How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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WunderBah
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How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby WunderBah » Sun Jul 18, 2021 7:03 pm

Besides the obvious reactions to it being documented across the web, I remember reading a post from this forum a real while back that implied in contrary that episodes 25 & 26 were actually well received.

How much of that is true, I don't know. Was EoTV truly as disliked as many claimed?

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Szmitten » Sun Jul 18, 2021 7:37 pm

The final episode was watched by over 10% of the Japanese viewing audience, and single-handedly beat every single Gundam broadcast before (and since) except for Zeta Gundam, which is partly why and how Evangelion became intensely mainstream in Japan, and the mysterious ambiguity of the ending caused it to become an phenomenon for the following year until the movies were released.

So generally the reaction was confusion and curiosity that enabled popularity. There is a quote of a publication (Megu) referring to the ending as a "betrayal", but it seems to have been the one smaller publication and not one of the notable ones like Megami or Nyantype. (Megu Magazine was put together after the death of Genkai OUT Magazine in July 1995 and died in March 1997 before the Eva movies even premiered. They even had Rei as the covergirl for the March issue so maybe they weren't negative at all and the quote isn't true?)

It's worth keeping in mind also, this is just the initial broadcast, so viewers didn't have many opportunities to rewatch or have the foresight to know how deep they were going to get into it, so the concept of an "Eva fandom" existing in the first 6 months in a pre-social media world wasn't really a thing. Also, the production of remakes (not as movies but as OVAs) were pubicly being talked about within a month. The impression I get is more one of confusion, protracted baiting, and enthusiasm rather than much outright negativity. Also worth pointing out that the EoE montage and "death threats" were not in relation to the TV series and were rarely in relation to Evangelion at all.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Archer » Mon Jul 19, 2021 8:40 am

I can’t imagine how bad it could possibly have been when everyone KNEW that EoE was coming in a year anyways. It’s not often for a studio to straight up come out and say “yeah we ran out of time, but don’t hate us, you’ll have the ‘real’ ending this time next year!”

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Szmitten » Mon Jul 19, 2021 10:47 am

View Original PostArcher wrote:I can’t imagine how bad it could possibly have been when everyone KNEW that EoE was coming in a year anyways. It’s not often for a studio to straight up come out and say “yeah we ran out of time, but don’t hate us, you’ll have the ‘real’ ending this time next year!”

WELLLLLL

The animators via Anno knew a remake of some kind was going to be made while making EoTV. A month after the ending was silence until there was talk of OVAs and the video versions (the NPC/DC equivalents) making them sound like enhanced remakes, but also an AU movie in addition (which gradually vanished from the collective consciousness). The announcement of D+R wasn't until October/November (which is also when work actually started). The actual point of frustration was Rebirth being incomplete and having to wait a further 4-5 months for it, and then having to wait until 1998 for 21-26 on video.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby WunderBah » Tue Aug 24, 2021 12:42 am

https://youtu.be/mCkeQIAOuBg

After watching this, I'm more convinced with EoTV being more controversial than I thought...

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Szmitten » Tue Aug 24, 2021 8:08 am

The documentary and/or Anno is combining two different things.

a) Having compeleted the series, Anno suffered an "identity-collapse" after having poured everything of himself into Eva, and was in a daze. This is when and why the "suicide attempts" happened, but friends and staff have gone on record to say that he wasn't serious and he was just "lol I could die here" about it. But this is why he took a break before Death/25'/26'.

b) People need to understand that fan reactions in a pre-social media, pre-2ch, pre-2000 world are going to be extremely limited. There wasn't a Twitter where thousands of mainstream phone users vomit onto the net. It's a few dozens-to-hundreds hardcore desktop users spread across a number of dedicated BBS's, literal physical mail sent to Gainax or the enthusiast press, and the articles written by those magazines - and due to the mainstream appeal of Eva, some TV coverage too. Most of it was positive - you see it in the EoE sequence. The one quote people abuse that said the ending was a "betrayal" was from a no-name magazine born from the ashes of another dead magazine, which proceeded to die before EoE even came out - and this "betrayal" didn't stop them from putting Evangelion on their front cover.

It's all very overstated and incredibly easy to mythologize.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Blockio » Thu Aug 26, 2021 9:03 pm

I seem to remember seeing an interview with Anno somewhere that one of the death threats was written by a close friend of his after he explicitly asked him to write that, and then going on to praise the letter for how realistic a death threat it ended up being
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby FelipeFritschF » Sun Aug 29, 2021 12:32 pm

You mean this:


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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Blockio » Sun Aug 29, 2021 3:23 pm

yeah, that's the thing
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby FreakyFilmFan4ever » Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:05 pm

Well, that's just for the letters shown on screen. I'm sure they got real fan letters/death threats that they couldn't show in screen for legal reasons. Think of that segment as a "Dramatic Reenactment" of a real life event.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Szmitten » Mon Aug 30, 2021 8:55 am

I always direct people to https://wiki.evageeks.org/End_of_Evange ... th_Threats to actually read them because they're all positive except for the grafitti/vandalism and the amused internal reaction to it (less about Eva itself and more the mainstream attention to the studio which'd pick up more weirdos), one ranting weirdo who doesn't mention Evangelion at all (more mainstream attention so your pool of unhinged weirdos is suddenly larger), and a very zoomed in "Anno, I'll kill you!!" copied and pasted (which may or may not belong to the previous).

I've always said it's exaggerated and overblown, and that's certainly to do with the content not being in a language you can understand on sight and having to be told on the internet "oh yeah it's death threats plural" and everyone assumes the information overload is all anger.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Blockio » Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:31 am

That sounds about right, yeah.
I can see why Gendo hired Misato to do the actual commanding. He tried it once and did an appalling job. ~ AWinters
Your point of view is horny, and biased. ~ glitz2hard
What about titty-ten? ~ Reichu
The movies function on their own terms. If people can't accept them on those terms, and keep expecting them to be NGE, then they probably should have realized a while ago that they weren't going to have a good time. ~ Words of wisdom courtesy of Reichu

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby FelipeFritschF » Fri Mar 08, 2024 1:24 am

I saw this very enduring myth being promulgated again, and although I can point out to the evidence we already have presented, I want to ask two things.

It was popular at the time, and it is popular now. I thought of everything in the letters. If you write the real thing, it causes a lot of trouble. The person who wrote the abusive/slanderous stuff, is actually a really old friend if mine. He wrote it really well. It seemed like something that could be real.


This is mentioned on the EvaWiki article. We know it's real, but I don't know where the actual text is from. Is there a transcript somewhere? Perhaps in the bluray release?

Moreover, Wikipedia has this mentioned in its EoE article:

According to an official pamphlet on the movie, the production of the fake e-mails simulated the hypothetical reactions of fans to reflect on the relationships that are established "between a work and its admirers".[93]


I don't think it's made-up because everything else it's accurate, and we don't even need additional evidence, but I'm interested where this is specifically mentioned, because in that article the source is " Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Feature Film - DTS Collector's Edition Booklet. Dynit Italia. 2009. p. 14.", that is to say, the Italian release of EoE (specifically, Revival is called "The Feature Film" there). Some forum members had it a long time ago, and I can't find mention of this in the RCB or any other pamphlet featured on Eva Otaku. Again I don't doubt the veracity of this specific claim, but it'd still be nice to have a direct reference. Presumably this is also mentioned somewhere in Chronicle, of course, though not necessarily in Essential Chronicle which has been translated.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby BusterMachine4 » Sun Mar 17, 2024 11:29 pm

View Original PostFelipeFritschF wrote:I saw this very enduring myth being promulgated again

I assume you're talking about this video, right? The majority of the analysis is fine from a "death of the author" perspective, but the whole basis of the video seems to be uncritically-accepted fandom myths with very little to back them up.

It's especially strange given how many actual Anno interviews are listed as sources in the description, but I guess myths about the series creation become so engrained within fans' minds that they accept ideas like "EoTV was the planned ending" and "EoE was a middle finger to people who didn't like Anno's brilliant vision" without really thinking about it.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby FelipeFritschF » Mon Mar 18, 2024 11:45 am

Yeah well, we have to understand that Youtube analysis are a major way for people to form their interpretations. However, for the most part they read off the wiki and the forums here, sometimes verbatim. The ones that care to do research are usually fine but this is a remarkable case of someone misunderstanding what authors said or selectively interpreting this much to mantain fandom myths intact. Still, it's just one small video among hundreds of better ones.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby Dummy2837 » Mon Mar 18, 2024 2:18 pm

View Original PostBusterMachine4 wrote:
View Original PostFelipeFritschF#942933 wrote:I saw this very enduring myth being promulgated again

I assume you're talking about this video, right? The majority of the analysis is fine from a "death of the author" perspective, but the whole basis of the video seems to be uncritically-accepted fandom myths with very little to back them up.

It's especially strange given how many actual Anno interviews are listed as sources in the description, but I guess myths about the series creation become so engrained within fans' minds that they accept ideas like "EoTV was the planned ending" and "EoE was a middle finger to people who didn't like Anno's brilliant vision" without really thinking about it.


So is this video not worth the watch? I had it in my backlog to check out eventually, and I was looking for some actual good analysis.

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Re: How controversial was the EoTV ending in actuality?

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Postby BusterMachine4 » Tue Mar 19, 2024 11:25 pm

View Original PostDummy2837 wrote:
View Original PostBusterMachine4#942976 wrote:I assume you're talking about this video, right? The majority of the analysis is fine from a "death of the author" perspective, but the whole basis of the video seems to be uncritically-accepted fandom myths with very little to back them up.

It's especially strange given how many actual Anno interviews are listed as sources in the description, but I guess myths about the series creation become so engrained within fans' minds that they accept ideas like "EoTV was the planned ending" and "EoE was a middle finger to people who didn't like Anno's brilliant vision" without really thinking about it.


So is this video not worth the watch? I had it in my backlog to check out eventually, and I was looking for some actual good analysis.


I’d say it’s still worth it just to hear a different take on EoE from the default one (and one with a uniquely feminist perspective), but take anything said about Anno’s motivations for making the movie with a massive grain of salt. The essayist is very much in the “EoE was a work of anti-otaku spite that isn’t canon to the series” camp, which just doesn’t line up with the actual circumstances of production.


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