I was writing a different short piece when a TV Special on Hideaki Anno and the last few years in the production of the last Eva movie, which screened earlier this month, aired, and I thought I had to talk about. Those are the highlights from that documentary along with some of my comments. Text first and then photos, my comments within quotes are inside brackets.* My translation. Corrections are welcome.On Anno and His LifeThe documentary starts with a word from Toshio Suzuki: “What is unique about him… He is honest and always a kid. He is 60 years old but didn’t really grow up, or maybe just didn’t want to grow up. I mean, just look at Shinji. The man is what he draws.”The doc. contained a lot of quotes and comments from Miyazaki and Suzuki about their friend, whom they know since the early 80s’ when Anno worked on Nausicaa. Miyazaki says that when he first saw Anno he thought he was an “Alien”, while Anno looked like a “Terrorist” to Suzuki.zMiyazaki then goes on to talk about the period Anno spent working on Nausicaa: “He was living in the studio! I wondered how many hours he worked back then. When we came to the studio in the morning, he would be sleeping under a desk with a foot sticking out. It stunk! We called it "The Caveman’s Foot”.” This drawing is of Anno back then by Miyazaki. Anno’s life back then was relatively tough, with almost no money and no place to stay in. He is still keeping his key frames from the iconic Nausicaa cut.The doc. goes over Anno’s childhood too. “My father lost his leg in an accident that wasn’t his fault. He hated the world. I used to always draw robots with a missing leg or arm, and I also liked seeing them break off. It used to happen a lot in "Tetsujin 28-go” and I liked that. I prefer it when something is missing, which is I think probably because my dad was missing a leg. I wanted to accept my parents.“As for his mindset as a creator, the doc. summerizes it as "Prioritize the (art)work over my life.” He called it literally “Work Supremacy”. “I don’t want to be the focus, but my work. I’d offer anything for the sake of my work, and if you weigh my artwork and my life, then my work would be more valuable to me. I’m sometimes willing to die to get it done. It’s now a bit different after I got married though.”“I always thought I was working hard for the sake of all anime fans in the world. But (after Eva TV finished) I saw a thread about killing me. They were discussing the best way to kill Hideaki Anno. I then started not caring anymore, and I thought I wouldn’t bother making anime again. I was thinking of throwing myself under a train. A different time I thought of jumping off of the roof of the studio. What stopped me, though, was thinking of the pain. I don’t mind dying, but I don’t want to feel the pain before death.Suzuki: "Creating something is the best medicine for such situations in my opinion. You have to take a step forward.”It was then that he started working on his 2nd Live-action movie, starring friend director Shunji Iwai and filmed in his hometown Ube about a director that comes back to visit his hometown, titled Shiki-Jitsu.On His Way of Working on EvaTill early 2018, Anno didn’t come to Khara all that often. No one knew when he would show up, or for how long.Anno: “I’ll just go to sleep today.”Reporter: “Are you lacking sleep?”Anno: …“Basically I would all the movie to be a one-shot. When you obsess about it and come to a point where you can’t do it anymore, you might discover a way that you didn’t think of before to do it. Something that makes the viewer go "didn’t know you could do it like that too!”““If I made the last Eva movie with the same old way of making anime it wouldn’t be something new. Just an extension of the 3 older movies. I didn’t like that”The reporter asked mecha designer Yamashita Ikuto: “Why do you keep working with Anno despite the chaos and problems his attitude causes?” (slightly rephrased)- "Hmm.. I wonder why! But if I think about it, this is an environment where you do what you feel like. Other places follow plans and such, you know. Although I personally wouldn’t say this is the best way of doing work.” *laughs*During Filming- Why did you allow us to film this documentary?Anno: “I thought it would be good for business”He frequently said to the cameraman not to point the camera at him, and that there was no much point in that. At one point, he wanted to give some direct feedback to the filming staff. "You film me a lot, more than necessary. There’s no need for me to be the focus of this doc., film the people working and film their hardships and the hurdles they try to clear. That’s more interesting. I want this to be interesting and make the movie look interesting”It was once raining during a scenario meeting. Anno to NHK staff: "Did you shoot outside? Take footage of the most intense part, you could insert it here then.” which is what they did.Last Eva Movie’s ProductionAnno isn’t known for planning or thinking ahead much. “I don’t want to follow a certain blueprint at all. We decided not to use storybaords while working on the last Eva movie.”They instead relied on playing out the scenes based on the script and motion capture them from different angles at the same time. This footage is then the real visual basis of the movie.Anno: “My focus is angles. If angles and editing are good, still animation is fine. It doesn’t have to move, and this applies to liva-action as well.”Anno later reviews the footage in the editing room, and is really obsessed with seeing the scene from all the possible angles. He often complains that the footage is lacking in angles even after all that filming.But Anno leaves the staff record the footage and limits himself to only supervising them.- Don’t you feel like the footage won’t come out the way you imagined?Anno: "That’s the point. If I wanted to do it myself, I would’ve drawn storyboards from the get go.” But then he goes to record footage from different angles himself anyway.This technique is called “Previsualization” or previz for short, and isn’t radically new, but also isn’t really used in anime. I personally see it used for the first time here. Now, the movie includes a storybaords credit (画コンテ), so maybe those are drawn based on the previz for animation purposes (for backgrounds and key animation etc.)? I don’t know.Moving on, Anno started coming back to the project in earnest around March 2018, and it was then that he first entered the editing room to see the previz footage. Based on that, he didn’t like the A-Part script, and in June 2018 decided that it had to be rewritten from scratch. He wanted no compromises in this movie. Voice recording started with the available script in March 2019, while D-Part was still incomplete.“I never thought of forgetting about it. I thought of just not finishing it, but I somehow never wanted not finishing it. I have an obligation to finish what I started. Towards myself, the staff, and before everything the fans.”10/2019 Voice recording for the D-Part finally began.Shinji’s VA: “Won’t this be the beginning of a different story?”Anno: “No story will start here. It’s sad, but there’s an end to everything. My Eva ends here.”He was saying before that whenever he tried making something new, it turned into Eva somehow. He needed to come to a conclusion with Eva.Anno telling the Voice the Actors to voice their last lines the way they want. First image Misato’s VA crying, second image Asuka’s VA perplexed.As for Shinji’s last line, it seems he added it while recording. “Sayonara, all of Evangelion”The end of a 25 years journey.12/2020 The movie was finally done and the first private screening took place. Anno left the room when the movie began.- Won’t you watch it?“No, I don’t usually watch the first screening of my finished works.”- Why?“If I finish something, I have to start working on the next.”
Apr 3, 2021 • Subscribe
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