#did you know evangelion was originally going to be a sequel to Nadia? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cateringisalie · 3 years

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9 years later and we have at last got a new Eva film and the end of the Rebuild project.

Much was made at the start of Rebuild of the desire to introduce Eva to a new audience. 1.0 more or less leant into its original goal and restaged episodes 1 to 6 of the TV series with a bigger budget, CGI, some more blunt and early reveals and a few weird alterations for the existing fan base. The Angel numbering was off; everyone knows Lilith is stuck in the basement, Seele just default to their monoliths. Kaworu is actively introduced at the tail-end rather than alluded to in the opening titles. As an intro, its fine (though most would agree the equivalent stage of the TV series isn’t really a struggle to cope with either), though a few stylistic and environmental changes lead many to conclude this was a direct sequel to End of Evangelion. 2.0 seemed content to build off of the intro but steer away from the relevant section of episodes – roughly 8 to 17. Recognisable moments like the falling Angel, the corrupted Unit 03 and the ribbon angel and Unit 01’s impossible reactivation share the screen with altered relationship dynamics. Now we get Mari one of the few wholly new characters who gets to open the second film in a wildly dramatic fashion. The key of Nebuchadnezzar (which does at least re-enter proceedings in the final film, but I am even shakier on what it is or used for – even fandom seem to have struggle to explain this as anything other than a blunt drop-in replacement for the Adam embryo in the TV series). And come the end its time for Third Impact already, Shinji altering the world around him to rescue Rei from the depths of an Angel. Kaworu uses an unfamiliar spear to incapacitate Shinji and the preview hints at a story further from the rails than ever. 3.0 is as promised more or less completely divorced from anything Eva had done before. Just not the off-the rails version 2.0 advertised. Some will be quick to note that none of the Rebuild previews have entirely accurately advertised their subsequent instalment; 1.0’s features at least one key scene that never happened (Mistao slapping Ristuko in a seeming allusion to the Sea of Dirac Angel) while even the sequences of animation that did make it look nothing alike. Which is fair, but even then 2.0’s bears absolutely no resemblance to 3.0 and even 3.0’s very strange preview doesn’t really jibe with 3.0+1.0 ultimately. 3.0 is post-post-apocalypse and with a whole 14 years just evaporated between films. There’s a distinct last third of Nadia feel to it. About the only part similar to a former incarnation is Kaworu and Shinji’s relationship which while not even roughly mapping to episode 24 serves the same function; to make Shinji distraught before the climax of this story. But 3.0 is also the point where that initial premise of the series slams headlong into the drift from familiar territory. Where the film is a quantum leap away from the mystery terms and slow reveals. The oddities and confusions pile up given the glimpsed state of the world, the strange gridded moon, the sea of Eva corpses, the strange state of Lilith in the depths of Nerv. An awful lot happened while Shinji was (for reasons no one has explained or seems to care about except me) IN SPACE and the film only ever alludes to the sequence of events occurring between these two films in the broadest of strokes. Which if done a certain way can be compelling though I did not find it to be the case here in the slightest. It’s a huge struggle to build up even a vague idea of what went down and that’s with heavy deferral back to the TV series again. If you’re new, none of this means much of anything. Even mixed media doesn’t help. The reveal there was a limited run manga of events prior to 3.0 had a potential for answers, but upon reading a synopsis... Nope. Helps not even a tiny amount. Also this mixed media attitude is never to be encouraged. So, I didn’t like film 3 much at all. Film 4 does little to not be based on where it left off. Which is a small mercy that it doesn’t effectively toss everything out again and skip further ahead in time. And 3.0+1.0 does at least make use of some of what 2.0 revealed and setup in the spirit of trying to get this into something cohesive. It fails, but it tried. Maybe the points it touches on were the intended direction of the films. Maybe Anno changed his mind on this one. It’s not like Rebuild’s failure to cohere should be a surprise – the title of the film is simply confusing in sequence. Titled neither 4.0 nor 4.44, instead we have the pretty inexplicable 3.0+1.0 which is just annoying to type. Even thematically this doesn’t feel right given its more like 2.0 mushed into 3.0 but I suppose that’s technically film 5 so... Unless, 1.0 here is supposed to mean the original TV series or EoE, which... End of Evangelion figures unexpectedly largely in the film. Could be that its meant to infer some collection of the Eva cast (the original pilots + Mari? The Ikari family + Mari? The pilots from 1.0 (Shinji and Rei) plus the pilots from 3.0 (Asuka and Mari)?). The other part of course, is that the three prior films had titles in the form of [Thing](Not)]Thing]. 3.0+1.0 decides to dispense with this entirely and instead is titled “Thrice Upon a Time”. Nothing like confusing matters (and instead media library ordering) by not only giving the film a title that puts it before the 3rd film (since prior to this cinema releases are .0 and the home media (excepting the first release of 1.0) are triple digits of their instalment number) but also has another reference to three within it. It might be some kind of holy trinity allusion, some play on Third Impact, or an acknowledgement that this is theoretically the third version of events surrounding the end of the world (if you take TV series as 1, EoE as 2, and Rebuild as 3). Also potentially a literary reference about cyclical time and messages from the future which is all well and good and fits into a whole other essay about how Rebuild and FFVII Remake are operating on the same basis and making many of the same mistakes by both trying to be fan-service for the new fans and draw in new ones and do the big fan-moments similarly but diverge wildly off in others. Good start! The final film starts with bombast as per 2 and 3 (and thus focused on Mari) though the setup and point of the action is possibly more confused and less explicable (which is saying something given 3.0 opened with retrieving Unit 01 from space. No, I will continue to complain about not getting this. Yes it was very exciting but why was Unit 01 in space? In a strange crucifix coffin. Anyone at all?) – and only vaguely connected to anything resembling the plot. At least 2.0 and 3.0 had some immediate and long term stakes with a cover for Kaji stealing something and bringing Shinji into the plot. This film opens with a scrounge for spare parts in a red Paris that the tertiary cast make no longer red while Mari fights off a massed horde of Evas while battleships are puppeteered from orbit. It’s all terrible cool and everything, but given at no point do we even begin to understand what is going on or what the stakes even are. Which is a problem with the latter half of the sequence. 2.0 might have started with an Eva vs Angel fight but while there was ambiguity over the situation it at least seemed to lead into the eventual plot. Here we’re getting Eva spare parts for later and a whole dose of new terminology the film has no interest in explaining. Which is par for the course for prior Eva incarnations but again, I feel there was more explanation setting the weirdness up. Here we are reduced to keywords that sound important. The film proper opens with our familiar trio of Eva pilots winding up at a village with their old classmates (which of course, to follow the proliferations of 3 all the way down and also match to Tokyo-3, is in fact, Village 3. The far future sequel to Resident Evil 8 presumably). Who are necessarily now 14 years older than them. Asuka is naked (in a sequence to contrast to 1.0 and 2.0) or in her underwear for far too much of this sequence (and just as creepy as 2.0 got with this) as Shinji struggles in the aftermath of Kaworu’s death, Ayanami (critically not the Rei of 2.0) learns about life (and visits a library with – I’m not kidding – a poster for Sugar Sugar Rune on display. I like to think not many in the audience caught this slightly odd reference). 30 minutes of the film are taken up with Rei being happy and contented with her life while Shinji slowly recovers and re-enters polite society (sulks, throws up at the sight of the DSS collar, is insulted and force-fed). There’s a good case for this section just being an unnecessary time filler, though you don’t need to fill time in a film that is 2 ½ hours. But if it was cut down, perhaps it would have the same strange feeling as 1.0 had where the aftermath of Shinji’s second Angel fight lead was mostly skipped and left that part of 1.0 feeling strangely hasty and actively (and badly) abridged. Maybe that’s just my familiarity with the source material again. There’s still an edge of weirdness in the air on the film hits the 45 minute mark; even prior to this gigantic sections of the land are missing, and some things just float around now (apparently because). Past this mark is where weirdness creeps in; the barriers keeping the village from suffering the fate of Paris – the structures a curious match to the Cocytus facility at the start of 2.0. There are headless Eva copies who roam the landscape. An indicator on Ayanami’s suit runs down. Shinji is advised to talk to his father before he loses the opportunity forever. This one made me laugh, and even Asuka comments that given who Shinji’s father is and what he’s done don’t really make this plausible (or sensible). Ayanami concludes her pastoral life and this stage of the film by transforming back to her original white plug-suit; her AT Field then dissipates and she bursts in a familiar spill of LCL. For such a previously central character, Rei or Ayanami or Lilith will have exceptionally little bearing on the remainder of the film. The plot now kicks in properly as Gendo decides enough is enough and he’s going to be doing some world ending. Our Eva pilots are ready but not the same; we have Asuka, Mari and Shinji. And standing orders for Shinji to be shot if he tries to pilot anything (but given we’re at the end of the world and basically the original plan fails to stop Nerv bringing about the end of the world, that people still try to shoot him is... a little weird and an almost pointless resolution of factors the quaternary cast brought up in 3.0). The entire rest of the film is even more impenetrable and confusing than Kaworu’s sweeping explanations of what happened between films 2 and 3. If 3.0 fumbled the ball on being newcomer friendly 3.0+1.0 actively doesn’t care. Not that familiarity with series helps since so much new terminology is thrown at the audience. The entire cast – literally the entire cast – are not only caught up on but also understand the varying levels of psychological, biological and religious nonsense that Eva has formerly wielded as something almost coherent. You, as audience member, are not privy to a fraction of this understanding and thus left to flail for the remainder of the film making what you can of the maddening breadcrumb trail of exclamations and partial explanations. Shinji is no help here and infuriatingly asks barely a single question about what is going on (thankfully he does prompt Gendo to explain a few things – presumably where even the staff had gotten lost on what was supposedly going on). For existing fans, you might get a sense of it by application of known quantities from the previous incarnations (I pity newcomers struggling to make sense of this). What the Lance of Cassius is a thing introduced abruptly into the series – and contrasted with the Lance of Longinus you can muddle through to get some idea of what was going on. 3.0+1.0 however, decides that even that grip on its story is too much and adds a bunch more unnamed spears. Some of them formed from Lilith. This is a thing of some import apparently, though ultimately is effectively buzzword name-checking. We know who Lilith is in context from both 1.0 and the TV series but how that relates to spear formation is beyond me. And then there’s the part where one of the flying ships (there were four made according to Seele’s plan. Seele, the former sinister puppet-masters, who died in film 3, and if the flying ships were their idea or this stated at all, I had totally forgotten it in the last 9 years (checking wikia seems to indicate no one else knew this either so I feel vindicated). Seele feel an artefact of the old Eva Anno has no time for – EoE had what equated to three groups vying for control of the process of human instrumentality. Seele are adhering to a prophecy of sorts, Gendo is trying to subvert that process for his own ends, and Misato is trying to stop it. In terms of economical story-telling, the distinction between Seele and Gendo’s goals in causing Third Impact are so slim as to be basically zero (few critical differences though), I suspect Seele were deemed unnecessary and shuffled out of proceedings hastily despite their continued name-checking at this late stage) is turned into another spear because if all the spears are used up, the end of the world can’t be averted. You will have to forgive me for failing to notice how and where most of these spears (save three) wound up or what most of that means or why or how or anything. But we have a budget to squander and why not channel the Gurren Lagann energy for action one last time? And there is some action, this presumably part of what a good section of the audience have waited for with baited breath, that thing the TV series so rapidly lost interest in; that EoE staged for narrative cruelty. Smashy giant robot action time! So we get billions of Eva enemies for Asuka and Mari to cut through without problem. They explode and fall away despite exhaustively overwhelming numbers. There is a palpable lack of threat here. A few hitches but nothing the pilots can’t cope with. It’s just empty fan-service, a boast about how much can be rendered into a single frame. We get Asuka, unable to stab critically important Unit 13 (looking distinctly Unit 01-like just with four arms), and then hooking into an odd leftover thread from 2.0. Her accident in the activation test of Unit 03 has left her with a part of herself now more correctly classified as an Angel. And like 2.0 for surprise value, her Eva has special Angel blood injectors to again overcharge her Eva (which seems to be a thing in the latter three films – turn the Eva safety off and go beserk. As if Unit 01 didn’t do that all on its own in the first and second film). And this too fails. But this too is just another moment of important and pretention. Where the audience is meant to gasp at Eva/Angel hybridisation (not that the dividing line between Angles and Evas is ever completely clear (not least Unit 03)), at Asuka revealing herself to be part Angel (as if Kaworu and Rei weren’t established examples). So her Eva bloated and animalistic is... just another moment. We saw this in 2.0 with Mari releasing her limiters. We saw it in 3.0 in almost the same way. The distinction isn’t meaningfully different to the last few times the Evas were let off the leash and became more brutal. And just like the prior times this escalation of Eva body horror, ferocity, blood and over-indulged violence doesn’t actually help the situation. Asuka fails in her task as the Unit 13 counter-attacks. She’s saved by getting pulled out of reality moments before her end. Of course this being narrative, this being Eva; Gendo, the architect of this situation, is three steps ahead. Misato’s flying ship is badly and perhaps critically damaged so Gendo can retrieve the limbless body of Unit 01 formerly powering the flying ship. Shooting Gendo doesn’t work thanks to the key of Nebuchadnezzar (which did... Uh. Something? Kaji noted it as the lost number kept as a spare in 2.0 which implied Angel or Eva or... No I don’t know nor can I make sense of what it’s done to Gendo. Wikia informs me that while it’s never seen on-screen past the one time, its case is in some shots of 3.0. How amazing) and he leaves. And thus, of course, Shinji must get in the f-ing robot once more. But we’re back to the confident, more certain Shinji who 2.0 birthed as we enter the last (but still very long) final stage of the film – and restage End of Evangelion. Curious of course; EoE by turns can feel like a legitimate replacement for the final two TV series episodes or a bleakly, darkly, disturbing and flippant retort to the low-budget metaphysic version of the TV apocalypse. EoE to some has been not so much the intended ending (though buying a complete set of the old Eva in Japan will always net you the 26 original TV episodes, the four amended episodes and EoE), but more a poisoned chalice for the people who wanted a less introspective version of the end of the world and the process of human instrumentality. Anno was free to do what he wanted and veer off the tracks here – he can’t get away from the end of the world – this is integral to Eva’s base concept. 2.0’s glimpse of Second and the starts of Third Impact depict a process completely unfamiliar from the TV series’s version (reading Wikia explains some of 2.0’s imagery but is still bewildering with reference to 3.0+1.0’s reveals). In Rebuild, the end of the world is staged in the space below the strange aftermath of Second Impact, in an anti-universe where humans cannot venture. And yet, we are still clearly revisiting End of Evangelion. Not exactly the same, but a lot of imagery (the symbols in the sky, the gigantic form of Lilith at multiple points, the crucifix explosions across Earth’s surface) – to say nothing of some actual sections of animation – are taken straight from the 1997 film. Those moments and images were haunting and disturbing (the more overtly sexualised imagery has been completely removed). Clearly no matter what was said at the time or in the interim, EoE is in fact how the ending must play out; this is, or has become, what happens externally and internally when these characters attempt to force a next stage of evolution. The End of Evangelion will always be the end. ...just not quite the same. Not least it is missing most of the infamous moments (Shinji in Asuka’s hospital room is notably completely absent). There’s no moment where Shinji strangles Asuka, Komm Susser Tod is missing entire (in favour of something similar sounding but in Japanese), the live-action sequences of the empty cinema or the world without Evas aren’t utilised (though some live action footage is included), Rei betraying Gendo and beginning Third Impact outside his control etc. It's actively absurd to type this, but Lilith – Lilith! – has less character here. Which is so astonishingly absurd given the only depiction of Lilith we get is effectively Rei/Rei was Lilith the entire time, but those introspective sequences hinting at something more involved with Rei or the points Lilith does talk directly to Shinji are gone too. This shouldn’t be a surprise – we are after all missing a Rei character at the climax. Mostly. 3.0+1.0 almost expects you to remember the last time you saw Eva end the world and contrast it to this new version. The EoE imagery, the footage of Lilith descending from the crucifix, the looming figure of Lilith rising as humanity ends. Even something like the sequence of the backsides of cels running backward is reused – this footage also cribbed from EoE and played out on a wall between two characters. The animation breaks down into scratchy storyboards and later degenerates from finished footage down to outlines, animatics, and storyboard. The end of the world is this time around is more heavily meta. Both EoE and the TV episodes “staged” the process of Instrumentality (or parts of it) for Shinji. It occurs in filming spaces and on sets, there’s lighting equipment and dolls as stand-ins. The strange artificiality of pulling back the curtain on the TV or film production, or else the effect of setting the camera back further than you should for filming a theatrical experience. But even that’s a false layer given a true pull-back would be to people in front of computers or previously drawing key-frames. Here the staging is more blunt still. It begins with an Eva vs Eva fight between Gendo and Shinji in the anti-universe where their brains make sense of the impossible space with artificially staged areas of familiar locations. A fight in a city has a huge sheet as a backdrop and carboard buildings the Evas kick around. They fight in front of Nerv headquarters and in Misato’s kitchen. A blow knocks over a section of scenery and sprawls Shinji in the studio space surrounding the set. A crossroads of sort where Shinji will move on from Gendo to meet with Rei, Kaworu and Asuka. The major difference to EoE is that the end here is much more concerned with Gendo; we dive into his psyche and his past. His isolation and desire for it. This feels extremely confessional for Anno all things considered given Gendo was always previously kept at arm’s length. This feels revealing about the man behind it all, a reflection of the director. He has admitted during production that at his stage of life he is far closer to Gendo than Shinji – I think this is barely obfuscated here. The flashback is more about understanding Gendo and how Yui changed him than anything about Evas or the end of the world. Gendo’s motivation is revealed to be the same as always; this is how he gets to be with Yui again. Odd details catch as this past plays out. And is that Mari in his memories? Mari, who Fuyustuki calls Mary Iscariot upon meeting her and has prepared something for her. Which feels much more like religious buzz words; there’s an obvious implication coached in that selection of a name, but how it actually relates to the story or the circumstances is really unclear. Nor am I clear on what Fuyutsuki prepared. He explodes into LCL like last time too. The process is so close to EoE but the mood is lighter and the reasoning behind the cast a little different. Asuka is part of a clone series – same as Rei. Just without the physical signifiers that Kaworu and Rei exhibit and the prior short-hand for clones in this universe (as noted, their design is intended to invoke lab rats). Nice consistency there. The beach ending from EoE is re-done under a blue sky; Asuka is saved thanks to Shinji and Mari working in concert. Kaworu’s beach meeting with Shinji is restaged, the newer, confident Shinji discussing the circular system that delivers Kaworu into his place at the end of the world. So Eva has happened before, meta-wise or time-wise or dimensionally. Take it as you will, no interpretation is more valid than another. Only that Kaworu remembers them all. It’s happened before and it’s expected to happen again. But Shinji’s different now, so the end of the world is different. Now it’s time to move on; Kaworu is left with Kaji to tend the earth assured the cycle of Eva productions is at an end – both have been dead all this time. Anno’s attitude to his seeming forever association with this one franchise his and his desire to set it down and move on? EoE finished in space; 3.0+1.0 finishes beneath the Antarctic. The idea of Unit 01 living forever as a testament to humanity is no factor at all Shinji intending (and his parents possibly driving) the final riddance of the Evas from reality – none can be allowed to remain. But now, the film takes an odd turn, and as with EoE, there’s the coda. In EoE this was the beach scene. For Rebuild: The sun shines, the sky is blue. An adult Shinji sits in a train station and meets with Mari. She’s older too now; the pair share a kiss and run from the station hand in hand. So. Uh. Yeah. That happened. There’s Kaworu and Rei seemingly alive and well as adults. And Asuka of course. But Shinji winds up with Mari. Mari who knew everything the whole time and might somehow have been part of Gendo’s group at university and known Yui and no, we are not getting any insight into those peculiarities! (or more plausibly it could be Mari’s mother who looks near identical to Mari but... What are we meant to take from this, really?). Mari who met Shinji in a handful of brief moments and has never spent any actual time with him. Mari won the love-triangle! But this is not some simple alternate reality, a different better take world where the cast existed in something resembling our reality; Shinji still wears the exploding DSS collar given to him before rejoining the giant robot fray. Mari effortlessly removes it from his neck. The film ends with a live-action sequence – this is reportedly Anno’s hometown. The world without Evas; we passed the relevant date while 3.0+1.0 was stalled. Shinji made it to 2014, or more plausibly past it in a world without Second Impact. And he’s happy, well-adjusted, and... Not really recognisable as Shinji. Shinji now exists in the present, not the future as he had for so long in pop-culture. But he’s in a different 2021; a world without the pandemic. And that was Rebuild; a project intended as a new introduction to Evangelion that blatantly had its entire core conceit revised at least twice (the 4th film delayed because of Shin Godzilla and then a struggle to write at all) that increasingly and confusingly leant more and more on its famed initial incarnation even as it veered increasingly and erratically away from the familiar sequences. I liked 3.0+1.0 more than 3.0, but can’t help but still bemoan whatever 3.0 was going to be when 2.0 happened. The alternate other sequence. And despite it all, despite the allusions to a repetition of Eva and of this being the break in the chain, even those working on and involved with the film see even this as a definitive end. Even Anno’s not convinced that’s the last word. Eva will come back all over again; naturally – there’s money to be made here, and what’s yet another alternate take to add to the TV series, the manga, the games, the other manga, EoE, Rebuild and so on. Kaworu apparently is indeed doomed to revisit this forever alongside everyone else and also remember that for once he was gifted a true end. An impossible conclusion for modern pop-culture it feels.

#long post

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sailor-arashi · 7 years

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Anime suggestions?

Asking a 42 year old lifelong anime dork for anime suggestions!?

Sorry that it’s taken me a little bit to address this. In the absence of specifics I decided to provide a recommendation of my old favorites as opposed to new releases. Of course then I realized I could write entire essays on each of my old favorites as a recommendation and started thinking about how to make a post like that. Then I decided to provide short recommendations for most of the old favorites and save the hard-sell for a single great freaking show. This in turn led me to end up re-watching large parts of said show because it’s just that freaking great. Also, if anyone reading this wants lengthy essays on why I love a certain series, ask away and I’ll write one up if I’m feeling productive one day!

Anyway!

If you’re looking for recently-aired stuff, you can go through my GIF tag to see what I’ve been watching for the past few seasons. Chances are if I’m making GIFs of something I also recommend watching it. The only recent show that I’d mention specifically as deserving more attention than it received is Made In Abyss. It’s a great little show. It’s also really dark, despite the cutesy character designs, so don’t be fooled. Also, if body horror is a trigger, stay the fuck away. The Abyss does bad bad things to people. Anyway, on to the old stuff ;)

Macross SeriesMacross is my all-time favorite ongoing setting. It’s one of the great pillars of the Real Robot genre. It’s stands apart from its peers by focusing more on the human side of conflicts, having an actual nuanced take on the role of the military, and just being very hopeful in general. There are several separate series that I recommend, thus I am grouping them together.

The Super-Dimension Fortress Macross (1982): The original. A true classic of anime. The animation is terribly dated at this point, but the story still holds up. Every time I remember that I first watched this within a year or two of it airing, I feel really old.

Do You Remember Love? (1984): A stunningly-animated movie version of the TV series. The story is slightly different, but close enough if you don’t want to put in the time to watch the TV series but want a better frame of reference on the sequels. It’s also one of the most technically impressive hand-animated movies put to film, so it’s worth a look.

Macross Plus (1994): Four episode OVA series set 30 years after the original. The focus is on the reunion of three former friends rather than the overarching events of the setting, so it can easily be watched without knowing anything about Macross. It’s also widely regarded as one of the best OVA series ever made. It launched the career of Yoko Kanno, among others.

Macross Frontier (2007): Takes place 47 years after the original on board one of Earth’s many outbound colony fleets. Like Macross Plus, the cast is original to the series, and the first 8 or so episodes begin with summaries of the history of the Macross setting, so it can be watched without watching the others…though you’ll miss a lot of references and a bit of the story nuance, but not enough to be unenjoyable.

Moving on from Macross!

Azumanga Daioh (2002): The original slice-of-life show. Cute girls doing cute things. You will cry when they graduate. Watch it.

Nadia of the Mysterious Seas (1990): High adventure in the 1800s! Very very loosely based on 2000 Leagues Under The Sea. This is the series that put Gainax on the map. It also has one of my favorite openings ever.

Aim For the Top! Gunbuster! (1988): While we’re talking about the glories of 80s-90s Gainax, let’s drop in on Gunbuster. A surprisingly-deep take on the Super Robot genre, featuring the most hot-blooded female pilots you’ll find anywhere, which is a huge selling point. If you ever wonder why Evangelion took off so quickly, it’s because it was sold to us as a TV series “by the people who did Gunbuster!”

Marmalade Boy (1994): For years this was my ‘warm blanket and dark chocolate’ anime. Whenever I was feeling down for reasons hormonal or otherwise I’d just start watching randomly from one of the 76 episodes. It’s just an animated soap opera. The main character, Miki, is stunned when her parents come back from a vacation and announce that they’re swapping partners with a couple they met in Hawaii. They all move into the same house together, and Miki meets the other couple’s son Yuu. Hijinks ensue. Nearly every episode ends on a cliffhanger or stunning revelation. It oozes melodrama from every frame of animation.

EDIT: I just walked out into the living room and told the wife what I was doing and mentioned that I recommended Marmalade Boy. Her response: “RUN MIKI! RUN FROM YOUR PROBLEMS!” and now I can’t stop laughing, because that’s exactly Miki’s response to everything bad that happens to her.

(I appear to be drifting closer to writing essays for them all, I’ll just add a couple more and move on)

Yamato 2199 (2012): A bit of a cheat, as this is fairly recent, but it’s a direct remake of the original 1970′s series that I watched as a kid…and it’s frankly better than the original.

Please Save My Earth (1993): Six-episode OVA series that covers the first half of the manga series by the same name. A girl named Alice begins having dreams of living in a hidden base on the moon. She encounters several other people who are dreaming the same thing. I used to hate one of the characters for what he did. Then I understood but still couldn’t forgive it. Finally, now, I think I can forgive him. It’s a series that makes you feel very strongly, but to explain is to spoil. One of Yoko Kanno’s first series as a composer.

His and Her Circumstances (1998): A romance buds between two people who hide their true selves behind a mask of normalcy. Will they still like each other once those masks are stripped away? A compelling romantic comedy from Gainax, and also one of the codifiers of the Gainax Ending, so the show kinda goes to shit in the second half, with three recap episodes and the animation devolving into stick figures, but the main plot is resolved long before then and despite all of this it remains a truly incredible series.

Okay, so, now we come to it. The hard sell.

If there is anything at all in this post that you watch, you absolutely MUST WATCH

GIANT ROBO: THE ANIMATIONThe Day The Earth Stood Still (1992)

I cannot possibly summarize the plot better than its own intro, so watch this:

youtube

The entire show is like that! Breathless exposition! Dashing heroics! Fearful villainy! And the entire thing done in a retro-60′s design aesthetic as an homage to the original creator of all the characters within, Mitsuteru Yokoyama. Top it off with a literally operatic soundtrack and you have the recipe for…well…maybe that’s hard to say? Why am I recommending a series about a kid who controls a giant robotic pharaoh?

The show looks absolutely ludicrous, and in many ways it is. The characters are over the top in a very old-school sort of way. You’ve got your obvious good guys, literally called the EXPERTS OF JUSTICE. You’ve got your obvious bad guys who constantly pledge themselves to the service of a guy named BIG FIRE. The heroes protect the new utopia that the world has become with the invention of a perfect power source. The bad guys seek to destroy that utopia and crush humanity beneath their heel. It’s all so cut-and-dry. Even the characterization of some of the villains as “noble monsters” and some of the heroes as “ends justifies the means” loose cannons doesn’t really give it much depth.

At first.

The show very quickly disabuses you of that notion as it delves into what it actually took to carve out a utopian existence from a humanity that is so frequently opposed to any such thing. It examines the motivations of the villains and finds them valid. It examines the motivations of the heroes and finds them wanting. It provides two questions that drive the emotional arc of the story and demands that the characters, and you the viewer, answer them.

Can happiness be achieved without sacrifice?

Can a new era be reached without misfortune?

As the sins of the past rise up to destroy the hope of the future, somehow the giant robot pharaoh stops seeming so ridiculous. The fact that everything looks like 1960′s guy-in-monster-suit action cinema only serves to contrast the actual depth of the characters and the series as a whole. To say more is to spoil, so I’ll not go into detailed analysis. Suffice it to say: The show looks silly, yet is really quite serious.

It also has one of the best finales of all time. I watched this series as it was released, and there was a three year wait between episode six and episode seven, and I can honestly say it was worth every second. Re-watching it just a few hours ago, my cheeks were wet with tears and stretched in a big grin at the same time. It’s probably the most satisfying end to a series I’ve seen.

So, there you have it. A whole bunch of old anime to watch. (WATCH GIANT ROBO)

If anyone reading this actually watches something based on my recommendation and enjoys it, please let me know. It’s always great to hear that a recommendation was well-received.

#holy crap how to tag this?#I think i'll leave it and maybe tag the series in later #i've been writing this for a couple hours now #wife loving dork #gotta put that one in for the wife mention #how-tobe-him #giant robo #macross #kare kano #his and her circumstances #azumanga daioh #please save my earth #marmalade boy #fushigi no umi no nadia

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