[EVA] Religion and Gainax was RE: [EVA] Moura interviews

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 10:16 AM, V V <frumious99 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Actually they do mention China by name (rarely), and we know Seele represents the 5 countries that are still powerful:  the USA, the UK, France, Britain, Germany.  I doubt they'd make her Chinese (on top of which, she's supposed to be "European" and very "foreign")......and he doesn't like the USA.

Mm. Looking back, the platinum 07 script mentions that the plane scene
with Gendo is with a 'Chinese Guy', and reading between the lines,
that does seem to be what he is. He's not obviously inconsistent with
representing a Korea or Japan, but China is a better fit. (He seems
somewhat hostile, incidentally.)

So I guess there was actually one reference to China the country.

> So why Germany and not France or Britain?  Unsure.  Possibly because they were colonial powers in asia and Japan doesn't particularly like them.

Well, France has the wrong image for a fighter like Asuka.
Cheese-eating surrender-monkeys, etc. _Rose of Versailles_
notwithstanding, France's stereotype is that of elegance and love and
light, etc. Doesn't go with Asuka at all. (In defense of this
stereotype, I will point to Paris Syndrome:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Paris_syndrome )

Britain is relatively plausible, being an industrialized nuclear power
on the Security Council, with a long history of war & imperialism. We
can't pin the blame on its imperialism as Germany was a colonial power
as well. ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies#Pacific
). But Britain, AFAIK, has had less influence on Japan than Germany or
America. Perhaps that with less nearby imperialism led to Germany
instead?
I don't see any clear reason; but not everything is keenly thought out
and charged with meaning (like it is in the fiction of Gene Wolfe),
after all, with a good NGE example being Sadamoto and the A10 nerve
and dead-mother & child ideas. For all we know, some Gainaxer saw
'seele' somewhere, put it up as SEELE's name, and that was enough to
make Asuka German rather than English.

-- 
gwern