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10 Years of Neon Genesis Evangelion
smooth wombat writes "Mainichi Daily News has a lengthy, multi-part article on the history of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The article looks back at the 10 years since Evangelion appeared and how it changed the world of manga." From the article: "In a series of 26 episodes, Evangelion told the story of a 14-year-old boy called Shinji Ikari, who piloted a biomechanical combat robot called an Evangelion, which fought against mysterious extraterrestrial monsters known as Angels. But Shinji was also a regular junior high school pupil, and his school life featured strongly in the anime's plot too. As did psychotherapy and the Old Testament, which director Hideaki Anno attributed as influences while creating the series. Evangelion become a huge hit across Japan, attracting fans across generations, sparking a massive public debate over its controversial final episode -- which many criticized for leaving the work unfinished -- and sparking unprecedented merchandising sales that set the scene for the current manga market."
For those who want the spoilers, here's the summarized plot of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
:'( ...
Shinji: My life sucks, I want to die!
Rei:
Asuka: Stupid Shinji.
THE END.
I don't mean to troll, but I find zero appeal in the show. It falls in the category I call "psuedo-literature," a group which includes works that try so very hard to actually be quality literature, but ironically, trying so hard ruins the whole exercise. The writers for the show obviously through from the start that they were going to write a grand epic; they put enough twists and turns into the plot to get people convinced, even. If it's that complicated, it HAS to be good, right?
Wrong. The quality of a piece of literature isn't in its complexity, it's actually in the simple, easily apparent parts. The complexity adds dimensions to the simple story, but it does not add meaning itself, and often *confuses* meaning by adding extraneous material in the attempt to make "a really cool story."
So that leaves us with Evangelion, admired by hordes and spurned by people who are described by said hordes as "not getting it." Perhaps there's just not that much to get? Perhaps you're adding too much into a reading, because they left so much hanging you constructed around the work? That's not literature. Literature guides your faculties, it doesn't fool them and then expect them to expand things past the breaking point.
To wit, look at shakespeare. Generally, a couple rich people who get in trouble with someone else, and either laugh it off or die. The end. The complexity is internalized in the characters; the plot itself is simple. That is why Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and Evangelion is just another mecha anime.
And they still don't know what the fuck it's about.
HitScan
One of the more controversial things about Eva is some of the scarier linkups that (thankfully for ADV) havn't been widely reported. A few years back I was on staff with a large anime con, and talked with ADV staff about Eva. One of the things they mentioned was that they got heat from the police because both the Columbine Killers and Hale Bopp Crowd apparently were big fans of Eva, and the police stopped by to have a word with ADV.
One of the more interesting connections was also with Aum Shinrikyo. Apparently at least one of the assistant directors on Eva was a member of Aum Shinrikyo. Anno himself mentions this, and also mentions that he started writing eva right around when the Aum Shinrikyo attack occured. Aum Shinrikyo apparently also used Eva tapes for recuriting afterwords, but apparently stopped after GAINAX started complaining.
OK, here goes:
The Three-Minute Summary of NGE
NGE is the story of a program initiated by a secret council of powerful old men in order to make themselves immortal. The program uses genetic material from "aliens" (who are actually not aliens, but rather the original inhabitants of Earth, related to humans but not the same species) to create living "robots" that can only be operated by children who have been traumatically separated from their mothers - the bodily fluids of the mothers are used to provide an interface to the "robots". The original plan was to have the old men take over an immortal fusion of human and "robot", but this was hijacked by the lead scientist on the project who was aiming to be reunited with his dead wife (the mother of one of the child pilots). This also goes awry, and the result is that all of humanity undergoes an involuntary fusion with everybody else, but this is interrupted by the rejection of this union by the child pilot who acts as the medium for the unification, when he realises it will mean those closest to him being able to know his most secret thoughts. The ending is ambiguous as to how the whole mess works out.