Being one of the most famous animes of all time, it shouldn't be surprising to know it has quite the turbulent history behind the scenes.
Anime
- The show began while Gainax struggled financially
from the failure of Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise and the complicated making of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. Hideaki Anno fell into a clinical depression following a Creator Breakdown, to the point he would later describe himself as "a broken man who could do nothing for four years; a man who ran away for four years, one who was simply not dead." Also, the bad state of the anime industry at the time made execs Toshio Okada and Takumi Akai argue that PC games were proving to be much more profitable than animation — not untrue, as Akai's Princess Maker was a major source of income for the company. They thus argued that Gainax should forget about anime altogether, which ultimately led Okada and Akai to depart; Okada retired from animation, while Akai left to form his own video game studio. A planned sequel to Honneamise, named Uru in Blue and designed in conjunction with Masamune Shirow and Kazutaka Miyatake, had to be cancelled due to lack of budget when they were just about to produce it, which only caused a mass exodus of workers when it looked like Gainax was at death's door. - A stroke of good luck happened when Anno was drowning his sorrows with Toshimichi Otsuki, an exec from King Records, as Otsuki promised to fund a new anime project for Gainax. Reinvigorated, Anno started writing what would become Evangelion from notes he had conceived for Uru in Blue, among them the theme about "not running away", which carried the Reality Subtext of Anno trying to tackle his problems. Anno also wanted the concept of psychological examination in the anime, which was more relevant than ever (and which Gainax had already used in GunBuster). Several formats were considered, like an anime film and an OVA series, before settling for a TV anime series. However, production would still take time to start, as Anno had expected Evangelion to be a Stealth Sequel to Nadia, yet he was unable to secure the rights to do so and this idea had to be scrapped. Several other discussions about the plot caused production to run late, to the extent the first two episodes were finished only three months before they aired in TV.
- After so much effort to find money the rest of the production was plagued again by a lack of time due to the project's complex nature. By episode 13, the series began to deviate from the original story, which was simplified heavily to meet the demands: the number of Angels was reduced to 17 instead of the original 28, the script became more brainy and less action-filled (in part due to Anno reading a lot of books about psychology), and the ending was completely rewritten from scratch. Also, in a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, a whole chunk of mostly-finished script ended up being trashed because a central plot point had a strong resemblance to the Aum Shinrikyo cult's terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway in March of the year. By episode 16, people started becoming nervous because the original plans had been already dismantled and they were out of time. A lot of work was already being done by Tatsunoko Production, and some executives started fearing Evangelion would have to be cancelled.
- The anime's production issues spread to its many branches. Editorials thought Sadamoto's Evangelion manga was too outdated to draw interest, while the companies in charge of the merchandising complained that the design of the EVA Units was too intricate to make toys. To top it off, public outcry rose against the series due to Episode 18 cramming too much violence in, and Episode 20 showing the sounds of Misato and Kaji making love, all of which was deemed unfit for a show commonly watched by young people. Ironically, this had been deliberate, as Anno was of the opinion that violence and sex were elements of the real world that his young viewers had to see and know.
- Voicing Shinji proved so taxing and haunting for Megumi Ogata that she would feel downright afraid every time she received a new page of the script. She once went home with psychological pain all in her body after a strenuous session recording Shinji's crying.
- If Ogata suffered to voice Shinji, voicing Asuka was basically torturous for Yuko Miyamura, who equally worked hard to do it and even learned German to better say her lines in that language. Either by an eerie coincidence or because she identified with her character too much, Miyamura's mental health deteriorated along with Asuka's, and eventually suffered from bulimia after the series had ended. Yuko went later to reveal that, despite not being able to help but loving Asuka, she would like to erase that part of her life for how tough it was.
- The series ended in rushed fashion. Reportedly, Anno couldn't decide until the last minute what kind of format would the last two episodes have. Finally, after many rewrites and changes of script, Episode 25 and 26 aired, disconcerting and infuriating fans all around Japan due to their abstract and minimalist edition. The national shock was such that popular anthropologist Eiji Otsuka wrote a letter to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper complaining about the finale. It also gave out many urban legends that Gainax had lost its sponsors and was forced to produce the finale this way in order for the budget to fit.
- Fan outrage against episodes 25 and 26 reached such a fever pitch that Gainax's offices were vandalized by an unknown party — one internal memo even wondered if it came from an obscure cult. Anno himself faced death threats, one of which simply read "Anno, I'll kill you" over and over again. Photos of these incidents were briefly seen in The End of Evangelion.
- Even after the series had finished its run, Gainax's shifty accounting practices ended up with the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau pouncing on them for suspected tax evasion on the profits accrued from Evangelion. At the end of the process, the company's CEO and chief accountant, Takashi Sawamura and Yoshikatsu Iwasaki, were arrested and jailed in 1999 for accounting fraud, having reportedly failed to pay at least 560 million yen in corporate taxes. Gainax employees like Yasuhiro Takeda have gone to say they don't actually blame Sawamura and Iwasaki, as the studio's economic troubles were so deep that their action was seen as basically Jumping Off the Slippery Slope to try to ensure Gainax was never that close to collapse again.
Death & Rebirth and The End
- After the anime's finale, Gainax started producing a theatrical film which would allow Anno to remake the ending with much more time and freedom. According to the Red Cross Book released by Gainax around this time, the anime's ending had shown only the inner aspect of the finale, while the films would show in detail what really happened. Contrary to popular belief, this project was not a reaction against the backlash towards the anime's ending, nor a way to please viewers unsatisfied with it, although Anno was definitely aware of those when he was working of it.
- Production was initially neat, as several elements used in this project had been originally conceived for the anime and were already outlined (most notably, the climactic fight between Asuka and the EVA Series), but for a change, Gainax started running against the clock due to Anno's usual shenanigans. Ultimately, Anno opted to divide the film in two parts so he could gain time: under his orders, Kazuya Tsurumaki crammed all the produced story in a movie, filled it up with a quick recap of the entire anime series, and released it as the first part, named Evangelion: Death & Rebirth. The rest of the story would be produced by Anno himself, now with his hands free, and later released under the name of The End of Evangelion.
- Anno had originally wanted to show in The End real fanmail Gainax had received since the broadcast of the anime, but legal reasons prevented them from doing so. The letters shown in the film were made up by the staff and written by an old friend of Anno who was good in calligraphy.
- Adding to her troubles while working the series, Yuko Miyamura felt terrible playing Asuka in her troubled part in the movie, as she cherished Asuka enough to sometimes "feel like a mother" to her despite being a fictional character. Watching and voicing it would turn so difficult that she described herself as working with a kamikaze-like feeling. In 2021, Miyamura revealed she cannot bring herself to even watch The End again.
- Megumi Ogata grabbed and squeezed Miyamura's neck to better simulate their character's strangle, but she became a bit carried on and momentarily strangled Miyamura for real. Ironically, Miyamura thanked her because she though it had helped her give the perfect noises.
Rebuild of Evangelion
- The third Rebuild of Evangelion movie was hit with this was well. In addition to massive script rewrites and some very unpopular creative decisions, Anno had another Creator Breakdown while working on it. In interviews, he revealed that working on the series again had brought back his serious bouts with depression, and that he'd often go for long periods of time without even showing up to the studio. He credits his friend Hayao Miyazaki and working on Shin Godzilla for helping him through this troubled period and his eventual Creator Recovery.
- Incidentally, that Shin Godzilla gig led to the fourth and final Rebuild film, Evangelion 3.0+1.0, rotting in Development Hell, with its release date (initially in 2013) being repeatedly pushed back or revised. It wasn't until 2019 that the first ten minutes of 3.0+1.0 were finally screened, thus tentatively confirming a 2020 release date... just in time for the coronavirus pandemic to postpone the release until January 23, 2021, nine years after the release of the previous Rebuild movie, and then beyond. It FINALLY released on March 8, 2021.
- The English dub for the third Rebuild movie has suffered its own share of problems. Funimation had originally announced that that the dub would be released on DVD in February 2014, but Studio Khara's dissatisfaction with the job they did led the company to re-record the entire thing and push back the release date to February 2, 2016.
Dubs
- This trope also extended to the American side of the Pacific with ADV Films. Commentary for the English dub will often make reference to it being made on budget that consisted of a metaphorical shoestring and paperclip, involved renting out space to do recordings with substandard equipment, and had a good portion of the cast played by members of the production team besides the voice actors, among other things.
- According to Rei's voice actress Amanda Winn-Lee, Gainax foisted ADV their own translated scripts, which ended up being used in the 2019 Netflix re-dub, only for Matt Greenfield to lobby them to let him produce their own scripts. A particular point in contention was "Children," which is what the EVA pilots were called in the singular, which the translators fought tooth-and-nail to convince Gainax to let them change it to the grammatically correct "Child."
- ADV wasn't exactly in danger of going out of business, but it's still pretty amazing that the dub was as good as it was all things considered, though it also goes a lot of way to explain why it was as uneven in places as it was.
- The Latin American Spanish dub suffered from this trope, big time: Originally it was planned to be dubbed with a different voice cast. For some reason, the licensor (possibly ADV Films) decided to dub the series in Colombia, using the same studio who dubbed the very unpopular dub of Rurouni Kenshin. For unexplained reasons, they only dubbed a pilot episode, but they were never be able to dub the entire series. Later, the dub was planned to be made in a Spanish-speaking studio in Los Angeles (possibly All Post/Point.360, who produced some Latin Spanish dubs for TMS Entertainment in the late 90's) and, after too much criticism, it went back to Mexico again, albeit with a very different cast from the original Mexican one. Interestingly enough, some of the same cast would later go on to reprise their roles in the Netflix dub.
