[EVA] Re: Kowaru's Origins

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 9:38 AM, ObsessiveMathsFreak
<obsessivemathsfreak at obsessivemathsfreak.org> wrote:
> Sorry about the Chairman Keel mistake! I mean to say it was 4 _frames_
> long!! (~0.16 seconds). Whoops.

OK, that makes much more sense!

> I didn't count the silhouette of Asuka. That's there for about (5-6) seconds
> I think. I'm not inclined to put very much weight on it, not as much as a
> full character shot in any case.

But it's distinctly Asuka, and it's interesting as it puts forth the
duality between her and Rei right from the opening scenes. The opening
*is* worth watching for some aspects.

> I should mentioned that I also didn't count 4 other appearances by Ritsuko
> in one form or another. Reichu has a more comprehensive list of character
> appearances on this page:
> http://wiki.evageeks.org/FGC:OP_Cut_001a

Looking at that and thinking about the other shots, I think we can
explain appearances in the opening as simply being a combination of
how 'soon' in the series a character shows up, and how important they
are. We get a lot of Eva-01 (this *is* a mecha after all), Shinji,
Misato, and Ritsuko because they're there from episode 1, aren't they?
We get 5 shots of Gendo for the same reason. (Hm. I seem to be echoing
MDwigs: "In other words, they had already completed most of the first
few episodes by the time they did the opening, which could explain why
Asuka has so few appearances." Drat.)

But Asuka, while important, doesn't show up for many episodes yet, so
she doesn't get too much screentime; although it's worth noting that
she's fully colored and has her final appearance and also her anti-Rei
role, so she couldn't be in too much flux. But the final angel gets
nothing, and Kaworu gets the smallest possible screentime with a
colorless sketch* because he's more than twice as far away as Asuka
and is not terribly important. And I *think* that the screentime an
Angel gets decreases ~linearly with how far away they are - although
I'd have to go count some frames to be sure.

* pencil? charcoal? I'm not an art person, I can't tell. Actually, I
wonder if we even see the whole thing - it looks cut off. Perhaps in
his unseen arms is a cat...

-- 
gwern