[EVA] Moura interviews with Gainax people & others

[Gwern Branwen]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 6:18 PM,  <once at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Dear Aaron,
>
> Do you mean, licensing the rights from the Japanese publisher of the interviews to produce them as an actual English-language book, the way ADV did with "The Notenki Memoirs?"
>
> --C.

Presumably, although I would be more than satisfied with fan
translations of the major ones.

Actually, while we're on the topic of interviews, I found a very
interesting summary of one the other day:

> Asahi Newspaper publishes a weekly magazine "AERA." AERA 08/31/1998 issue dealt with an interview with Hideaki Anno.
> As you know, he is 180 cm tall. He is a kind of giant for normal Japanese.
> He always fears something. But he himself is a kind of fear.
> He was born in 1960 in Ube city, Yamaguchi Prefecture. In his childhood, Ube city has shipyards. His inside proto-landscape is like such a shipyard, say, NERV base. (Faculty of Medicine, Yamaguchi University is located at Ube city.)
> His father Takuya Anno lost his left leg like Touji Suzuhara.
> Hideaki Anno fears animal. Therefore he is a vegetarian.
> He said, "I cannot break my own heart shell. However I think I can enlarge it because I completed EVA."
> He is shy in fact.
> He made EVA as his private anime. After EVA, he escaped from work. He tried to kill himself. In order not to kill himself, he had to live at the building of GAiNAX, Musashino-city, Tokyo.
> But he lost his everything because he wasted out his all inside to make EVA.
<http://web.archive.org/web/20071207235755/www.geocities.com/Tokyo/4081/file425.html#3>

It's a curious interview if that's all true. He tried suicide *after*
making Eva? That chronology sounds wrong. And the missing leg bothers
me a little (why didn't Justin Sevakis mention the leg while writing
up the Anno live-action documentary which includes interviewing his
parents? I can't imagine he saw it and didn't notice the connection to
Touji.)

(The really funny thing was, just a few hours before I found that
page, I had seen an offhand mention that Touji's missing leg was like
Anno-pater, and my reaction was 'Yeah, sure, how likely is *that*?
Even if that were true, I'll never find a real source for a rumor like
that.'
Ask and ye shall receive... A real translation would be better, of
course, but I'm not greedy - both a summary & citation is already a
gift from the gods.)

-- 
gwern