Misconceptions on Anno & fanservice

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Misconceptions on Anno & fanservice

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Postby busterbeam » Thu Aug 08, 2013 4:08 am

So I was looking through this thread http://forum.evageeks.org/thread/14236/You-Like-Evangelion-Anno-hates-youDeath-of-the-Author/0/? and got reminded of something that always bothered me about Evangelion's fanbase.

And now the Rebuild movies, which seem to be a continuation more than a retelling. We’re introduced to a new character: Mari, who doesn’t seem to exist beyond providing panty shots and talking about how her breasts are too big, stealing the spotlight from Asuka, and sell a lot of figures.

Anno was apparently on record as saying he put her in the movies to “destroy Eva.” She’s the moebait fantasy the otaku nerds clearly crave, and Anno is sarcastically giving it to them.

Note the lack of a source and the use of 'apparently' - where did this come from, and if he did say this, how do you know he was talking about 'moeshit fanservice' or whatever?
The only Eva fans I can see Anno hating are the "Tier 2" Eva fans; people who misinterpret the sexual tones of the show for erotic fanservice and masturbate to them.

All discussions about Evangelion lead to Death of the Author because the fandom's hyperfocus on What Anno Thinks dismisses 90% of the show's meaning, and even people who've never seen the show know that Anno wants you to grow up and stop masturbating to cartoons.

Sure, this is one thread, but these views are really common. People seem to think that Anno's criticism of otaku goes beyond 'stop being a total shut-in' and into the realm of 'if you enjoy erotic drawings you are scum'.

I've asked Carl Horn what he thinks of this and whether Anno has ever stated or done anything implying that he's against fanservice, given that he's someone who's documented Hideaki Anno's statements for ages, and his answer was a resounding "no, definitely not". He pointed out that Anno contributed to Chosen Ame, is friends with the guy behind Golden Boy and that Eva itself is full of fanservice and fanservice-themed merchandise, which Anno approved of.

And of course, some fans will say, "Oh, it's ironic! You're just too stupid to tell!", but it extends beyond Eva. Even ignoring his past works like Gunbuster (since, if you wanna be that way, you can say "oh no, he started hating fanservice AFTER he made Gunbuster!"), he directed a live action adaptation of Cutie Honey and is a well-known fan of Go Nagai, who is a huge pervert. He's also a documented fan of Strike Witches which is EXTREMELY fanservicey.

Not to mention, he said this (as documented on this forum http://forum.evageeks.org/post/505322/2003-Kodansha-interviews-Hideaki-Anno/#505322):
I feel that otaku have already become common to all countries. In Europe, in Korea, in Taiwan, in Hong Kong, in America, otaku really do not change. I think that this is amazing. I say critical things towards otaku, but I don't reject them. I only say that we should take a step back and be self-conscious about these things. I think it's perfectly fine so long as you act with an awareness of what you are doing, self-conscious and cognizant of the current situation. I'm just not sure it's a good thing to reach the point where you cut yourself off from society. I don't understand the greatness of society, either. So I have no intention of going so far as to call for people to give up otaku-like things and become more suited to society. Only, I think there are many other interesting things in the world, and we don't have to reject them.

Not being a complete shut-in and liking fanservice/hentai/whatever are hardly mutually exclusive. Also, liking 2D erotica does not mean that you aren't attracted to real-world women.

"But EoE had that comatose Asuka scene! That must mean he's repulsed by fanservice!"

...actually, no, unless you think any and all fanservice is of the kind where a character is gravely hurt. There's a colossal difference between Shinji masturbating over a comatose Asuka and the nude scenes in Gunbuster. I really, really doubt that he looks back at those scenes in Gunbuster and goes, "UGH, I was such a sicko then. Thankfully I only include fanservice in my works ironically now'. It's kind of akin to stating that if someone makes a negative statement about rape porn, they're against any and all porn.
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Postby Space Sweeper » Thu Aug 08, 2013 7:00 am

Thank you.

I do tire of overblown misinterpretations fueled by sheer supposedly unequivocal pessimism. It's the old "Anno just wants to troll"-tier argument rather than a desire to make meaningful and- get this -at times, even fun, art.

Of course, there was a base to the disillusionment with otakus from Anno, but it didn't go to the absurd lengths that some people take it.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Aug 08, 2013 8:15 am

Well, I don't think he ever "hated" fanservice inasmuch as he grew tired of fanservice being a trademark in animes and a prominent reason for otakus to watch stuff.

But let's take a look at what he's done.

Gunbuster has tons and tons of fanservice in its scenes. Not only do the girls wear mostly one-piece bathing suits all the time, but by episode 2 he's already got full frontal of three women, one of them named "Jung Freud." It would be difficult to have more fanservice then that and still have it be meaningful to the rest of the picture. I like the rivalry that's set up between Freud and Amano in that scene through their nudity. I think there's also some importance in Gunbuster as to who exposes herself to whom and why, then end being Noriko exposing her breast to the Gunbuster itself. I don't think there's anything "deep" there, but it would at least be poignant.

Nadia has all of one or two episodes where there's blatant fanservice, and the rest is just dressing Nadia up in three different types of costumes.

Evangelion in specific sets people up for disaster with its fanservice. Sure, it can be a commentary on otaku, as Anno has said himself that he wanted otakus to wake up and smell the roses, as it were. But even then it had more to do with deconstructing an otaku's sense of entitlement through its fanservice rather than it being a deconstruction of the fanservice itself. I think to focus too much on fanservice in either a positive way or a negative way is to miss the point of Eva entirely. Nowhere is that more prominent than the opening of EoE, where Shinji masturbates to Asuka's comatose body. It had more to do with Shinji's sense of entitlement, especially as it was preceded by a couple minutes of Shinji whining in a pouty, demanding way asking that she come back only because the other women scare him. It wasn't about him masturbating; it was about his whiny sense of entitlement that he had to be broken of. He's whiny and demanding because he's at his lowest point in the seres. He's at the lowest point in the series because Eva is all about its bleak universe and foreboding story.

Right after that we have Kare Kano. The lead female hides a baby picture of her boyfriend in her bra; the guys find it weird that she did that. Then there's an episode where everyone's at the beach, and whatever fanservice that's to be had with bikini-clad girls was upstaged by the lesbian character wearing a one-piece that looked similar to the outfits in Gunbuster. (Well, if you've seen Gunbuster anyway...) Even then you really don't get any nudity in that show, but that's probably because Kare Kano isn't a show directed toward male otakus and their relentless hunt for bewbs. You just get a sense of the girls having a fun day at the beach, and that's fun enough to watch.

Love & Pop isn't a commentary on fanservice either. In fact, there's absolutely none in there. We have a scene where the character is completely in the nude, but it's not shown in anywhere near a fun light. Sure, there's a scene where a guy takes her to the porn section of a video store, but that scene in particular has more to do with the creepy guy then it does the video selection he surrounds himself with. And that scene intensifies the larger plot of the film, which is simply a story about a girl who's desperate to find a way to move on with her life. It's got nothing to do about what guys think of girlie parts.

Shiki-Jitsu's just weird. Sex is mentioned, and there's even a porn magazine in it. But it's there only so we can see how scared the female character is in the movie.

Anno makes Cutie Honey, and we're back at more fanservice. It's been a while since Anno used fanservice, and longer since he used it conventionally. I guess Cutie Honey wasn't a show about bleak tones and characters being set up to fail. It was a show about fun characters saving the world.

NTE Evas have yet another round of fanservice, and now with Q in place it still feels somewhat like a set up to have the run pulled out. So far it's just there for tones and moods. The fun aesthetics and cute girls in Ha are taken away in Q and replaced with cold demeanors and harsh stares. It's not there to support a larger message this time around (at least, not yet as far as we can see), but it's certainly there to set up contrast in tones.

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Postby Chuckman » Thu Aug 08, 2013 12:01 pm

On the other hand, EoE starts out with a scene that says "If you enjoy jerking off to cartoon teenagers you are the scum of the Earth." It actually address dakimakura/hug pillows directly.

A good way to analyze Mari is to look at Mari. People say she's a pure fanservice character because she is, as I explain here. She's also a criticism of fanservice, part of the ongoing Evangelion statement on the objectification of women. She's important as part of a larger framework; Mari and Shikinami work together in an intertextual way with Soryu to make a comment about the audience' reaction to strong or independent women.

View Original PostChuckman wrote:The pilots are portrayed in NME/Rebuild not as inhuman per se, but as mass produced. The -nami naming convention recalls the ships that gave them their names- the Shikinami was a vessel of the same class as the Ayanami; the meaning then is that Asuka has been made both subordinate to Rei in importance and that she has been turned into an archetype; Shikinami is a commentary on the idea of the "tsundere anime girl" and the naming suggests that the tsundere anime girl is the same sort of disgusting objectification as the quite Rei-clone waifu. Mari comes in by outwardly appearing to be the Otaku's dream -every part of her appearance and mannerisms is something that's fetishized in sexually charged anime/manga designs, like her stockings, school uniform, glasses, improbable-for-her-age bust- and turning out to be an otaku's nightmare, a competent, self aware and independent young woman who's sexual without being sexually subordinate. Importantly, though they sound similar, the Makinami was not a destroyer of the same class- she's the same, but different.

She falls out of the sky into Shinji's dream world, and she's purposely out of place. Mari is a kind of artefact- Shikinami is a creation of a kind of alchemical ritual; "Asuka Shikinami" is what fans who smear their joy juice on love pillows want her to be; in the process, her animus was drawn out and given physical form as Mari, who cuts through Shinji's bullshit without really knowing him and frees the beast in Unit 02 i.e. in Asuka- she is the beast in Asuka, the part that makes Asuka Langley Soryu who she is, which must be removed to make her Shikinami- once removed, that animus or force refuses to leave; it has to go somewhere, and forcefully intrudes on the narrative as this strangely mature, (Mari, having big boobs, embodies Soryu's hatefully repressed maternal side) yet feral, sensual (in every sense of the word) and animalistic character who glides through the story without any attachments or apparent origin, blithely and smirkingly amused by everything going on.


View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:NTE Evas have yet another round of fanservice, and now with Q in place it still feels somewhat like a set up to have the run pulled out. So far it's just there for tones and moods. The fun aesthetics and cute girls in Ha are taken away in Q and replaced with cold demeanors and harsh stares. It's not there to support a larger message this time around (at least, not yet as far as we can see), but it's certainly there to set up contrast in tones.


There is always a larger message.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Aug 08, 2013 12:30 pm

Maybe there will be. FINAL has yet to come out.

View Original PostChuckman wrote:On the other hand, EoE starts out with a scene that says "If you enjoy jerking off to cartoon teenagers you are the scum of the Earth." It actually address dakimakura/hug pillows directly.

So, Asuka was a cartoon to Shinji? I thought Shinji perceived her as a flesh and blood character. To say that the scene in EoE is a commentary on fanboys jerking off to animation only makes sense if Shinji was a live-action character jerking off to an animated Asuka character (or a pillow or something). But since both the masturbator and the victim are animated characters in an animated film, it becomes more about Shinji's sick entitlement issues (which, yes, some otaku also have) that were being culminated in his masturbation that it is a commentary on some animation fetish.

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Postby busterbeam » Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:04 pm

A good way to analyze Mari is to look at Mari. People say she's a pure fanservice character because she is, as I explain here. She's also a criticism of fanservice, part of the ongoing Evangelion statement on the objectification of women.

Hideaki Anno: big Strike Witches fan, purveyor of sex-negative feminism.
On the other hand, EoE starts out with a scene that says "If you enjoy jerking off to cartoon teenagers you are the scum of the Earth." It actually address dakimakura/hug pillows directly.

Except it doesn't. I already pointed this out in the OP:
"But EoE had that comatose Asuka scene! That must mean he's repulsed by fanservice!"

...actually, no, unless you think any and all fanservice is of the kind where a character is gravely hurt. There's a colossal difference between Shinji masturbating over a comatose Asuka and the nude scenes in Gunbuster. I really, really doubt that he looks back at those scenes in Gunbuster and goes, "UGH, I was such a sicko then. Thankfully I only include fanservice in my works ironically now'. It's kind of akin to stating that if someone makes a negative statement about rape porn, they're against any and all porn.

There is always a larger message.

And yet, SOMETIMES, we can find ourselves over-analyzing something. We already know that official statements reveal that the religious symbolism was there to look cool, and that Eva's primary theme is not a religious one. And comments like
(Mari, having big boobs, embodies Soryu's hatefully repressed maternal side)

are just so super-specific.

Really, this is just your interpretation. It's how you read the show, and as far as I know it's not actually supported by the Word of God. In fact, as I have proven in the OP, Anno's attitudes and tastes go against your reading of what Eva is "really" about. He would have to be a completely different person for this to be the authorial intent.

If the man is so worked up about 'female objectification', how do you explain Hideaki Anno's open love of fanservicey Go Nagai works and Strike Witches? Hell, even Yoshiyuki Sadamoto himself has drawn Evangelion porn.
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Postby Chuckman » Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:27 pm

View Original Postbusterbeam wrote:Hideaki Anno: big Strike Witches fan, purveyor of sex-negative feminism.

Except it doesn't. I already pointed this out in the OP:


And yet, SOMETIMES, we can find ourselves over-analyzing something. We already know that official statements reveal that the religious symbolism was there to look cool, and that Eva's primary theme is not a religious one. And comments like

are just so super-specific.

Really, this is just your interpretation. It's how you read the show, and as far as I know it's not actually supported by the Word of God. In fact, as I have proven in the OP, Anno's attitudes and tastes go against your reading of what Eva is "really" about. He would have to be a completely different person for this to be the authorial intent.

If the man is so worked up about 'female objectification', how do you explain Hideaki Anno's open love of fanservicey Go Nagai works and Strike Witches? Hell, even Yoshiyuki Sadamoto himself has drawn Evangelion porn.


You mistake me. I'm not arguing authorial intent. The author's intent does not cancel out the messages on gender roles and sexism within Evangelion, nor does the "they're just there to look cool" canard cancel out the many religious themes within the work; the series is actually heavily concerned with religion (which, like all institutions, it treats as hypocritical, useless, and an escape from the difficulties of human relationships)

View Original PostFreakyFilmFan4ever wrote:Maybe there will be. FINAL has yet to come out.


So, Asuka was a cartoon to Shinji? I thought Shinji perceived her as a flesh and blood character. To say that the scene in EoE is a commentary on fanboys jerking off to animation only makes sense if Shinji was a live-action character jerking off to an animated Asuka character (or a pillow or something). But since both the masturbator and the victim are animated characters in an animated film, it becomes more about Shinji's sick entitlement issues (which, yes, some otaku also have) that were being culminated in his masturbation that it is a commentary on some animation fetish.


She's not a cartoon to him, but he was dehumanizing her. This is a relentlessly literal requirement for interpreting the scene. She's a cartoon to us. EoE in particular draws the viewer and the director into the work and incorporates them into itself.

There's several elements in the framing and composition of the scene that establish Shinji as an extension of both Anno and the audience. We see the joy juice on his hand through his eyes, as though we are him. Asuka is posed and positioned in a manner deliberately and specifically reminiscent of the design of hug pillows (character X all sprawled out, looking vulnerable and possibly unconscious)


I need to refer you to my thread on EoE since I don't feel like like repeating it all verbatim here.

What Anno is or is not a fan of or what other work he has produced has no bearing on the meaning of the text, i.e. the hospital scene.

Evangelion has a great deal to say about feminism and gender roles. Anno doesn't have to be a feminist for Evangelion to be a feminist work.
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Postby busterbeam » Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:36 pm

You mistake me. I'm not arguing authorial intent. The author's intent does not cancel out the messages on gender roles and sexism within Evangelion, nor does the "they're just there to look cool" canard cancel out the many religious themes within the work; the series is actually heavily concerned with religion (which, like all institutions, it treats as hypocritical, useless, and an escape from the difficulties of human relationships)

Well, this thread is PRECISELY about authorial intent. It's not about fan readings of the show, it's about people putting words into Anno's mouth.

The message of that scene was very likely "guys... we can get really fucked up at times". But this doesn't mean "any and all fanservice is objectively evil and disgusting". Masturbating over a comatose person is particularly gross as far as these things go.
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Postby Chuckman » Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:47 pm

As I said in the post of mine you quoted in the OP, every discussion eventually winds up here because people are so tooled up about what Anno thinks. If you think psychoanlizing him through the show is a waste of time, you're probably right, even though he's sort of invited it through his statements about putting himself in the work.

People are too hung up on what Anno thinks and proving that Eva reflects what Anno thinks. Even if it can be proven that Eva represents an opinion, it's an opinion he held almost twenty years ago.
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Postby busterbeam » Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:54 pm

That's another thing: Anno doesn't criticize otaku as an outsider, from a safe distance. All the otaku-criticism in Eva included himself. Anno even said that it annoys him when outsiders shit on otaku without really understanding them.
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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Thu Aug 08, 2013 3:41 pm

View Original PostChuckman wrote:What Anno is or is not a fan of or what other work he has produced has no bearing on the meaning of the text, i.e. the hospital scene.

Actually, Anno's works outside of Eva apply in this discussion, because we're discussing Anno's opinion on a subject matter that spans several of his works. (I believe the thread title "Misconceptions on Anno & fanservice," and doesn't specify it to only Eva.) Heck, it would even be more helpful to look outside of ALL of his works in order to see what he thought of things as a child. (Especially since Shinji is supposed to be Anno's self insert.)

So because we want to discuss the director's opinion on this subject matter, we need to analyze the subject matter every time he presents it in any work he does and anytime he mentions it outside of his works, rather than ban such information from this discussion. Yes, context to the specific show is important, but because this conversation deals with the idea over the story, that has to be seen in the context his other works as well.

With that said...

View Original PostChuckman wrote:She's not a cartoon to him, but he was dehumanizing her. This is a relentlessly literal requirement for interpreting the scene. She's a cartoon to us. EoE in particular draws the viewer and the director into the work and incorporates them into itself.

There's several elements in the framing and composition of the scene that establish Shinji as an extension of both Anno and the audience. We see the joy juice on his hand through his eyes, as though we are him. Asuka is posed and positioned in a manner deliberately and specifically reminiscent of the design of hug pillows (character X all sprawled out, looking vulnerable and possibly unconscious).

This is an example of Anno painting a flesh and blood character as a pillow, and it only means that Anno thinks its wrong to take a flesh and blood person and use them only as a pillow out of a sense of entitlement, and therefore actually has no comment on the concept of Shinji masturbating to an actual stuffed pillow.

It's like saying that it's bad to call someone a bitch. Sure, there's inherently nothing wrong with female dogs. They can be loyal and friendly animals. But it would be wrong to dehumanize a human by comparing that person to a female dog.

Now, because Anno is Shinji's self insert, could this mean that this might be a commentary on how he dehumanized living people around him in his past, and therefore has nothing to do at all about his anime pin-ups?

Because we need to (again) look outside of Eva if we want information directly from the horses mouth, not just looking into his other works, but also into his childhood and even the years just prior the production of Eva if we want to know how this idea relates to Anno and how he feels about it.

Now, I heard somewhere (though I don't have a source) than Anno stalked the voice actors for Nadia during his anime hiatus. This would certainly be a form of dehumanizing people, and would be more congruent with the EoE scene than simply masturbating to a pillow, as it would have been through Anno's bloated and immature sense of entitlement that would bring him about to stalk other people, just like it was Shinji boated and immature sense of entitlement that manifested in him by masturbating to Asuka, therefore dehumanizing her.

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Postby NemZ » Thu Aug 08, 2013 6:12 pm

View Original PostChuckman wrote:She falls out of the sky into Shinji's dream world, and she's purposely out of place. Mari is a kind of artefact- Shikinami is a creation of a kind of alchemical ritual; "Asuka Shikinami" is what fans who smear their joy juice on love pillows want her to be; in the process, her animus was drawn out and given physical form as Mari, who cuts through Shinji's bullshit without really knowing him and frees the beast in Unit 02 i.e. in Asuka- she is the beast in Asuka, the part that makes Asuka Langley Soryu who she is, which must be removed to make her Shikinami- once removed, that animus or force refuses to leave; it has to go somewhere, and forcefully intrudes on the narrative as this strangely mature, (Mari, having big boobs, embodies Soryu's hatefully repressed maternal side) yet feral, sensual (in every sense of the word) and animalistic character who glides through the story without any attachments or apparent origin, blithely and smirkingly amused by everything going on.


And yet these qualities you list don't remind me of Asuka AT ALL, which makes everything else in this theory laughable. What Asuka in rebuild is missing is a depth of personal conflicts and failings, all of which are simply exicised because the movie doesn't have time for her shit. Mari on the other hand is absolutely and completely devoid of such issues, so to say she's Asuka's 'missing half' is to fundamentally misunderstand both of them and the films as a whole.

The only connection Mari has to Asuka is that, lacking any idea what the hell to do with this charecter who literally doesn't belong here, the 'script committee' temporarilly gave her a handful of Asuka's scenes. And they STILL don't know what the hell to do with her, so she just floats around aimlessly, less a charecter and more an infrequent narrator who isn't really watching very closely and who has nothing new to add to the conversation other than tits and tea.
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Re: Misconceptions on Anno & fanservice

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Postby Ornette » Sun Aug 11, 2013 7:52 pm

View Original Postbusterbeam wrote:Note the lack of a source and the use of 'apparently' - where did this come from, and if he did say this, how do you know he was talking about 'moeshit fanservice' or whatever?

http://www.evangelion-not-end.ru/images_news/090-091_aug09.jpg

From an interview with Mari's VA Maaya Sakamoto, she mentions that anno has said: "I want Mari to destroy the EVA up until now" is what I've been pushing for.

Nothing to do with Moe, or fanservice. More about that statement in the Mari speculation thread from 2.22.

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Postby Mr. Jive » Wed Aug 21, 2013 3:26 am

Nobody knows what the hell Mr. A was thinking whit that hospital scene. I lost a lot of respect for him what that sickass move he pulled. There somelines once you crossed can never be uncross and that was one of them. There a difference in showing a guy not in his right frame of mind then showing a guy who is on his way in becoming the nami bates of Japan. Either anno did that to get fans to hate Shinji or just see how far he and the staff can go whit this movie by putting as much suckcrap in to it?


I always wonder if mari was made just to be the new T&A girl of Eva while Asuka is view as the sample action girl. Not that I don't like mari, it just hard for me to care about her if that the real reason why she was added to the series. She took the place of Toji who had a very good reason why he became a pilot just so the rebuilt team can be a soup bowl? Another thing that bother me is how the shippers want her to be the child of Asuka&Shinji from the future of the original Eva series? Which makes no sense at all cause she don't look nor act like either of those 2 brats. Besides anno hate the idea of those 2 as a couple anyway. That fact he crap all over the relationship in EOE is proof of this.


Shikinami is a downgrade from soryu. Shiki is a robotic,stuck up little brat who speak nor get along whit anyone who is not a pilot or work at Nerv. Sure soryu was a meangirl but her only friend was a non eva pilot,then there her mad crush on Kaji. And T&A was a apart of her character. When you first see her she's wearing a sundreass that soon lead to her paying homage to the seven year itch. Shiki has never wore a sundreass. I have no problem whit Asuka being a action girl just as long she is interesting. Shiki is nothing like that.

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Postby pwhodges » Wed Aug 21, 2013 4:03 am

You have to remember that a lot of social mores in Japan are fundamentally different from in the West, and things may be perceived very differently there - and especially, that Japan is the sole intended market and we in the West are just onlookers.
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Postby Kendrix » Thu Aug 22, 2013 3:16 pm

"Anno is not as ham-fisted as he's commonly misinterpreted to be, nor as much as certain fans (who think they're being uber mature by being cynic about everything) want him to be"

/thread.

Not even as far as "strictness" with his creations is concerned.
See also a certain prano interview ("If you see being able tochange from [how he previously was] as a good thing, it's a bad ending, if you think it's fine, it's a happy ending".)

If you've read anything by the guy, it becomes quite obvious that he doesn't approach this from a big, howering teacher-ish "Here's a negative example, now hate him" kind of pov. It's too deeply personal for that. This guy's been there, in the kinds of feelings he shows in his works, and speaking from down there; He's not suggarcoating it because that would be lying, he's not glossing over the ugly parts, but that's quite distinct from pulling out the index finger.
The hospital scene was probably very much a metaphor for something in his life, perhaps his relation with the work.

Even the dislike of Rei is something grossly misreported; It's more of a vaguely shizoid disconnect thing, but he has stated that she "comes from the deepest, most core part" of himself.

It's just today's world where ppl thing being snarky and reading un-pretty inplications intob everything makes them super mature and "aware", when, in reality, that is, like many other things, also something everyone can do.
That doesn't mean you should suggarcoat everything, or buy everything that people sell you, but, even negativity gets old and cheap at some points.
I wanted to try harvesting the rice

I wanted to hold Tsubame more

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Postby thunderwolfx17 » Sat Mar 26, 2016 5:49 am

View Original PostChuckman wrote:As I said in the post of mine you quoted in the OP, every discussion eventually winds up here because people are so tooled up about what Anno thinks. If you think psychoanlizing him through the show is a waste of time, you're probably right, even though he's sort of invited it through his statements about putting himself in the work.

People are too hung up on what Anno thinks and proving that Eva reflects what Anno thinks. Even if it can be proven that Eva represents an opinion, it's an opinion he held almost twenty years ago.


That's a convenient, baseless claims that you used to use as an excuse for you trying spreading your illogical, dishonest feminist opinions everywhere you can.....
The author's mind is a valid basis for arguments and interpretations of the show. Not 100% proof, but it's reasonable to use the artist as evidence....which some people abuse to makes their opinion seem correct when they know it's not.

Mostly Evangelion is and has always been a vague, confusing mess. The artist explaining the story was one of the only ways to understand what was going on after it was all over, so it's natural for NG:E fans to look to him for clues.
Why is it wrong for people to want to know the thoughts of the artist? Is it that big a deal? You seem to be using the "comment war" meme, where you make sweeping claims about how people feel and blowing out of proportion the actions those people who think differently than you are.

Finally, obviously the concern is that the artist might still hold those opinions, but either way it's undeniably relevant If the artist kind of hated his fans. Besides, Time has no bearing on criticism and judgement of actions and ideas, so who cares about when it happened? Also, a person's past is still part of them. People can still like/dislike other due to what they did in the past, so your statement makes little sense. I mean, you're the type of kid who would never forgive someone who made 1 sexist joke 50 years ago, so you're just a hypocrit using the "Responding to old comment" meme, where you attempt to invalidate someone's ideas and arguments by saying "it happen long time ago, so u wrong."

*gonna ignore the baseless "he invited it on himself" claim and fallacy*

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Postby Bagheera » Sat Mar 26, 2016 7:58 am

View Original Postthunderwolfx17 wrote:That's a convenient, baseless claims that you used to use as an excuse for you trying spreading your illogical, dishonest feminist opinions everywhere you can.....


Well, that's a hell of a first post.

Mostly Evangelion is and has always been a vague, confusing mess.


That's a claim that's often made, but it isn't supported by the text itself. Eva makes perfect sense, particularly when you have the CI available to support it (though it's hardly necessary). People who claim otherwise typically do so because they haven't bothered to do the work needed to understand what's actually going on.
For my post-3I fic, go here.
The law doesn't protect people. People protect the law. -- Akane Tsunemori, Psycho-Pass
People's deaths are to be mourned. The ability to save people should be celebrated. Life itself should be exalted. -- Volken Macmani, Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra
I hate myself. But maybe I can learn to love myself. Maybe it's okay for me to be here! That's right! I'm me, nothing more, nothing less! I'm me. I want to be me! I want to be here! And it's okay for me to be here! -- Shinji Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yes, I know. You thought it would be something about Asuka. You're such idiots.

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Re: Misconceptions on Anno & fanservice

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Postby arilando » Wed Mar 30, 2016 6:58 pm

This is related to a general sort of self-hatred that seems to exist among certain western anime fans. They hate certain aspects of anime, such as fanservice, moe etc. Because of this they often delude themselves into thinking that the fanservice in a show they like is "ironic" or a "parody". Most notable among recent series this was seen in the interpretation of the fanservice in KIll la KIll.

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Postby Bagheera » Wed Mar 30, 2016 7:05 pm

View Original Postarilando wrote:This is related to a general sort of self-hatred that seems to exist among certain western anime fans. They hate certain aspects of anime, such as fanservice, moe etc. Because of this they often delude themselves into thinking that the fanservice in a show they like is "ironic" or a "parody". Most notable among recent series this was seen in the interpretation of the fanservice in KIll la KIll.


It's not really a delusion in Kill la Kill, though, since it's actually an explicit part of the text. But if you're talking about Misato's butt shot or Asuka's crotch shot or the test suit in Ha there's a bit more room to argue.
For my post-3I fic, go here.
The law doesn't protect people. People protect the law. -- Akane Tsunemori, Psycho-Pass
People's deaths are to be mourned. The ability to save people should be celebrated. Life itself should be exalted. -- Volken Macmani, Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra
I hate myself. But maybe I can learn to love myself. Maybe it's okay for me to be here! That's right! I'm me, nothing more, nothing less! I'm me. I want to be me! I want to be here! And it's okay for me to be here! -- Shinji Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Yes, I know. You thought it would be something about Asuka. You're such idiots.


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