Get in the Simulwatch - Neon Genesis Evangelion [End of Eva - 21/7]

Let me guess. "Eevan-jellion"? 😅
Yep. I'm just thinking has this person even seen the show? That word is said multiple times an episode, how is it even possible to say it like that?!

With regards to the Nadia thread sounds good to me, cheers!
 
One other thing I meant to mention with EoE for anyone who's interested, as I don't think it ever made it to any of the official English-language releases, is that there's a lengthy (10 minutes!) live-action sequence that was deleted from the final film. Like a very mundane take on It's a Wonderful Life, it shows a possible a reality where Shinji never existed, placing Misato, Asuka and Rei (all played by their VAs) as regular office drones going about their daily lives, albeit at a point where their conversations do mirror some of Shinji's thoughts from earlier in the film. It's a little tedious, and it's not hard to see why it would have been cut, but it's such a bizarre artifact that I'd highly recommend seeking it out (not sure if it's entirely kosher to link it directly). If nothing else, it makes an interesting counterpart for the 'anime romcom' fantasy sequence in the TV version.
Wow, I didn't even know this was in the public domain. 😯
Thanks once again!

Yeah, it's very interesting. I'd read about it in an earlier draft of the EoE screenplay but didn't realise it'd actually been filmed! 😮
That voice near the end (the one that calls out "Asuka" and says "I'm not here") is actually Hideaki Anno.

Actually, talking about that early screenplay draft on Evageeks, the Google-translated version is once again hilarious. 😆
Here's a sample:
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Best bit: "A three-handed pair of coffee with a hand of coffee"! 🤣
 
One thing I would like to bring up at this stage is the first Evangelion game, the appropriately named First Impression
Oh my god. There's... a bit of wordplay near the start of that video. 😅

A reminder of the setting: Shinji has lost his memory following an Angel attack. Ritsuko, Misato, Asuka, Rei and Shinji are watching recorded footage of the attack. Asuka is branding Shinji as useless as usual. From 2mins 08secs in:

Asuka: Oh my god, what a hopeless manoeuver!

[On-screen, Shinji's Unit-01 takes a hit from the Angel]

Misato: Just shut up and watch!

Asuka: Fine, fine...

Ritsuko: Look at this bit here. This strange discharge phenomenon.

[The Angel emits a blinding flash of light]

Rei: After that, Shinji-kun lost consciousness.

Ritsuko: Exactly. It's as if the light has sucked out Shinji's seiki.

(Seiki in this context is referring to Shinji's "spirit", but the word can also mean "genitals". 😆)

Asuka: Seiki?! Eww. That's... That's dirty.

Misato: No, not like that, you idiot! . . .
 
Yeah, it's very interesting. I'd read about it in an earlier draft of the EoE screenplay but didn't realise it'd actually been filmed! 😮
That voice near the end (the one that calls out "Asuka" and says "I'm not here") is actually Hideaki Anno.

Thinking back on the live-action scene that is in the final film, there's a time-lapse shot of three women standing in a busy street - without going back to check it, I wouldn't mind betting that's the VA group again. I wonder if that was originally intended to be part of the longer sequence.

On that note, I'm off for a three-handed pair of coffee...
 
Thinking back on the live-action scene that is in the final film, there's a time-lapse shot of three women standing in a busy street - without going back to check it, I wouldn't mind betting that's the VA group again.
It is, yeah. That's actually confirmed.
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We also see them dressed as (from left to right) Rei, Asuka and Misato from the back.
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Also, if anyone's interested in any further explanation of what's going on in the story of that First Impression Sega Saturn game, just let me know. :)
 
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Sure - dunno if there's anything specific, but one of the mods in another group made a comment about there being a lot of additional lore in that game, so I'd be curious if there's anything of note.
 
Sorry I'm late (again), but I've watched End of Evangelion a couple of times over the past day.

Firstly, it's a masterpiece. If Episodes 25 and 26 subverted audience expectations of what constitutes an ending or what one should be, EoE does the same but in a radically different manner. Like Yoshiyuki Tomino did in The Ideon: Be Invoked , Anno destroys the characters and world that he has created. The film itself, or rather the animation, starts to break down. Shinji's thoughts and dreams cycle like the Beyond the Infinite sequence in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and we end with him looking upon creation - the First (and Second) Children have become the Star Child(ren) of this film, the Adam and Eve of whatever - if anything - comes next. They have been reduced to symbols; who are they now? Shinji's instrumentality in Episode 26 tells us that his sense of self is dependent upon the existence of others to draw from; Asuka is now the only other in existence, and to what extent is left ambiguous. Shinji strangles her in the belief that she is a dream, ultimately neither he nor we know for sure whether or not it is - or what difference that would make after the walls between fantasy and reality have been broken down. After all, all of the scenes in a work such as End of Evangelion are ultimately all fiction and unreal to us, the audience, that Anno at one point trains a camera on. It is merely a trick of the narrative that we come to recognise some scenes as being less real than others.

I don't think there's much to comment on with regards to the opening. Shinji rightfully feels shame at masturbating over Asuka, but Shinji's shame is not only due to the context of his act but also due to his fixation at an earlier psychosexual stage that has led to a frigidity and not-quite-outright rejection of sexuality, but certainly a lack of willingness. Misato's kiss could be interpreted as an attempt to move Shinji past this fixation, and to push him to acquire a more aggressive (one could say 'masculine') approach to the situation and life in general. Asuka seemingly manages to get over or, rather, embrace her baggage and use this to power her when she regains consciousness. The consequential horror of her remains trigger the surrealism that follows, in keeping with the relationship between horror and surrealism that existed since the 1920s and films such as Un chien andalou. And like that film, we end on a beach - of sorts with a couple who are only - sort of - living.
 
I don't think there's much to comment on with regards to the opening. Shinji rightfully feels shame at masturbating over Asuka
Misato's kiss could be interpreted as an attempt to move Shinji past this fixation, and to push him to acquire a more aggressive (one could say 'masculine') approach to the situation and life in general.
This is a great opportunity to bring up a quite significant detail about the opening scene of EoE that I honestly haven't ever seen discussed, though I'm sure it must've been within Japanese fandom. Taken from a draft of the screenplay, this is Shinji's last line of the opening scene:

シンジ:「・・・サイテーだ。オレって。」

(Shinji: ". . . I'm the lowest.")
It's the familiar line "I'm so f**ked up", as it's rendered in the film's original English dub. But the interesting part here is the word Shinji uses to refer to himself.

Japanese has several different words that are equivalent to "I" in English, and depends on factors like the perceived social status of the speaker versus the perceived social status of the listener, the speaker's age and gender, and the social context of the conversation. Throughout all of Evangelion, the Japanese word that Shinji uses to refer to himself is the modest and polite "boku". This is the only scene in the anime's entire run where Shinji uses the more adult and masculine "ore". (オレ in the text above.)

Shinji does use "boku" in his own company elsewhere in Eva, so it's very striking when he switches up to something else in only this one scene.
 
Eternal gratitude to the amazing @~AyaMachi~ for finding the DVDs and sending me them. What an incredible thing. We'll get to watch the show together further down the line.
Right place, right time 😉👍

I'm just thrilled you had the opportunity to get involved, Neil; I know it's a series that's special to you and I'm really looking forward to experiencing all of it with you some day 🙂❤️

Now maybe you can GIVE YOUR FINGERS A BREAK FROM ALL THE POSTING! HOW WILL YOU MAKE ME A THREE HANDED PAIR OF TEA IF YOUR FINGERS ARE SORE?!

😂
 
Japanese has several different words that are equivalent to "I" in English
I often see "you" or "I", but hear the characters name in the dub. I assume that use for "you" is when your very familiar with the person. But what about the "I"? Speaking in the third person is seen as a bit weird here, but in what circumstances do the Japanese do it? I think the last time I heard was in "If It's for My Daughter..." when the little girl uses her name instead of watashi.
 
I often see "you" or "I", but hear the characters name in the dub. I assume that use for "you" is when your very familiar with the person. But what about the "I"? Speaking in the third person is seen as a bit weird here, but in what circumstances do the Japanese do it? I think the last time I heard was in "If It's for My Daughter..." when the little girl uses her name instead of watashi.
Ooh, interesting questions! 😀

To answer the first part, referring to someone and addressing someone in Japanese overlaps in ways that it doesn't in English.

For example, the sentence "Anata, chotto kite" could be, depending on the context, translated as "Darling, come here a moment."

"Anata", though, is just one of the many Japanese words meaning "you". See also the use of the words "kisama" and "temee" in shounen anime. These are similarly also just words for "you".

The flipside of this is that a person's name can be used when directly addressing them. Example: "Shinji-kun, Shinji-kun mo iku?" is "Shinji-kun, are you going too?"

The first use of the listener's name in this case attracts his attention, as per in English, but the second one is in place of having to choose a word for "you", and so acts as a kind of "safe bet" if the speaker is as yet unsure which word would be appropriate or acceptable towards this person. Sometimes an obvious choice will become clear with more time; other times, the name choice will just stick and become the default. The person with the perceived higher social status is the one who gets to pick and choose, pretty much.

###

To answer the bit about speaking in the third person, that's reserved exclusively for girls. Girls, depending on their character, may choose to refer to themselves by their own name (in place of the standard "watashi" or the feminine "atashi"), in either a full or shortened form, and sometimes even with a "-chan" suffix. This is deemed to be "kawaii" (cute), but can also come across as rather cringeworthy or cloying, depending on your individual tolerance for things like this. It can also come across a rather demanding or diva-like as well in certain cases like "Jun-chan mo ikitai!" ("Jun-chan wants to go too!") if a girl called Junko were to say that while drawing out the last syllable with a frown and a pout.
 
kind of "safe bet"
So the opposite of my guess 😅
This is deemed to be "kawaii" (cute)
Definitely this for the example I used.

It's good to know a bit more about stuff like this. One of the jokes in Your Name. needs an explanation if you want to understand, but putting a translators note on screen would interrupt the flow. I can't remember how they did it in the dub as it just doesn't work in English.
 
So the opposite of my guess 😅
Well, not completely so; it's quite complicated. It's just that it's the most accessable "catch-all" solution to addressing someone in Japanese. If, say, the name were to be used without any name suffix (no "-san", "-kun", "-chan" or anything), that does convey a level of familiarity or even intimacy.

One of the jokes in Your Name. needs an explanation if you want to understand
I remember it well; I was really impressed by the subs for that bit.

It's lesser known than the scene you just mentioned, but there's actually a bit in the film that references name suffixes. It's the scene immediately before that where Tsukasa puts Taki (Mitsuha) in a playful headlock. When Mitsuha (in Taki's body) realises that this is the guy who texted earlier, she hesitantly checks, saying "Tsukasa... -kun?"

The subtitles have Tsukasa reply "At least you sound apologetic," but what he actually says is "Kunzuke... hansei no hyoumei."

"Kunzuke" is a combination of the -kun suffix along with the verb "tsukeru", which means "attach", so he's actually saying "Attaching -kun (to my name) is an apology."

Taki does not normally use any name suffixes when talking to his friends. This is known in Japanese as "yobisute", from the words "yobu" (to call) and "suteru" (to discard) and is a sign of familiarity between people, where the formality of name suffixes isn't needed. 🙂
 
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Not gotten around to having a further look at the games yet, but on my travels the other day, I stumbled across Misatogelion, which is a very funny fanbook that, during an angel attack in Shinji's absence, sees Misato blown up to enormous proportions to go and fight the invader in Ultraman-style hand-to-hand combat.

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Would recommend seeking it out, it's a good laugh.
 
I've started reading Neon Genesis Evangelion Angelic Days so if people are interested thought I'd give reviews of the 6 volumes as I go.

Vol 1

Overall I enjoyed it. The art is good and sometimes great. The artist's strongest point being how expressive they make everyone, Rei in particular, because of how different she is from the main series. Story wise I really like all the character dynamics and relationships. Shinji is completely oblivious to how everyone around him is feeling. Practically everyone in the class has feelings for someone!

Although mostly school based highjinks, theres an extended sequence where they do Home Ec and Rei has never cooked before! There are more elements from the main show than I thought there be. Nerv still exists and all the kids are brought there 'for tests' and we briefly see them in plug suits. Honestly I wish this had nothing to do with all that and it was only a relationship school based drama but that is still the focus.

Theres a comment in the afterword where the writer mentions they'd never noticed how big Rei's boobs are which made me chuckle as I had wondered why they decided to up her bust size!

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Vol 2

Another good volume with some real intrigue and mystery added to the rom com side of things! And we get and alternate (essentially parallel universe) look at an episode from the series.

So early on a giant humanoid figure of pure light stands over Tokyo 3 and is labelled Adam, but how could Kaworu have known about it before its appearance?! Soon after we are back to fun and games at the school! Relationship tensions increase, Rei gets the school uniforms and argues with Asuka, and Shinji even gets out the cello! The kids go exploring in a cave and find the Geofront! Here the story starts to intertwine with the main series as we get out first angel attack! It's Angel 3 from the first episode but this time Rei and Shinji fight it together. What is apparent is how much more willing Shinji is to pilot and fight from the off given he already has a group of friends he wants to protect! He still suffers in the fight and the end of the volume is a very cathartic dialogue between him and Misato as he talks about how scared he was. He may still have daddy issues but this is a much more open and emotionally aware Shinji with a big friend support network
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