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

[Carl Horn]

On Dec 27, 2009, at 10:58 AM, V V wrote:

> Yes.  Aaron, Rachel & Co however have glowingly described the old  
> "hunting around to borrow VHS tapes from other people" days.....
>
> Regardless, the problem is that most "fans on the street" (i.e.  
> people who watched after 2003) ...don't know much about cast & crew  
> statements that "the religion didn't mean anything" and a poor job  
> was done of informing them.....

The reason I mentioned this is that you originally said "poorly  
fansubbed" versions, which would imply that people in the late '90s  
were watching a different version of Eva than the one that later  
aired on TV, which is not the case.

Even if one were to take the most comprehensibly non-religious view  
possible of Evangelion, based on interpreting certain of the  
characterizations of the show's religious content made by certain of  
the people who worked on Evangelion, to then mean the correct view is  
as follows--

a.) it was, indeed, all superficial, chosen only because it looked  
different, and that
b.) among the presumed range of choices available to Gainax that  
would have fulfilled the sole requirement of looking different, this  
particular choice was done on the part of everyone involved in its  
production without any regard to any symbolism or meaning that has  
ever been associated with these words or images, and that
c.) furthermore, this lack of significance applies not only to Gainax  
themselves, but even to their fictional creations--i.e., in the world  
of Evangelion, all these elements likewise only "look cool" or "look  
different," to the characters who discuss them, witness them, and  
experience them--that is, in addition to the elements having no  
particular meaning to the artists, they also have no particular  
meaning to their characters

--you would still, and always will, have problems with the "fans on  
the street," or indeed, anyone, fan or not, who, instead of relying  
on reading selected quotes or attending panels, actually watches the  
Evangelion TV series and movies at any point in their life, because  
it is stuffed full of this content, a trend that, as I noted, only  
accelerates in The End of Evangelion, and continues into its very  
last image.

I wouldn't try to insist on a single correct interpretation of  
Evangelion; still less would I do so by directing people to ignore  
much of what's actually in it. For different reasons, people may find  
much of Eva's content awkward--not only its religious elements, but  
its comedy, its fan service, its hot springs penguin. It's difficult  
to fit all these into a grand unified theory of Eva, and it may be  
felt they might confuse people new to the show, or make them take the  
series less seriously, so there is a temptation to, in a sense, make  
one's own private director's cut of Evangelion--one that cuts out (by  
calling them irrelevant) anything that doesn't support one's  
interpretation.

May I suggest that the error here is the belief that there is a  
single correct interpretation of Evangelion--or, alternately, the  
belief there are only two choices: either there is a single correct  
interpretation, or it is therefore impossible to understand the  
series at all. In the course of insisting that religious ideas (or  
fan service, or Pen-Pen) are irrelevant to  the "true meaning" of  
Evangelion, one enters the ironic position of becoming not an  
inquirer, but an inquisitor, and imposing a single dogma on it.

Maybe I should say something at this point about Christianity in  
Japan, because there may be a sense that  it is unlikely for these  
symbols in Evangelion to have been used with any sense of knowing  
what they mean, simply because Gainax is Japanese, and Christianity  
is a minority religion in Japan.

Many anime fans around the world know about the recent prime  
minister, Taro Aso, who had a reputation for actively courting for  
the "otaku vote," talked about liking Rozen Maiden, and how he wanted  
to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the anime and manga  
industry. Aso is the epitome of the social and political elite in  
Japan--he is the grandson of another prime minister, and his sister  
is married to Prince Tomohito, the Emperor's first cousin. Taro Aso  
is also a Christian--in fact, he is the seventh Christian thus far to  
be prime minister in Japan (compare this to America, the land of  
religious diversity, where there has never been a non-Christian  
president or even vice president). Aso was replaced by the current  
prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, also the grandson of a former  
PM...and also a Christian--a Baptist, like President Clinton.

It is not, then, that the concept of being Christian or believing in  
Christian ideas is so remote to a Japanese person, nor that they see  
it as something that must necessarily make you foreign, un-Japanese  
or cut you off from social respectability or status. Where  
difficulties might arise is when a Japanese decides they want to  
*convert* to Christianity. If you're born into a family that's  
already Christian, that's seen as different, because to be a  
Christian in that case shows social integration, not rocking the  
boat. To be fair, the same conflict between practicing your family's  
religion and deciding to join a different one on your own often  
applies in America, with the difference being that U.S. society would  
view the individual's faith as just as important as their family's  
tradition.

Any Japanese person living in a big city is going to run into at  
least some Japanese people who are Christians, and, as you might  
guess from the above, Christians in Japan are represented among the  
elites in numbers beyond their population--including literary and  
artistic elites as well as political ones. (I don't mean to take this  
too far; they are still a minority. The point is, that has not made  
them obscure or outsiders).

This mention of the literary and artistic realms brings up another  
way in which Japanese people absorb Western religious ideas; namely,  
through studying it in school in the context of the history of  
Western thought and art. You don't have to be "religious" to know  
something about Christianity in Japan. It is often assumed in America  
that the more you happen to know about a religion (especially  
Christianity), the more you must believe in it. That's not an  
unreasonable assumption in the U.S., because such a large percentage  
of Americans identify themselves as believing Christians.

So it's sometimes difficult to see that there are alternate reasons  
than belief by which a society might absorb religious ideas,  
especially "foreign" ones. In Japan, as in many non-Western  
countries, these ideas have come in as part and parcel of studying  
Western culture, with its powerful influence on the modern world. It  
doesn't mean that one's native culture gets thrown away, replaced  
with this Western culture; it does mean that one learns something  
about it and its significance (Confucian or Buddhist ideas are not  
native to Japan, either, and one can still discern the philosophical  
conflicts that play out in Japanese culture between these imports and  
Japan's native Shinto beliefs).

To take another sort of example from Japanese pop culture, the #10  
best-selling manga in Japan last year was named St. Oniisan. It's a  
comedy about Jesus and Buddha being roommates together in modern-day  
Japan. It would be a lot more difficult to make such a work in the  
United States a hit; not only because of the risk of offense, but  
because the average college-educated American doesn't know as much  
about Buddha as the average college-educated Japanese does about  
Jesus--therefore, half the jokes wouldn't work, because readers  
wouldn't know why it was funny that the Buddha said this or did that  
in one of St. Oniisan's situations, whereas the Japanese reader has  
more of an impression of Jesus as a literary character, even if they  
don't necessarily believe in him in a religious sense.

--C.