Neon Genesis Evangelion

IIRC, Anno confirmed that the first draft was completed and they had started working on revisions, so I would say that it is somewhere in the process of being changed to something almost entirely different from what it was planned to be.

Sounds like the first word was true at least...

So we know for sure now that the last movie is NOT going to debut in 2015. Too bad.

Pretty sure Anno is joking here.

...I hope.

What're the odds that he is invoking Cassandra Truth to obfuscate the spoiler that the 4th movie starts with yet another Time Skip, this time of four to six years?

He means the next one common out is 3.5, with 4 a few years after that...

That's actually what I thought he might be hinting at before I actually read the article. Hayao Miyazaki is now officially my favorite human, ever. I say Anno should take however much time he needs for FINAL.

edited 28th Oct '14 7:45:29 AM by TheAirman

For the original series, is it a fair assessment that Asuka is Shinji's Implied Love Interest? She's on the page, and I'd like some opinions. I'm leaning toward "yes" but am conflicted.

Probably so (even though I never really bought it as being anything but mutually unhealthy).

Can't say the same for the Rebuild saga, despite what all the guys on Eva Geeks claim.

The next rebuild movie won't come till 2125.

You know, thinking back to my favorite character, I kind of find it depressing that Anno thinks that she is popular for these sort of reasons:

"Anno understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like Rei as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape borne of Japan's defeat in the Second World War. Japan lost the war to the Americans. Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there's no reasonable model of what an adult should be like."

Couldn't it simply be that she's a really fascinating and sympathetic character?

Well, she is good to fap to according to some otaku and she fits the Yamato Nabeshiko stereotype well.

That whole quote sounds like a lot of baseless psychobabble. Maybe it has some validity generally speaking but applying it to why one of your fictional characters is popular? Ehhhhh.

Maybe Anno doesn't want to admit that there are quite acceptable reasons involving her character design that led to her popularity with the mainstream fandom, and instead tries to come up with convoluted reasons that reaffirm the Misaimed Fandom label of her popularity.

It's pretty clear from his works that 1)Anno;s psyche is kinda screwy 2)His understanding of symbolism and literature analysis is more intuitive than anything else

I would take anything he says in that area with a grain of salt. Mostly, I think it's just "it makes no sense to him, so he tries to come up with a reason to explain it". Kinda like what happens when you watch the series basically.

It is clear that Anno pours himself into his work. And since we're not Anno, we're never going to fully understand it all, no matter how hard we try.

At least, that's how I view it.

I'm not convinced ANNO understands his work. Still, it certianly has it's merits, even if no-one, not even him, knows where he gets it.

It's why unlike Eva Geeks, I don't really tend to put much stock into what Anno says, since he seems to have a habit of overthinking things and the like.

That, and I don't really fit in with the former's extreme love of Retake being the Rei fan / shipper that I am (her treatment in that doujin is just insulting to me), while they are pretty much Asuka fanboys / fangirls who consider her the best and most perfect character.

For that matter, I feel my main problem with Asuka is her being Unintentionally Unsympathetic. While she does have a tragic backstory, her behavior throughout the rest of the series makes it really hard for me to care for her when she acts so abrasive and without many scenes of humility or tact. Even her Mind Rape came about as a result of her hubris and pride getting the better of her. As Linkara puts it, "There's a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic."

I'm not quite sure Anno (or Eva Geeks for that matter) understand this, no offense to any of her fans in this thread. It's why I found Rei to be way more of an interesting character to analyze and yes, relate to.

edited 31st Oct '14 12:57:52 AM by LDragon2

I think you're missing the point of Asuka's character. She suppose to come off as a massive jerk BECAUSE of her back story. What makes her sympathetic is that she COULD be a better person, but her past made her the exact opposite, that's where the sympathy comes from.

Expecting humility or tact out of Asuka is really missing the point of her character. She sympathetic because she became jerk due to horrible upbringing.

edited 31st Oct '14 2:10:13 AM by AfroWarrior27

I don't know. To me at least, that still doesn't really make her all that sympathetic because she only really changes at the very end of the series. Being a jerk due to harsh upbringing is still being a jerk. Again, there's a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic.

I guess my main problem with her character is that she didn't give me enough scenes of her not being a jerk to really connect to her and feel her plight. I dunno. She just failed to give me anything to latch onto, unlike Rei.

There different ways of how a character can be sympathetic, one of them is understanding the character. Simply saying she's jerk is really a one-note way of judging her overall as a character. It's understandable why she's a jerk and why she that way.

Does it excuse her actions? No.

But is it understandable? Yes.

Is it sad that had she not had such shitty life she could've been a better person? Yes.

Is it horrible that by the time she change, she was completely brutalize? Hell, yeah. (Anno, you damn sadist...)

Is it pitiful that because she felt she was unloved? She craves attention to be loved? Yeah

See what I mean?

edited 31st Oct '14 2:41:52 AM by AfroWarrior27

"Understandable" and "Justifiable" are completely different things. Especially when you also add "Free from negative consequences" in that Equation. Remember that quite a bit of Shinji's stress during the series was her regularly abusing him, that would not endear her to, say, abusive relationship victims, no matter her excuse to do so.

edited 31st Oct '14 2:44:22 AM by SaintDeltora

And I quote:

Sorry, missed that part.

Anyways... what I was trying to say is that it's completely in anyone's right to dislike her for the way she acts, regardless of what drove her to act that way.

I understand that, the point I'm trying to make is that her actions aren't excusable, but there understandable. To say she just a jerk, is ignoring a great deal of her character.

That's like saying Shinji is just a whiny boy, or Rei is just an unemotional girl and leaving it at that.

edited 31st Oct '14 3:01:20 AM by AfroWarrior27