[EVA] If you had one question ...

[Carl Gustav Horn]

On Aug 31, 2006, at 10:14 PM, Peter Svensson wrote:

>> ...what was the response?
>
> Well, to be fair, I'm still unsure of how the translator handled  
> the question. Carl's write up of the event for the Evangelion Manga  
> letter column used a much nicer phrasing of my question.
>
> But honestly, what did you think the response would be? Yamaga gave  
> a very polite answer which implied nothing about Anno being crazy  
> or difficult to work with or the like. (I can't fully remember it,  
> I was too busy being embarassed for all-but insulting his  
> colleague.) But the lowdown is that yes, Anno is sane.
>
> Gainax on the other hand...
>
> Peter Svensson
>


Let me kick it old school, from the May 1998 issue of EVANGELION:

---------------------------------------------------

On Anno’s severe depression, his “crisis of the soul,”  as a motive  
in the development of Evangelion.

YAMAGA: Well, I think Anno may have appeared in the Japanese media as  
you suggest; he’s made comments about wanting to die, and so forth,  
but at least from my perspective, things were never as serious as  
they appeared in the press. [LAUGHS]

On the reasons for use of Judeo-Christian symbology in Eva

YAMAGA: I don’t know exactly why. I suspect that Mr. Anno may have  
read some book on it, and there was some thoughts he wanted to  
express on it. I personally am glad that, rather than Christianity,  
he didn’t express some obscure Buddhist theme, because then it would  
have been linked more with Aum Shinri Kyo. [LAUGHS]

On whether Anno and Yamaga are fans of David Lynch, and whether Anno  
is “the Kurt Cobain of anime.”

YAMAGA: As far as Mr. Anno committing suicide or anything like that  
[LAUGHS], I’m not really sure how to say this, but, while sometimes  
he might seem very emotional, when you get to know him, he doesn’t  
come off like that at all. [LAUGHS] As far as David Lynch is  
concerned, I don’t dislike David Lynch, but on the other hand, he’s  
not someone I’m a huge fan of, either. As far as Anno, there have  
been people who have called Evangelion the anime equivalent of Twin  
Peaks. [LAUGHS]

---------------------------------------------------

Having quoted all this, it was also my understanding that in 1995  
many members of Gainax were surprised by Anno's famous postscript to  
vol. 1 of the manga, that they were unaware he felt so depressed.  
It's quite possible that his friends saw a different side of Anno  
than he saw in himself. Mr. Yamaga is obviously very close to Anno  
(he's known him since he was eighteen, freshman year of college, as  
more or less depicted in OTAKU NO VIDEO) and cares about him a great  
deal, although he also enjoys talking smack about his personal life ^_^