Evangelion 2.0 CRC: Enokido Interview

Discussion of the new series of Evangelion movies ( "Evangelion Shin Gekijōban", meaning "Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition"). The final instalment made its debut in Japan on March 8, 2021.

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Postby Xard » Sun Dec 05, 2010 7:32 am

Shoji Kawamori's Macross Plus is commonly seen as the best and highest quality entry in the whole franchise. Kawamori's conditions for returning to Macross franchise was complete freedom as well as no budget and time constraints.

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Postby Chrad » Thu Dec 09, 2010 1:34 am

View Original PostKendrix wrote:...So the final scene WAS meant as a heroic thing! Hehe, I was right!

It was meant that way when Enokido conceptualized it. But Anno wrote the final screenplay and was the director, so the real question is whether he views the scene in the same way. We don't know if Enokido's initial conceptualization of the scene featured third impact being set off (!!!) or Shinji's "I don't care about myself or the world" speech.

It's very strange how much of Enokido's input was implemented when it seems like he wasn't thinking on the same wavelength as Anno. His suggestion that Shinji save Rei illustrates this. On its own, Rei surviving is an interesting twist on the Eva we're familiar with and takes away one of the sources of Shinji's descent into despair. But having Shinji not only make an attempt to pull her from the clutches of death, but succeed, dramatically alters the course for his character in the future. Pulling off something so incredible would doubtless be a massive confidence booster for him. It's hard to imagine him showing any reluctance to take action, or fearing failure, in the aftermath of that scene. Shinji stops being Shinji. Evangelion starts becoming a show about how you can do whatever the fuck you want if you believe hard enough...in other words, a generic shonen mecha series. Evangelion becomes something completely different and loses what made it unique. If that's what Anno was going for, fine, but from what I've read about the Rebuild and the thinking behind it this doesn't seem like what he was going for.

The final version of the scene is much more complex and interesting than what Enokido described, so maybe Anno just used his suggestions as a launching pad, before thinking up something more in line with the message and feel of the old Eva. It's hard to say for sure before we see Q, but the indications that something is wrong ring loud enough for me watching that sequence that I can't take it seriously as simply a moment of heroic triumph.

View Original PostKendrix wrote:Mari was supposed to introduce something the other character's didn't have, she should be "completely new" and "destroy old EVA", - but whatever character Anno would come up with, she'd still be 'tainted' by his signature and feel unneded because most of the contend of his head is already represented.

Personally, I don't see what's wrong with her character being 'tainted' by Anno's signature. Being the director and writer means that no matter who's ideas he draws from, what we get onscreen is still going to be filtered through his perspective.

I find it very difficult to believe that the entire contents of his head were represented among the cast, leaving Anno no room to think up something new himself. 15 years have passed since Evangelion. Artists grow with age and experience, and by all accounts Anno has changed quite a bit. Anno seems to view the world of Eva with quite a bit of distance now. I'm sure if he had felt like it, he could have drawn a new character from his psyche that was at once very different from the cast we know and a better fit in with the tone of the series than Mari is.

View Original PostAzathoth wrote:I seriously don't understand why a character who you can non-negatively describe as "doesn't fit in at all with the tone of her setting and supporting cast" was ever invented.

Exactly...

View Original PostKendrix wrote:There's so many characters that are kept "mysterious".
But Mari is different. Despite so few appearances, her presence is clearly there, her personality radiates from her. We know EXACTLY what kind of person she is even if we know so little about her exact goals.
If that's the case, what a shallow character.

View Original PostKendrix wrote:Honestly, I really miss Mari when I rewatch NGE nowadays. It's just not the same without her.
She's barely been integrated into the plot of Rebuild as of yet. She's had a few fanservice scenes, two brief, inconsequential action sequences, and an 'inspiring' speech which resembles at least two that Shinji received in NGE. I'm struggling to think of what she really adds.

View Original PostAzathoth wrote:It sounds stupid, but Rebuild really does need a streak of cruelty to it. Right now it feels like all the characters are existing in a dippy little funland. Rei's dead, but at least she's happy. Shinji's committing omnicide to satisfy his own ego again...but at least he's happy as long as everything stays like it is. Asuka's having her dreams smashed, her agency taken away, her (inexplicable) crush stolen, her face raped by Angels, and her mind invaded, and the only indication we get that she even cares is an "aw shit" face right before Bardiel eats it. And then in Q she's going to be happy. And then there's Mari, who's so relentlessly happy that she thinks being a psychic child soldier with the power to destroy humanity should be fun. And here comes Kaworu, our old-fashioned harbinger of despair, with the intent to make Shinji happy.
Absolutely right, but it seems like this is what people want these days, judging by how many people have said that Rebuild is an improvement for being "less emo" or something.

View Original Post1731298478 wrote:Am I right in thinking that one of those shadows in the Kaworu shot clearly looks taller/longer than the other three?

Edit: Also, looking at those screencaps, one of the little Reis seems to be taller than the other two, just like one of the shadows~!

Hmm~

Edit again: That being said, the shadows of the little Reis should still be much shorter than that, right? And this scene was clearly altered from what's in the storyboard.
I doubt they put a huge deal of thought or effort into the shots in the previews. We only see flash glimpses, so it's probably enough to convey the general idea.

I've thought all along that the four figures Kaworu is addressing in that shot weren't Rei, Asuka, Shinji and Mari...too obvious, and with the way we only see the shadows lead me to believe they were playing with us. This Rei and minis idea is the best alternative I've heard.

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Postby gwern » Sun Jun 05, 2011 5:48 pm

View Original PostSaltyJoe wrote:Good.
You know, i wanted to point to a counterexample of a vanity project with a massive budget turning out to be something most people consider praiseworthy, but honestly, i can't think of any. Someone else?


I read an article once that claimed that you can't think of those projects because when they're successful, they're no longer a 'vanity project with a massive budget', they're just a great film, and specifically looked at quotes from reporters about Cameron's Titanic - apparently it was expected to be a schmaltzy mindbogglingly costly boondoggle on par with Cleopatra, and not what it turned out to be, one of the most successful movies ever both financially and critically. Similar comments apply to Avatar and probably Lord of the Rings too. Hindsight bias is a real bitch.

And more on topic, Wings of Honneamise comes to mind. A huge budget, directed by some young kid who had done nothing on that scale before, by some dropout geeks, with no editorial control by Bandai and whose president said he didn't understand the film at all IIRC, completely self-indulgent...

View Original Post1731298478 wrote:I'll definitely do Anno eventually. Immediately next I'm trying to do something from Higuchi. Higuchi's interview is really funny, because he seems to really dislike the "chaotic" way Eva comes together (he said it was the same for 1.0, even without the major plot changes... he makes many jokes about the whole thing) and just shuts himself off from the "scriptwriting" process, and draws whatever storyboards people request from him ^__^


Higuchi comes off as something of a real professional. He's directed tons of stuff (http://www.gwern.net/docs/2002-notenki-memoirs#fn146), specializing in special effects, co-founded GONZO, and is even something of a pinch hitter for Gainax:

The production schedule fell so far behind that the quality of the midsection had to be reduced, and that part (the so-called “Island” story arc) was handled by another director, Shinji Higuchi. He carried out his responsibility very well.


(Also from TNM.)

View Original PostRawinder wrote:Because believe it or not, the industry is not run by hardcore Eva fans who'd like nothing more than to sit in a movie theater for 4 hours. There are practical, financial considerations to be made when making a movie.

The longer a movie is --> the fewer showtimes it has in the theater --> the less money it makes at the box office --> the less money the next film gets.


Budget shouldn't be much of an issue for Gainax. Even if we generously assume it may have been a problem for the first movie, it sold well enough to justify a big budget for the second, and 2.0 on its own set a number of sales records, so...

And it's not like there's no audience willing to sit through long movies. America has proven that again - look at the successful vanity projects I listed above, how many of them were over 3 hours? And then there's the whole Kara no Kyōkai phenomenon in Japan (7 tightly connected high quality animated movies which had minimal theatrical releases).

View Original Post1731298478 wrote:Enokido claims the title of the originally planned final episode, "The Only Neat Thing To Do," was an important source of inspiration for his "final scene." It's not clear from the interview if he knew something about that planned episode's content.


Final scene? That'd be the diving competition with Rei, I take it... I don't see how the title could have inspired that scene, even having read Tiptree's "The Only Neat Thing To Do" - the point of the story was the two, the alien & human, dying together. Rescue was out of the question. A bizarre little anecdote; maybe it'd make more sense if we had any description of how EoTV was plotted between the Proposal and the EVANGELION ORIGINAL/broadcast versions.

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Postby 1731298478 » Wed Jun 08, 2011 3:15 am

View Original Postgwern wrote:Final scene? That'd be the diving competition with Rei, I take it... I don't see how the title could have inspired that scene, even having read Tiptree's "The Only Neat Thing To Do" - the point of the story was the two, the alien & human, dying together. Rescue was out of the question. A bizarre little anecdote; maybe it'd make more sense if we had any description of how EoTV was plotted between the Proposal and the EVANGELION ORIGINAL/broadcast versions.

When I get some time, I'll finish off the translation of the relevant section. I agree that it seems strange. Enokido's rationale is:

"In short, Rei or someone else is caught in a desperate situation, a situation in which she absolutely cannot be saved. Shinji saves that person by means of an impossible method. I could not help wondering if the subtitle 'The Only Neat Thing To Do' implied such a scene, which achieves a cathartic reversal in a miraculous way."

It sounds like Enokido was going off of a very loose interpretation of the title by itself without referring to the original scenario (if it was even completed) or the Tiptree story (which he may never have read). Though, I suppose there is a slight possibility Enokido was told or had heard something about an initially conceived scenario (maybe along the lines of the rumors about the initial ending in the Kaibunsho?) and he was partially inspired by that.

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Postby gwern » Wed Jun 08, 2011 2:15 pm

View Original Post1731298478 wrote:It sounds like Enokido was going off of a very loose interpretation of the title by itself without referring to the original scenario (if it was even completed) or the Tiptree story (which he may never have read). Though, I suppose there is a slight possibility Enokido was told or had heard something about an initially conceived scenario (maybe along the lines of the rumors about the initial ending in the Kaibunsho?) and he was partially inspired by that.


Hm, checking the Kaibunsho with Tiptree in mind, this really jumps out at me:

Furthermore, the ending was supposed to have been "The main characters die one after another, and the final battle is Ikari Shinji vs. Ikari Gendo," although there probably isn't any evidence left to support that now. (laugh)


A scenario in which Yui/Shinji took Gendo with them would match up nicely with Tiptree's story. Be very dark, though.


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