Controversial Anime Opinions

[Enki v.2]

Did anybody else notice a Utena angle to Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches, or is it just me making that connection?

[Gendo'sPapa]

It might not be how Rahxephon was but it's how I remember the series. Mind you, I only watched it once eons ago. But, I sure do remember an excessive amount of the female cast having a passionate longing or connection to the milquetoast protagonist.

[Ray]

I don't know if this deserves to be it's own topic or what. But Evangelion kind've ruined shows with kid protagonists as a whole for me.

Whenever I see shows with kid protagonists, particularly superhero stories. They don't really address the psychological damage that kid protagonists would in these situations go through. On one hand, you don't want to traumatize the kids by showing them the real horrors of the human condition. On the other hand, is it realistic to show or brush off the real world psychological consequences that would face kids in adult situations?

[Bagheera]

I don't know if this deserves to be it's own topic or what. But Evangelion kind've ruined shows with kid protagonists as a whole for me.

Whenever I see shows with kid protagonists, particularly superhero stories. They don't really address the psychological damage that kid protagonists would in these situations go through. On one hand, you don't want to traumatize the kids by showing them the real horrors of the human condition. On the other hand, is it realistic to show or brush off the real world psychological consequences that would face kids in adult situations?

Gundam did this decades before Eva made it trendy.

[Compiling_Autumn]

Everyone i know seems to love prison school, personally i think it's shit, though i cant be arsed to elaborate on that since i don't hate it quite enough to be enthusiastic about hating it...

The manga was pretty hilarious and the art style was great. The show looks like crap compared to the manga

[Defectron]

. . . that's not a very accurate description of what's in the show.

And as I always note when people claim Rah ripped off Eva, Anno doesn't seem to think so.

Though it also might just be that Anno was doing the Japanese thing and was too polite to ay anything about that. Or he may have just been glad enough to see some anime come out that has some brains behind it that he decided to let that slide.

[Bagheera]

Or it might be that Anno and Izubuchi are friends, and know exactly what they're doing, and that in the greater context of the past 30 years of super robot anime the notion that Rah ripped off Eva is laughably absurd, as anyone with even passing familiarity with the genre would recognize.

Eva Monkey did a bit on this a while back, where he threw out a description of Eva's premise and first episode. It was obvious he was talking about Eva - what he was saying fit Eva to a T. Thing is, he wasn't talking about Eva - he was talking about Mobile Suit Gundam. The moral being, a lot of stuff that looks "obvious" to an outside observer is anything but to people who actually understand what's going on.

[Mr. Tines]

Eva Monkey did a bit on this a while back, where he threw out a description of Eva's premise and first episode.

Did you mean the piece that Quiddity did about how Gundam was an Evangelion clone?

[Bagheera]

Did you mean the piece that Quiddity did about how Gundam was an Evangelion clone?

Yeah, that was it. Thanks for the correction; Monkey put it on his site but I'd forgotten that he wasn't the original author. Mea culpa.

[Defectron]

Or it might be that Anno and Izubuchi are friends, and know exactly what they're doing, and that in the greater context of the past 30 years of super robot anime the notion that Rah ripped off Eva is laughably absurd, as anyone with even passing familiarity with the genre would recognize.
.

Freinds are allowed to rip each other off I mean thats probably better then doing that with some guy you don't know because they might not be ok with it. But yeah I will stand by my opinion though that if something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

But yeah eva and all other gainax anime took a bunch from stuff that came before them too, no ones debating that, but that doesn't mean that this isn't the case with xephon and eva as well. Thats something that I don't really understand why people try to deny how similar the two are. Still not as bad as that one toku show that copied sparkling generation valyrie yuki though, that was even more blatant and some people still tried to say they werent copying stuff from it.

[Enki v.2]

Gah.

Saying that Rah Xephon copied Evangelion is like saying Gurren Lagaan copied Evangelion -- it's defensible, but so what? The idea that Gillighan's Island is an allegory about the seven deadly sins is also defensible. Making an argument that Rah Xephon ripped off Evangelion is, at best, a parlour game for nerds with a connection to reality that's tenuous at best. Because of its popularity, every post-Evangelion mech show (and even non-mech-shows like Utena) is in conversation with Evangelion, particularly because Evangelion's shadow still looms large on the genre after twenty years and because Evangelion used its creators own deep familiarity with the genre to produce subtle variations that were tempting to copy. Rah Xephon isn't special in being influenced by it, but it also isn't particularly derivative as far as these things go.

(If you want to accuse somebody of stealing, look at harem shows instead -- which are simultaneously incredibly inventive and incredibly formulaic, since they need to perpetually invent increasingly novel ways to get a worthless beta-male protagonist surrounded by attractive women fighting over his gametes. The harem genre is like the anime industry version of The Aristocrats -- the joke whose punchline never changes but whose variations are the private obsession of comedians since the 1920s.)

[pwhodges]

That's something that I don't really understand why people try to deny how similar the two are.

There are big and obvious superficial similarities, sure, but the whole feeling of the show, let alone the form of the plot, is different.

[Enki v.2]

All mech shows are similar. That's why they're in the mech genre. How much you fit into the mech genre depends on how many tropes you share with other things that are classified as being in the mech genre.

When something on the outskirts of a genre -- something with major differences from the norm -- becomes popular, it often encourages other members of the genre to adopt some of its ideas. Over time, either it becomes less popular, its ideas become difficult to meaningfully adapt, the new cluster breaks off and becomes a spinoff genre (like paranormal romance broke off from urban fantasy, which broke off from fantasy) or the new cluster shifts the center of the genre toward itself. Evangelion definitely shifted the mech genre toward itself, but it takes a *lot* more to be a rip-off. And, ultimately, nothing that Rah Xephon shares with Evangelion was very original when Evangelion did it. Evangelion stole more from Ideon Be Invoked than Rah Xephon stole from Evangelion.

Like, do these guys look familiar?

[pwhodges]

Oops, I wrote "superficial differences" when I meant "superficial similarities" above, which changed the sense all about (now corrected).

[unz]

Gah.

The harem genre is like the anime industry version of The Aristocrats -- the joke whose punchline never changes but whose variations are the private obsession of comedians since the 1920s.)

That's signworthy material.

[Defectron]

Gah.

Saying that Rah Xephon copied Evangelion is like saying Gurren Lagaan copied Evangelion -- it's defensible, but so what? The idea that Gillighan's Island is an allegory about the seven deadly sins is also defensible. Making an argument that Rah Xephon ripped off Evangelion is, at best, a parlour game for nerds with a connection to reality that's tenuous at best. Because of its popularity, every post-Evangelion mech show (and even non-mech-shows like Utena) is in conversation with Evangelion, particularly because Evangelion's shadow still looms large on the genre after twenty years and because Evangelion used its creators own deep familiarity with the genre to produce subtle variations that were tempting to copy. Rah Xephon isn't special in being influenced by it, but it also isn't particularly derivative as far as these things go.

(If you want to accuse somebody of stealing, look at harem shows instead -- which are simultaneously incredibly inventive and incredibly formulaic, since they need to perpetually invent increasingly novel ways to get a worthless beta-male protagonist surrounded by attractive women fighting over his gametes. The harem genre is like the anime industry version of The Aristocrats -- the joke whose punchline never changes but whose variations are the private obsession of comedians since the 1920s.)

I'm not saying its an important opinion to the face of anime as I like both shows even if they took a bunch from other things. Really to a degree everything in fiction is a copy of something else. What I'm questioning is why its a controversial opinion at all. Which is why I posted it here, because the idea that Rahxephon copied eva is considered by the fandom to be a very controversial opinion even though there's some really damning evidence that they did. Such as many dolems being similar to angels, there being a Rei ayanami-ish sort of character and the instrumentality-ish ending for example. As far as I know those three examples are pretty eva specific unless you count Gall Force's Catty as a sort of proto Rei, but she kinda lacked the sort of mystique Rei and some of her copies have which is why I don't count her so much.

Rahxephon to eva is sort of like what Nadia is to Laputa imo. The only difference is that the creators pretty much said "yeah we did this" openly and Miyazaki had them clean his house (Which is why it's a better idea to copy your buddy then your hardassed mentor figure).To get back to the earlier gundam comparison, there's a newer anime called Gargantia of the verduous planet which took a bunch from Nadia and even directly referencced it so yes you can make a derivitive of a derivitive.

But yeah I'm not saying any of that is bad, most of my favorite things rip off other stuff, Kill Bill ripped off all sorts of shit. Gurren Lagann probably did that just as much. I'm just questioning why people don't think they did it here in the case of Xephon.

(If you want to accuse somebody of stealing, look at harem shows instead -- which are simultaneously incredibly inventive and incredibly formulaic, since they need to perpetually invent increasingly novel ways to get a worthless beta-male protagonist surrounded by attractive women fighting over his gametes. The harem genre is like the anime industry version of The Aristocrats -- the joke whose punchline never changes but whose variations are the private obsession of comedians since the 1920s.)

For the record I don't hate harem animes because they copy stuff, I hate them because they are perpetually terrible. Some of the early proto harem anime like urusei Yatsura and El Hazard and even Tenchi and Ranma to a degree were good but most things after that were utter garbage save for an occasional good show like Zetsubo sensei.

[Bagheera]

Freinds are allowed to rip each other off I mean thats probably better then doing that with some guy you don't know because they might not be ok with it. But yeah I will stand by my opinion though that if something looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

And that makes you look like a fool, because RahXephon doesn't particularly look like Eva, and it definitely doesn't sound like it. Yes, they both feature super robots and a monster of the week formula and vast conspiracies and such, but so does every super robot show ever. Eva didn't invent these things -- they are standard genre tropes. Accusing Rah of being a ripoff of Eva because it used the same tropes Eva did is absurd. You're basically claiming a ripoff is the real deal and that another ripoff is somehow lesser because it did the same thing.

If you want to compare the two, look at the only thing Eva did that was truly novel: present us with a realistic take on how dysfunctional characters would react to having to pilot super robots. That's Eva's thing. That's what sets it apart from the rest of the pack. The Evas are meaningless. The Angels are meaningless. Seele, HIP, Impacts, and all that rot are meaningless. What makes Eva stand out is its treatment of its characters, and that is nothing like what we see in Rah. Rah's characters are (largely) well-adjusted and stable, and are pretty much standard anime faire. Rah's virtues are its time shifting shenanigans, the Mulian conspiracy, the Mayan influences, and the whole overarching theme of song and sound. These are what make Rah stand out from the pack, and they are, surprise surprise, nothing like anything we see in Eva.

You're basically pointing at the props the shows use and saying "see? They use the same props, so the one's totally a ripoff of the other!" But that's silly, because props are just props. It's what you do with them that lets you tell a story, and Eva and Rah do very different things with their props.

[Defectron]

And that makes you look like a fool, because RahXephon doesn't particularly look like Eva, and it definitely doesn't sound like it. Yes, they both feature super robots and a monster of

Yes it does in some places because some of the dolems look similar and there's also some giant naked reiish looking beings near the end.

But yeah I already addressed the other points in my previous post as people make derivitives of dreivitives all the time. Granted Rah could just as easily been takingbroad tropes from something else that shared it with eva, but the presence of the smoking gun examples I mentioned makes me think otherwise, or at the very least it may have been one of the sources. In any case it's ultimately unimportant because everything in the end is a ripoff of something else as humans are incapable of truly inventing something that is truly apart from things they have observed.

What I was questioning was why people think that the opinion it took stuff to begin with was controversial. The fact that this debate is happening at all means its a very controversial opinion. The reason why I'm not asking this about Gurren Lagann is because that's not controversial, because it did what Xephon did with eva except with pretty much every giant robot anime ever made.And no one argues about that which is the difference.

[Bagheera]

But yeah I already addressed the other points in my previous post as people make derivitives of dreivitives all the time. Granted Rah could just as easily been takingbroad tropes from something else that shared it with eva, but the presence of the smoking gun examples I mentioned makes me think otherwise, or at the very least it may have been one of the sources.

I don't find that very compelling, honestly, because I don't agree with any of them. The dolems don't particularly look like Angels, Quon is nothing like Rei, and tuning the world has fuck all to do with Instrumentality. The goals and processes involved with each are so incredibly divergent that I'm frankly baffled as to why anyone would compare the two (particularly since in the Rah case the ending is literally rewriting reality, which is explicitly not happening in NGE/EoE).

What I was questioning was why people think that the opinion it took stuff to begin with was controversial. The fact that this debate is happening at all means its a very controversial opinion.

The controversial bit is the notion that Rah is a ripoff, rather than its own thing that references older anime (something its creator explicitly acknowledges, though both he and Anno seem to think the link to Brave Raideen is far more important than any superficial similarities to Eva. But hey, why pay attention to the creators of the show in question and the show it supposedly ripped off? Surely fans would know better than they, amirite?).

Basically, if Ayata was anything like Shinji you might have a point, but since he isn't (and since your "smoking guns" are utterly meaningless when looking at what makes Eva distinct to begin with) said point kinda falls flat.

[Defectron]

I don't find that very compelling, honestly, because I don't agree with any of them. The dolems don't particularly look like Angels, Quon is nothing like Rei, and tuning the world has fuck all to do with Instrumentality. The goals and processes involved with each are so incredibly divergent that I'm frankly baffled as to why anyone would compare the two (particularly since in the Rah case the ending is literally rewriting reality, which is explicitly not happening in NGE/EoE).
.

I in turn am baffled as to why people would be baffled at why I find them to be similar but while I disagree with your opinion I will defend to the death your right to say it!

But yes Imo the only reason why reality didn't get rewritten in eva is is because Shinji chose not to. It was stated he could make reality whatever he wanted but he decided to go back to the regular earth, so Rahs ending is sort of the reverse of what happened. And it actually did get rewritten in the manga.

The controversial bit is the notion that Rah is a ripoff, rather than its own thing that references older anime (something its creator explicitly acknowledges,

That's essentially what I was arguing that is was, just that those things happened to mostly be Raideen and eva. See I was totally and completely right, and there's no reason at all any of this should be controversial! Damn I'm good!