The format of the entries should be something like

Title (or some combination of who-what-where, if a straightforward title is not available)

Points of interest

Quotations?

Primary source and its availability; this would usually mean the original Japanese text

Secondary sources and their availability; these would be usually translations

Reliability level of the sources and related disclaimers (staff statements would usually be Tier 2 canon)

For a much more comprehensive list see http://www.gwern.net/otaku. Please refer to Theory and Analysis:What Is Canon? for the pecularities in analyzing Evangelion extra-textual material.

Reliable and well-known sources

Hideaki Anno: What were we trying to make here?

Points of interest: An insightful view of what Anno had in mind before the start of the TV series. (Please expand)

An insightful view of what Anno had in mind before the start of the TV series. (Please expand) Quotations?

Primary source: Neon Genesis Evangelion Vol. 1 (Needs better release info!)

Neon Genesis Evangelion Vol. 1 (Needs better release info!) Translation: available here. Mari Morimoto and Fred Burke

available here. Mari Morimoto and Fred Burke Reliability level: Solid Tier 2 canon.

The year: 2015. A world where, fifteen years before, over half the human population perished. A world that has been miraculously revived: its economy, the production, circulation, consumption of material goods, so that even the shelves of convenience stores are filled. A world where the people have gotten used to the ressurrection-yet still feel the end of the world is destined to come. A world where the number of children, the future leaders of the world, is few. A world where Japan saw the original Tokyo destroyed, discarded and forgotten, and built a new capital in Nagano Prefecture. They constructed a new capital, Tokyo-2, then left it to be a decoy-then constructed another new capital, Tokyo-3, and tried to make it safe from attack. A world where some completely unknown enemy called the "Angels" comes to ravage the cities.

This is roughly the world-view for Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is a world-view drenched in a vision of pessimism. A world-view where the story starts only after any traces of optimism have been removed.

And in that world, a 14-year-old boy shrinks from human contact. And he tries to live in a closed world where his behavior dooms him, and he has abandoned the attempt to understand himself. A cowardly young man who feels that his father has abandoned him, and so he has convinced himself that he is a completely unnecessary person, so much so that he cannot even commit suicide.

And there is a 29-year-old woman who lives life so lightly as to barely allow the possibility of a human touch. She protects herself by having surface level relationships, and running away.

Both are extremely afraid of being hurt. Both are unsuitable-lacking the positive attitude-for what people call heroes of an adventure. But in any case, they are the heroes of this story.

They say, "To live is to change." I started this production with the wish that once the production complete, the world, and the heroes would change. That was my "true" desire. I tried to include everything of myself in Neon Genesis Evangelion-myself, a broken man who could do nothing for four years. A man who ran away for four years, one who was simply not dead. Then one thought. "You can't run away," came to me, and I restarted this production. It is a production where my only thought was to burn my feelings into film. I know my behavior was thoughtless, troublesome, and arrogant. But I tried. I don't know what the result will be. That is because within me, the story is not yet finished. I don't know what will happen to Shinji, Misato or Rei. I don't know where life will take them. Because I don't know where life is taking the staff of the production. I feel that I am being irresponsible. But... But it's only natural that we should synchronize ourselves with the world within the production. I've taken on a risk: "It's just an imitation." And for now I can only write this explanation. But perhaps our "original" lies somewhere within there.

July 17, 1995,

In the studio, a cloudy, rainy day.



PS.

By the way, Shinji's name came from a friend of mine. Misato's name came from the hero of a manga. The name Ritsuko came from a friend of mine in middle school. I borrowed from everywhere. Even names that have no bearing on anything actually came from the countless rules that govern these things. It might be fun if someone with free time could research them.

Hideaki Anno: Ghibli ga Ippai Liner Notes

Ghibli ga Ippai ("Full of Ghibli") is a boxset of all Studio Ghibli movies (TKLO-50180 Tokuma Japan Communications), that was released on August 1996) and contains a section about Hideaki Anno in the liner notes.

("Full of Ghibli") is a boxset of all Studio Ghibli movies (TKLO-50180 Tokuma Japan Communications), that was released on August 1996) and contains a section about Hideaki Anno in the liner notes. translated by Mark Neidengard

Source http://keyframe.cjas.org/~mneideng/trans/misc/annoghib.txt



Anno Hideaki. Director, producer. Born 1960, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Uto City. As an animator, participated in works including "Superdimensional Fortress Macross", "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind". Afterwards, established the shared stock company Gainax for the production of "Royal Space Force - the Wings of Honneamise". Also acted as Animation Director for that work. Later, as director he worked on "Aim for the Top!", "Nadia of the Mysterious Seas", "Neon Genesis Evangelion", and others.



There are too many painful things for people to go on living in reality. Thus, humans run and hide in dreams. They watch films as entertainment. Animation, as a means to enjoy everything in a pure, fake world, is a realization of dreams and has become entrenched in film. In short, it is a thing where even coincidences are arranged and everything judged cinematically unnecessary can be excized. The negative feelings of the real world are no exception. If the director so desires, even malice toward others could be introduced straight into film. I guess that's one of the attractive things about anime. Changing the tribulation of reality into dreams and conveying that to the people... is that what our work is? For the sake of people who forget reality until the bill comes due, who want to devote themselves to happy fallacies. I guess that's our job in the entertainment and service sector.

One of the distinctive features of Studio Ghibli's works is that, even if there are obsessive actions, there are things which appear to have not forfeited their goal. Forfeiting one's goal leads to despair, and is a sickness that can prove fatal. I wonder if Miya-san and his people are familiar with that feeling of despair. Perhaps they don't want to show that anguish to other people. I think they specifically don't want to display the negative things called self-loathing and complexes to others. That's why Studio Ghibli's works can't show anything but superficial happiness and a reproduction of reality with all the dirty things omitted. A fiction that imitates reality, and nothing more than a single dream. I suppose that is the governance of entertainment. And I think that that is one of the reasons that Studio Ghibli's works are safely watchable, brand name creations.

I have no intention of denying that. All of Studio Ghibli's works are top level creations. But, I can't help but feel that something is missing. This is because, although the technique is there, I can no longer feel "blood", the "blood" that is surely flowing within everyone. I wonder when that happened? Studio Ghibli's works have, for me, become things that doesn't possess the image of "Anime", but rather of the so-called Japanese cinema, in other words, the Japanese movies that have now lost all their energy. That may be the reason that I feel that something is missing.

By the way, Mr. Miyazaki Hayao and Mr. Itano Ichirou are those I consider my teachers. I brag and say that I'm probably the only one in the world with that combination. I was greatly influenced, not just in the technical points of the animation craft, but in the mental portion of filmmaking. My posture on filmmaking is nothing more than an attempt to hang on to the things I learned from the two of them. I have nothing but words of gratitude for both of them.

When I helped out as an animator for "Nausicaa", there's something that Miya-san often told me. It seems to have come from a Chinese sage, but "There are three conditions for accomplishing something. Those are: Being young, Being poor, and Being unknown." And, "No matter what, make friends." So I was taught. This was more than 12 years ago. Yes, I've known Miya-san approximately 12 years. In that time, I think Miya-san has achieved various things. However, he also lost many things.

I think supporting a studio, that is, fighting to protect the organization against ruin, is painful as it piles up. A staff that strongly depends on you is also a double-edged sword. The height of the brand-name image and weight of the pressure from the world which prevents you from announcing even a short film without hiding your head under the excuse of it being an "experiment".

However, I feel that he is still trying to obtain something new. Is that trying to throw away the past? But could that be the fate of those who go on making films? In any case, he is a person of deep craft regarding his desires.

Finally, I'm looking forward to "Mononoke Hime", the latest in the series of seven works stretching from his masterpiece "Nausicaa" (the movie). No, I'm serious.

Postscript. Yesterday, when I was in a state of mental collapse after my latest work had ended, I was moved deep within my heart by an encouraging phone call I received. The words of concern proceeding from the receiver became joy on my end as, with a exaltant face, my whole body was buoyed. In secret, I rejoiced in receiving some recognition for myself. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My master, the Lord Miyazaki Hayao-sama. From a (self-proclaimed) prodigal son, Anno Hideaki.

Hideaki Anno: Protoculture Addicts #43 (NewType 11/1996)

Quotes from Protoculture Addicts #43

Translated by Miyako Graham

Source: http://www.cjas.org/~echen/articles/spring97/05_03b.html

"Evangelion is my life and I have put everything I know into this work. This is my entire life. My life itself."

"Evangelion is like a puzzle, you know. Any person can see it and give his/her own answer. In other words, we're offering viewers to think by themselves, so that each person can imagine his/her own world. We will never offer the answers, even in the theatrical version. As for many Evangelion viewers, they may expect us to provide the 'all-about Eva' manuals, but there is no such thing. Don't expect to get answers by someone. Don't expect to be catered to all the time. We all have to find our own answers."





Translated by William Flanagan & David Ury

Source: Neon Genesis Evangelion Manga Vol. 2 (Japanese) http://www.evamonkey.com/writings_sadamoto03.php (Circa 1996)

"The design concept in Eva was that the characters themselves should lean towards a relatively subdued appearance. But the plug suits! Gaudy as hell. Embarassing--I mean, they almost look like, y'know, body paint. Naturally, I thought the cos-players wouldn't even consider attempting it."

"But there were, at the December '95 Comic Market, the February '96 Wonder Festival, at the... You know, I hate crowds, so ordinarily the whole cos-play scene is no more than a distant reality. But this... this, I had to see. Specifically, I had to see the girls in sky-blue wigs, wearing white plugsuits. Mmmm. I had to see it."

Hideaki Anno vs. Kunihiko Ikuhara, What the Avante Gardemen have to say (NewType 12/1998)

Article "What the Avante Gardemen have to say" from NewType October 1998, by Kimata Fuyu

translation by Mark Neidengard

Source: http://www.cjas.org/~leng/anno-ikuhara.txt



Constantly injecting new stories and excitement into the business, Anno Hideaki and Ikuhara Kunihiko discuss the state of anime production. Perfected, only to await collapse?! Amidst such unfavorable circumstances, they discuss their thoughts and hopes as members of the literary avante garde[*0].



"There isn't anyone trying to make 'me-anime' now, is there?" (Anno)



WHAT IS THIS NEW METHODOLOGY OF ANIMATION?

Ikuhara: I know "KareKano" ("Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou") is just about to start, but have you decided on anything like a regular style?

Anno: Regular style?

Ikuhara: Something like a set pattern.

Anno: No, not really. I haven't decided, or should I say, it hasn't come to me yet.

Ikuhara: Did you think of making it at the outset?

Anno: Somehow, nothing but an inkling came to me. There was no epoch-making "That's It!" Although, I _am_ thinking of stopping being limited by the bounds of time and space. (brief silence) Let's see...methodology... For "KareKano", if I try to do interesting things with a methodology that doesn't depend on the number of cels, it'll turn out just like "EVA". I'm tired of reusing cuts and depicting using freeze-frame rhythm. That was how I did "EVA". It's what I did since the "Top (wo Nerai!)" days. But, not counting on the number of frames, the methodology that shows things most effectively is exactly that. It's not a new methodology at all. To put it bluntly, settling into creatorhood may let you stay alive in life, but I just can't stand the thought.

Ikuhara: Can't stand it?

Anno: Yeah, can't stand it. Maybe it's okay for people over 50 to get set in their ways as creators, but I intend to fight it as much as possible. Or so I say, and yet no matter how much I speak of seeking a new methodology, I can't leave the original work to people walking on the street. What I'm talking about is the influential work known as "Macross"[1]. In those days Yamaga (Hiroyuki), me, Sadamoto (Yoshiyuki), and Maeda (Mahiro) all began to get involved with anime because of our student part-time jobs. I could say that was how huge the talent of director Ishiguro (Noboru), who used that kind of unknown youngsters, was; the result of sensibilities drawn from deep within. Creators in those days had substance.

Ikuhara: I agree about the younger generations. It's hard when people don't think of anime as a venture. That's why there aren't any sure-fire aesthetics.

Anno: The reason the game business prospered and grew so fast is because it was a venture. But games have finally tanked too. It happened pretty fast, didn't it? Our generation is naturally a shallow one, and there's noone who's trying to overturn things. There isn't anyone trying to make "me-anime" now, is there?

Ikuhara: I just don't know about the people who'll be getting into the business from here out. This is a generation that loves both cel anime and digital anime. I personally get uncomfortable when the two are mingled.





WE'RE RIDING ABOVE THE SYSTEM

Anno: The first time I saw "Virtua Fighter"[2], I thought, is this what anime is up against? It was quite a shock. That's when I realized I'd have to level up somewhere other than the visuals, I guess right before I did "EVA". Visual impact is anime's strong point, but since games had followed on anime's heels, it had become a time when a methodology no different from the others just wouldn't cut it. All the cards had already been dealt, so we had no choice but to change the combination, or turn over cards that were thought to be taboo. That's what I mean when I say that "EVA" didn't use even a single new methodology.

Ikuhara: Ah, like what the media talks about as creatorhood when discussing animated works. But that's just an illusion, and actually in the anime business no such thing as a creator is anywhere to be found. All there are are people who were brought along by the founding of the system. The people who devise the form of the anime of today.

Anno: Right.

Ikuhara: The people who accomplished soemthing are all 50 or older. Those people are almost all associated with the early days of Toei Douga or Mushi Pro[3]. The people who came after that are all no good, they haven't done a thing. It's not that they haven't _made_ anything. It's that they didn't build the system at all. They're just riding on it, on the system that the people of the previous generation made.

Anno: Yeah. They can't seem to overturn it.





WHAT WILL THE SPREAD OF DIGITAL CHANGE?

Ikuhara: Well, there are currently a lot of people who talk about digital as a technique to make the presentation of anime more radical, but I think they're making a horrendous mistake. Wouldn't that just make using digital a technique for overhauling the presentation of cel anime that has taken 30 years to establish? That's no way to change the system of the animation production houses. It's just an attempt to go on riding the system we've already got.

Anno: Oshii (Mamoru)-san says "Now that the pioneers of anime have died, it will die with them." He says the history of anime ended long ago.

Ikuhara: Once there was a time when people were groping, saying "What methodology do we use to express ourselves?" The way things are expressed in modern anime comes from a fixed way of negotiating with the production houses, a way made by working backwards from cost-performance.[6]

Anno: That's limited animation[5] for you.

Ikuhara: Yeah. And what about our aesthetics? The aesthetics of people like us who find shadows fixed on the back side of cels beautiful are being processed through cost-performance. If cost-performance changes, my aesthetics are supposed to change too. Of course, the people who created form in the midst of such groping were the people of the first generation who created Japanese anime.

Anno: The origin was stuff like Disney animation, and we're just extensions.

Ikuhara: Thanks to the impending spread of digital, the aesthetics on screen will change. Because my emotions will get more and more messed up when that happens, I think the emotions that that we now consider beautiful will fall apart.

Anno: No, but, I can't stand CG shadows.

Ikuhara: Oh, really?

Anno: I hate them see...I guess they're just not crisp or something.

Ikuhara: Come again?

Anno: So, with brush shadows, when you make them fluffy, I just can't take it. It's just not manly. (laugh) Girlishness when trying to express aesthetics just sucks. Shadows should be crisp and definitive. "Seaweed" shadows weren't popular in the original robot anime.

Ikuhara: "Seaweed"?

Anno: When depicting the aesthetics of mecha, the wavy shadows.

Ikuhara: But weren't those shadows cutting edge for expression in those days?





"The human body is far better than CG." (Anno)

Anno: Yeah, well, I can stand Sakano (Ichirou)-san[7] and the other guys with good sense using them, but with everybody else they look like nothing more than seaweed. You wouldn't think anything but that the mecha had camouflage markings. Those aren't shadows. When we did "Ouritsu (Uchuugun)", it was totally counter to that. The shadows were crisp, and the highlights[7] did nothing but give the impression of light. If cel anime targets aesthetics it's all over. Both clothing and skin are the same except for color. Just give it up, and go for the gusto in some different area. No matter how hard you struggle, there are just some things you can't fight your way out of. The people who created the system at the outset understood this.

Ikuhara: I guess it's through that trial and error that the anime of today is made.

Anno: Recently I watched some "Kinchuu" ("Kingiyo Chuuihou!")[9]. As research for "KareKano". I thought that perhaps that was what gags and shoujo manga were. But it felt a little old.

Ikuhara: Old? It feels like things are divided into the the time before and after "Sailor Moon". I feel like it really infected the tastes at Comiket.

Anno: Yeah. Whether something's major or not at Comiket amounts to whether or not it gets made into erotic stuff. After all, the sex industry is strong no matter what era it is. As Tsurumaki (Kaguya) said, earnestly value all things equally. Both Hiromatsu Junko and Ayanami Rei. I can't express it in words, but I feel the same chasm within myself.

Ikuhara: I think it's the feeling of antisepticness. The impression that they don't smell like anything is good.

Anno: Yes, yes, exactly.

Ikuhara: Apparently stuff like unnecessary hair, or nose hair, isn't absolute. Of course, in pictures the characters don't actually have nostrils (laugh). I bet everyone would start hating pictures of girls if we drew nostrils on them.

Anno: Cel anime fans are more sterile than that.

Ikuhara: The idols of a decade ago felt really sterile. But recently actresses and TV talents are feeling less remote and more realistic.

Anno: Does that include us, by any chance? It's an existence where courage and familiarity seem to be draining away.

Ikuhara: If so, the place that the people who recognize the feeling of sterility are carrying with them in their thoughts will disappear.

Anno: That's why I'm going with the cel anime system.

Ikuhara: There's somewhere where we'll give up, isn't there. We're trying to fulfill our own ambitions virtually. I suppose if we were doing it for real we should be trying to make more properly ideal cities and better human relations. I can't really say it in anything but pedestrian terms, but, like with things like the Aum[*1] incident, I can understand the feelings of the people who want to reorganize the world.

Anno: In order to see a made-up drama, there are even people who neglect their real lives, right? That kind of person does things like become a seiyuu fan.

Ikuhara: I bet what they really wanted was to touch an anime character.

Anno: For something that could connect the virtual and the real, I too turned to the seiyuu. But that was a mistake. That's why I tried to show something different in "KareKano". But altering the existing system is tough.





THE COMPLEX ABOUT THE BODY

Ikuhara: On this point, Anno-san and I differ in our way of creating. I'm not trying to connect anime and voice that much. But if I have a sentiment close to that, I think it's the complex about the body. I have moments where I think that, not just anime, but _nothing_ can win against the human body. A while ago I was watching the Nagano Olympics on TV. There was this girl who was nothing special during her interview, but who became sublime when she started skating. It was only for instant while she was doing it, but I felt like God was dwelling in her body. A moment when I thought there was nothing more beautiful in the whole world. And it's not like her body changed, either. It's that kind of complex towards the human body that I've got. Even though my work is in anime, I have moments when I doubt we matter compared to a real body. When counting on the actors to do something, I wonder if what I'm actually looking for is corporeality.

Anno: Yeah, that happens.

Ikuhara: Could it be that what I'm seeking in the middle of a production is not the show, but the corporeality itself?



"I have moments where I think that nothing can win agains the human body." (Ikuhara)

Anno: Yeah. This past New Year's there was a part at Higuchi (Masatsugu)'s[10] place. We watched some American specials, and in _every_ case the CG was an utter bore. This special on the lives of stuntmen was more interesting. The human body is by far better than CG.

Ikuhara: I guess the reason Anno-san has been expressing an interest in the little theater recently and why I've been saying the same for a while, is because of this feeling of demanding corporeality. When I feel a real body right before my eyes, I feel like, it's all over, time to throw in the towel.

Anno: Yeah, that's right.

Ikuhara: Now this beauty of the physical body only exists at infrequent moments. Only for the moment of the drama is one an actor - after it's over one is someone else.

Anno: The first time I realized that was with Noda (Hideki)'s[11] drama. I thought, this is the real thing! Before that, within myself I felt that the only thing that gave the feeling of corporeality in the anime dimension were the seiyuu. That's why I kept on trying to express life. But I was deluding myself.

Ikuhara: Hahahahaha. Well, not only is that the case for Anno-san, but also in the so-called little theater boom of the 70's. A renovation right down to the roots. The couldn't touch anything with their hands, the people of that generation. Their path was pre-made, and they couldn't create anything by themselves. It was the first virtual generation.

Anno: Miyazaki (Hayao)-san said that we're the "first generation to value the the virtual and actual equally", but I say "What about you?".

Ikuhara: He may not be a generation, but he's certainly foremost among it. (laugh)





THE FEELING OF WANTING TO BE PRESENT FOR MOMENTOUS EVENTS

Ikuhara: I'll state up front that all Japanese fictional works, even for the little theater, are all manga.

Anno: Yeah. It's the manga-ization[*2] of the nation. Dramas are the same, nothing but either manga with an extremely tenuous grasp on reality or documentary-like variety shows.

Ikuhara: I can't say precisely what I mean by manga-like, but for one thing, such works can only show the totally familiar or the astoundingly distant. Aren't all popular songs that way? They can't speak to anything but minutae like someone's dress shirt, or about things like the edge of the universe that are so far away they can't be spoken of except in the imagination. They don't speak at all to the yawning gap in between. That's how I feel the world of manga is.

Anno: Perhaps we can be at ease in a fake world because we know it's a lie from the outset. That's how the creators of manga where you'd think "There wouldn't really be a teacher like that" make drama. That's how works like "Denpa Shounen", where you never know what's going to happen next, work.

Ikuhara: I read the feeling of seeking variety and such as wanting to seek corporeality.

Anno: Yes, a world where something is done with the body alone. Nothing else befits a documentary. A world that shows nothing of creation.

Ikuhara: Take "Utena" and "EVA". They take a fragment of our work and talk about us introducing impact into our animation, saying it's like Terayama Shushi[12]'s work or something. It's nothing that narrow, is it? I think that what appears in our works is the complex about the body that people who make made-up anime feel.

Anno: I use the word "lifelike-ness". Compred to that, cel anime is pretty and virtual. Because I feel a sense of thwarted life in current cel anime, I want to try to peek at it from a slightly different direction. Like trying not to use any of the established seiyuu.

Ikuhara: There are times when I want to stay away from impactful stuff and deal with the illusion. Saying one thing after another, I think everyone's deluded. Directors, animators, seiyuu, the audience, everyone is deluded while making and watching anime. I wonder if things aren't just fine that way? I don't want to brood over it. The first time I saw Terayama, I really loved it. My country bumpkin complex and my intelligencia complex give me my drive. Now that I think about it, that delusion was a godsend (laugh).

Anno: In the old days, I had never seen anything like real impact, and thought the whole thing was absurd.

Ikuhara: That's how it usually is.

Anno: Adjusting a set in real life was such a pain. Anime and movies are much cooler.

Ikuhara: That's why people quit doing theater when movies were invented. And that was precisely why I was so shocked when I saw Terayama. The pleasure of corporeality being possible. The pleasure of fiction. The kind of pleasure that makes strip-tease more engrossing than pornography.

Anno: In real life, bad things happen, like rowdy neighbors at a shop, but impact isn't virtual, is it?

Ikuhara: Movies are recordings, whereas the stage is a sort of "incident".

Anno: Just like the difference between a war you're in and a war you see on TV.

Ikuhara: It seems we can't savor the interest of becoming the people on the scene.

Anno: That's because impact is tough stuff. Movies can't offer anything more than a pseudo-experience.

Ikuhara: What propelled the 70's little theater boom was the feeling of wanting to be in the middle of things, wasn't it. How much of being in the middle of things is left these days? People worry about things that aren't yet firm and solid.

Anno: I thought of a lot of different stuff for "KareKano", but it seems impossible to do impactfully under the current system. All the same, starting around episode 9 a lot of inexperienced kids appear, the kind for whom it's their first time in front of a mic. We'll see what happens.

Ikuhara: That could be interesting.

Anno: Kuni-chan, you should come on too, as a teacher or something.

Ikuhara: I've gotten used to doing things halfway, but can I really? (laugh)

Anno: Ah, I don't need anyone who only does things halfway. (laugh)





Footnotes

[1] Superdimensional Fortress Macross ('82). With Mikimoto Haruhiko's characters, Kawamori Shouji's mecha and such, the talent of the young animators became evident and started a boom. Afterwards OVAs, movies, and toys were created.

[2] Virtua Fighter ('94). Sega's fighting game. With polygon images and real-life shots, it became a major hit. Not stopping at arcade sales, it's also availble in a home version for the Sega Saturn.

[3] Toei Douga. Established in '57. The mighty anime creation house that gave us such things as "Dragonball" and "Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon". Mushi Productions, established in '63 by Techou Daimushi. Created such things as "Tetsuwan Atom".

[4] Oshii Mamoru. Anime director. Specializes in nonsensical worlds and visual expression that tries to dismantle fiction. Major works include "Urusei Yatsura Beautiful Dreamer" and the "Mobile Police Patlabor" series.

[5] Limited Animation. Anime that, for economic and time-related reasons, must skimp on use of "commas". A second of animated film is made from 24 commas. Full animation would use a different image each comma, but limited animation might keep a frame before the eyes for 2-3 commas. To the human eye, that sort of trick still looks sufficiently like motion.

[6] A way made by working backward from cost-performance. Methods used today in Japan's anime industry, such as using cels to merely slide a character a step or two at a time to produce the effect of motion, reuse of commas (limited animation), and reusing cels in other shows (the bank system).

[7] Sakano Ichirou. An animator known as "Sakano Circus" who depicted speedy and frequently moving mecha action. Principle work is "Superdimensional Fortress Macross".

[8] Highlights. Transparent lighting.

[9] "Kingyou Chuuihou" ('91). TV anime. Product of Toei Douga. Anime taken from the shoujo manga serialized in "Monthly Nakayoshi". The series director was Satou Junichi.

[10] Higuchi Masatsugu. Special Effects director for the "Gamera" series. Assisted with the visual continuity for "Fushigi no Umi no Nadia" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion".

[11] Noda Hideki. Musician, producer, actor. Was interviewed along with Anno in the May issue of this magazine. Principle works: "Kill", "Rolling Stone" (for the stage).

[12] Terayama Shushi. Musician, author, poet, movie director, and so on, he was a many-faceted multicreator. In high demand, he not only did drama on stage, he did street theater and participated in experimental drama. Principle works include "Kegawa no Marie", "Shintokumaru" (theatrical), "Cast Off Books! Return to the City!" (movie). Died in '83. J.A. Seazar, who contributed to the music for "Shoujo Kakumei Utena", worked in Terayama's Theater Observatory "Ceiling Gallery".





Biographies

Anno Hideaki. Born '60 in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Producer, director. As a member of GAINAX, has been involved in numerous anime. "Neon Genesis Evangelion" became a runaway hit. In his new work starting in October, he tackles shoujo manga.

Ikuhara Kunihiko. Born '64 in Hiroshima Prefecture. Director. Was involved in the production of such things as "Kingyo Chuuihou!" and "Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon" at Toei Douga. Founder of the production company Be-PaPas. His latest work, "Shoujo Kakumei Utena", is heading toward a spring '99 theatrical release.





Translator's Notes

[*0] The word I translated as "avante gardesmen" is "gesakusha". Kyoko Selden, Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages at Cornell University, offers the following commentary on the meaning of "gesaku":

"It literally means 'playful writing,' but what I was trying to say was its implication differs from age to age. Takizawa Bakin first comes to mind when I think of late Edo gesaku (not that he was so playful but he is thought of as having been content with 'romance' rather than seeking to discover a more serious genre). In Meiji, of course there are the works of Narushima Ryuuhoku and others, as well as Tsubouchi Shouyou's cricitisms of gesaku as opposed to the Realist modern novel (and Bakin was one of his prime targets). Then there is the return to, or rediscovery of, gesaku in the recent decades. So I couldn't think of a single word that fits all cases. The term parodist occurred to me because I was thinking of Inoue Hisashi who claims himself as such. If there is an element that is common to all those authors, after all it must be the attitude of playfulness, whether expressed in comedy-of- manners type satire, literary or social parody, or aversion from the idea of modern novel. I'm aware that some use 'light literature' or 'cheap literature' as a translation of gesaku, but I wonder if either is best. I don't have a good single word definition, but the brief discussion with you this afternoon led me to think that gesaku, from Meiji on at least, has the connotation of posed, pretended, or deliberate playfulness as a tool of social criticism and/or of literary or stylistic flourish. It always comes with a gesture, a pose, a persona."

[*1] Ikuhara is referring to the release of sarin gas in a Tokyo subway station on March 20, 1995 by terrorists belonging to the Aum Shinri-Ki, under the leadership of Asahara Shoko.

[*2] Anno uses the phrase "ichioku sou-manga" here, in imitation of a famous phrase about the "idiotization" of the Japanese nation ("ichioku sou- hakuchi-ka") coined by Hanamori Yasuji, sharp-tongued critic and editor of the "Kurashi no Techou". Another corruption of this phrase likens the hard-working Japanese population to a beehive: "ichi-oku sou-hatarakibachi".





Hideaki Anno: Disability Shapes Taste for the Imperfect

Points of interest: Anno speaks about his father's disability and how that influenced his works

Anno speaks about his father's disability and how that influenced his works Source: Asahi Evening News, Sunday 10/3/1999

Asahi Evening News, Sunday 10/3/1999 Reliability level: Solid Tier 2 canon.

My father has only one leg. While working at a lumber mill he had his left leg seriously injured with an electric saw. He was 16 years old at the time. He wears an artificial leg below the thigh. He has trouble walking, so he used to stay at home.

He was running a tailor's shop with his wife in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture. He became a tailor because he could work sitting on a chair. He had no trouble pedaling the sewing machine.

Father had an operation at a local hospital, but the surgeon did a poor job. I often saw an edge of the bone still peeking out of the flesh. And he felt pain befcause his artificial leg didn't fit. After walking for a long time, he would take off the device and massage his thigh. So about the only time I went out with him was when there was a festival in town.

In my boyhood, father was melancholy. I often overheard him complaining to mother, "I wouldn't lose out to anybody if I had two healthy legs." As a small child I could understand how he felt about his handicap.

I think he was emotionally unstable. Maybe that's why he beat and kicked me when I did something wrong. Sometimes mother came to my rescue and ran away holding me in her arms. Father also said something very cruel to me, though I don't remember exactly what he said. It had the same connotation as what a frustrated mother might say to her unwanted child - "I wish you were not here."

When I was in senior high school, low-priced ready-made suits hit the market, and father couldn't make a living just running a tailor shop. So he began delivering newspapers. He made his rounds in the town on a bicycle. Maybe he wanted to show he could work like anybody else.

I think something in him changed after that. He stopped complaining around that time. He got a driver's license and often made a short trip with my mother.

Father says nothing about my productions. Maybe he does not understand animations. I meet him perhaps once every two or three years. I feel distant from my family.

But there is no doubt that I have been influened by father's physical handicap. I cannot love anything perfect. To me, robots without a hand or leg look better. In my animation "Tetsujin 28-go" (iron man No. 28), the robot loses his arm. I love that scene.

While in elementary school I would draw a robot in my notebook or in a blank space of the textbook, and then I would rub out a part of the body and show something that looks like a bone.

The robots that appear in my productions usually get injured in battle and end up in bad shape with a part of the body broken.

Something broken of deficient comes more naturally to me. Sometimes that thing is the body. Sometimes it is the mind.





Yoshiyuki Sadamoto: Interview with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Der Mond)

Excerpt from an Interview with Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, published in 1999.

Translated by Bochan Bird

Source: Deluxe Edition of the artbook "Der Mond" in September 1999 http://eva.onegeek.org/pipermail/evangelion/2006-November/003855.html

The Initial Title was Alcion (Arushion)

In the first place, just what kind of story was Evangelion in the initial stages?

When the very first meeting was held before the title had even been decided, Anno had already provided the theme of "a battle between gods and humans". Both Anno and I -- our generation -- was influenced by Go Nagai, so making something on a grand scale meant it ended up like "Devilman". The character design request from Anno was that "the lead character is a girl, and has an older-sister type figure like Coach next to her," so it was structurally similar to "Gunbuster". So I first designed an Asuka-type girl as the lead character, but after "Gunbuster" and "Nadia" I felt some resistance to making the lead character a girl again. I mean a robot should be piloted by a trained person, and if that person just happens to be a girl then that is fine, but I couldn't see why a young girl would pilot a robot... So I remember saying to Anno, "It's a robot story, so let's make the lead character a boy." And just about that time, I was watching the NHK [public TV channel] program "Brain and Heart" and learned about the existence of the A10 nerve, and I told Anno about the idea that popped into my head at that time. That was the idea where "the dead mother is inside the robot, which is operated by mental/psychical bonding with the child. Moreover, parent-child relations are parched/strained due to the death of the mother at a young age." As soon as I had this idea I was filled with confidence that "This will work!" and I just whipped out a setting drawing. That setting drawing became the character chart for the Planning Papers.

What points did you take care for with that character chart?

An easily recognizable silhouette is also important, but I designed the characters so that their personalities could be more or less understood at a glance. For example, even the color and length of the hair expresses personality. I thought that Asuka would occupy the position of an "idol" in the Eva world, and that [Asuka and] Shinji should be just like the relationship between Nadia and Jean. And then I set Rei as the opposing "Ying" portion. It was my idea to have her wrapped in bandages. The most difficult was Misato. So I thought it would be interesting to have someone like the older girl next door as a military person. I really wanted to make her a character who changed her clothes constantly, but I have no fashion sense so I wasn't able to do it. (laugh) I imagined Misato as a looser girl who, taken to the extreme, would be sleeping with all the men at Nerv and so on. Furthermore, she would not think too seriously about all of that... Gendo and Fuyutsuki were modeled after Commander Ed Staker and Col. Alec Freeman from the TV series "UFO".

Were there any title proposals other than "Evangelion"?

One of the names proposed by Anno was "Alcion (Arushion)". But a robot story title that doesn't have a voiced consonant sound in it just isn't catching. So I pushed "Evangelion", which had been rejected once, as sounding stronger. We had talked a lot in the beginning about wanting a title like "Space Runaway Ideon (Legendary Giant God Ideon)", so I think I did push that. And to tell the truth, the story composition is also similar. For example, Nerv can be considered the same as the Solo Ship fighting a lonely battle against both humankind and the Buff Clan, and then there are the incomprehensible robots that can only communicate with children and tend to go berserk, etc. It might not be an exaggeration to say that if you add "Ideon" and "Devilman" together and divide by two, you get "Evangelion". (laugh)At that time the media venue also had not been decided yet, but I really wanted to do it as a TV series or movie instead of as an OVA. Sure, you can do higher quality with an OVA, but I felt that OVAs were a minor media compared to TV, so it was out of self- gratification [that I wanted to do it as a TV series]. When you are in Tokyo and constantly reading the anime magazines, you succumb to the illusion that OVAs are a major media. But when you live in the provinces like me, the anime selection at the video rental shops isn't that great, so you think of it as a more minor world.

Hideaki Anno: Celebrating the Revival of Gundam as Tale

Essay that was included in the first volume of the Aizouban edition of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s Gundam: The Origin manga in 2005, as well as the North American edition that was released in 2013.

translated by Melissa Tanaka

The world of Gundam, drawn once again as a Tale –that, I believe, is the greatest significance of this manga. Of course, we also have here Mr. Yasuhiko’s distinctive art, the indescribable charm woven by his gentle, delicate lines, the characters and mobile suits in particular. Yet I feel the greatest pleasure of this “Yasuhiko Gundam” lies in the resuscitation of a Tale lost among our memories of First Gundam.

It has already been twenty-five years since the broadcast of First Gundam. I’m afraid the legacy of Gundam dwindled down to the mobile suits, in the form of plastic models as a business and military hobbyism. Even these mobile suits were summarized down to the protagonist mecha, Gundam, so that friend and foe alike were all uniformly Gundams. One could say this was inevitable: the pivotal creation that made Gundam a classic and drives the franchise expansion to this day is, of course, the mobile suit, represented by the RX-78 Gundam, a weapon bearing the elements of a character; and the way of the world is that characters are what ultimately remain with the audience. It’s not a bad thing. I simply find it unfortunate that the Tale that enveloped the worldview and ideas on war presented in First Gundam ceased to function as anything more than a device for the mobile suit fantasy.

In recent years, in the world of anime and manga too, the hollowing out of mainstream culture and the putative rise of subculture severely diluted and eroded the standing of the Tale. Audiences have come to need only a work only as an escape from reality, as a comfortable dream, judging everything on the criterion of moe, while creators’ intellectual paucity and the jumble of trivial touches have encouraged that structure. At the same time, TV-type mass consumption, which prizes instant gratification and simplistic results, laid the improverished grounds of contemporary Japanese entertainment, giving rise to masses that can only respond with praise for superficial details and technical proficiency; with tears, laughter, fear, or some outpouring of simple emotions ; or with identifying and particularism. And here we are, in this stagnant state of affairs. I am stuck here myself. It’s embarrassing and frustrating, and I also regret that I contributed to it. I want it fixed. The sooner, the better.

That is why I am so glad that Gundam, the animation brand with the largest market in the industry, is showing us here a true Tale through the medium of manga. I want as many people as possible to reconfirm and savor the essence and allure of Tales. I want this work’s readers’ receptivity to grow more fertile, more embodied. Only Mr. Yasuhiko, I think, could have accomplished the task of reviving the Tale that is there in First Gundam. I think this because I sense a certain equipoise--in that Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, the author who seconded diverging with the masses and business, who abandoned the anime industry and, as solitary manga artist, gazed at and depicted the livelihood of individuals and state society historically, finally returns to Gundam after steering clear of it for over twenty years. And I sense a certain good grace. He decides to draw Gundam—well-known to the masses as a premier franchise of the plastic model and anime industries—not from weariness, not as expiation, nor to return to his roots, but in earnest, as a work of his own. That is why we are able to sense from the work a Tale that is both true and distinct from the first Gundam anime’s. I think that’s fantastic. I thank anew that I am able to read Mr. Yasuhiko’s Gundam.

Finally, dear reader, holding this book, I urge you to pick up Mr. Yasuhiko’s other works as well. I sincerely wish for you to know better what Tales are to you, to touch and feel them again. As for me, I’ll do my best so that my next project will come across as a Tale.

Hideaki Anno, Gundam Fan April 10, 2005

Toshmichi Otsuki: NewType USA December 2006

Excerpts from NewType USA, December 2006 issue

Source http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=2053

Anime's new baby

In the recent years, Hideaki Anno has been focusing more on live-action than anime, so his decision to make another Eva anime surprised many. Otsuki has a theory, though.

"Twelve years is enough time for you to be able to look back on earlier works obvjectively", he explains. "Shortly before we started this project, Anno had a big Eva marathon where he watched the whole series in one go. The first thing he said when he finished watching was, 'This show really is interesting, isn't it? I never realized how interesting it was'. That comment really shook me."

The new project was started as an affirmation of the value of Anno's past work. "He and his team have gained a lot of experience since then," Otsuki adds. "They've matured as animators and as people. I think you'll be able to see that growth in this production.

Despite all the changes in everyone's lives, having the old staff together again made for a very nostalgic mood on the production site. "Everyone was completely burned out during the second half of the original TV run and the movies, but now they're fresh and enthustiastic again. They've gotten older, but they're still full of energy. It's almost like watching kids prepare for a holiday celebration. The staff will also include a bunch of younger twenty-somethings who decided to join the anime industry after watching Eva and being inspired.

This show has been loved by a lot of people over the years." Indeed it has. The new movies also reflect the staff's feelings about the state of the anime industry. It's even suggested that this project is a rejection of current anime production philosophy.

"It's true that Eva was a huge hit," Otsuki says. "But its success spawned a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding in the in the industry, the end result being a bunch of mass-produced junk. That mindset has persisted for ten years, but now we're in a position to prove it wrong. We're determined to close the door on the post-Eva era for good.

Not your daddy's Eva

When the shocking news first broke, it sent anime fans around the world into a frenzy: Neon Genesis Evangelion, widely regarded as one of the best anime series ever made, was being adapted[into] four brand-new films! Who would've ever thought we'd see another Evangelion? In the dozen or so years since its debut, the series spawned numerous video games and even saw a "renewal" reissue with touched-up art and new voiceovers, but until now there hasn't been a smallest whisper of a new series. What can we possibly expect?

"The new story takes place in the same period as the 1995 TV series, but the plot is completely different," producer Toshimichi Otsuki elaborates. "This isn't a remake or a quick fix. It's a totally new production."

Being a new production means GAINAX is taking a different approach than what SUNRISE did with the recent Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam movies, which were essentially a three-part summary of the TV series. In contrast, the new Eva movies call for massive modifications to the setting and the concepts.

"It'll be something viewers can enjoy if they've never seen the TV series," Otsuki continues. "I want everyone--from hardcore fans of the original work to people who only know it because of the licensed stuff--to look at it as a standalone film series.

The complexity has been somewhat lessened to make it more accesible to newbies, but it'll still take a bit of thought to understand." Otsuki adds that they're removing much of the deliberate obfuscation that made Eva infamous: "Filling works with difficult words and concepts in order to create confusion among viewers was a good technique 12 years ago, but not anymore, and one of our primary goals for this project is to turn everyone's expectations upside down."

The core creative team from the TV series has reunited, with original director Hideaki Anno (Gunbuster) overseeing the production. Kazuya Tsurumaki (FLCL) is taking on the mechanical design. Anno himself came up with the storyline for the first installment, while fellow GAINAX co-founder Shinji Higuchi is responsible for storyboarding. A number of new staff members will also be brought on as the production advances.

Hideaki Anno: Statement about New Evangelion Movies

Statement released on February 17th, 2007 at the Evangelion Movies website.

Translation: Unknown

Source: http://eva.yahoo.co.jp/gekijou/big_message.html



Many different desires are motivating us to create the new "Evangelion" film.



The desire to portray my sincere feelings on film.

The desire to share, with an audience, the embodiment of image, the diversity of expressions, and the detailed portrayal of emotions that animation offers.

The desire to connect today's exhausted Japanese animation [industry] to the future.

The desire to fight the continuing trend of stagnation in anime.

The desire to support the strength of heart that exists in the world.



Finally, the desire to have these wishes be realized.



For these purposes, we used the best methods available to us to make another Evangelion film.

Many times we wondered, "It's a title that's more than 10 years old. Why now?"

"Eva is too old", we felt.

However, over the past 12 years, there has been no anime newer than Eva.



Specifically, among the stagnant mood of the present day, it is the portrayal of will - not technology - that is most important.

To support the fans that support animation, we felt that a work that would appeal to middle and high school-aged men, who quickly grow away from Anime, was necessary.

When we decided that we wanted to something to support the anime [industry] of today, the determination to return to this title was strong.



As the creator of this project, [I assure you that] a very new-feeling Evangelion world has beeen constructed.

For this purpose, we are not returning to our roots at Gainax. I have set up a production company and studio, and it is in this new setting that we will start again.

Without looking back, without admiration for the circumstances, we aim to walk towards the future.

Thankfully, we have gathered staff from the old series, new staff, and many other fantastic staff to work on this series.

We realize that we are creating something that will be better than the last series.



”Eva" is a story that repeats.

It is a story where the main character witnesses many horrors with his own eyes, but still tries to stand up again.

It is a story of will; a story of moving forward, if only just a little.

It is a story of fear, where someone who must face indefinite solitude fears reaching out to others, but still wants to try.

We hope that you look forward to the 4 new retellings of this story.



In closing, it is also our job to provide a service to our customers.

Although it seems obvious, we aim to create a form of entertainment that anyone can look forward to; one that people who have never seen Evangelion can easily adjust to, one that can engage audiences as a movie for theatres, and one that produces a new understanding of the world.



This fall, we hope you can join us.



Creator/General Director, Anno Hideaki







Kazuya Tsurumaki: NewType USA, March 2007

Exceprt from NewType USA, March 2007

Source: http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=2536

Recapturing the look and feel

Kazuya Tsurumaki, one of the directors for the new Evangelion films, has strong words for naysayers who dismiss the project as a mere remake. "Nothing could be further from the truth!", he says. "This isn't about putting the same old story with slightly better animation techniques or touched-up footage. When we use the word "rebuild", we mean an honest-to-goodness rebuild, from the ground up. It's a fact that there were things we wanted to do in the original TV series that just weren't feasible at the time, and one of our goals in doing this is to find a way to put some of the ideas back in. Operation Yashima is a perfect example. It's something we really wanted to do right this time, and getting the chance to do that was one of my main reasons for accepting the role of director. But rehashing past efforts isn't the whole story--not by a long shot. There are plenty of sides to this story which I want to bring out that are very different from what you saw in the TV version."

Tsurumaki goes on to explain that in the calculus of Eva-world, merely increasing the pixel count doesn't automatically translate into better production: "The Evangelion story is both simplistic and deep. The ideas are densely packed, like in a haiku. But that doesn't mean it needs to follow the Hollywood pattern of overproduction ad infinitum. We've all gotten used to that style of moviemaking, but if we're going to do Eva the way it should be done, then we need to return to the look and feel of the age. And I think we can do even more amazing things with that look and feel by incorporating modern-day animation technology."

While Tsurumaki freely admits that the first of the four film installments--slated to hit theaters in Japan sometime mid-2007--will run like a digest of the TV series, employing key scenes to bring viewers up to speed on the basic story and setting, no one is very willing to speculate on the content of the second, third, or final films.

"Frankly, it just got too chaotic," Tsurumaki comments on the brainstorming sessions that were initially meant to provide an overall plot outline and final resolution to the story. "We're all working from the assumption that we weren't able to reach our destination with the original TV series, but the exact nature of that "destination" is still unclear to everyone on the staff. Since we're going to all the trouble of making these new productions, we'd at least like to take the story as far as we took it back then, but it's been an uphill struggle so far. I get the feeling this project is going to be a very unstable project--in a lot of ways." Unstable, maybe. But brilliant, almost certainly. We're come to expect nothing less from Evangelion.





Yoshiyuki Sadamoto Answers All (Omake)

Q: How long have you been with GAINAX?

A: Over 20 years now!

Q: What was the biggest thing that happened to you while there?

A: Getting my manga published! It's still going strong...

Q: What's your favorite Anime quote?

A: In Honneamise, where Lieutenant Colonel Marty says he believes he's capable of existing only because the people around him need him to.

Q: What's the longest you ever stayed at the office without going home?

A: Three days!

Q: Fill in the blank: "GAINAX, ____ Forever!"

A: GAINAX, an otaku's friend forever! (OK, I know it's corny...)





Hideaki Anno Answers All (Omake)

Q: How long have you been with GAINAX?

A: I'm into my third decade now.

Q: What was the biggest thing that happened to you while there?

A: The company managing to stay together after the production of Honneamise. Also, resisting the urge to resign from my job even after the Aoki Uru project [a sequel to Honneamise, conceived in 1993] was put on indefinite hold.

Q: What's your favorite Anime quote?

A: Umm...

Q: What's the longest you ever stayed at the office without going home?

A: I dunno...A few years?

Q: Fill in the blank: "GAINAX, ____ Forever!"

A: GAINAX, there's no such thing as forever!







Hideaki Anno: "Let's Die Together", Atlantic Magazine, May 2007

Excerpts from the article "Let's Die Together" from the Atlantic Magazine, May 2007

Article by David Samuels

Source http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/let-8217-s-die-together/5776/3/

“Rei is someone who is aware of the fact that even if she dies, there’ll be another to replace her, so she doesn’t value her life very highly,” Anno explains, slouching ever-deeper into the couch. “Her presence, her existence—ostensible existence—is ephemeral. She’s a very sad girl. She only has the barest minimum of what she needs to have. She’s damaged in some way; she hurts herself. She doesn’t need friends.”

Anno understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like Rei as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape born of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. “Japan lost the war to the Americans,” he explains, seeming interested in his own words for the first time during our interview. “Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like.” The theory that Japan’s defeat stripped the country of its independence and led to the creation of a nation of permanent children, weaklings forced to live under the protection of the American Big Daddy, is widely shared by artists and intellectuals in Japan. It is also a staple of popular cartoons, many of which feature a well-meaning government that turns out to be a facade concealing sinister and more powerful forces.

Anno pauses for a moment, and gives a dark-browed stare out the window. “I don’t see any adults here in Japan,” he says, with a shrug. “The fact that you see salarymen reading manga and pornography on the trains and being unafraid, unashamed or anything, is something you wouldn’t have seen 30 years ago, with people who grew up under a different system of government. They would have been far too embarrassed to open a book of cartoons or dirty pictures on a train. But that’s what we have now in Japan. We are a country of children.”





Ikuto Yamashita: NewType USA, September 2007

Except from NewType USA, September 2007

Source: http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=9686

Ikuto Yamashita is the man responsible for taking the giant-robot concept and giving it a radical organic treatment in Evangelion. Now he's taking the opportunity of the new theatrical release to remake many of his core designs from the Eva series. Yamashita first heard news of the new movies from director Hideaki Anno, but at the time, he didn't realize what a monumental task was in front of him. "Anno only mentioned it very briefly in passing, at the very end of a presentation about a bunch of new projects.", he says. "I'd already heard that we were going to be collecting material from the TV series to reuse in a movie, so the announcement didn't surprise me much at all. The real shock came later, once I was already wrapped up in the production."

Yep, you guessed it--Yamashita was asked to completely rework many of the key designs from the show. "But it's probably more accurate to say that we returned to our original designs.", he adds. "Back when we were doing the TV series, the production was so tight that we had to drop all the fine details that might cause animation errors or delays. This time, the director's letting us do it the right way from the beginning."

As you may have guessed, Yamashita's influence is all over the look of the new movie, from the color schemes of the Eva units to their new weapon configurations--even the new NERV logo. In fact, the entire Eva arsenal (including the Positron Rifle, Progressive Knife and Shield) has been completely redesigned.

"When we were doing the TV series, the director was really into the idea of the Eva equipment being actual real-life weapons, scaled up to Eva-size," Yamashita notes. "This time he's basically saying 'Just make it different from what we used before,' so that's what I'm doing with my redesign."What excited Yamashita the most about working on the Rebuild of Evangelion? "How it's crammed with so many new ideas!" he sounded half-exhausted, but there was plenty of pride in his voice--we can't wait to see his work for ourselves.





Megumi Hayashibra: NewType USA, October 2007

Excerpt from NewType USA, October 2007

Source: http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=9686

Sometime in April, at a certain studio and without any particular fanfare, recording quietly began on it. You know--the new Evangelion movie. Honestly, I was pretty worried about it--after all, I'd parted ways with Rei Ayanami ten years ago--so in order to find the character again, I hauled out my old videos and immediately started turning the lines over and over in my head. There were famous ones from the show, of course, but there was also the flood of random game and figurine-related voice work that came afterward--I remember trying to do every line as seriously as I could, even if I didn't think it was the kind of thing that Rei would say. Revisiting the old stuff wore me out, and when I went to the first recording session for the new movie, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. The feeling nagged at me until I walked into the studio, said, "Good morning" and saw the old, familiar cast again. It took me right back to 1995.

Rei's first appearance is when she comes out on a stretcher, all bandaged up. As soon I performed the first groan for that scene, the Rei that had been sleeping within me all along came rushing to the surface, and before I knew it, I was 100 percent her. "Yes, this is where Rei and I started," I thought. It was like once I heard Shinji's and Gendo's voices, all my misgivings vanished. Such is the power of the recording booth! Anno himself was directing, and we rolled right through scene after scene. (Okay, so we did at least five takes for each. We wanted to be sure we weren't compromising on quality.) A whole bunch of scenes from the TV series and original movies had been rewritten and reanimated, and the lines were subtly different, too. But in the midst of all that change, one thing's for sure: The Rei I know is and love is definitely back.

Reasonably reliable sources with limited availability

Interview with Hideaki Anno and Kihachi Okamoto (Writer/Director)

Okamoto said that he watched Evangelion twice though he watched the ending first. He said the reference material he received along with the video has "controversial" written in it. He did not understand at first but later knew why once he watched the whole series.

Okamoto - Gun Busters is easier to understand. The final episode in the second video is black-and-white. I think it might be done to make it stand out - I mean the "Okarinasai" at the end.

Anno - My generation was the age when black and white moved to color. I would like people living now to see how great to have color lol. That was 35 monochrome.

Okamoto - I love black and white. Perhaps nearly half of my works are black and white?

Anno - Recently there are more black and white CM on TV. Poster too. Somehow it is getting popular.

Okamoto - And then there is partial coloring.

Anno - "Part Color"... Everyone is now so familiar with beautiful full color, so on the contrary they see that as ununsual.

Okamoto - But development cost is high. In the past development solution for black-and-white was always available. Now you need to order it first and then they make the development solution.

Anno - If it's color development can be done in the same day. For black and white, they told me to give them 2 days and it became a problem to me schedule-wise. If there is a rush, they would not get it done unless they have 2 days.

Okamoto - But that thing does not fade. Print is easy to fade as time passes by.

Anno - It becomes reddish...



Then some talk about Okamoto's Nikudan. Anno watched it twice and Okamoto said it's more than enough...Anno said he still remembered a lot of the scenes and how they are edited and linked.

But the ones he watched most are "The longest day of Japan" and "Okinawa Battle". He even played it as BGV when he was doing storyboarding at one time, and then slowly his attention was drawn to the video and ended up spending 3 hours watching it.

Then Okamoto talked about his filming Okinawa Battle in Okinawa and the problem with lack of manpower and resource, ended up doing one of the characters.

Then Anno said it's easier in anime -- if one more character is needed just draw him. But Anno said anime and real life both have aspects that the other side may envy. For example in anime, the camera does not move, and the shadow and body motion needs to be made realistic. Even with CG it has become easier, it still has that CG feel. Anno then said for anime the main work is still about fixing the motion. Scrolling and wrapping the background is particularly inefficient. Then more flattery from Anno about how Okamoto's tempo and scene cutting is suitable for anime. And then Anno talked about frame aspect ratio -- love Cinescope and miss its disappearance. Hate standard ratio and also not like Vista. He loves the way when Cinescope aspect is used audience have to follow the scene by moving their heads which is something not possible with TV watching.

Skipped the part that talks about "Blood and Sand" and "Sengoku yarou", and use of long shots. Except that Anno mentioned the fun thing with anime is that the photographer doubles as the actor in anime and in real-life you never see cameraman doubles as actor.

Very technical talk about how many frames of films to use for one blink. Anno said 6-7 frames, if he does not want the scene to get noticed, he put 6, if he wants to make sure it gets noticed he put at least 9 frames. And he said that if it is familar and static scene, even 2 frames can leave an impression. 3 frames may already make it too slow. But if it is fighting it needs 7-8 frames. Took 12 frames in film, cut may be 5-6, depending on how the pictures look. And of course in dialogue how to cut is already predetermined. He said he spent 12 hours to cut 20 min of animation. The longest time took him 24 hours.

Skipped the part about talking with the audience.

About line of eye sight:

Anno - In the case of anime, the acting and performance usually does not take that much into account. One reason could be the character design. The eyes of the characters usually stress on the details of the eyes and this make it difficult to put acting by using line of sight. However, in Eva the char design is comparatively easier to do such acting, so I put some effort into that. Like where the character is looking at in that scene, or whether the audience are going to see the eyes or not...

Because it is so fundamental I took great care about it. So unusually I put instructions in the storyboard like "Eyes are looking here". As I am influenced by director Okamoto, I used camera line of sight more than usual

Okamoto - if possible, line of sight should be on somewhere close. And on direction, A would look at B and then speak, and B would look back at A in reaction. It has to be like that...

Anno - for me, camera line of sight is often on the front. The drawing staff usually hates it. Drawing frontal face is more diffcult and often it could not be done well. But if the line of sight goes the other way, it becomes hard to use it to act.

Okamoto - There is power if the guy's sight is close to you

Anno - yes, that's it. That has energy in it.

Anno - I don't like switching between front and side. It is easier to frame the position of eyes of the characters if it is a front to front exchanges between the lines of sights of two persons. Anime is at the end a 2D thing so the amount of information is limited. When it is cut to a new scene, the audience will try to search for something to focus, and if it is a face, it will be the eyes they look first. So when the eyes have expressed the information, you can cut to another scene already. In tv anime, static scenes are many. I think this is the proper way to go. Although I think acting by eyes is very important it is also very tedious. I don't mind putting effort into doing it but somehow when I look at it later I have a feeling that it won't get noticed, or nobody cares. And then I get a bit irritated.

Okamoto - Perhaps because eyes in anime characters are so big...

Anno - That has many physical reasons. If we do not make the eyes big and treat it as a symbol for the characters, it will become difficult for many to draw.

Okamoto - but one can act just by eyes. Like the position of the iris...

Anno - true, but as the end we only have the drawings to fall back on. If we overdo that kind of serious acting, it carries a risk of looking ridiculous. Character Design is a difficult thing.

About Director:

Skipped the part about old time directors and struggles with studio about rights to edit, except Anno said that for anime sometimes it needs to do editing without having all drawings. But he thinks editing is fun. Gather extra cuts and then try to experiment by switching the cuts or rearranging order and that is interesting. And even the question of whether to cut 2 frames or not can make a difference.

About Storyboarding:

More flattery from Anno about watching "Ghost Train" and Okamoto said because of AD'S mistake he once needed to take 140-150 cuts in one day.

Anno - for movies, consensus is impossible

Okamoto - Director must be a dictator

Anno - He is a despot. Nothing can move forward if we have to wait until someone else makes a decision and approves. Also the personal character would not come out. In anime, a overall design called storyboard is made from the very beginning. And the production system is based on that design, so it is easier to unify opinions.



On the other hand, there is an image that the director's job is over once the storyboard is decided.

Okamoto - since we are on it, in Gunbuster and Eva last episode, there are parts in black and white, that flashback, that kind of stood out. It used quite a bit of sketch like drawings. Did the storyboard also cover that?

Anno - It was put in there.

Okamoto - Oh, those sketches were interesting. It somehow feels it's moving.



Anime vs real-life film:

Okamoto said real-life is not necessarily better. Anno said many anime directors want to do real-life. Many simply put drawings in place of real-life images and they seem to want to push anime to look closer to real life film. And both think it is not a good idea.

Final comment by Anno - Animation is a kind of static world, but there is a yearn for thrill when it switches from one static world to antoher static world and that cut to new scene is a most efficient way to get such thrill. And he thinks Okamoto's style of film cutting has similar effect

Anno - in a tv anime, 30 min of video has a limit of 3500 pictures. So the images cannot move as much as I want. And how to squeeze out the best from the image in such lack of motion, it is all in the cutting.

Hideaki Anno's Roundtable Discussion

Excerpts from a roundtable disccussion with Hideaki Anno at the Anime Expo '96 convention. From Animerica vol.4, no.9. Source: http://masterwork.animemedia.com/Evangelion/anno.html

On the unique appearance of the Evangelion Units...

ANNO: There is a monster in Japan called the oni, which has two horns sticking out of its head, and the overall image of the EVA is based on that. I wanted also to have an image that beneath the image of that robot monster is a human. It's not really a robot, but a giant human, so it's different from other robot mecha such as those in Gundam.

On Gunbuster's alternate future -- is it dominated by Russia?

ANNO: There's a Japanese Empire. In the year 2000, the U.S. and Japan had a war, and Japan occupied Hawaii. Sorry.

On the decision to have the final episode of Gunbuster in black-and-white...

ANNO: When you have color, you have an extra dimension of information. Color would have gotten in the way of the sense of scale we wanted to portray with the black hole bomb. Also -- no one had ever done it before.

On the date 2015 which figures in both Gunbuster and Evangelion...

ANNO: The date is from an old show I liked as a kid, and it was also the year in which Tetsuwan Atom took place.

On his favorite American animation...

ANNO: Tex Avery, Tom and Jerry. I don't like Disney.

On anime creators who inspired him...

ANNO: Outside of my staff, Mr. Yoshiyuki Tomino. Tomino's Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Runaway Ideon are my favorite anime besides Yamato. Hayao Miyazaki, with whom I worked on Nausicaa, animating the scene where the God-Soldier fires, was also a mentor to me.

On computer games...

ANNO: I myself have no interest in them; however, I am interested in computer graphics for animation.

On how the protagonist of Evangelion reflects Anno himself...

ANNO: Shinji does reflect my character, both in conscious and unconscious part. In the process of making Evangelion, I found out what kind of person I am. I acknowledged that I'm a fool.

On his religious beliefs...

ANNO: I don't belong to any kind of organized religion, so I guess I could be considered agnostic. Japanese spiritualism holds that there is kami (spirit) in everything, and that's closer to my own beliefs.

On whether he is a vegetarian like Nadia and Rei ...

ANNO: I like tofu. I just don't want to eat meat or fish. It's not for religious reasons.

On expressing himself through animation...

ANNO: Animation makes sense to people in the process of their seeing it. So when people get confused by my themes, or cannot get the overall message, the connection is not really going through, because it didn't satisfy that person. So there would be less meaning for that individual. There has to be a relationship that comes into being between the person watching and what the character's saying in the animation itself.

On what he thought of Patlabor 2 and Ghost in the Shell...

ANNO: I haven't seen Ghost yet, but I think that Patlabor is really good. I liked the scenes better in the second film.

On Evangelion's success...

ANNO: As for all the merchandising, it's just a matter of economics. It's strange that Evangelion has been a hit. Everyone in it is sick!

On his next project...

ANNO: Another TV show, probably some kind of space adventure.

On The Wings of Honneamise...

ANNO: The director of Honneamise, Hiroyuki Yamaga, is pretty serious as a matter of character, certainly -- so he doesn't really think of compromising with the audiences. Therefore it wasn't a radical film from Yamaga's perspective. There's something like a sequel planned, but it's been stopped for now. Yamaga wants to make it 'the final anime of this century'. He wants to make it happen.

On the future of the anime industry...

ANNO: The creators have to change their frame of mind for the field to advance. And it doesn't look too hopeful in today's Japan. It's in a critical condition right now. I don't think there's any bright future. That's because the people who are producing it are not doing well. But there's also problems in the people who are watching it. The people who make it, and the people who want it, they're always wanting the same things. They've been making only similar things for the past ten years, with no sense of urgency. To get it going once more, you need to force people to go outside, to go out again.

On recent attempts to adapt anime from novels...

ANNO: There are many novels written today which are made with the intention that they will be animated -- so it's not that big a step. I think that Legend of the Galactic Heroes was well done, but then, it was that kind of a novel.

On his feelings about the current trend toward Japanese historical content in manga and anime...

ANNO: I have no interest in it; they are searching for a theme.

On his hobbies and interests...

ANNO: My hobby is scuba diving, and besides science fiction, I like to read romance novels written by women. Since I'm a male, I don't really know the emotions of women. And because I want to understand their feelings, and create more realistic female characters, this is something I have to pursue.

To an American fan who boasted of having spent all his schoolbook money on anime goods...

ANNO: You're a fool. Study harder. If I could go back in time and tell my college-age self something, I would tell him to study harder, too.

On where he would like to travel...

ANNO: I want to see the universe, outer space -- it's one of the places I want to go while I'm still living. When I was a child... I thought that it would be possible to go out into space when I grew up. And that's not possible now. But I'd like to go to the moon, or ride on the space shuttle.

On getting into the anime industry...

ANNO: If you want to get into anime, my best advice to you as a creator is to please have diverse interests in things besides animation. Look outward, first of all. Most anime makers are basically autistic. They have to try and reach out, and truly communicate with others. I would guess that the greatest thing anime has ever achieved is the fact that we're holding a dialogue right here and now.

On his favorite Evangelion character...

ANNO: Asuka , because she's cute.

When told that the American audience favors Misato ...

ANNO: I'm surprised. In Japan, the overwhelming favorite is Rei . They can't handle strong women such as Misato and Asuka .

On Evangelion's last two episodes , which upset many fans...

ANNO: I have no problem with them. If there's a problem, it's all with you guys. Too bad.





Toshio Okada: Return of the Otaking

Excepts from "Return of the Otaking", Toshio Okada at Anime America 1996

Copyright 1996, Viz

Source: http://www.j-pop.com/anime/archive/feature/04_gal_999/otaking.html

Anime America 1996 was a voice actor's convention, illustrating that such a phenomenon is growing in the United States. Toby Proctor ('Tuxedo Mask,' Sailor Moon) drew crowds, as did Viz's own Matt Hill ('Laocorn,' Fatal Fury), Jason Gray-Stanford ('Godai,' Maison Ikkoku), Paul Dobson ('Happosai,' Ranma 1/2), Janyse Jaud ('Akemi,' Maison Ikkoku),and Cathy Weseluck ('Shampoo,' Ranma 1/2). Of Japanese guests, there was but one--a man not famous as an actor, animator, character designer, or director.Yet the significance of Toshio Okada, the founder and ex-president of Studio Gainax, was well-known to many attendees.

The story of how Okada and a group of fans with 8mm cameras founded Gainax, the 'super-otaku' anime studio, has passed into legend through Otaku no Video, the self-parody and study of fandom. Okada himself (who appears loosely disguised in the film) is known as the super-otaku, the Otaking, alternately out of ridicule and respect. During Okada's time, Gainax's features ranged from the girls-and-mecha OAVs Top o Nerae! (Gunbuster), to the Miyazaki-esque adventure Nadia, to the visionary alternate civilization depicted in Wings of Honneamise. In 1992 Okada left the company, which has since produced Neon Genesis Evangelion and an increasing number of CD-ROM games such as the Princess Maker series. He is now a university lecturer--even though he himself entered college only to join a science fiction club, dropping out after he did.

In two separate sessions Okada, whose frankness and humor stand out among people associated with the industry, spoke to fans and press. In English, and occasionally in Japanese with translation, he answered questions from anime fans who remembered the days of the late '80s when Gainax was the studio every garage animator aspired to be -- and from fans for whom A.D. Vision's Evangelion release will be their first look at the studio Okada began. Fandom has changed a lot since he, dressed in a Char Aznable suit, first sold fanzines at Daicon...but, conversational with strange questions and accessible with unexpected answers, Okada still knows just what it's changed to.

Friday

The Toshio Okada panel took place as a large public forum in the main upstairs ballroom of Anime America. About 80 people were present to hear and talk to Okada.

PANEL: So, uh, sir, um, what--what's going on now? As a producer, as a president--former president, excuse me--what progress have you made as a creative force?

OKADA: Well, basically, I started off as an otaku, and I jumped from being an amateur to a pro--I'm really not sure when that happened; it was sort of in the early '80s, or perhaps 1984 or 1985. In 1981 I made the "Daicon III Opening Animation"--that was only an 8mm, five-minute film. In 1983 I made the "Daicon IV Opening Animation;" that was also an 8mm, five-minute film. And after that, my staff wanted to become professionals, because all of that had cost me, they were all volunteers, and we had already spent much money and much time...So, and then, we had already quit our universities and colleges, or most of us had lost our jobs, so we must make money doing something, so we went to Tokyo and became professional film-makers.

PANEL: My personal favorite of all your work is OTAKU NO VIDEO, just because it's a very universal story, with situations I think many people can relate to if they're fans of something, the culture is very universal--Did you see yourself investing a lot of emotion into making OTAKU NO VIDEO as a fun thing, as your experience, as the experiences of your friends?

OKADA: I had a lot of fun making making GUNBUSTER, but I didn't have that burning sensation when I made OTAKU NO VIDEO. It was something that I lightly made. I made it that way because I thought the people who watched it were like the people in the live-action portion--not the people who made it. 1983 was the turning point for myself and my friends. Basically what I wanted to do was set the stage for 1983 because that was when everything was changing; I wanted to show people what it was like during that period back in 1983, how we lived, basically, what our life was as otaku. [TO AUDIENCE MEMBER] You're hiding your finger with the flash, so you probably didn't get a picture.

AUDIENCE: Arigato.

PANEL: I'd like one more question, and then I'm going to open it up to everybody: There are many themes...I go back to OTAKU NO VIDEO--you talk a lot about, and it seems like you predicted in that film, a lot of the commercialization and product management that is now very, very common in the animation industry. Do you feel more strongly now about the way things have to be processed, and managed, and shoved out the door--you see all around you the selling of creativity?

OKADA: That world we made in OTAKU NO VIDEO, it was not a prediction: it was an otaku's dream. Maybe we can be more major, or a bigger group, or maybe we can make our own theme parks! But in these days, I can't believe all of the things that are happening--our otaku's dreams are beginning to become a reality in the United States. I am very surprised, and very glad.

AUDIENCE: I understand that you teach at Todai (Tokyo University) now?

OKADA: Yes.

AUDIENCE: People often say that there's an interesting story behind your interesting employment. I was wondering if there is an interesting story behind how you got to teach at Todai?

OKADA: Are you asking what I'm teaching at Tokyo University, or how do I teach there...? Of course, most of you do not know about Tokyo University--it is the top university in Japan. It's like Harvard or M.I.T. in the United States. Most of the of the executive people are from Tokyo University--the most powerful Japanese business executives, or political and government people--all of them are educated at Tokyo University. And I thought, "Maybe, I can teach at Tokyo University, so I can control the top Japanese people" [LAUGHS]. So, it is very good for us otaku. Not *them* [LAUGHS]. So, I had a very dirty plan in my head. Sorry, I can't talk about it [LAUGHS]. It's not so illegal--but, it's almost legal, so--

AUDIENCE: Stop the camera, stop the camera.

OKADA: --I've also been telling the teachers at Tokyo University a little lie: [AUTHORITATIVE VOICE] "There are many otaku in the United States. Right now, most U.S. executive people are otaku, watching animated films." And Tokyo University teachers believe it [LAUGHS]. So I go at Tokyo University. But it's a secret (puts finger to lips) [LAUGHS].

AUDIENCE: Do you have any other plans in the future to create an anime?

OKADA: Not in this century.

AUDIENCE: I have one question about GUNBUSTER. A lot of people in America don't know whether to consider it a serious story, or just a frivilous story, or a serious parody of space anime. How was GUNBUSTER treated in your mind when you made it?

OKADA: The confusion is not only in the United States. Most of the Japanese otaku who saw it are confused about whether it's a parody, or whether it's meant as serious--whether the staff is serious, or just saying some bad jokes, but--basically what it was, when I made it, I found that every other science fiction plot was taken [LAUGHS]. The only thing I could find to make a real space science-fiction was to make a parody film. So basically, what I'm saying, is that if someone goes into space, you could take it two ways: you can make it, one, the story of a hero--or you can make a parody of it. To travel into space, that's a moment of history, and you could make it in a truthful style, a hero's story--or a parody, and it just basically depends on the viewer's side--of how to take the truth of that historical event--as a parody, or a hero's story. There are two components to GUNBUSTER: one, it's a robot animation where a girl goes out into space and destroys monsters; the other story is that it holds the concept that it's *impossible* for a girl to pilot a robot of that size, and then destroy all these monsters with kicks and punches. There are two impules that arise when you make animation: one, "This is a real, true story--it's got a plot, it's just not animation." But then that calms down, and that idealism turns cold, and it turns just into, "Oh, it's just anime, it's just animation--it's not something with a real plot." So, what I wanted to do in GUNBUSTER was combine those two elements: while you're watching a parody, and relaxing, you're thinking, "Oh, well, this is a parody," and then at the same time, with the plot, you see, you get the feeling, "It's great that I'm watching animation."

AUDIENCE: I'd like to ask the *sensei* if he's going to be using the medium of computer animation more often.

OKADA: Mr. Miyazaki's new movie, MONONOKE-HIME, is going to be using 80 cuts of computer graphics in it. If there were more opportunity, time, or availability, he would have wanted to use 120 cuts in it. So Mr. Miyazaki is also one of the people starting to use computer graphics, too. And, also, Mr. Miyazaki says, "If we'd had a computer system when we made LAPUTA, there's half of it I'd like to remake." So there's great possibilities with computer graphics. And Mr. Anno has said, in remaking the last two episodes of EVANGELION, he's going to Studio Ghibli to study Mr. Miyazaki's system. And that studio has a big system for computer-graphics images. I've heard they've got five, or seven, Silicon Graphics workstations. What Anno wants to make is a "snow world"-- the Eva units fighting the enemy amidst a world of snow, on a snow- covered mountain. But it's very difficult to portray snow falling and piling, and the robots walking through the snow--it's very difficult to draw by the human hand. Mr. Anno wants to make a masterful scene of a battle amongst the snow. Computer graphics are very expensive, and very difficult to use, but they have great possibilities. I've heard that James Cameron went to Production I.G., the studio that made GHOST IN THE SHELL, and asked the president of Production I.G. for five of his animators, because he wants to make a full computer- graphics film. But Production I.G. said no, because Cameron's offer was very bad. Bad, because Mr. Cameron was thinking, "Oh, Japanese animation, it is very low price! So, I think, maybe--ten thousand dollars-- for a thousand dollars for each man, I can get the best animators in Japan!" And he said so; and Mr. Ishikawa, who is the president of Production I.G., said [STERNLY] "No! It is very expensive!" So Mr. Cameron quit.

AUDIENCE: Many Americans believe the line Kubo [OTAKU NO VIDEO] has concerning wanting to become the tyrannical king to be a reference to Nostradamus. We were wondering if it really is, and if Gainax was into other forms of Western occultism, like Masonry, or the Knights of Malta.

OKADA: No, no! (waves dismissively at audience).

PANEL: [TO AUDIENCE MEMBER] You're a bad boy!

OKADA: The setting of 1983 is still the primary focus of OTAKU NO VIDEO, and the characters in that video during the time had seen the movie, NOSTRADAMUS: THE MAN WHO SAW THE FUTURE [narrated by Orson Welles-*ed.*]. Anyway, what it was, is that, their idea--that vision was so strong in their minds that they presented that story. And what I wanted to do was for people to see it, and make that, and say, "Oh, there are still people like this!" or, "Yes, that was the way it was back then."

AUDIENCE: A lot of your films and TV series are very innovative, creative--they bend [sic] the envelope--leaders...NADIA showed a person of color as a main character, a lot of--WINGS OF HONNEAMISE is a very meticulously-crafted film, a very complex film...Is there anything out there now that you see which can be measured as a--pushing the envelope, an intelligent creation, something different?

OKADA: There was a normal standard back then, during those times, and there was one set for normal animation, and Gainax was the one who would make these "weird" animations. But then GHOST IN THE SHELL and MEMORIES came out, so--those are the "weird" ones. So--there's really no purpose, or place to make--there is no "weird" animation any more, as I see it.

AUDIENCE: How well were MEMORIES and GHOST IN THE SHELL received in Japan?

OKADA: Everybody thought it was a big hit in the States, so it was a big hit in Japan [LAUGHS]. Kodansha says, "It's the number one hit in the United States!" and most Japanese believe it. [LAUGHS] So: "Oh, we must see it!" [LAUGHS]

AUDIENCE: Does that mean, sort of, you see a lot of Western-style animation now taking over a lot of the studios--now they're looking towards the West when they create something?

OKADA: Basically, they can't do it, even if they consciously thought about it-- because, if a Japanese company tried to make a T.V. anime show for the U.S., the code of the U.S. T.V. networks is so strict--like, you can't punch or kick somebody, so...what they're thinking is, "We'll make this, so, we'll put it on video in the U.S., so please buy it." Basically what it is, for the producers and presidents of animation companies, all that they can see is that, to make it in American animation, or make it appealing to the American population, is to make the eyes smaller and the chin larger, and so they can do that. And then, to make it a happy ending, with the good guys always winning [LAUGHS].

AUDIENCE: I was wondering as to what your recommendation would be for mid-'70s *sentai* shows. [LAUGHS]

OKADA: SUN VULCAN. Basically, before SUN VULCAN, it was all just--five people go after the evil guy. After than, SUN VULCAN just basically set the standards for movement, and action--and--robots came after that, but it basically that set the standard for things you see today. If you watch SUN VULCAN, and then BATTLE FEVER J, one episode during the middle of the season, and DAI RANGER, then basically you're a veteran [LAUGHS].

AUDIENCE: On American television right now, German car manufacturing company Volkswagen is using what we call SPEED RACER, what we call MACH [MAHA] GO GO GO, in selling German automobiles in the United States. Would you feel happy to see something of your work being used in American T.V. to sell a product?

OKADA: I don't care, as long as the studio gets the money for it so everyone could go on a hot-springs trip. It's fine with me [LAUGHS].

AUDIENCE: Many Japanese intellectuals are Christians. Similarly, the characters in OTAKU NO VIDEO were clearly outcasts. Do you believe that liminality is necessary for creativity? [SOTTO VOCE] Try and translate that one, pal.

PANEL: Are you a psychology major? This is getting too deep for me.

OKADA: Eh?!

PANEL: [TO AUDIENCE MEMBER] See, you're a bad boy!

OKADA: Maybe you have some secret knowledge of Japan. Maybe you're a Stonecutter [LAUGHS]. One more time, please.

AUDIENCE: O.K....Do you feel it is easier for social outcasts to be creative, to invent original ideas?

OKADA: That's right. Basically, creativity will not come out of happy lives, but from people who become outcasts. There is no reason for you to become *purposely* unhappy. 'Cause everybody who watches anime is happy--the people who watch it who are *not* happy, are the people who make it [LAUGHS]. It's not too good of a thing to make anime. I think a peaceful life is to take anime merchandise cheap from Japan, and then sell it expensively over here and/or work at Viz and make some weird American anime magazine. Very happy! [LAUGHS]

AUDIENCE: Lots of your programs are very contemporary or futuristic. Why have you never made a period film like THE HAKKENDEN, or something else? Are you just forward-thinking, not looking at the past?

OKADA: Because I'm a science-fiction fan. So, I can make just a future, or near-future, or robot, or girl-fights-against-space-monster-and-saves- Galaxy story, that's O.K., but--ninja, or samurai, or sword--Ha? [LAUGHS].

AUDIENCE: They have robot ninja in some films...

OKADA: That's nice [LAUGHS]. Have you ever heard of AKAKAGE? It was a live-action series in Japan, about 30 years ago. The Akakage ninja, red-masked ninja T.V. series. In that T.V. series, there were many monsters, large *kaiju* monsters or mecha, just like Area 45 [?], or these kind of very strange stories. I loved it. So--if you can make some ninja story or ancient Japanese story, maybe I can make some monsters, or some strange mecha, but, normal, fantasy samurai stories, or ninja stories--sorry, I can't make it. There is no motivation in my heart.

AUDIENCE: If you had the chance to do it again, would you do an epilogue to THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE?

PANEL: I'm guessing, it's because you don't get the ending?

AUDIENCE: No, I get the ending, but--sometimes it leaves you with a feeling of wanting more. Just a little bit more, to see what happens with the characters.

OKADA: In THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE's story, that planet is six light years from our Earth. So, I told Mr. Yamaga, we should make a continuation story where their spaceship, not interplanetary, but interstellar, arrives here 100 years after the time of HONNEAMISE. So, they come to our Earth, and make contact with Earth. So, it is a continuity of that story. But it is very difficult to make. The plot I want to have, if I am to make a continuation of THE WINGS OF HONNEAMISE, is to have the story of them making their own interstellar ship, And that ship will arrive in our solar system right about the time Earth is able to colonize Mars. Not a warp drive, but an acceleration ship.

AUDIENCE: A long trip.

OKADA: Yes. It would take 30 or 40 years. And then I'd try to show the conflict between the two cultures, the two planets. I would be really enthusiastic were I able to make a war between the two planets.

AUDIENCE: Apparently one of the more difficult aspects of translation is to carry over trivialities of the other culture. Some American anime companies include a pamphlet to explain references to Japanese culture in the films they release. Last year we learned that an American show, THE SIMPSONS, which is based almost completely on American errata, was distributed in Japan. I was wondering how it was received there?

OKADA: It was not popular at all. It was only the hard-core otaku who really watched it. My favorite episode was the one where the Simpsons went to Itchy-and-Scratchy-Land, but no other Japanese understood it. Ha? [LAUGHS] "Very strange animation."

AUDIENCE: You were an ordinary otaku, and then you became the president of one of the most influential anime studios. And then you changed from being president, to some, like, professor. So how would you describe these three different phases of your life, and which phase did you most enjoy?

OKADA: I've had fun in all parts of my life. What it was, is I became an otaku and tried to have as much fun as I could, and when I came to the limit of having fun as an ordinary otaku, I jumped to Gainax. And then when I was in Gainax, I came to the limit of making animation and games, I then jumped to becoming a professor.

PANEL: Our time is almost up. Are there possibly one or two other people who would like to ask Mr. Okada a question?

AUDIENCE: Do you think that there is any difference in being an otaku today, than an otaku in 1983 or 1985? I mean, is it easier, is it harder--do you feel there's any difference the way the otaku are perceived in the eyes of society?

OKADA: The difference I see is that it's becoming merchandise-based. And if they see something wrong with it, they don't have this burning sensation inside of them to basically say, "Well, if I made it like this--" For example, if you watch RANMA 1/2, and say, "Well, there's something wrong here, but if I made it like *this*, it's going to be like this..." But I don't see that burning sensation as much in the United States or Japan as I did back in 1983 or 1985. What I first started learning in my high school years, when I saw STAR BLAZERS, UCHU SENKAN YAMATO, it was like, "If I had made i