I Want The New Neon Genesis Evangelion Movie And I Want It Now
I don't consider myself an anime fanatic. I mean, you know the guy I'm talking about, the guy whose dorm room is next door to yours, who has everything on his hard drive half a year before it comes out in the States, and a shelf of collectible figurines and another shelf with all the manga in the original Japanese. I'm not him. (Where would I be without that guy, though? Although in my case he's a she. Thanks Beth!)
But I do have a couple anime to which I am totally addicted. I am crazy about anything Ghost in the Shell, and above all, Neon Genesis Evangelion is--well, it's what my boyfriend and I have instead of a Bible.
If you don't know it, it's your standard mech saga--the world is under attack by extraterrestrials, and the only way to stop them is with a team of teenagers in giant weapon-suits--except that these teenagers are all completely emotionally effed up, sort of like real teenagers, and neither the "aliens" nor the "robots" are quite what they seem. And when the safety of the whole world rests on the shoulders of a single teenaged boy... he lets us down. Again and again and again.
So I was pretty skeptical when word got out a couple years ago about this reboot of the franchise, Rebuild of Evangelion. True, the narrative of the original series fell apart a little bit as it went along, until the finale (which has, itself, already been remade) ended up firmly in WTF territory, but that seemed to be of a piece with the psychological and emotional collapse of the characters, and the seemingly imminent collapse of reality within the fictional world.
Blah blah. But look! The first film of the projected four-film cycle, You Are (Not) Alone, won Animation of the Year at the Tokyo International Anime Fair last week. And the IMDB queens are a-twitter about "big changes" to the storyline at the end of the first film. Could it be that this is actually going to be an awesome thing?
ARRRGH! I want it. Obviously this "Feb. 22" on the IMDB page is not actually when this movie is widely available stateside, because I've got my hand out, I'm lookin' up, and there ain't no EVA movie fallin' out of the sky anytime soon. Gimme it! I want to see it now now now, right now. Now.
[via io9]
DannysNotHere
Posted to Animation on 4 March 2008
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: japan, japanese, neon genesis evangelion
YES YES OH GOD YES!
I COMPLETELY agree with you about anime. There are select few that are really worthy of being obsessed over, and both Ghost in the Shell and EVA are on that list.
thank you for posting this, you just made my day 10,000 times better!
I dated someone who was WAY into Evangelion. He had a zippo with the breast plate of one of the Mechs engraved into it. Anime-heads are a breed all their own.
Having watched the series way back in '97 or '98, I decided to go catch the first of the four new films when it came out back in September, and while I was able to enjoy it, it was not something I would really feel compelled to recommend to anyone who wasn't already familiar with Evangelion. It very much feels like a compressed retelling of the first chunk of the series (and that's what it is) -- the pacing is less cinematic and more "this year in review."
It's very pretty, though, and the music brought back fond memories, but I don't think I could go so far as to say it was "great."
If you need anything else to get excited over in the anime world, however, I would recommend "Shoujo Kakumei Utena" (Revolutionary Girl Utena), and more or less anything directed by Kon Satoshi (Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, Paranoia Agent). Die-hard Eva fans may string me up for saying this, but I'd say that Utena is superior to Evangelion (although perhaps less accessible).