neon genesis evangelion

Here instead of using the feedback of their consumers and giving them the escapism fantasy they came to expect, the narration works on the fears of an antisocial guy and confront him to the other.

The "reality check" was recieved as a bravade by both fans and the industry! (But somehow I think it doesn't matter since the importance of Eva is now undisputed.)

The author being a Ûber-Otaku himself made his point eaven more twisted, isn'it?

They made a considerable research for this project; loads of references to theology, wwII, post wwII pop culture and it's avant-garde, history of anime etc so it makes it extra-fun for fans to talk about it and share interpretations. The 2 last episodes are fantastic, like a metaphysic of the anime. ANNO HIDEAKI rules! anyone've seen his latest stuff?

Also, the animation in that movie was probably the best stuff I've seen outside of, say, Fantasia.

The End of Envanglion was created later after the series became a huge success and they had funds to do a proper ending with mecha battles and so forth.

The creator of the series was battling depression at the time, which explains alot. He also admitted that the Christian/Kabalah references were just window dressing and didn't have any real bearing on the plot, which pissed me off (I guess its too much too expect the Japanese to have weird insights into Western Theology). Like a lot of anime, its not as deep as it first appears, just incomprehensible and filled with non-sequitors.

I think FLCL toppped NGE's animation.

i enjoyed it when i was about 12-14. i'd probably like to see it again sometime, but i'm in no rush. (this includes the end of evangelion movie et al. which i might be more into if this girl lauren didn't steal it from me. bitch.)

i have been watching this stoned as part of my post-breakup/summer regimen of weed & movies that alienate my roommates and its fucking terrific. why does the music suck so much, though? i was hoping for some crazy akira-style chanting/drums. still. giant robots + pseduo-gnostic theology = bonerville

+ babes, too

ha, I've been watching this too.

I loved this series the first time through but when I tried to rewatch it, I couldn't tolerate Shinji's whining. I only got through a few episodes before I was muttering, "Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup," uncontrollably.

Maybe it had something to do with having seen the ending. The end of the movie is a total cop-out, right? I don't want to give anything away (and I don't recall many details anyway) but I remember feeling ripped off.

the english dubbing is terrible as usual

Yeah, I think I watched the dubbed version. Stupid, whiny Shinji voice...

I couldn't finish watching this on TV because of him, had to buy the DVDs and see it subbed.

This is the man responsible:
http://ia.ec.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/89/58/29m.jpg

Also, I think Asuka is awesomely bitchy in Japanese, but just annoyingly bitchy in English.

hmm, did the pic not post?
this guy:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0818111/

Huh, Asuka's voice was the only one I liked better in English than Japanese.

Something about it, just more affecting...

I've heard people say that. Couldn't take it.

Asuka's accent in the dubbed version is so weird.

for me, it doesn't work without the english dubbing. only because i saw it all first as the dubbed version.

the penguin annoys me too

I haven't seen this but I have been led to suspect it might be the second-best thing ever, by this... intriguing version of Gangster's Paradise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP9DKGhUiaY

(which is obviously the first-best thing ever)

why does the music suck so much, though?

haha that fly me to the moon cover omg

@ one point in my lyfe i really thought this was the most wonderful thing imaginable. rewatching now ive got a new appreciation for mitsuru erm mitsato

lmao ya me 2 (that point in my lyfe being when i was 14 - perfect age for it really, since at no other point in ure life will that particular brand of narcissistic doom-angst resonate so distinctly)

imo it's best interpreted as an extremely hateful sequel to otaku no video - the whole thing boils over with anno's rage & disgust w/himself and w/his audience, which in turn casts a darkly funny light on the show's legacy, tho otoh i have recently come to understand that GAINAX is doing a series of evangelion movies w/the promise that it will retell the story in a more conventional and straightforward fashion, to make it accessible for a broader audience - i guess that says something about where anno's at in his life now (i know he got married a few years ago), or maybe it just means he has nothing better to do than remake gunbuster for the 93rd time

the scene from end of evangelion where asuka is eaten alive still gives me, like, emotions btw ;_;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMEjWP-CGbc

just watched the first two episodes and there are some moments of true beauty - the cut from shinji seemingly losing his battle with the angel to a blindingly white hospital bed and the "unfamiliar ceilings" title card is wonderful~~~ and the show has some of the best sound fx in any anime from the bestial groans of the eva in battle to all that perfectly calibrated silence

yah i watched it 1st when i was 13 and i really got sucked in to the alternating ~coolness~ (lol the shadowy cabal meets in a nite black room with glowing neon thrones) and ~heaviness~ of the angst and the alienation amidst this wonderful futurescape. but i think its still "good" or w/e maybe more nuanced than im giving credit for

the whole thing boils over with anno's rage & disgust w/himself and w/his audience, which in turn casts a darkly funny light on the show's legacy

even two episodes in every characters desperation to connect w/another human being is pretty fukken tragic but the amount of self-loathing that shinji feels is pretty lol considering hes the obv audience surrogate

also cankles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebuild_of_Evangelion

the show has some of the best sound fx in any anime from the bestial groans of the eva in battle to all that perfectly calibrated silence

otm i always loved the way they would isolate the cicadas in quiet outdoor scenes

idk if it's good or nuanced but as someone who basically hates anime i appreciate eva for being so mean and hateful. it was the most influential anime of the decade, but everything it influenced took the 'wrong' cues from it - all the crap with the conspiracies and retarded plucked-from-a-hat religious shit was just window dressing for the 26-episode therapy session of one rageful manchild. that's probably why i liked the movie better than the series, which had a lot of bland monster-of-the-week filler episodes (tho i liked the show's ending fine), stuff like the scene where shinji jerks off over asuka's coma-titties has no room for extra interpretation.

haha from here it seems like the most influential anime of the 90s was dragon ball but i def agree with everything else ur saying. eva was unique in how bleak and vicious it could be - watching the sub versions the dude who voices shinji's dad is so menacing and hateful its pretty great.

i guess id just add that eva still feels a lot more "artful" than most anime. its beautifully drawn and we talked about the sound but the editing is fukken aces and it less idk static or flat than a lot of cartoons imo. also i do think theres some nuance - its mostly pretty emo and yah "rageful" is really good word for it - but small moments like shinji sobbing in the cockpit of his eva after the 2nd battle in front of the dude that just knocked him out - there are some slivers of a more grown up empathy and distance in there

retarded plucked-from-a-hat religious shit

lol deathnote

lol all anime

haha, this show will always have a special place in my heart, seriously

dragonball couldve been the most influential in america but as far as influencing other anime eva takes the cake. idk a lot of that was pretty by-the-book giant robot melodrama stuff - crying in a robot (the new 'crying in the club') is definitely well-worn territory imo. the 'moments of true beauty' u mentioned earlier were only there for budgetary reasons, ie. it's a tv production so there's lots of panning across still frames and backgrounds, which is why gendo spends half the series with his mouth covered. maybe the fact that eva gave license to every anime that followed it to also be 'artful' and pretentious makes me distrusting of those qualities in eva itself.

also ya lmbo anime imo

'starscream ascendant', chapter 9 - transformers fanfic community — this is the only google result for 'crying in a robot'

haha yah it wasnt that shinji crying in da robot was new ground but that the way it was shot and cut and the perspective of the two classmates (lol even drawn the O_O looks on their faces is a+) made it seem more, i guess, than the typical emo pity party thing. idk i thought it was pretty effective @ showing how alienated and ashamed the dude was - even if being alienated and ashamed is kinda de rigeur~~~

sometimes the "artful" stuff is pretentious lol the shot of a lone tennis ball in the rain but i think it works, generally. meh ive been liking it so far what can i say?

it works.

i will say, the way the kaji-misato relationship was handled always struck me as really 'adult' i guess

we are all so lonely €~€~€~€

the scene from end of evangelion where asuka is eaten alive still gives me, like, emotions btw ;_;

haha just watched the movie and this, basic. the whole thing is pretty fucked up and meandering and tenuous but that scene and ikari just choking the fuck out of asuka @ one point ~feelings bro~

flcl on tapppp i think

flcl was awesome

i don't know what you mean by "on tappppp" though

no 1 understands me. [do they?] no 1 cares about me. [do they?] i'm useless. [are u?]

no; possibly; maybe

when u read that u shouldve pictured a bunch of squiggly kanji and stills from some of my past ilx posts btw

that's pretty much the spirit in which i always read ur posts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwj9SeKlvx0

props for rabbit head violinin', at least

is the one on the bottom right a man

just finished watching the orig. 26 eps (havent watched the movie yet tho THANKS FOR SPOILERS)

alt name I thought of after first 6 eps: EMO GENESIS EVANGELION
alt name I thought of after first 16 eps: NEON GENESIS BILDUNGSROMAN

then it got really cool

shinji's japanese voice actor is really good, when he screams its legit terrifying

This shit was super key to me as a teenager. Basically ruled my, like, 1998-2000 or so. I even used to run an Eva fanfic site! Not sure I could ever really sit through the whole thing again, though I've been hearing good things about the new remade version.

lotta OTM comments upthread, don't really have energy to add to them right now but man, this really is a very stylish and memorable show, a lot of the images from it are totally burned into my brain basically fifteen years later.

This shit was super key to me as a teenager

Oh yes. They really should bundle a DVD box set of this show with every under-18 Zoloft prescription, it would save a lot of time.

This and Lain

Oh wow - I never checked out Lain and up til this second had totally forgotten it existed but suddenly I remember a LOT of buzz

It's seriously amazing work, even watching it as an adult (and post-90's; the VR stuff is of course dated but a lot of the mobile devices, social networking, etc is...not prescient, but damn good guesswork and as such not embarrassing in hindsight). There's a new blu-ray coming out in the US next month, with everything restored to HD from the original elements- I've seen clips from the Japanese release of the remaster on Youtube and it's a revelation after years of seeing it on muddy first-gen DVDs with blown-out color.

Ah, here we go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9CXmEUwvgM

Oh waiiiiiiiiiiit. I might have watched the first episode of that in the control room of our high school's video lab. Damn.

re: Eva, I can't say it's really satisfying but there is something miraculously batshit about the End of Evangelion ending, where the evil white Evas circle around and the two-hundred-foot Naked Rei does something with a spear to dissolve all of humanity into flying green crosses and Asuka and Shinji wake up on a beach, presumably to become the next Adam and Eve. All soundtracked by the world's corniest piano suicide ballad which gradually morphs, apparently without anybody involved noticing that this is an odd thing to do, into an "All You Need Is Love" type singalong complete with "A Day In The Life" strings. This from a show that begins with giant robot fights and wacky hijinks revolving around a warm-water penguin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNelByTqFnA

good god this is even more fucked than i remember

pretty sure i've only ever really seen this as a pirated Video CD of an unsubtitled camcorder-in-the-theater bootleg, with art reading "THE END OF EVANAGELION"

This just reminded me that my friend sent me the Blu-Ray of 1.11 and I haven't watched it yet. I sort of wanted to wait until they were all released but that'll be forever. I loved this series as a teenager.

All soundtracked by the world's corniest piano suicide ballad which gradually morphs, apparently without anybody involved noticing that this is an odd thing to do, into an "All You Need Is Love" type singalong complete with "A Day In The Life" strings. This from a show that begins with giant robot fights and wacky hijinks revolving around a warm-water penguin.

― Doctor Casino, Saturday, October 20, 2012 1:34 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

iirc its called Komm Susser Todd and is a blatant Hey Jude rip as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCLoNOYcVQU

only the song audio, with all the freakiest visual bits, and yeah, the "Hey Jude" rip is pretty apparent, don't know why I didn't think of that

I've gotten more into anime in the last year and would love to watch NGE, but it seems to be going for pretty astonishing prices everywhere I look. I do plan on seeing more Lain, seeing it's often cited as one of the first shows in the mold of Kino's Journey, Mushishi and Haibane Renmei, all of which I really liked.

Half.com has what appears to be complete box sets for $30, FWIW.

kind of staggering considering as a teenager i'm sure i bought these for like, $15-20 per two-episode VHS tape

it was pretty easy to find on a semi-enclosed body of water used by marauders

I believe you mean "Dirac's Ocean."

I do plan on seeing more Lain, seeing it's often cited as one of the first shows in the mold of Kino's Journey, Mushishi and Haibane Renmei, all of which I really liked.

You really can't go wrong; it's very much like those shows, especially the darker or more elliptical episodes of Kino's Journey (ie the less pastoral or Invisible Cities-esque ones). You mention Haibane Renmei, but it's also worth checking out the other two shows lead artist/character designer Yoshitoshi ABe worked on if you get a chance- NieA_7, which starts as a slice-of-life magical realist (or whatever the sf equivalent of that is) thing with lots of forced wackiness but ends on a much more subdued, Haibane Renmei-like note, and Texhnolyze, which is overlong, a bit too action-y and full of irritatingly affected nihilism but still absolutely marvelous to look at.

A few years back, ABe and Ryutaro Nakamura (the director of Lain, Kino's Journey and Texhnolyze) were working on something called Despera that summaries and production art presented as a kind of diesel-punk 1940's Lain, but it seems like it's been sidelined, maybe permanently, by Nakamura's ongoing health problems.

Okay, removing nerd hat...NOW.

Yeah, I've heard about Texhnolyze and will probably seek it out sometime in the future. I've been getting two box sets roughly once every two or three months, and usually order something lighter and humorous along with a more "serious" anime each time. Thanks for the tip, Doctor Casino, though I'm always weary about ordering stuff from the States.

I should rewatch this. I remember that it seemed super profound and symbolic, though I could never have explained how.

"shinji's japanese voice actor is really good, when he screams its legit terrifying"
i'm not sure but i think it's a lady? like bart simpson.

just watched end of evangelion, complete lol

I've gotten more into anime in the last year and would love to watch NGE, but it seems to be going for pretty astonishing prices everywhere I look. I do plan on seeing more Lain, seeing it's often cited as one of the first shows in the mold of Kino's Journey, Mushishi and Haibane Renmei, all of which I really liked.

haha, are you me? Kino's Journey, Mushishi and Haibane Renmei are all shows that i adore.
I recently watched the Evangelion TV series for the first time, I can see why it was so important at the time etc. but ... it really wasn't that enjoyable to watch, thought it was kinda terrible tbh. are the film versions any better?

tbh that's how I felt about the velvet underground's first three albums

don't bother with the film versions then, i'm gonna be frank...

that said, the rebuild movies were shockingly good at capturing what was good about the original series. i guess that's not a surprise since they simply redrew many of the iconic scenes and removed a lot of cruft, but i'm used to TV > film retellings being pretty crappy. it and made me want to rewatch the series again, since at the same time it made me miss those super long, slow shots wallowing in depression. doc casino, you get what i'm saying

so are they gonna rerelease the TV series on blu-ray?

the new film is being cross promoted with ... a horse race. yup.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQX__T2W8ag

http://spongethesquid.tumblr.com/post/51611088597

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XSV2DAUnfk&feature=youtu.be&t=9m56s

i chuckled. what WAS that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGFSwwibn94

Made my day!

wow

i am watching this now for the first time, holy shit so good

this is my favorite show

still haven't watched the third rebuild movie bc everything i've read about it suggests it is insane garbage

Yeah I refuse to watch any of the ones that 'clean up' the ending

I haven't seen 3.0 yet, but from what I understand it's even MORE of a mess, which makes me want to see it all the more!

3.0 is cool, carries in the eva tradition of trolling fanboys

who would you cast in live action american remake? has michael cera aged out?

eva-01 going nuts and ripping apart eva-03/13th angel is some freaky shit; surprised they were able to air it!

i think around the same time ppl in the us were freaking out about power rangers and x-men being violent.

yep. I believe the show did get moved to a later time slot at some point during its initial run tho.

that scene was serious

^_^

o_o

O_O

>>>>room falls into a hushed silence<<<

for teenage me

how was anyone seeing this in the 90s? i remember some kids at school talking abt "neo eva" prob around 99-2000 but i can't imagine there was some cable channel airing these (in the us anyway)

long established tape trading networks, anime clubs and binaries on Usenet by late 90s etc. guess you would have needed to be a huge nerd to know about any of this stuff tho!

Of course with shows like Evangelion there were official VHS releases, going by Amazon they were coming out by 1998

huge nerd so I did tape trades too but I mostly bought bootleg vhs tapes from nyc places that had things like kung fu, hk action, and kaiju movies <3

and yeah, there were official release, but they were soooo expensive! like $35 for two subbed eps or something iirc!

yeh it's crazy how the high price of anime during the economic bubble has been retained in Japan, while prices in the West have come right down (although occasionally Japanese companies still try the old methods e.g. the recent Yamato 2199 with 4 episodes on a Bluray for $45)

for example, take recent hit Attack On Titan
on US Amazon you can get a Bluray box set of the first 12 episodes with all the extras, dubbed & subbed for $25
On JP Amazon you buy single Blurays containing 2 episodes each for ¥4795, roughly $48
the economics of the business are absolutely borked, hence the preponderance of creepy young girl T&A in modern anime grumble grumble

service! service! service!

Honestly, I mean, what is it about that. I'm not even into the anime, I just want to play the JRPGs video games but god do I feel weird playing JRPGs now. Were Japanese people always this sexually retarded or was it just the 16-bit era that prevented me from realizing that Japanese men have the sexuality of 9-year-old aspergers.

For me it was a mix of official VHS (which was crazily expensive - $20 for two episodes on VHS was my experience) and really shitty low-quality VHS dupes. I definitely had at least half of Eva in those sweet-looking ADV VHS tapes, lined up on my shelf, next to the one great indulgence of that era for me, the complete Escaflowne ($100 at the time, now available on Amazon for $18, or $45 for the DVDs). Most of the anime I saw was fan-subbed, ranging wildly in quality from tapes packed out in EP with nth generation, washed-out dupes (but: sixteen episodes on one tape!) to really gorgeous labors of love (can still remember one fansubber by name: VKLL, who did immaculate work on key chunks of Sailor Moon continuity when they were not available in the US).

There were certain things I would buy official releases of and certain things where that was just not ever going to be realistic... DVD changed all this just as I was getting out of the hobby. Back in the 90s there were all these huge, huge shows that you just couldn't believe would ever get finished being released, and couldn't imagine anybody actually buying each and every tape of - so why even bother buying tape #1 out of 100? It's a shame because there were these shockingly dedicated, and probably insane, small American operations that were slowly, steadily putting out these expensive but wonderful tapes. AnimEigo did Urusei Yatsura with all these annotations and stuff explaining the puns and mythological references, everything. That show has 195 episodes! The watershed here was probably Dragonball Z, which had daily television building its audience, and was coming out on tape for a while but I believe switched over to DVD just before it would have gotten totally crazy.

soyokaze fansubs is the one I remember to this day. their tapes were blue!

and yeah, those animeigo inserts were special. and particularly fascinating to me for something like otaku no video, which had all these layers of references and in-jokes I couldn't possibly get otherwise.

still have regrets about not signing up for that macross box they did but I just didn't have the money then :-/

how was anyone seeing this in the 90s?

there was an anime review section in the back of this import video game magazine i read that led to me asking for (and getting) a bunch of the vhs tapes for my birthday in like '96 or '97 and i remember most my parents like complete puzzlement about any of this stuff but they also bought me a pretty sweet record of lodoss war box for the same bday

i do remember how expensive/difficult to acquire this stuff was in the 90s so i was sort of saddened to see that the entire series is (was?) available to stream on youtube three or four summers ago when i rewatched it

hey, it's a great thing that it's 100x easier to watch anime compared to when we young

i too remember the pain of buying those $30 VHS tapes. i was so happy when my local comic shop or video store picked up some rentable anime

My high school also had an anime club, where seniors could introduce sophomores (previously versed only in Akira and Sailor Moon) to the wonders of the first two episodes of any number of random shows. At at a certain point, the sophomores learned enough to no longer settle for whatever was being offered, and the club split into rival factions, which required inventing a dubious new title, the Eastern Film Appreciation Society in order to convince the school officials that this needed to be its own club. The EFAS leadership (including yours truly) also cast an open invitation to anybody who wanted to appear in an extra yearbook photo, so it (apparently) possessed close to a hundred members, versus the rump anime club's near-dozen.

Usenet was also key in getting up to speed on the shows that were out there, learning how to get fansubs, etc.

there was always something potent and fulfilling about how obscure and rare anime felt to me in the 90s. i dont wish anime was still hard to find and expensive to acquire but that was def part of the appeal of it to me as a kid, the idea that i was watching something secret and different from the stuff my friends and classmates and people at tennis camp were into, something they hadnt even heard of. its still slightly surprising to me when i talk to people who were into it at the same time i was so strongly do i associate this stuff (less eva than some of the other series i was fanatical about) with a kind of private obsession

TOTALLY, no question. It was so great to have this hobby with a world of undiscovered treasure - which also made it really satisfying to commiserate with the small number of other people who would get the jokes, be stoked about the same release news, whatever. My first couple of anime conventions, though exhausting, had a similar "wow, I'm among my people!" kinda feel that faded by the time I went to my third in 2000 or so. This is obviously independent of the quality of the shows but I do think it's significant that my interest waned as more and more shows were becoming available. Part of this was the sheer tidal wave of product though - it got really hard to tell shows apart, for me, though it's kinda obvious I probably woulda dug the big 'college hits' of the early 2000s (Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, etc.) if I'd given them the time. But I also was in college vs. high school, I wasn't in touch with any anime people there and there was other stuff going on, political clubs to join, rock bands to go see, girls to meet, etc.

the difficulty in tracking this stuff down also it also made it kinda mind blowing when you'd start seeing roujin-z or w/e on regular old tv

i do remember how expensive/difficult to acquire this stuff was in the 90s so i was sort of saddened to see that the entire series is (was?) available to stream on youtube three or four summers ago when i rewatched it

felt the same way when I typed "macross do you remember love" into youtube a while ago and there it was, the whole movie. last time I'd watched it (quite a while ago), it was on this nth generation dub of a dub. I'd found someone through a newsgroup, sent them blank tapes, endured an excruciating wait for my stuff to arrive. later on I'd get burned by the same person in another trade and that part sucked hard... but everything else about these weird fan systems made watching this stuff super exciting back then.

According to a document from March of 1998, inevitably titled "Anime Instrumentality Project.doc," my collection included a handful of very motley commercially-available stuff: first OAV of Oh! My Goddess, Macross Plus, the "Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood something" movie, Eva episodes 13-20, the first Project A-Ko movie (saw this on the street the other day for a buck and was really tempted).

Everything else was fansubs or other bootlegs, but similarly miscellaneous - Battle Angel 1-2, Blue Seed 1-4, Dirty Pair 1-4, Fushigi Yuugi 1-8, Here Is Greenwood 1-4, Irresponsible Captain Tylor 1-4, Kiki and Laputa, Rayearth 1-8 (came out as a dub a year later and I think the fansubs dried up), Marmalade Boy 1-8, Kodomo no Omocha 1-12, Kimagure Orange Road 1-12, Ranma 1-3, Lodoss War 1-13 (all on one tape!) and a ton of Sailor Moon (three movies, one of which I'm not sure I ever watched, nice VKLL subs of 1-15, plus the 'lost episodes' rounding out Sailor Moon R, back when the dub didn't go that far), all of The Mysterious Cities of Gold on ten tapes, Urusei Yatsura 1-16 and movies 1 and 2.... down to a few I have no memory of whatsoever, "Fairy Princess Ren 1," "The Samurai 1."

Man, what a mess. You can see one big problem with the fansub/tape-trading system: it was pretty easy to 'sample' the beginnings of lots of shows for basically the price of a blank tape plus shipping. But lots of things would get started by some fansubber and not continued - or more likely, I would sample them and like them enough to go a certain distance but not farther, or I'd get distracted by the prospect of some other new show. I might be jumbling this up but I think it was customary to order a max of three tapes at one time, so you would have to choose: one more four-episode block of a show I'm halfway following, or TWELVE episodes in a row of something else? I suspect social factors were also at work... it wasn't as fun to be into a show the three other anime fans at school weren't hooked on and didn't want to borrow!

But since we were teenagers with limited income, the real kiss of death was always a show getting picked up for a real release, ironic because the translation, packaging, and especially video/audio quality would be immeasurably better. But Rayearth, lavish though it was, just was not a compelling enough show on an episode-by-episode basis to justify shelling out for it. In the couple years following that list I know I committed a bit more to certain shows - I bought all of that first run of Utena episodes (thirteen episodes, four VHS tapes) and then the release stalled out for years for some reason.

For Eva, 1-12 and 17-24 were each jam-packed on single tapes in super low quality. I didn't see 25-26 until a couple years later I think! My friend had a shot-in-the-theater bootleg of the movie on Video CD, but I see I mentioned that upthread...

Sorry for the super nerdy posts btw, this is just bringing back lots of memories. I actually ran a big Evangelion fanfic site for a while; it was gutted when my dad discovered all the "lemon" fics, and I think I lost some ground to bigger, slicker sites. Still, I got a lot of mail when I closed it in a huff in May of '99, and again when I tentatively reopened a year later, the summer before college (though I never actually updated the thing again).

in the long gap between end of evangelion's japanese release and its american release i got my dad to take me to see it at a japanese cafe/gift shop where i had discovered it was going to be playing. turned out it wasn't even fansubbed—just the unsubbed version playing on a small tv mounted near the ceiling. i made my dad sit through the whole thing with me.

hahahaha awesome

Reminds me of one time my dad tried to watch some anime with me, to keep current with my interests. I had just bought a new Eva tape, and it turned out to be the one where they're all naked for no reason. It was a bit awkward but I think he was more confused and bored than disapproving.

it was p easy to get anime and manga stuff in austin (although i didn't become seriously interested in it until around 1997). for a long time there was a dedicated anime and manga store called animagix where you could buy models, posters, OSTs, videos, etc and they also rented out fansubs (i didn't realize at the time that this was shitty). i also used to go to the university of texas anime club screenings, which were open to the public. my japanese teacher would also show us fansubs in class and sometimes just straight-up tapes of japanese tv that his family had sent him.

reading manga back then was weirder and more difficult, though—i would buy stuff in japanese off the internet (where? i can't even remember) then read along with a fan translation that was just a plain text file

Sorry for the super nerdy posts btw, this is just bringing back lots of memories.

no keep it up, i find this sort of stuff really interesting! i wasn't watching any anime at the time so like reading about the early days of western fandom.

yeah, loving it too

Anime Instrumentality Project.doc

haven't changed my DN in years but I am v tempted right now...

hahaha

Thing was, I was already conscious of being a very late wave of fandom! It felt like the golden age had arrived in terms of stuff being available, when you compared to old-timers who went back to the 70s or early 80s, the people who were now running the cons (and in some cases the official release companies). Also, since the clandestine difficulties of tape trading were part of the appeal, they weren't really obstacles as such.

yeah, it reminds me of when metal guys talk about tape trading in the 80s/early 90s. but even nerdier.

and love that story, 1staethyr. I was soooooo excited for end of eva man. for a lot of reasons, really, but the main one was prob bc the poster for it was so badass that I could barely stand it

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Eoeposter.JPG

sadly, it all came down to nothing
it just kept letting me down, letting me down, letting me down

hahaha

and that reminds me, I really tried to make myself like the eva osts, but man, the music is p much the one thing about this series I still can't get with

except "cruel angel's thesis" of course

lol. i still know all the lyrics to cruel angel's thesis and have had the occasional singalong when hanging out with my best friend from the 7th grade

i also used to go to the university of texas anime club screenings, which were open to the public

One of my biggest sources of anime in college (~2000) was the private FTP server of someone who either ran the University of Texas Anime Club or provided the anime (I didn't go to the school). God bless her

in the long gap between end of evangelion's japanese release and its american release i got my dad to take me to see it at a japanese cafe/gift shop where i had discovered it was going to be playing. turned out it wasn't even fansubbed—just the unsubbed version playing on a small tv mounted near the ceiling. i made my dad sit through the whole thing with me.

this is incredible

ha, that End of Eva poster, so fucking metal!!! still love the vibe of the show's promos, fonts, title cards, etc.

Anime Instrumentality Project.doc

the music is p much the one thing about this series I still can't get with

i actually get really excited whenever the one battle theme with the tympanis starts up, like something badass is about to happen!

http://i.imgur.com/UQL9jIb.png

Is this canon

Lollll Gendou

hahaha so wrong!!!

i can't accept as canon a stubble-free kaji. everything else abt this is fine tho

just watched "end of evangelion" — has there ever been such a despairing end to a series?

also wish i could get "komm susser töd" out of my head.

i know i've let you down
i've been a fool to myself

crossover

http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.13794286.2799/fig,white,mens,ffffff.u2.jpg

i mustn't run away 94
fig leaves have no place on a pizza 76

i bought a shirt

http://www.redbubble.com/people/ayarti/works/11820802-ramiel?p=t-shirt&ref=shop_grid

nicely obscure

that's the idea

also ramiel is the coolest angel fuiud

That's a pretty cool pokeball

i played that for the first time last winter, fun game

"how disgusting."

http://i.imgur.com/xRwi14C.jpg

rad

http://i.imgur.com/GmUXGKO.jpg

me irl

Bluray box set of TV show & original films coming to Japan in summer 2015. gonna be expensive!
http://www.evangelion.co.jp/ng.html

snap i just tried to start watching this show again today. 1-3 eps in and i might be ready to take the plunge. (it takes me forever with anime series to get into a groove but i have heard lots of recs for this recently.) might help to have access to bluray quality.

It starts off as a somewhat melancholy mecha series, then develops into a vortex of crushing sadness and alienation, if that helps at all....

and then the budget runs out and it's a slideshow with incomprehensible narration!

Even then it's a vortex of crushing sadness and alienation

with penguin gags!

should rewatch at some point but I'm watching Utena w/ my partner now (a few eps in) and it's a whole other angle on eschatological(?) weirdness

http://i.imgur.com/bC2Gnly.jpg

lol

Brilliant.

should rewatch at some point but watching Utena w/ my partner now (a few eps in) and it's a whole other angle on eschatological(?) weirdness

Just about to give a rewatch to Adolescence of Utena, which is a) one of my favorite animes and b) available in its full length on Youtube. Merry Christmas to me!

uh oh

http://i.imgur.com/6UIZMso.jpg

Today is the exact day Shinji Ikari time travels to while absorbed inside the Twelfth Angel.

totally rewatching this rn, happy 2015 everyone

so i'm rewatching it with someone who's never seen it before, which is fun bc i've seen it all the way through like 15 times

it's the first time i've watched it in five-six years though and it's like even more emotionally harrowing? cool, great series

talking about the show with someone just now i only now realized how deeply, deeply gross and horrible the gendo/rei relationship is

I don't know if I could stand a series rewatch, so much angst!

I'd watch that new film series, though.

i still haven't seen 3.0 but enjoy the idea of anno trolling his audience with piano solos

Every time I think about rewatching this I get filled with unutterable dread

in the long gap between end of evangelion's japanese release and its american release i got my dad to take me to see it at a japanese cafe/gift shop where i had discovered it was going to be playing. turned out it wasn't even fansubbed—just the unsubbed version playing on a small tv mounted near the ceiling. i made my dad sit through the whole thing with me.

― 1staethyr, Friday, July 11, 2014 1:14 PM (6 months ago)

Reminds me of one time my dad tried to watch some anime with me, to keep current with my interests. I had just bought a new Eva tape, and it turned out to be the one where they're all naked for no reason. It was a bit awkward but I think he was more confused and bored than disapproving.

― Doctor Casino, Friday, July 11, 2014 1:16 PM (6 months ago)

i love these posts

I saw Rebirth fansubbed at an anime con in I wanna say 1998, a decent amount of time before it was out domestically, at a late night screening filled with rowdy black anime fans. I was shaken by the shattering emotional journey Anno took me on and resented the rambunctious crowd for puncturing my melancholy. But in retrospect it was cool.

okay finally watching 3.0 and holy shit

i love that everyone has corny space/future beards

this is like leiji matsumoto's evangelion

last one comes out this year, right? i've still only seen the first one b/c i wanted to watch them back to back + still not sure how i feel about the whole thing anyway

the second one is legitimately great, and the third one veers so far away from the original plot that uh you could consider this a sequel

almost every scene in 3.0 is baffling, i am being elaborately trolled rn

weren't you the first time around too though, tbh?

yeah that's why i'm sorta into it

beautiful 3d animation on this kaworu/shinji piano duet

one day I hope to marathon the 4 new movies in a theater in one sitting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va5_rn3vG3A

crowdfunding campaign to send a replica of the Spear of Longinus to the moon, after one day they are about a third of the way to the total.
Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki (in blue) showed up to the campaign launch!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GpMGhZ6h0

omg awesome

http://i.imgur.com/5i6hunw.gif

Evangelion remake looks sick

woooooow =)

I'm watching the original series for the first time. Loving it! Amazing the range of stories you can tell with "Giant robots defending Earth" as your main plot.

Also Misato rocking the high-functioning alcoholism and the timeless comedy of a crazy penguin doing crazy things.

Just finished the ep where they reveal Adam.....woah. Really liked episode 14, starting with the recap and featuring Rei's mystical/psychological freak-out in the middle there. Looking forward to see where all this goes!

The design of all the angels is pretty fantastic. Each one is a new abomination and has a really bizarre appearance and shape. The weird pyramid....the floating wedjat eye...the shadeless zebra-striped sphere.... So so good.

I'm highly enjoying the mystical shit but I like that stuff more than most people, and Shinji's angst isn't just one-dimensional sulking.

there's upwards of two dimensions to it!

Just finished the ep where they reveal Adam.....woah.

This was one of the first really badass, mindblowing, stuck-in-my-brain moments when I watched the first time. Just a couple of cryptic, baffling lines, enough to keep a lot of speculation going.

Agreed about the Angel designs - I think there's a few duds or too-similar ones, early on, but yeah, I like them as they get fucking weird as hell.

lol adam I would love to reexperience this show for the first time, enjoy

shinji's "angst" is straight up deeply woven trauma so i kinda can't hear ppl be shitty about it anymore

Yeah it's devastating, he literally has the world on his shoulders. I read the writer/director was suffering from depression-I do from time to time so I can really see that in this. But it's not depressing, it's pretty inspirational. Shinji rules!

http://38.media.tumblr.com/8a7bff2413a3a6a975049bffc8044091/tumblr_ncki3wPgKB1s7m1zqo1_r1_250.gif

shinji's "angst" is straight up deeply woven trauma so i kinda can't hear ppl be shitty about it anymore

Yeah I am just in a mood tonight, ignore me.

That was pretty funny.

I like how Misato promised her team they would all get steak if they were successful. But she had no money and so they had to get ramen instead. This meant Rei the vegetarian had an option, so it ended up working out ever better.

Yeah I am just in a mood tonight, ignore me.

oh don't worry about it, your comment was funny, it just reminded me of recent conversations i've had about this show

I think I'll finally be able to rewatch the show when I'm close to dying and after having led a very fulfilling and happy life with no pain and sadness

how disgusting

http://i.imgur.com/yw86LBz.png

hahah

Literally started having flashbacks while reading that. I need to go lie down

Damn I can't believe Ikari made his son almost kill Toji. So cold.

And then Shinji coming back and going insane to the point of the Eva eating the Angel like an animal.....woah

i thought what happened was shinji refused to kill the angel-infected eva so gendou replaced shinji w/ the autopilot which is what caused the gorefest

Yes but Shiji quits piloting the Eva in next the ep and when he does come back to save the day it's super brutal (Shinji achieving 400% sync and the Eva turning into God status). He starts crawling on his hands like an ape and consumes the Angel in 19/20. CRAZY

Please keep it coming AB, you are taking me back to tenth grade here, seeing this for the first time - stunned silence in the room, two absolute ''holy shit'' episodes back to back. It's amazing how seamlessly the show ramps from its initial melange of fun robot show, weird arty angsty guy show, and wacky penguin/boob antics show, to get to *that* point so quickly, and yet have you 100% invested in the characters, their shock, their horror.

damn right!

24: Holy Kubrick w the floating sentient monoliths and the Beethoven. So amazing that still shot of the Eva holding the tiny seemingly benevolent Angel. And the crunch that follows is insane. Wow. Also aw sad Pen Pen is leaving Miss Misato. She is an amazing character btw. Coming in at the very end when it seemed all hope was lost, like Krishna surveying the battlefield. Some amazing philosophy in here.

you've reached the moment for an important decision now as to whether to watch 25/26 and/or End of Eva and in what order. (I suggest End of Eva, I can't put up with 25/26)

25/26 are beautiful ;__;

watch both tho, obv

uff, misato in EoE

;_;

v pleased this thread has gone from ilxors being like "THAT ONE SHOW WHAT HAS THE PENGUIN" just ftr

25: Ok wow this is Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back as art film written by Freud. "What I desire is despair" Rei is so goth. All the stoplights here, it is very much like a psychological stage play. Dark night of the soul for all involved.

26: Love the watercolors. I like how as the characters break down the animation breaks down too. This show is great about using classical film techniques to get across character development and these final episodes are master-classes. Adding the line for ground to give Shinji something to use to orient himself was brilliant. It reminds me of the Ancient Egyptian concept of The Horizon and also a bit of that Daffy Duck where the animator is creating the world around the character. I bet some people were upset there were no more giant robot fights but this stuff is great. It seems like the kind of ego destruction and rebirth that might have gone on during Dave's trip through the 2001 monolith. Plus we had that alternate reality where Shinji is a normal kid and its like a stock anime about wacky school hijinks. Then all the characters say goodbye, leaving you to decide what really happened at the end there. So ambiguous. Having all the characters (and then the writer) thank the audience at the end was a nice touch. Can't believe they fit all of this into a 23-minute episode!

I guess End Of is next =)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/39/The_End_of_Evangelion_shot.jpg/250px-The_End_of_Evangelion_shot.jpg

Aw this looks amazing.

they're the same ;)

bought another shirt ^_^

http://www.redbubble.com/people/jelecy/works/13485645-penpen?grid_pos=162&p=t-shirt&ref=shop_grid

I need a NERV mug so badly

― 龜, Wednesday, April 8, 2015 1:30 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

episodes 25/26 rule, i will hear no dissent

end of eva is probably my favorite movie of all time

adam's observations of ep 26 are GREAT btw

brad let's hang where u at

http://ih0.redbubble.net/image.40518278.3615/mug,standard,x400,left-bg,ffffff.u1.jpg

big fan of the double coffee effect if you strike the same pose

My wardrobe is literally 10 exact copies of Shinji's white schoolboy shirts and 20 aquamarine tees

I've held of this for years, finally starting tonight

aw yeah welcome 2 the batshit insanity

Is it really be that much of a mindfuck? I mean are we talking Hetalia, Cat Soup, Dead Leaves crazy?

I want to forget it so I can watch it anew again

Cat Soup

i have not thought of cat soup in like 10 years

uh it's more linear than that but it's fucked up as hell

uff, misato in EoE

;_;

misato and asuka in eoe make the movie a legit tearjerker for me

Saw EoE, yes def a tearjerker of a movie! An amazing end to an amazing series! I want to note again how great the pacing to this show was from beginning to end. That flashback scene of Shinji building the castle and hanging out w his mom ;_; So sad to see Misato and Asuka die, what did Misato mean by "the rest"? Overall it was like normal Evangelion cranked up to 11, just OTT all over the place, great psychedelic mystic stuff at the end, etc. I liked the last two eps of the show but this does feel like a way more big important finale. I will watch Cat Soup next.

So sad to see Misato and Asuka die, what did Misato mean by "the rest"?

the literal implications of this line are pretty gross buuuuuuut a major them of this series is adults enacting trauma on children

theme*

for instance

talking about the show with someone just now i only now realized how deeply, deeply gross and horrible the gendo/rei relationship is

I... did not enjoy this, at least not as much as I thought I would. Problem is I'd have to watch it again to really understand why but it's mostly due to the complete lack of affinity I feel for Shinji. I know full why I should and feel weirdly guilty that I don't which makes me dislike him even more.

It would be cool to watch rewatch eva alongside Gurren Lagann; another Gainax anime with a Shinji clone protagonist that indulges and lampoons mecha tropes
http://i25.tinypic.com/10ddumt.gif
in relatively sharp contrast with Eva's mostly sombre deconstruction. Probably not as good but it's a ton of fun.

kill la kill has a couple references also

it's hard for me to recommend eva to peeps even though it's my favorite anime -- it really doesn't try to reward the viewer like more recent shows, which is what i like about it. the last two episodes basically are like "fuck it"

also the show is made by and for hardcore depressives

p much

<3 it

http://i.imgur.com/F8Yt2Eq.jpg

love it

http://i.imgur.com/V6m8ei8.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/5bdjDOw.jpg

omg lol

ᴛɪᴍᴇʟɪɴᴇ ᴏғ ᴇᴠᴀɴɢᴇʟɪᴏɴ: ᴡᴇᴇᴋ ʙʏ ᴡᴇᴇᴋ ʙʀᴇᴀᴋᴅᴏᴡɴ

just dl'ed the series, gonna watch again for the first time since... middle school? can't wait

i don't feel bad about torrenting cause i own the whole series on vhs

http://media.giphy.com/media/12dR06fHYRBY0E/giphy.gif

mostly weirded out by how you got that bitchin' gothic font working on this board!

"cruel angel's thesis" is dying for a sweet balearic mix

ugh i read all of that timeline

OK so I have had nothing to do except apply for jobs lately and so of course I watched Rebuilds 1.0-3.0 (the final and fourth isn't out till later this year apparently?)

1.0 and 2.0 are fun and horrific and mostly familiar for series viewers, but 3.0 is soooooo fucking out there and ultra-depressive. Frequently very difficult to follow, which is commented on repeatedly in the movie itself. I have no idea how 4.0 could top it for bonkersness.

gah, i've gotta snag a copy of that

i still don't know how i feel about 3.0. first time i've ever felt ambivalent about anything to do with this show so the feeling's sort of novel in itself

So sad to see Misato and Asuka die, what did Misato mean by "the rest"?

would like to add to my initial response to this: misato came onto shinji like 2-3 times during the course of the actual series so "the rest" is definitely what you think it is. part of this is bc she's a frozen adolescent trauma baby like the rest of them.

i still don't know how i feel about 3.0

Me neither really, except "loooool this was Japan's second-highest grossing movie of 2012"

And also the fact that Anno has taken the most lavish production of this story and seems hellbent on making it the least palatable one yet, which is so...weirdly perfect?

that is why he is my hero

https://twitter.com/jacquesgreene/status/510183538021629952

this guy otm re: the rebuild series and 3.33 in particular

http://wrongeverytime.com/2014/02/10/once-more-with-fury-rebuilding-evangelion/

fantastic piece. i rewatched 2.0 last weekend and was suddenly really frustrated by it, for the reasons that piece describes

rewatching 3.0 tomorrow and lol I'm really excited to watch it without saying "wtf" every few minutes

while mourning my lack of fresh Eva content I've spent most of today trying to find other anime series that I don't find intensely grating on one level or another - after a bunch of false starts, Masaaki Yuasa's stuff seems pretty solidly up my alley

xp lol I don't think I can rewatch that till...ever

who am I kidding I will totally rewatch it when 4.0 comes out, this franchise is built on (and fosters) masochism

"when 4.0 comes out"

*stares at wikipedia page for 100000 years*

also why is there no u.s. release of 3.33 what the hell is up with that

you can (not) exhibit

simon, have you seen either mushi-shi, serial experiments: lain or kino's journey? they aren't at all like eva tone-wise but pretty much free from most anime cliches and are v cerebral and emotionally engaging.

^^^ all 3 of those are excellent, especially Mushishi. Someone should make a anime recommendation site for people who hate anime

I have not but Lain is on my to-check-out consideration list. Currently watching Ping Pong, which feels oddly substantive given the subject matter? I've seen Bebop (eh) and FLCL (neat). Basically hated what I saw of Death Note, Future Diary, and a few others that aren't immediately coming to me.

the biggest problem is that all anime gets marketed essentially the same in english-speaking countries, as if "anime" were one monolithic genre -- so you get this phenomenon of the same people recommending in the same breath stuff made for teenage boys like death note also recommending more complex shows like steins;gate or the others i mentioned. it seems to me that the targeted demographic for these shows are quite distinct in japan, though i could be wrong.

this is exactly why i had a bad time whenever i went to an anime convention

anyway all of anno's pre-eva miyazaki-inspired series nadia is on hulu and i recommend it; it's very digressive but also very charming. another gentle, kinda perfect, nontraditional anime, by lain's character designer: haibane renmei

just realized Anno is only 55 and could feasibly redo Eva a couple more times (if he can remain unmurdered)

attending an anime convention sounds like my idea of hell!
thought this was a fun little story, composer of the NGE theme song Neko Oikawa was interviewed recently - she wrote the song in two hours, it earns her close to a million dollars annually in royalties and she's never even seen the show. Oh and I have a bridge I want to sell to her ex-husband lol.

brad: that sounds awesome, thanks!!!

Here goes nothin': Anime for people who hate anime

this guy otm re: the rebuild series and 3.33 in particular

http://wrongeverytime.com/2014/02/10/once-more-with-fury-rebuilding-evangelion/

― the naive cockney chorus (Simon H.), Saturday, September 12, 2015 9:49 PM (Yesterday)

ok i appreciate this post but 3.0 is a still a little on the completely incoherent side of things

I think we're still maybe a decade and a half away from understanding / not being quietly infuriated by 3.0

http://i.imgur.com/IKWgJmi.jpg

the worst thing

http://i.imgur.com/GZoLgDa.png

https://www.facebook.com/420blazeiteva/posts/731654926969144

idk how i missed this but 3.33 finally got a u.s. release in february

nice! maybe i'll actually buy this...

http://www.wikihow.com/Act-Like-Shinji-Ikari

Ha, there's more like that. http://www.wikihow.com/Category:Anime-Character-Imitation

http://www.wikihow.com/Appear-Yandere

6. Become more violent. Now, this is a daring step but if you really want to be a yandere, you need to get more violent. Gently threaten people to make them leave your beloved. Act more creepy, like if you're cutting vegetables then suddenly stop and look at the knife, asking the beloved something like, "You do love me, right?" or "We're friends, aren't we?", trying to make them uncomfortable. Start questioning things straight out.

7. You could write in a cute little diary how much you wanted to slaughter the teacher who gave your beloved person an F today, and so on.... And, whoops! You didn't mean for anyone to find it, now did you? Remember it's not bad to get in trouble sometimes!

lol

oh i ended up buying 3.33 and i love it more every time i watch it

that there are two very distinct english subtitle tracks on the funimation dvd is baffling tho

One probably is subs of the Japanese and the other captions for the dub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpnNakMdvXk

http://66.media.tumblr.com/a34770d5d4ca08396818daf3fef39c12/tumblr_o7k1bd9CeA1vrkdp4o1_1280.jpg

good lord that Seinfeld intro

One probably is subs of the Japanese and the other captions for the dub.

this is not the case!

that Seinfeld thing is great!

the image where Elaine appears on the phone chomping on a cigar is so perfect

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGzf63FScnR/

SEELE won't stand for this

btw have been showing the series to bf and finally got to e18-19 -- it is really fun to see ppl's reactions and amazing how shocking it still is

thought the bump would be bc of
http://forward.com/opinion/national/342905/decoding-an-anti-semitic-meme-donald-trump-supporters-took-from-anime/

lol come on

http://i.imgur.com/fOFaiUK.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/hjN2ejr.png

http://i.imgur.com/e01LSDw.jpg

They missed the opportunity to market those with a corresponding orange sports drink....

This week on Steven Universe:

https://i.imgur.com/7tA0Ume.png

heheh yup

wait, what? Which bit in the original show is this reffing?

end of eva!

http://45.media.tumblr.com/f736093418057b9b8a4c22aad627b458/tumblr_n4iq3bikJi1qmencro8_500.gif

neon genesis pizzagelion

bless whoever bothered to make that image animated

lol i was thinking the same!

FYI the name of the SU episode was "Kiki's Pizza Delivery Service"

i was freaking out when i saw the above, so good

https://67.media.tumblr.com/56b2da128d82af780b2423f31c4f43fe/tumblr_ob1ckyetvb1urexxpo1_1280.png

https://66.media.tumblr.com/ca8e0d7c8531dbd46a804e41ed5d1b8d/tumblr_ob1ckyetvb1urexxpo2_1280.png

haaaa

lol

http://i.imgur.com/hAPyDe9.png

"kimochi warui"

https://twitter.com/dogrunes/status/792148536368304128

haha nice

now that it's been so long, is the Eva theme just something every kid grew up with in Japan, like Pokemon or DBZ themes?

i hope the themes for the japanese pokemon and dbz animes aren't regularly played, they're horrible

awww, i like "cha-la head cha-la." i mean it's pretty silly but it has a nice peppiness often missing from the show itself.

http://i.imgur.com/ODxQdDv.jpg

omg

https://68.media.tumblr.com/707edb008746f45b1a87768eb6b0e27b/tumblr_myahcgYG1m1qeu4eno1_400.png

hahahaha

lolol

what in the world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCWf5bNDnjw

more shocked that Dark Horse is actually publishing this. guess the Eva mangas do better here than i thought

Ready Eva 01

wowwwww I just started this yday and 5 eps in I am OBSESSED w it, also nb I only started it bcz Brad Nelson says "End of Evangelion" is one of the best movies of all time and I want to see it

hahaha just you wait

don't read this thread steve

The blu-ray rip I have looks incredible, the colors are great, I don't think I realized how techno-futuristic/sci-fi/cyberpunky this would be??? I think a lot of my interest in this is rooted in 90s nostalgia but even beyond that it's p great, also this is the best 10 seconds of any opening sequence in the history of the universe

https://media.giphy.com/media/26DMZm8cFkHpvroJ2/giphy.gif

otm

I will not read this thread but I did see this and lol'd a lot

https://68.media.tumblr.com/707edb008746f45b1a87768eb6b0e27b/tumblr_myahcgYG1m1qeu4eno1_400.png

fukk i wanna see that blu-ray rip

also steve you're extremely otm about the opening sequence. the tech design is very "1997's idea of how shitty the future would be" and i love it too

what in the world do i have to do to not only get evangelion back in print but also get a u.s. blu-ray release

would buy a ludicrous Eva blu box, yeah

where that final movie at

honestly I just downloaded it, the files are p small (like ~250mb per episode) but they still look amazing on my 55" tv, and come with both the dub and the sub tracks (spoiler alert: the dub is weak as fuck and watching this show in English is bizarre). There are torrents out there with like 1gb episodes but it might be overkill as I can't really see any room for improvement over this.

the last time i checked: it's almost done i think xp

yeah don't watch the dub

i have affection for the dub as that's how i initially encountered the series (and bc i was a huge anime nerd in high school i kinda followed the voice actors from anime to anime; i once got to meet tiffany grant at a convention and i was soooo psyched) and everybody gets way better as they go along but no one has to put themselves through it

I learned recently that anime in Japan is super accessible and thus DVD and Blu Ray sets are made more as collectors items than as a way to watch a show (which is why they'll put like 2-3 sidesteps per disc and then sell them for way too much $$$). Is anime on DVD/BR dumb and expensive like this in the US too?

xp yeah for me anime is so distinctly Japanese that watching it in English is just jarring, and also the voice acting is always over-eager and terrible and at least w/ Japanese since I don't understand it I can pretend it's really lifelike (even though it's prob not). I think the only exception was Cowboy Bebop which is super western and apparently the creator preferred the dub, which they actually did a great job on, but when I was watching it on Hulu they only had dubs of the first 4 or so episodes and I had to switch :-/

though it's easier to take everything in when you don't have to constantly read the dialogue

i will say that tiffany grant eventually becomes a great asuka

everyone else just gets competent iirc. shinji's dub voice is especially a loss bc the guy cannot scream (i've probably said this upthread but megumi ogata can fuckin' scream)

I learned recently that anime in Japan is super accessible and thus DVD and Blu Ray sets are made more as collectors items than as a way to watch a show (which is why they'll put like 2-3 sidesteps per disc and then sell them for way too much $$$). Is anime on DVD/BR dumb and expensive like this in the US too?

― the masseduction of lauryn hill (Stevie D(eux)), Monday, January 29, 2018 10:51 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i haven't purchased anime in a while but basically almost all of the distributors i was familiar with when i was a huge anime fan are straight up gone except for funimation. feel like box sets have only gotten cheaper over the years but there's not a lot of profit in rereleasing sets as blu-rays afaict so it doesn't happen very often (i was thinking the other day that i'd buy a blu-ray set of haibane renmei but there isn't one in the u.s.. the dvd box is still in print (funimation took over the rights from pioneer) and is only $25 (for 13 episodes))

oh but funimation did put out the lain blu ray so who knows

How is crunchyroll as a streaming platform?

it was the only place where i was able to find subtitled haibane renmei episodes recently so a+ from me

US anime home video release used to be like that - way too spread out and expensive - but in the last decade+ it's gotten more reasonable with season sets, in general

ya I just looked at amazon and complete FLCL, Bebop, and som eothers are $30 or less on BR

I also started Paranoia Agent and it's also awesome

really sad in particular that paranoia agent is oop here

the complete NGE sets are 300-400 bucks in canada :(

wow look how stupid this is

https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.351278761.9361/ra,unisex_tshirt,x2200,fafafa:ca443f4786,front-c,267,146,1000,1000-bg,f8f8f8.u1.jpg

lmao

what does Taco Bell have to do with Eva?

it requires you to think outside of the bun. the bun represents existence

it's about not running away, sometimes taco bell is your only option and if you run away you won't have dinner so you just have to go to taco bell

Fourth Meal is an event mentioned in Neon Genesis Evangelion and finally occurring in The End of Evangelion where Human Instrumentality was almost achieved.

!!!!! re: brad suggesting an Eva blu-ray box is coming soon

i did no such thing

gonna imagine you did still

i really want to rewatch the series, i haven't seen it since 2002 & i don't have those DVDs anymore. I watched the dubs, obv

god watch the subs right now

I don't have the DVDs anymore!!

i have seen End of Evangelion many times in the years since and yeah it's one of my favorite movies ever, and one of my favorite endings to a movie ever, & final line

I don't have the DVDs anymore!!

― flappy bird, Monday, January 29, 2018 1:17 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the dvds don't even exist anymore man, find a stream

blows my mind that anyone, anywhere watched the dubs...for me this show is inseparable from being the kind of thinking man's anime fan teenager who had been carefully inculcated in feeling superior to such things.

i was 9

lmao

i love Evangelion so much. i envy you Stevie on your first viewing! it really is a special show. i love how each episode builds and builds.

currently im watching the "Fist of the North Star" series for the first time. it's pretty much as badass as you could possibly imagine.

i'm 60 eps into fist of the north star! it just keeps getting better and better

steve i'm so glad you're enjoying my favorite anime ever!

aaaaahahahahaha omg

https://i.imgur.com/9ZWs2Ff.jpg

"they look bad"

look I get that Asuka is supposed to be this caricature of like obnoxious Western traits or w/e and maybe a commentary on individualism vs collectivism but oh my god I really hate it when she's on screen!!!!

you may feel that way now but wait imo

(asuka is my favorite character)

enh my favorite evangelion character is and will always be anno

lmao

i like the penguin 🤗

pen pen is definitely the only character on the show who doesn't have problems

pen pen is good, i like him

is pen pen in the movies at all? I honestly don't recall

i don't remember him being in any scene of end of eva but it's possible i forgot

yeah i don't think so, luckily we are spared a pen pen perishing scene

^^spoilers sorry!!^^

pen pen’s last scene in the show is a real heartbreaker iirc

I wouldn't rule it out for Evangelion 3.0+1.0: I hate myself and want to die xxp

https://youtu.be/yK4CoaLM7gs

yas

yeah some of the "fly me to the moon" variations bang

i *LOVE* you!

omfg they have Adaaaaaaammmmm!!!!!!!

This has abruptly shifted from zany action anime to like weird govt conspiracy mystery anime???

that shift is so so crucial to my love for this series. reel em in then BLOW THEIR MINDS.

This has abruptly shifted from zany action anime to like weird govt conspiracy mystery anime???

― the masseduction of lauryn hill (Stevie D(eux)), Friday, February 2, 2018 5:45 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh steve i am so excited for you

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

good lord watch serial experiments: lain next!!!!!

kill la kill had similar abrupt tonal shifts -- is this just a thing that anime does sometimes?
ok 6-7 episodes left and I just dl'd End of Evangelion so I'm prob gon finish this today
clouds tyvm bcz I'm just like "oh fuck, what do I watch after this???" and I'm halfway thru Paranoia Agent and then I have no idea what else is actually good

I guess I should finish Bebop too

kill la kill had similar abrupt tonal shifts -- is this just a thing that anime does sometimes?

eva's kind of ground zero for this. a lot of shows afterward absorbed the approach though

then you have shows like rahxephon which outright steal from it

steve have you seen flcl

I'll second the FLCL and Lain recommendations; also, Revolutionary Girl Utena (currently up on youtube in its entirety) has a similarly dreamlike and tonally slippery quality, and has the advantage of being practically drenched with queer subtext.

ya FLCL was maybe the v first anime I ever really watched, and I just revisited it a year or two ago, it was my fav until NGE. I think I've only ever watched:

FLCL
Cowboy Bebop
Kill la Kill
half of Paranoia Agent (which I'll finish after NGE)
most of NGE
oh I tried to watch the first few episodes of Sailor Moon a year ago and hated it!

I've only sought out "serious anime" that has a reputation for being really unique or subversive or groundbreaking and as a result I don't have a v good understanding of basic tropes or conventions, so a lot of the meta/referential/satirical stuff in FLCL and Kill la Kill goes over my head.

maybe all/most anime is like this and I just write it off bcz I don't know any better??

maybe all/most anime is like this

in my experience it really isn’t

for more arty stuff i've never heard of see Anime for people who hate anime

animation is such a bigger medium in japan that it really is hopeless to consider anime as any kind of genre. 95% of it is schlock for desirable demographics the same way 95% of american TV is schlock for desirable demographics. i faded out of anime fandom in the early 2000s just cause i was in college and suddenly had a bunch more stuff going on, but i think the glut of available product in the post-DBZ era would have killed me anyway - one positive of the 80s/90s fan culture was that people were not going to bother fan-subbing and VHS distributing completely generic forgettable shows (except ones with a lot of violence and smashing things). so the genre work that came through tended to either be of really high quality within the genre (escaflowne) or somehow weird and exceptional to the genre (evangelion, utena) or just memorably bizarre (kodocha).

even so, a fair amount of stuff that i don't think i could really defend as being above b-movie grade writing got its foot in the door, because it was animated sci-fi and geeks like me were in love with that - bubblegum crisis for example. sailor moon, which i loved, was a pretty darn good magical girl show... but its real advantage was that the dub got syndicated on american TV, and thus created a whole new anime fanbase. if some other magical girl show had paved the way i'm not sure US sailor moon fandom would ever have developed the way it did solely on the merits of the show. this is all thinking about TV series though - movies kind of circulated differently, with stuff like akira having gotten arthouse/college attention much much earlier.

point is: there are probably other shows you would dig if you love eva! though few that i've seen make quite the swerving and mind-bending turns eva makes. so from around the same period, my memory is still very fond of escaflowne if you can dig fantasy-world giant robots, and utena if you can dig boarding-school fencing melodrama and wonky intense choral music. i think if i'd been more open to beige-colored feudal-japan adventures, fushigi yuugi might have meant as much to me as it did others...

ok I just finished the last episode and I am so dissatisfied

haha seeing people react to nge for the first time is always great. the original ending is good i think but mostly because it exists in tandem with end of evangelion, i doubt i'd like it as much if it was all there was.

there's really nothing else quite like nge despite the huge influence it's had unfortunately. as far as other arty interesting stuff goes i agree with the lain & utena recommendations, and also recommend looking into things directed by masaaki yuasa. kaiba is probably his best but everything he's done is at the very least interesting with gorgeous, stylistically diverse animation. as far as more standard action-adventure anime goes, fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood is good as it gets.

i love episodes 25-26, but i say that as someone who has not actually sat through them in nigh twenty years. possibly it's just a mess wrung out of them running totally out of money. but it worked for me? agreed though that it works best as a parallel ending with EoE. it was a weird period when we had the one but not the other yet. (death and rebirth was out in japan but we only had summaries and that only gets you through the first chunk of EoE.)

the amazing thing is how even though the movies came in to address fan dissatisfaction and deliver a conventional, kick-ass high-drama ending, they're still batshit insane and actually more confusing in a way, tripling down on angel developments and the Human Instrumentality Project, without actually explaining a lot of it on camera or delivering much of what you'd normally expect in the way of payoffs from the dark government conspiracy side of the show. hope that's not a spoiler for Stevie, who should totally watch EoE - just be aware that while it swings away from "slideshow of text and psychological imagery" it's still not exactly a 'conclusion' to episodes 1-24.

occurs to me now for the first time that Twin Peaks must have been on Anno's radar.

Stevie you might want to read up on the behind-the-scenes drama of how the last episodes happened

but not until you see End of Eva.

episodes 25 and 26 are classic

25 and 26 actually feel much more satisfying than EoE once enough of the pieces are in place, but I'm glad both conclusions exist.

I rewatched some (half?) of this during college and watched End of Eva on its own a few times but otherwise I basically haven’t revisited the whole thing since high school. I enjoy the dim specificity of my memories of it.

It’s funny how Anno keeps remaking the ending, like a scab he can’t help picking at.

end of eva is a masterpiece and one of my favorite movies ever but 25 and 26 work just fine on their own, stranding you in stray thoughts and unfinished universes and individual consciousnesses bleeding into each other. it’s instrumentality! the viewer feels as recombined into the universal brain as shinji, asuka, and rei actually are

though technically rei is both within and without the universal brain

if you're into the space age christianity of evangelion, i recommend the VALIS trilogy by philip k. dick (valis, the divine invasion, the transmigration of timothy archer), which was a big influence on anno when he was making eva.

guys did you know abt this https://wiki.evageeks.org/Girlfriend_of_Steel_2

“The story is set in the alternate-universe that Shinji Ikari sees during Episode 26 of the original series, with Tokyo-3 at peace and Shinji (who acts the same as his Episode 26 AU counterpart) going about his daily life.”

It’s an ASUKA/REI/KAWORU DATING SIM

wowwwww i forgot all about being really intrigued by the original Girlfriend of Steel even though all we had were like two lo-res creenshots and almost no plot summary. a whole new pilot character!!! wow. if the Rebuild movies had come out a few years earlier I would have devoured those for the same reasons obviously.

only ever heard that guardian of steel is super boring

lol girlfriend of steel*

(Iron Maiden)

i'm on the 25/26 are awesome train, btw - loved it the first go-around, but it's even better after you see the movie imo

i’m so fucked up

Yesssss

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

i found copies of the blu-ray rips of the series and i guess i'm rewatching it again

i'm also really particular about the translations of this show (original adv subs >>> the retranslation they did for the platinum edition, the syntax is all wonky) but whichever i'm watching now is really working for me

I still think Asuka is annoying as fuck

https://www.the-fanboy-perspective.com/uploads/1/7/3/8/17382151/i-ll-kill-you-i-ll-kill-you_orig.gif

that whole sequence is so fuckin intense and metal, justifies the movie imo

i cry every time

fyi the anime that tonally most feels like the latter half of NGE is masaaki yuasa's ping pong. this is just a fact

I want a shirt that says

Absolute
Terror
FIELD

I have a NERV logo shirt that I treasure

I want a NERV mug!!!

y'all just made me remember i had a NERV logo shirt in high school! wow i forgot that completely. i was a pretty cool nerd. B^)

stevie i think u will also appreciate the VERY 90s lilith fair vibe of the theme song to lain

do you think he'll seem to understand?

a shame, he seemed an honest man

tum
ba-ling
down
tum
ba-ling
down
tum
ba-ling
dooooooooooooowwwwn

i want to finish Paranoia Agent but I am still like in shock from EoE

Oh, just wait till you get to the second Rebuild movie.

where do i find all the behind the scenes drama that happened during the making of the last episodes??

Nothing too salacious, I just recall some difficulties involving censors, budget cuts, and a mounting scheduling nightmare, all of which (along with Anno's, er, idiosyncrasies) resulted in the final episodes being done in that style.

I cannot fucking believe all of this shit I just watched has existed for the last 20 years of my life. How did I not know about this???? Like of course I've *heard of* NGE but how did I go this long w/o realizing it was THIS????

i'm sorry i didn't tell you earlier

tbh i first watched the series when i was 14 (and first encountered episodes 1-2 when i was 12) and i don't think i realized it was "THIS????" until about halfway through

it was the first anime series i saw (i know, i know, medium not a genre) that followed up on the inner strangeness and mystery i found in akira

episodes 1 and 2 still really lay out what the series is all about, what with delaying the big action setpiece until the end of episode 2 where it is experienced by the main character as resurfaced trauma

^^^ niiice reading, dig this

Didn't know the 2002 region 1 dvd (only American release) is so shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63UIBoIF3mY

yeah it’s v bad

sad yet informative

the last month or so i watched the whole series for the first time since 2002

it is beautiful

i remembered a few shots vividly: shinji collapsing on rei when they meet, asuka running thru the doors and finding her mother, eva-1 holding kaworu in its hand in that super long static shot & then his head falling into the water, big red NERV logo with ritsuko on the left in a chair and gendo on the right standing up, ritusko's mother's blood all over the equipment, "i mustn't run away," shinji's salmon colored polo & the scene where him and asuka kiss...

did NOT remember the end of episode 26 with the brief view into an alternate reality, really enjoyed that lol. rei sounded like jerry lewis. seeing gendo and yui together in the kitchen at breakfast was really sweet. and yes i ended up watching the dubs again because they were familiar and actually really good imo

gonna watch the movies soon

although i did watch the directors cuts of 21-23. the gendo there is worse, everyone else is voiced by the same actors afaik

pen pen <3

where is pen pen's spinoff

and yes i ended up watching the dubs again because they were familiar and actually really good imo

as much as i can identify with this, they really aren't. i forgot how many pointless dialogue changes they made in the first eight or so episodes

i got refamiliarized with it bc i tried to introduce the series to someone who couldn't watch subtitled things and like... allison keith is great as misato, almost everyone else is a nightmare

i assume/remember the dub gets better after the midpoint but the person i was introducing it to gave up

i'm up for a rewatch in the near future honestly, and i'll do subs for that. but i liked the english cast beyond nostalgia, it was def better than the dub for Akira (the only anime i've revisited), that one fucking suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

eva-1 holding kaworu in its hand in that super long static shot

that was so crushing to witness. the whole episode was amazing but so devastating at the same time. really this series hits some incredible operatic heights.

haven't seen the dub, only the subtitles. i love this show. someday i will gladly watch it again (possibly the dub). it gives me so much joy to recall that "Fly me to the moon" performance at the end of every episode. must see anime.

it was def better than the dub for Akira

oh this is absolutely true

a low bar tbh

KANEDAAAAAA

Definitely a low bar but that’s the only anime I’ve seen besides DBZ, NGE, and Trigun

Another thing about the series finale: I forgot how optimistic it is! "Congratulations!!!" iirc, that's what Shinji sees right before he wakes up on the beach at the end of EoE?

that's the idea, yes

idk some people think of them as separate endings but they're conjoined in my head at least

ideally shinji realizes he's able to love himself at the same time he's having a chill convo with his mom about the future of the human race

i love it because it's so optimistic, but you still get flashes of what's going on in the real world is dire as fuck and fully fleshed out in the movie

yeah the movie is unrelentingly brutal & bleak. Shinji rejecting "CONGRATULATIONS!" and Instrumentality makes him waking up on the beach with his yang Asuka even more devastating

also lol I forgot how funny Asuka and Misato are

idk if eoe implies that shinji's rejected "congratulations" or that his psychological progress gets eroded as soon as instrumentality is over/giant rei's head falls off, but clearly he's in a v bad mood when he gets back on the beach (probably all that horrible absence created by his separation from a vast orb of consciousness)

episode 26: oh the people i love don't actually hate my guts????????? what a breakthrough
eoe: unfortunately i'm still traumatized

also: i'm largely responsible for the literal end of the world hooray?

how disgusting

i have to watch all of the reboot movies

The final Rebuild movie is coming out in 2020!

https://kotaku.com/the-next-evangelion-movie-will-be-out-2020-1827741974/amp

promo art just looks like end of evangelion, which is great

steve did you watch the other rebuild movies? curious as to what you think of them (i was on the fence until 3.0, which i didn't even like at first but now think it's one of the boldest things anno's ever done, somehow)

ready for the madness

I’ve still only seen the first one

I just rewatched 1-26 + EoE w my new boo and he’s like freaking out. We finished EoE 15 minutes ago

RIP

I told Brad that I think shinji canceled instrumentality bcz it felt good and that was unfamiliar to him and he just wants to only feel pain

and he’s a fuckin little pipsqueak

well i finally got around to seeing shin godzilla, which is incredible and completely essential viewing for anyone who likes eva imo

i don't know if i'd go that far. it's a fun watch, but largely a satire of japanese government / the original Godzilla film

idk it totally has the feeling of an early evangelion episode

and the shot of godzilla's tail at the end is the francis bacon hellscapes of end of evangelion briefly swarming into the movie

and it may be a satire but it's also an extremely earnest one, the way it manages that tone is remarkable

also "angel attack" plays throughout for some reason

Party Rock Anthem has the same BPM as the Evangelion Opening and I hate it pic.twitter.com/UC2WzNF3zN

— Joseju (@Josejusejo) September 18, 2018

omg

internet brilliance.

whoa that rules

pic.twitter.com/4KGLwUhcQP

— ツンデレイチェル (@metalqueersoIid) September 24, 2018

lol

Why does this silica gel packet look like an Evangelion title card? pic.twitter.com/INNToBAhzi

— problem child (@tsundere_asuka) September 22, 2018

spring 2019 worldwide, includes both movies!

All’s right with the world: Neon Genesis Evangelion is coming to @Netflix. pic.twitter.com/2pQ1lG1h9e

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) November 27, 2018