neon genesis evangelion

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

that rules. beautiful glimpse into a whole lost world, really.

oh, that's wonderful. love it.

I still sometimes get pangs of regret from throwing out my old soyokaze tapes several moves back, esp end of eva on a cool blue tape.

holy shit...

I got all my Fushigi Yuugi and Magic Knight Rayearth and Rurouni Kenshin fansubs from this site I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upQYSSXHv7s

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

― jveggra va pbqr (Lamp), Tuesday, August 18, 2009 12:26 AM (fourteen years ago)

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

― a narwhal done gored my sister nell (cankles), Tuesday, August 18, 2009 1:14 AM (fourteen years ago)

i watched the whole series for the first time the last couple weeks, and loved the sound throughout. the cicadas cankles mentioned, so good. sometimes you can hear them muffled through walls, i think. also there are some downright ~terrifying~ screams from shinji in the early episodes, when he's first piloting the EVA's and going into battle. i listened with the english overdub so i'm not sure if the screams are the same or not. but they are horrifying.

i'll always attach this show to NAS now because if you watch it on netflix and skip the intro, it cuts straight to the last 2 notes of the theme song (which plays at the end of the 26th episode in modified form, hell yeah), and the letters "NAS" flash on the left side of the screen

Why would you pass up an opportunity to hear Cruel Angel’s Thesis by skipping the intro????

i did give it some solid listens. i was skeptical at first but quickly won over.

i haven't given the plot synopsis/wikipedia a read yet, and i missed a bunch of stuff. episodes 20-24, in particular, i was working on other stuff and falling asleep through half of it while big things were happening. i would keep waking up to the words "the sword of longinus"

also hello silby! <3

shinji's og voice (megumi ogata) is one of the great bloodcurdling screamers of all time

i can and will do a comparison of the screams in the OG vs overdub english version, but i have a suspicion that they just used the OG scream on everything because it is bloodcurdlingly perfect, and it seems out of range for the english actor

hello ivy! <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_1tLRuI30

here's a tour

oops that's a joke video. well the first two screams are real

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtSJR2faPFg

(that's just a really good scream)

fuck yes, thank you for finding those. i'm not even much of a scream fanatic! i listen to some heavier music on occasion and i know what gets to me, but it's not like i really know much. but these screams. they are very good! the russian one sounds plausible? i mean it's extreme but so are the other two

it seems out of range for the english actor

since this will likely never come up again i want to go ahead and acknowledge how wrong i was here. the english scream is different and also very good, i think i prefer it. it wavers in a believable way

*spear of longinus