy, explaining what the "true message" is, then you should take that with a big bucket of salt from the get go.

I'm a white male from europe, I dont pretend to be some kind of purist or pretentious or whatever, but I do know that when I read a western article about Japanese media, I do realize its just an opinion. All of it is, all our discussions and theories on these boards, they are interpretations and opinions. Very rarely are they facts (which are even more rare in fiction anyway since things can be retconned). So when an article has an attitude of "knowing the true...<insert clickbait>" then thats all you need to know how to treat such an article. No matter if you can find the information everywhere, that doesn't make it fact. Most likely it's been echochambered around for decades instead (and this has happened A LOT with eva). In any case, its likely near to impossible to interpret it correctly without all that context (I guess thats where claims like "it is useless for non anime watchers to see End of Evangelion" come from, not just non-anime watchers, but non-jap in general). But even then, it's still just open to interpretation and opinion.

In case of Evangelion, I'd say theres only one true answer, the one Blockio mentioned, and thats that its different for everyone, that there isn't actually just one answer.
Vague and ambigious? Welcome to eva! hehe

Just dont worry too much about it, who really cares when and how you enjoy your fiction, right?
There's no right and wrong, you are free to believe what that "message" is (personally, I'm not looking for any messages at all).

But be careful when you are looking for answers to just believe whats being perpetuated on the net.
You can always ask for clarification on boards like these and then make up your own opinion.

I'm mainly on these boards to read about interesting theories, most of it will turn out to be bs anyway, but it's still entertaining. If you are looking for a definitive answer or explanation about anything eva related, I'd say this is entirely the wrong franchise to be expecting anything clearcut as that :p

Yeah that sounds fair, but I personally don't think the words of Japanese fans would mean much either. Even if Anno said something I would take it with a grain of salt as he is a different person compared to 25 years ago.

Do not quote an entire post: trim it down only the part you want to adress. - JoelcrNeto

NGE is easily one of the most misunderstood anime series… not because it’s super #deep or anything, but just because of the sheer amount of misinformation that’s spread around within the fanbase.

Archer wrote:NGE is easily one of the most misunderstood anime series… not because it’s super #deep or anything, but just because of the sheer amount of misinformation that’s spread around within the fanbase.

What misinformation would that be?

A metric ton of it. The usual suspects being the aforementioned "Anno hates his fans", "Anno doesn't like Rei", "x character is y real person and nothing more", to name a few of the more innocuous ones; "Anno choked Miyamura against her will for EoE recordings" to name one of the more harmful pieces of misinformation. And uncountable others like those, there genuinely is no end to factually incorrect claims about Eva

Blockio wrote: there genuinely is no end to factually incorrect claims about Eva

Absolutely. Eva, at least its English language fandom, tends to attract a disproportionately high number of factually incorrect claims plus people willing to defend those factually incorrect claims even after correct information has been put up.

The way I see it, there are two major issues further complicating the situation, although these do not by any means provide a full explanation -

1. The obvious fact that Evangelion is a Japanese work and a significant portion of the information for debunking various factually incorrect or misleading claims among the English-language fandom must be translated from Japanese sources. While I am not familiar with fandoms speaking other European languages, I have the impression that the availability of skilled translators and translated sources is vastly better in languages like Spanish, French, Italian and German.

2. Numerous employees of ADV (which, for those of you who're new, was responsible for the original English dub of NGE) spouted a whole lot of highly misleading and factually incorrect information, to the point of ridiculousness in some instances. They continue to make highly dubious claims to this day, but fans who didn't know better landed up relying on them as sources of information and landed up regurgitating this stuff without knowing better.

And on the topic of factually incorrect information and misconceptions -
https://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_An ... onceptions

It is very much a language based split in the fandoms. The English speaking fandom translated a few things early on (with ever decreasing context) and some of those things became some of the immovable the cornerstone tenets, and every Eva discussion is a descendant of those early narratives. These narratives are also very focused on Anno and the intent of the work.

On light research, other language fandoms (european and asian) may have trickles of those elements, they tend to be a lot more in-universe (eg usually very consistent and good French Wiki) and production focused (eg that Chinese forum that disseminated EoE materials).

The Japanese fandom, ie the core who have access to everything ever released and ever spoken with no translation issues, generally think of it as a very pretty work with characters they care about with very little focus on Anno himself beyond him being very clever for making it, and while they do sometimes go off the deep end on in-universe theorycrafting (particularly when they start dealing with exotic non-Japanese concepts) the idea of Anno hating fans and "merchandising/otakuism bad" are non-existent.

In other words, Anno going to an anime convention in the US in 1996 and joking "Too bad" about not liking the TV ending to a room full of people who mostly haven't seen the ending is/was the foundation of all English mainstream discussion of Evangelion; for the Japanese it's a non-event.

BritKnee wrote:

Szmitten#935232 wrote:Despite what people say, this isn't "the message".

Now I'm intrigued considering how often it is perpetuated as "The True Meaning Of Evangelion" and how Anno hates all the fans and the like. What would you consider the meaning?

My take on its meaning: everyone should struggle to resolve their personal hedgehog dilemmas, to have satisfactory relationships with other people. Your original topic post expressed concerns about modern challenges caused by the Internet, and I think these are valid concerns. But, I think the meaning is as relevant today as it was in the 1990's pre-Internet world. So, the means for resolving these dilemmas have changed, but people are still people and always will be.

Any meaning people take from Evangelion as a critique on "otaku culture" usually frames Anno as a man outside of otaku culture talking down to otaku culture. This is very much not the case. Anno was an otaku. Anno is an otaku. He's speaking from the inside, and is partially talking about himself. I'm not going to conclude that the message of Eva is therefore "all otakus, myself included, suck," or anything like that. In fact, I think the hyper fixation on Japanese otaku culture is disproportionally from American/English-speaking audiences, which makes them see "otaku criticism" in most post-modern Japanese anime, even when it isn't there. Honestly, I believe that Anno is speaking to things that apply to Japanese culture (and even humanity) as a whole, and his otaku perspective adds a unique delivery to that universally framed message. If Eva had only messages that were unique to the otaku community, then it wouldn't have culturally blown up as much as it has, both nationally and internationally. In fact, it probably would have the cultural staying power and international acclaim of Oreimo if it was too otaku focused.

I don't really understand your point. How, because of Internet, is it impossible to live without escapism in the modern world? I guess digital media makes it easier for us, however it doesn't make it inevitable. The usage of Internet doesn't consitute running away to an imaginary world. I'm not sure if your defintion of "escapism" is right, as what you described doesn't seem like it to me. With that being said, I think that Evangelion's message holds up pretty well to this day and even if it didn't, I would like to remnid that we can learn multiple lessons form Evangelion, not only the one concerning escapism. If anyone disagrees with what I said, I would be happy to discuss it further

I don’t think I’d go that far. I don’t think thats the main issue of the series, GRANTED I think that certainly a message and I do think it kinda rings hollow. If you go into the show knowing about the crazy spin-offs, merchandising, memes and common perceptions of the characters, I think that particular message rings hollow if not sounds hypocritical. Not sure if we’re supposed to look at it and think “Eh, thats just how Anno felt at the time”, or if we cringe at how the IP has been handled since EoE debuted. I feel both at times, haven’t really conclusively consolidated those beliefs.