Other: Neon Genesis Evangelion - Illustrations 2007 to 2017

 

Content Warning: Capitalism?

While I haven’t had a chance to really discuss this yet, but I REALLY like Neon Genesis Evangelion. As you’ll discover (if I ever get around to actually completing stuff), I’ve picked up some of Eva related stuff over the years. I have soundtracks, some spin-off manga, but only a few art books. When these were easier to find, I wasn’t as into them as I am now, so I kind of missed out. And, I have say, I don’t enjoy art books that are connected to a series or product nearly as much as I like art books of artist’s work (Luis Royo, Boris Vallejo, etc). So, this one was sitting in my Amazon cart for a few years until I picked it up as part of my birthday present to myself this year. Also, the price had dropped to something reasonable.

This art book comes at an interesting time for NGE as a product, and for the fanbase as well. If you’re unfamiliar, the original NGE anime came out in 1995, but has remained wildly popular (for the most part) ever since, and even had a pair of movies that released in 1997, that were kind of a wrap up/retelling of the original ending (we’ll discuss that more when I get to them), but the product was mostly dormant in terms of anime and movies. However, merchandise and doujinshi (fan comics, more or less) and other things related to Eva continued to sell well throughout the years. I think the best way to put it is that Eva never stopped being popular or really faded away. Eva is a classic for a reason, which I will be discussing as I work on my review of the series. But, even though it remained popular, there was nothing new to draw people in

Until the Rebuild of Evanglion films in 2007, which is when this book starts its collection., making this a really good period to chose for this collection. Because, not only was there a new series of films releasing, but there was even a new character! This is important, as Rei Ayanami was once nicknamed “The girl who can sell anything” by marketing companies in Japan. Because she was.

And that’s what brings me to thing I really want to talk about with this collection. While there’s some lovely pieces of just art, most of the illustrations in this collection are marketing material and advertisements. We have a few movie posters, but there’s ads for partnerships they had with clothing companies, stamps for smart phone messaging, images of for a tourism bureau, and so on. And you can see it in the art. The poses are there to show the character, but what they’re wearing. Parts of the collection just feel like I’m looking at one of those old advertising fliers or magazines you used to get in the mail, like the Sears catalog (yes, I’m old). And it makes me a little sad. I usually enjoy these sorts of things to see how the sausage is made, so to speak, the work behind the designs and how the characters develop into what we see on the screen. And this is less than and more “look how cool Shinji looks in this hoodie you can buy!”

All of that said, I do enjoy this collection. If I push the advertisement angle out of my head, I can look at that same picture of Shinji in a hoodie and see what Shinji could have looked like, if he hadn’t have been forced to become a pilot of a giant robot in a post/current apocalypse. And, I also have to admit, that some of the outfits are very nice. There’s a clear eye for what designs and patterns, and maybe even cuts of an outfit, and how they match or compliment the character.

If you’re curious about who’s in this collection, it’s mostly Asuka, Rei, and Shinji, but Mari is also very present. Which does make sense, as she was a new character and needed to be seen, so people would be curious about her. Mind you, she barely gets any screen time in the first Rebuild, and not enough after that one, but it’s nice to see her almost fitting in to the setting almost seamlessly. I hesitate to say much more about her, as I have to save those thoughts for when we get to the Rebuilds, but visually, she fits in without issue. One interesting thing I did notice about her use in the pictures and advertisements, is that she replaces Shinji in some ways. Usually, Eva pictures and ads have what I call “the trinity” (yes, I stole the term from the DC fandom, deal with it), where the pictures have Shinji, Asuka, and Rei featured prominently. But what I noticed in this book was that, even on the cover, it’s Asuka, Rei, AND Mari, with no Shinji in sight. I can guess a few reasons for this, the first being the matter I’ve already discussed, that she’s a new character and needed to be shown off, but I also think that it is something pointed towards the fandom. Let’s be honest, the anime fandom in general, and the Eva fandom is particular, skews heavily in the male direction. I’m not going to get into the weeds of the reasons behind it, as that’s not what I want to discuss at the moment, but let’s just take that as a fact. This explains why Mari is now in the trinity. We don’t need Shinji up there, when we can have three cute girls instead. Now, you don’t have to choose between The Doll (Rei) or The Bitch (Asuka), because you can have The Weirdo (Mari). Or something like that. No matter what you might think of her, Mari became an important of Eva as an advertising tool. And this book will make that clear as you read it.

It’s also cool to see how the advertising and partnerships develop as the Rebuild series goes on, as the book starts right when the first one drops, with the art swiftly moving away from the classic styles of the original anime, to the new versions of the characters and their designs, until we reach the end with the third Rebuild movie and a few ads for the final part (which took FOREVER to be completed).

So, if you’re thinking about buying this, ask yourself how much you want to see ads and how important the Rebuild era of the franchise is to you? Because there’s not a lot of the original in here, it’s all new and clean. But that could be what you’re looking... Oh, and there's quite a bit of Kaworu, for those fans of his.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Suggestion: If you got into Eva via the Rebuilds, or if really like them, this is a good collection for you.

Anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion (episodes 1 & 2)

 

Oh, yeah, here we go!!!

Content Warning: Violence, blood, emotional damage, parental emotional neglect, brief female nudity, and the beginning of your obsession (you only hope I’m joking).

Ah, this is truly one of the classics of anime and is more than likely responsible for the downfall of the mecha genre. This is THE “modern” mecha anime. It is a total subversion of a genre that turned around and became the new definition of the genre, going forwards. As this such an influential work, I recommend seeing it for yourself.

As such, this goal of this series of reviews isn’t to provide you with a guide of wither or not you should see this anime, but to help provided some context, things to pay attention to, and my own thoughts on the series. You have to understand that this anime is one of the things that made me who I am. I first started watching this show during my teenage years and was one of the first things to make me think. One of the first things to make me watch something over and over again, looking for details that I had missed. I haven’t seen the show in several years, so this will be nice to review it without as much baggage. Let’s begin:

Episode One: Angel Attack

The series begins with telling us that we are in the far off year of 2015, that year far into the future… Anyway. We see that the city is flooded, buildings left to rot away in the sea, but people are still alive, with the sound of an announcement being repeated over loudspeaker. We also see that humanity hasn’t advanced too much, with weapons of war (marked with UN) prepared to open up on… Something. Eventually, we get a shot of the first (but really the third) enemy, the Angels. It looks a bit more “biblically accurate” if you get my meaning. Now, we begin cutting between the action against the Angel, and introducing our main character, Shinji Ikari. He’s stuck in the abandoned city, with the announcement continuing to play, as the Angel continues to advance. We also see the UN military in NERV headquarters, leading the attack against the Angel. The final thing they send against the Angel is an N2 mine, which is supposed to mean “Non-Nuclear” but still has an EMP effect. Whatever. While some of the animation shows its age in this fight, it does really shine with the explosion of the N2 Mine. It’s absolutely fantastic.

After this, we start getting into our characters, beginning with Misato Katsuragi. She’s picked up Shinji, saving him from dying out there during the battle, but we see that she isn’t some great hero, she’s just a normal woman with car payments. We also get some information about Shinji and his father Gendo, the head of NERV. NERV has been prepared to defeat the Angel, who was only slowed down, not defeated by the N2 Mine, and the UN generals are forced to turn the battle over to NERV. However, there appears to be a problem with whatever they’re going to use against the Angel, as it doesn’t have a pilot. Until Gendo points out that Misato just brought them a spare pilot.

After being brought to a room by Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, and having the lights turned out, Shinji is introduced to the weapon that will save us all, the Artificial Human Evangelion Unit 01. In a normal mecha show, the young boy would be shown this giant robot and being told that he was going to pilot it, and this would usually result in him begrudgingly accepting that he needs to pilot it. However, this scene plays out a little bit differently than you might expect. Shinji, as you might imagine, isn’t up for this. He doesn’t know what this thing is and he doesn’t know how to pilot it. Misato and Ritsuko, who have been friendly up until now, are much more serious and tell him to pilot it. Gendo, keep in mind that he’s Shinji’s father, tells him that he expects him to get inside of it. And confirms that he only sent for his son as he “had a use for” him. Yeah. Real picture of paternal love right here… Anyway, Shinji chickens out and they wheel in Rei Ayanami. She’s a pale girl with bright blue hair, wearing a strange skin tight outfit and lot of bandages. She’s clearly not going to survive going inside the Eva, much less fight in it, but she will obey. While Shinji looks at her, the Angel attacks, causing a bank of lights to come loose from the ceiling. Eva Unit 01 moves its arm (exactly as Shinji does) to protect him from the lights falling. It shouldn’t have done that, given how it doesn’t have an “entry plug” or a pilot, and yet it has. Shinji checks on Rei, who was knocked out of her rolling bed by the attack, and his hand comes back covered in blood. Shinji then agrees to pilot the Eva. We then start a sequence of Shinji being in the entry plug, and having to breathe LCL, which will oxygenate his body and smells like blood, and we see the Eva get loaded up and getting ready to launch, with some details about how it works and all that. And then it launches, ending the episode.

Episode Two: Unfamiliar Ceilings

This episode begins almost directly at where the last one left off, with the Eva launching up into the streets of New Tokyo 3, to face the Angel. The Eva stands in place as Shinji receives orders to just focus on walking and he takes a step forward (into terror, perhaps?). They give you a perfect sense of scale with this moment, as the phone booth next to where the Eva’s foot comes down cracks. (For those of you too young to know what I’m talking about, there used to be these glass and steel booths that held landline telephones, that you could use to call people when you were out and about, which had vanished from most of the world by the time we actually reached 2015.) When Shinji tries to have the Eva take another step, he trips and falls flat on his face. While everyone is screaming at him to make the Eva get up, as well as providing him with weapons and lines of retreat, the Angel walks over, picks the Eva up by its head, and then uses its melee attack to damage the Eva’s head. The Angel’s free arm grabs ahold of one of the Eva’s forearms and crushes it, and we see Shinji grabbing his own forearm, having to be told that it’s not actually his arm that was being crushed. The Angel continues its attack and the Eva is thrown back as the wound in its head sprays blood on the building it’s leaning against. Yeah, you read that right, blood. This episode is where they start laying the groundwork for all the weird shit that’s going to be coming as we go forward. Speaking of how this episode is laying foundations, the episode then cuts to Shinji waking up in the hospital, with no idea how he got there. For there, we get treated to how the animation is going to proceed, with use of coloring to wash out the colors of the characters, still scenes used to draw attention to the dialogue being said, and, let’s be honest, what is probably a good way to save money for the really flashy stuff we’re getting. But, I find that these silent, still scenes, with their meditative qualities, are showing just how different Evangelion is when compared to others in the genre that have come before. When most people thought about the Mecha genre back when this show was made, there was a tendency to think about noble heroes fighting flashy battles, but I think that this is a misconception. When I think about the Gundam and Macross series, I find that the heroes weren’t always noble boys going out to win the war. While I will get more into this when I get into these series (when that ever happens), but I don’t think that the more popular Mecha shows were as much like the perception we have, and that while Evangelion did go further than any before it, it was actually building upon what had already been done before, instead of tearing it down. Ahem, anyway. After a very uncomfortable scene with Shinji and Misato running to Commander Ikari when they’re going get on the elevator, we find out that Misato has invited Shinji to live with her. Once we arrive at her home, we discover that Misato is very much a Millennial, in that she can’t keep her home clean because she works too much and drinks too much. Seriously, we were all like this in 2015 and you can’t tell me otherwise. Moving on, there’s the comedic introduction to Pen Pen, the warm springs penguin that pops up here and there from this point on. Once Shinji is laying in bed (showing our first real scene of the SDAT playing good old tracks 25 and 26 on loop), we get a flashback to the rest of the battle with the Angel. To summarize very quickly, Unit 01 goes silent and then berserk, regrowing the damaged forearm (supposedly impossible), and then starting fighting the angel. I’d like to point out that Unit 01 opens its mouth and lets out some very animalistic roars after this, making for an interesting question, what does a giant robot need with a mouth and the ability make noise? The Eva wins pretty quickly, shattering the Angel’s arms (making it bleed blue, thus why we’ll see “blood type: Blue” on screens in the future), and then breaks off a rib to start beating on the big red gem thing in the Angel’s chest. This is the Angel’s Core, which is very important to its survival, so it’s interesting how this uncontrolled Eva, piloted by someone who knows nothing about the Angels or Evas, knows to target this important weak spot. The Angel chooses to end its own existence and tries to take out the Eva with it, but the giant cross shaped explosion doesn’t do too much to the Eva. Well, except the rest of the armor on the head falls off, as Shinji is coming back to reality, and then the eye regrows as Shinji watches in the reflection of a skyscraper.

NOTE: In case you’re wondering, I’m doing two episodes at a time, because that’s how I first watched it back on VHS.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Suggestion: Watch it.