neon genesis evangelion

hallelujah

this piece is AWESOME but also lousy with spoilers, reader beware https://www.polygon.com/2019/6/19/18683634/neon-genesis-evangelion-hideaki-anno-depression-shinji-anime-characters-movies

(not to keep derailing but the anno-leaving-kare kano thing seems false, e.g. the cut-out section stewart-ahn mentions starts ep19 which is after all the rumored leaving-points)

yeah i had never heard of that before, and i always thought that kare kano, for how much it completely falls apart in the last six or so episodes, is way more anno-esque at the end than at the beginning

(i've read the entire manga and the first half of the show is a very loyal translation)

(if it's true that masami tsuda complained about the show being too different in tone from the manga... she was wrong lol)

(but then again maybe anno had different plans that we never got to see, bc part of the issue with the ending of kare kano is that they had obviously caught up with the still-in-progress manga)

isn't the manga considered secondary/alternate? I don't think Anno was looking to translate it to the screen.

But this is my first Eva talk in around 20 years

all of those posts are about kare kano

the eva manga is indeed secondary to the anime, and it also diverts dramatically from it. not sure it’s a necessary read

oh i hadn't heard of "Kare Kano" ^^

all versions of Eva divert dramatically in the second half, 4.0 is gonna be a hoot
the manga is a fun read imo

i agree that it's fun

there's also a rich tradition of great manga being turned into great anime that had a totally different tone/emphasis than the manga, annoying the original creator. or even urusei yatsura, a great anime series based on a great manga, that then took a huge tonal/thematic digression in the second film (directed by mamoru oshii) that is itself a masterpiece, and which is in some sense a deconstruction of the very bones of an anime sitcom.

how had I never seen/heard this and why is it incomplete?!

https://youtu.be/YrKMiE9WII0

I've been totally ambivalent about anime series that I've seen (FMA, Bebop), but this is weirdly engrossing. About 5 episodes in and the narrative of trauma combined with high school melodrama with the abrupt slapstick breaks is riveting and imparts a surprising amount of momentum.

The leering fanservice is creepy and cringey, obviously.

Like the scene where Misato thinks that Shinji got on the train but is actually just behind her head in the mise en scene is some radically subjective Gonzo filmmaking.

when i saw this as a kid it took me forever to even work out what “fanservice” meant (the two shots framed from misato’s butt in the first episode did not clue me in)

in the new dub they keep pronouncing “nerv” the german way. cute choice

also much better than the old dub

did y’all know episode 4 was not part of the original sequence? iirc it was produced later in the run. and yet i can’t imagine the show without it. that scene with misato and shinji at the train station is the heart of the show

https://i.imgur.com/zCl1HWg.jpg

<3

This Is Just To Say

I haven’t watched
the anime
You won’t
Shut up about

Forgive me
There’s so little time
And I just
Don’t care

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) June 21, 2019

morbs no one wants you to watch this

iirc Labuza didn't finish The Return either

The landscape stills in ep 4 are really beautiful.

Also love that panning urinal shot

interesting take on the new translation

Babysitter Super Sleuth @ SomethingAwful posted this regarding the Netflix Evangelion dub and khara's involvement with the localization in general. pic.twitter.com/kRIAblHHQi

— Tactical Shitposting Action (@fooly_cooly) June 23, 2019

"cutting out all the memorable adlibs from the first dub"

excuse me

Just finished my series + EoE rewatch. OK ready for 3.0+1.0

interesting twitter thread but do i wanna trust someone named "babysitter super sleuth"

i don't actually mind translations like "the first children" to refer to Shinji alone if it does capture some of the ambiguity of the original language since i could easily imagine that sort of choice being intentional or representing the vision of the original language

the thing is that 1. that's technically what they're saying 2. there are english titles for every episode and one of the episodes is called (iirc) "fourth children"

but also the insistence that the english translation refer to them as second child/third child etc. actually came from gainax at the time (iirc, this is sourced from my extremely distant memory of the commentary tracks on adv's release of the platinum edition)

i'll also say that (given my extremely basic understanding of japanese from studying it in college) the netflix translation... is not strict

I didn't mind the weird translation bits. If anything they only serve to enhance the unreality/enhanced-reality of it all.

so far my biggest issue with it is changing "the three stooges" to "the idiot trio"

episode 16 is the goddamn best

im 6 eps in, never watched before. I'm enjoying it but thus far it's kind of a piece with other mecha anime series i've seen. but the larger backstory hasn't been delved into and there's not been much in the way of religious imagery or what have you.

yeah, the first half of the show definitely plays much much more like a conventional giant robot show (albeit maybe with more mood and bleak angst). might be appropriate to think of it as basically the hook to draw in casual TV viewers on its original run... like if Twin Peaks started out as an even more conventional detective procedural or w/e.

yeah it's def very moody. i just am thinking like, mobile suit gundam. 15 year old amaro ray has a distant relationship from his mech inventor father, his mother stayed on earth when he went to side 7, he's a bit of a social outcast who keeps himself to himself and lives alone etc. in the first episode he ends up piloting his father's mech creation against the enemy. amaro is more grumpy and aggro than shinji but otherwise they are pretty similar

amuro even

So at the end of the one episode where Asuka and Mitaso visit a hot spring, Mitaso tells her not worry over something about her past... is this reference intentionally vague or did I miss something?

What I like so far (and I'm about 13 or so episodes in) about the series is that it keeps its plot moving briskly. That and its sudden eructations of the weird.

the reference is intentionally vague, it gets thoroughly explored later

i'm almost done and i think i dislike this new translation, but my overall feeling is that it could've been way worse (cf. the recent translation of sailor moon crystal which is just syntactically terrible empty garbage). the occasional exchange is very strong (most of the misato/kaji dialogue) but there's something v... basic about it (overwhelming fidelity to japanese grammar resulting in recurring awkward uses of "that [noun]") and sometimes the grammar is pretty tortured. (again the only way i would be satisfied with a translation of evangelion is if they let me do it or at least edit it)

The thing that's so amazing to me about the ending(s) - without spoiling anything for anyone who's not there yet - is the way the seeds for the EoE ending are planted with specific split-second insert shots only explained in EoE. They're lightning-fast, but without them you could easily have made the argument that the EoE ending was made up out of whole cloth as a reaction to the backlash from the series ending.

the subtitles fell a second or two behind when I was watching episode 2 yesterday morning (I'm evidently not up for binging this rn) and I was like "y'know this is fine"

i had dub and subs on for a bit and they're not the same. not sure which is better. my brother's japanese is pretty good and he's a huge nerd so i should ask him, but he's kind of busy with his first child immanent

i've been impressed with what i've seen of the dub so far. obv derived from the same translation but it feels pretty natural

also my criticisms of the translation are super super personal and a result of being a huge nerd about this show for 20 years so they should be taken with a grain of salt