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Hideaki Anno's Wife Tells Studio Khara's Story Through Animated Turnips

Moyoco Anno's official website posted on Saturday the 16-page comic she drew for last November's 10th anniversary exhibit for Studio Khara. Studio Khara also posted an animated version. The comic and the short are titled "Yoiko no Rekishi Anime: Ōki na Kabu (Kabu)" (A Good Child's History Anime: The Giant Turnip (Inc.)), and they feature Anno's Director-kun and Rompers characters (based her husband Hideaki Anno and herself) from her Insufficient Direction manga.

The short's story begins in 2006 with an old man (Director-kun) who refuses eat meat and fish and only eats foods with vegetables. (The old man is Hideaki Anno, and the foods symbolize different types of media. Vegetables represent video works.) Director-kun tells the old woman Rompers that he has decided to make vegetables that he himself can eat. Director-kun starts work on a small garden (representing his Studio Khara). The old man asks Rompers to come up with a name for the garden, and she decides on "Khara," the Greek word for "joy."

Director-kun plants seeds, and a few men come to help him with the garden. The workers search for a bigger area for the garden and find a good location near Nishi-Ogikubo Station in Suginami, Tokyo. Everyone is excited that they will be able to grow bigger turnips. Still more people come to help with the garden.

Due to everyone's hard work, a large turnip (Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone) is ready to pick in 2007. Director-kun asks everyone to come and help to try to pick the gigantic vegetable. Finally, they are able to pick the turnip, and Director-kun soon plants the next turnip.

More and more people come to help grow Director-kun's turnips. The team picks its next turnip (Evangelion: 2.0 You Can [Not] Advance) in 2009. Everyone celebrates picking the turnip, but Rompers notices that Director-kun looks a bit sad. He decides to take a break from the garden and invites everyone to make what they want for a while. The gardener goes on a kind of sabbatical for a few years and helps with various projects (such as the Giant God Warrior Appears in Tokyo live-action short).

Director-kun returns and grows another giant turnip (Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo) with everyone's help again. They pick it with great effort in 2012. However, Director-kun is injured in the attempt to pick the turnip. His injuries are even more serious than everyone thought. As he is recovering, a "super old man" (Hayao Miyazaki) appears and recruits Director-kun to lay bricks (voice act in the starring role of The Wind Rises) for a month. Rompers is worried but hopes it will help Director-kun recover. However, he is still suffering from his injuries when he returns.

While Director-kun continues to recover away from the garden, his helpers continue their work there and await his return. The brick tower Director-kun worked on makes its debut, but he has yet to recover. Rompers asks him if there is anything he wants to eat, and he replies in the negative.

Director-kun receives the products everyone else has created and gets nourishment to rejuvenate him little by little. He returns to his garden in 2014. The workers are excited about his return and ready to grow more vegetables. However, instead of working in his own garden, Director-kun goes to the neighboring garden where Shinji Higuchi is waiting. He asks some of his workers to come along. They pick a humongous carrot (Shin Godzilla) in 2016.

Someone asks Director-kun what his next plans are. He doesn't reply right away, but he looks a bit relieved. He tells his team he is ready to grow another turnip. The new turnip is apparently growing to be bigger than anything they have harvested before.

The short references the classic Russian children's fairy tale "The Gigantic Turnip," which is also popular in Japan. In the progressive story, and old man grows a turnip so large that he cannot pick it alone. He has to ask for more and more help, starting with his wife, until the group can finally pick the turnip.

Megumi Hayashibara and Kouichi Yamadera return from the 2014 Insufficient Direction television anime to voice Rompers and Director-kun, respectively, in the short.

The official website for the Evangelion anime revealed an image board drawn by Shin Evangelion project art director Tatsuya Kushida on Saturday.

Khara confirmed in April that the next Shin Evangelion project is in production. Khara's official website also revealed in April that the studio was recruiting animators, modelers, technical staff, system engineers, and production managers.

The title for the final Evangelion film was announced back in 2012 as Evangelion Shin Gekijōban :||, or Evangelion: 3.0+1.0. The ":||" at the end of the Japanese title is meant to be the symbol used in music to denote repetition after reaching the end of a measure.