Forum - View topicNEWS: Terminal Dogma: Essays on Neon Genesis Evangelion
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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And Akira is Godardian how exactly? Anyway, judging from the press relaese it looks like they are looking to focus on Eva's influential position in Anime history at least as much as on interpreting and/analyzing the show's content. Good. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15320 |
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Aaron:
It's existential, and it doesn't have one sole driving theme behind it, but numerous themes interwoven into the narrative. It also has no clear ending, only a resolution. |
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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No sale. "Existential," "multi-themed" and "ambiguous endings" are not distinctively Godardian elements. Playing with formalist cinematic devices, violating conventional Cinematic narrative norms, and making non-narrative cinematic "essays" are Godardian, and Eva popularized all of them in anime. Edited for spelling booboos. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15320 |
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Giving cinematic devices a religious context isn't really "playing" with them. By that logic, you could call the first Mission Impossible Godardian.
How so? By having reluctant heroes and/or anti-heroes? That's existed long before Godard.
Except they aren't really essays as much as unfulfilled proposals. |
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Aaron White
Old Regular
Posts: 1365 Location: Birmingham, Alabama |
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If anyone wants to think Gatsu's post makes sense, go for it. I feel like I'm arguing with someone who asserts that chicken is a plant because it's yellow. I think I'll let it ride.
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GATSU
Posts: 15320 |
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Aaron:
I thought chicken's supposed to be brown. (Or white if it's still alive...) |
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HellKorn
Posts: 1669 Location: Columbus, OH |
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Hm, suck your blood dry, keep you coming back for more, and have you ignore what's really important? That seems to be a common theme in the United States today.
Pretty much.
Which I believe I was referring to, I think.
A kid in the movie was asking to buy an model of one of the EVAs, if I recall correctly.
Ah, I get what you're saying now.
Huh? In terms of storytelling and its execution The End of Evangelion was FAR better than the majority of the material in the television series itself. The only thing we didn't have was the atmosphere presented by the staff's inability to put out a satisfactory product (which has been said by at least one of the members), which hardly pushes away what would've been.
Uh, well, as far as being character studies, the last two episodes did that well enough, but the fact that the plot was screwed over and we weren't given any reason at all to believe spoiler[that Shinji was going to have a better life other than a cheesy round of "Congratulations!" from the other characters] leaves much to be desired.
The same Watsuki who couldn't spoiler[kill off Kaoru because he knew that too many readers would object to it despite it being more fitting to the theme of Rurouni Kenshin, and not only creating a bit more of a mess with the final arc?] I can't understand why spoiler[killing off your characters means that you don't care about them. Similar to why a lot of people don't like another anime I mentioned earlier, Texhnolyze, I don't get why so many can't stand to see fatalism represented in fiction. Anno clearly gave a damn about the characters and wanted us to know that there is still hope for them considering that he gave us Rei, Kaworu, and Yui's parting words of reassurance to Shinji along with Asuka actually giving him a compassionate act when he returned and continued what he started in Instrumentality. There was some optimism there, but people don't notice it just because of not fully understanding the narrative itself.] I find it silly for people to brush off and saying that it's BS whenever spoiler[massive deaths and fatalism are done in their favorite anime/manga.] That's one of the reasons why I admire Kubrick because he gave the audience the story in his movies, and if you didn't like, tough. |
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Iritscen
 Posts: 793 |
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Well, I guess it comes down to what kind of stories we prefer to view/read/etc. I understand why some directors tell stories fatalistically, but I don't have to like it. I try to only watch things that are generally positive in tone, like Kenshin, because I try to foster a positive attitude in myself.
Speaking of RuroKen, do you know for a fact that Watsuki spoiler[didn't want to kill Kaoru only because of the outcry from the audience, or might there have been an attachment to her on his part]? After all, a story is whatever the storyteller wants it to be. Often the death of a character is purely at the behest of the storyteller, in other words, the story doesn't logically lead to it, it just leads to a dangerous situation wherein the character's fate could go either way. It's a 50/50 sort of situation that ultimately relies on the storyteller to make the call on whether they die. We're not talking about a situation where Rambo can survive being shot at by 50 guys with machine guns while he guns them all down in turn. That's clearly just the storyteller making his character unkillable. But, in a situation where things can go either way, where the storyteller can safely make a call either way without making the outcome feel unrealistic, I'd just as soon see the character live, thank you very much. That being said, spoiler[it's true that Kaoru not getting killed by Enishi was something of a miracle, and finding out that he can't kill her because he has a thing about Tomoe getting killed at that age does feel a little contrived]. So I'm not defending that entirely. |
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I was responding to what some people allege, that the show is just pretending to be deep by throwing around $20 words. I'm sure to someone who has studied psychology it's pretty straight-forward. 
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