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I haven’t delved too deep into the weirdness of anime, but probably the most confused I ever felt watching an anime was the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion. I originally watched the series when I was in high school and couldn’t really follow what was happening in the final couple episodes. I distinctly remember thinking to myself that there is probably some deeper meaning here that I am just too dumb to understand…
…and I still think that. I am sure if I really wanted to read explainer articles or watch more of the many Eva-adjacent things it would make more sense, but I am happy to just not fully understand it. I am content with appreciating it as an influential piece of art within the genre and move on.
It’s not that deep. They got the rug pulled from under them when the studio slashed the budget. Instead of doing an ending they wanted, lots of action, with bad animation, they instead rebelled with a rewrite ending that used intentional vagueness and ambivalent philosophical storytelling that let them use their resources to focus on art design and keep the cool factor up. Tons of stills, but really pretty. That’s why a lot of the last sequences are just artsy backgrounds with only voice overs, there are several seconds of just white paper, etc. This however proved widely popular and the writing was vague but interesting enough to fuel hundreds of hours of video analysis and thousands of words essays.
The other factor was the mythological treatment of biblical imagery, which was rather new and unique at the time.
I never really looked too deeply into the production side of Eva, but that makes sense now why the show seems to change completely at a certain point.
The narrative pivot just happened to fit well with their overall rebellion against established shounen tropes and archetypes. It’s what makes it so enthralling. Something they have thankfully kept in the remakes. It’s a shounen only superficially, it has all the flashy action bits and colorful high tech things, the blank MC, and the harem cast. But then you get to the characterization and dialogue and it’s pure existentialism horror.
Isn’t this a myth? I thought they didn’t have budget issues they actually designed the ending to be that weird.
I’ve read it both ways with sources. Read also a third that they never had the whole budget to begin with and overextended due to clerical error. Alledgelly the latest remake has the style of ending they originally envisioned with lots of fight sequences and more experimental animation. It’s part of the endless debate.
Maybe we will never know, that’s almost fun. But there should be people alive that worked on it that could confirm right?! Idk, that kind of mystery makes the show even more fun!
Eva starts throwing out wild amounts of lore and background information out of nowhere and never really stops to explain any of it. I don’t think most anyone fully grasped the show on their first watch through. In fact, iirc a lot of what was figured out was with the help of a Playstation game that came out that had large text entries of lore.
It could be thought of as deep. I remember it being meanigful to me. A visual representation of the ego dissipating and watching the main character with numerous neurosis honestly reflect on his life and character while communicating with his subconscious that’s taken the form of the people in his life. Seemed like it was what the whole show was working towards.
I have a simple explanation that’s more Doylist than Wattsonian:
Anno is kind a dick.
Evangelion is a long series of borderline rug pulls, culminating in possibly the most infamous rug-pull that’s not just “it was a dream.” There was never supposed to be a textual climax and payoff. It was always scripted as a suck-zone for you to care about the characters so you could appreciate the introspective what-ifs in the last few episodes. Like if Tolkien stopping halfway through Return Of The King to say “fantasy is bad, actually.” And then spent six chapters litigating the dynamics of Frodo and Sam’s relationship, because that’s what all this Middle Earth bullshit was really about.
And then the movies and the rebuild are various forms of Anno targeting critics of all perspectives and finding genuinely creative ways to say “fuuuuck yoooou.” Like, thematically? The “curse of Eva” is ingenious. But the whole exercise is a giant middle finger to anyone foolish enough to care about the story he’s telling.
It’s satire that doesn’t work. It’s too functional as a sincere example of the genre it’s aimed at. If the man had been dragged from the studio, kicking and screaming, somewhere after episode nineteen and LCL splashing against a van on the road - if the last half-dozen episodes had been rewritten to play the story out, to its extremely final conclusion - it would still be revered among giant-robot anime. Its influence would be nearly identical. But all the philosophical payload that needs two left-turn episodes to “explain” would be known only to one pouting young director and a few co-writers. Vanishingly little of it is in the work, three-quarters of the way through the work. God help us, if the wrong hired gun took over, “get in the robot” might’ve been Shinji’s major character arc.
Contrast how The Last Jedi leaks “anyone can be a hero” from every seam, despite the finished product being roughly hammered back toward the status quo. Half the parts people like and most of the parts people hate are beautifully attuned to that lost moral. Meanwhile Eva can’t get people to go ‘ohhh, escapism is bad!’ even with two episodes beating them over the head, and a film sequel that spits on everyone who saw it, and a remake that loathes its own existence.
Furi Kuri and Kuuchuu Buranko.
Furi Kuri is a favorite for some but a lot of the images didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I like TheCynicClinic’s video essay on the series though.
Kuuchuu Buranko is also really weird. The narrative is easier to follow but it uses a lot of weird animation techniques. You can probably describe it to be visually psychedelic. It introduced me to Denki Groove though.
Furi Kuri is a fucking masterpiece!
I would never be able to tell you what it’s really about, but it’s a masterpieceIt’s about growing up and realizing that none of the adults around you know what they’re doing, and accepting that it’s ok.
Don’t tell me what it’s supposed to be about! The confusion is part of the magic!
Cat Soup, I didn’t understand enough of what was going on there to even describe it.
Out of context mildly NSFW screengrab (it doesn't make any more sense even in-context)
This looks like a painting from a modern art museum.
Reincarnated as a vending machine was absurdly fun.
That series wildly exceeded my expectations. I am so glad to see it got a second season and I will be right there to see where it goes next.
Amazing title, this is going on a list asap. One of the few in this thread I haven’t heard of which probably means it’s really fucking weird! Thank you!
Serial Experiments Lain. Assuming I remember it correctly. Or understood to begin with. It’s been a while.
The show and the PS game. The game gets dark.
I never played the game, will have to go look for that now.
It’s been made into a webapp and fully translated. A youtuber going by Hazel did a video on it. I don’t have the link to it but it might be worth taking a look at it to understand how to play it and in case you’re sensitive to that subject matter.
Whoops, forgot her video is embedded on the landing page.
I love the FAQ
Q: I’m extremely confused about the game and I’m not sure what I’m doing.
A: The game is meant to be confusing, if you feel like you can’t enjoy it the way it is, check out the guide. Keep in mind though that this is only my interpretation of the game and what I pieced together while developing it, it could be wrong.
Yep, that sounds about right.
Haha
Cool, thanks for the link!
lol, I just found this post
Lol, I haven’t seen Lain, but I am a mod, so I was monitoring that thread accepting I might be spoiled. However, I quickly realized that I wasn’t able to make heads or tails of just about any of those sentences. So, spoilers preserved!
Yeah, I’m at a total loss without watching it again, and even then it probably doesn’t matter.
It’s really bizarre. I couldn’t even remember what happened.
BTW, what show/movie is your thumbnail from?
Angel’s Egg
Perfect blue seemed to be preoccupied with pants pissing
I guess probably Kaiba (and it’s also one of my all-time favorites).
It’s odd though, because the settings and art design and such are very, very weird, but the storylines themselves - both the individual episodes and overarching plot - are actually fairly straightforward. It deals with some fairly serious themes - love, loss, loyalty, hope, betrayal, redemption and so on - and it does it very well really. It just also does it in very weird settings with very weird characters.
For that matter, FLCL qualifies in the same way. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it right off - I guess I stopped noticing how weird it is somewhere along the way, because it’s just… FLCL. It is what it is. But it is very weird. In the same way as Kaiba though, behind the very weird details is a fairly straightforward story. And in a way, it’s even simpler - where Kaiba deals with some relatively broad and complex societal issues, FLCL really just deals with a boy coming to terms with growing up in a bleak nowhere town, and starting to sort out how to deal with the opposite sex.
And as long as I’m here, I want to mention Ergo Proxy, which is exactly the opposite type of weird. Aside from a highly stylized science fiction setting, it’s really pretty straightforward from moment to moment. It’s odd, but no more odd than should be expected from the setting. But all the while, behind the current things going on, there’s this background story that’s bizarre to the point of near-incomprehensibility.
If anyone’s curious what the one from OP’s picture is it’s called Angel’s Egg. Seen it a few times now, very slow, dark and quiet. I love it.
I love it too. I don’t understand the whole story but it’s nice to just appreciate the animation.
I feel like I didn’t understand almost any of it as a teenager, more as an adult, and then a LOT more when I watched it with someone who had familiarity with Christianity?? It has some weird religious mythos to it that I didn’t know at all so that was really cool to have my eyes opened to that. But I think it’s also pretty open ended so it can mean different things to people.
There is no egg. Pretty sure Studio Deen also has no idea what it’s about either.
Though personally, just like the egg Princess Filianore held at the end of the world in the ringed city, it shows the power faith, even blind faith, holds over the world.
Ooh interesting question and I’m sure I’ll need some time to even remember some of them.
The ghibli movie with tanuki is what comes to mind. Japanese traditional lore consistent with transformations, tricking humans, and big and huge nuts - or sth. I don’t quite remember it well.
Utena
Katte Ni Kaizou. These piss bottles…man.
Urusei Yatsura of course… Hen to hen o atsumete, motto hen ni shimashou!
Happy Sugar Life. The name did not resemble the anime at all.
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How tf has nobody said Made in Abyss yet?
This shit has downright freaky abstractions who wanna use magic soul currency to trade you for body parts to get their desires satisfied!
