[EVA] Production I.G's Yoshiki Sakurai quote about Eva's mashupness

[Gwern Branwen]

from http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=5690

'I think Production I.G's Yoshiki Sakurai sums it up best.

Quote:
     "Influences or copying could be seen commonly within Japanese anime
     itself as well. Evangelion succeeded in utilitating and expressing the
     situation. It was, as it is often said, FULL of parodies and
     influences or sometimes even exact copies (on purpose of course) from
     some scenes of various anime, manga and Japanese modern novels and WW2
     warship names etc etc etc not to mention the Bible. Anno-san himself
     says it was a huge collage of past works.

     The older generations who understood the original, enjoyed the parody.
     Younger generations who didn't know, enjoyed the piece as it is. The
     brilliant balance of Evangelion is that it could be enjoyed both ways."'

Another quote of it can be found at
<http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=191202&s=65c676ffdd7a5288ae6df1d4c912cbf6&p=7122209&viewfull=1#post7122209>

MDWigs says that this quote 'would be been released circa 1998 post
Production I.G.'s work on End of Eva.' He also suggested I check
japan.anime.evangelion or this ML, but neither turned up anything.

I know that Sakurai could have written this in either English or
Japanese (he's pretty fluent in English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyDKG0r9wa4 ). I personally suspect
that the original was in English. It seems to bear the hallmarks of a
Japanese speaker (capitalizations, the 'Anno-san') - certainly it's
the rare native English speaker who could write something like
'utilitating'. (I would cut my wrists before using such a neologism,
and even a translating native would prefer 'utilizing' over *that*.)

As it happens, "Andy" <bemused at antisocial.com> seems to mention this quote:

     "Prod I.G's Yoshiki Sakurai discussing Eva/influences (second post from the
bottom) -
     http://www.productionig.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=33&t=861&s=25ff4325918
     b4df2a7f03c170068d1f4"
<http://lists.onegeek.org/pipermail/oldeva/2002-December/041932.html>

This is almost surely the same quote: the same person, in an informal
context where one might make many typos and use netspeak like "FULL",
in the language internal evidence suggests, on the right anime and the
right tack.

But. My various methods of contacting this Andy have failed utterly.
Woundingly, Production I.G. has shut down all its forums English &
Japanese*, vanishing them from the face of the Internet**. No other
mentions of the Sakurai quote seem to exist. The only archive service
which goes back to 2003 of the I.G. site is the Internet Archive,

Using our 1337 'advanced search'-option-checking skills, we look at
<http://web.archive.org/web/*/productionig.com/forums/index.php*>. 134
hits. Narrow it down to "?act=ST" as well:
<http://web.archive.org/web/*/productionig.com/forums/index.php?act=ST*>.
71 hits is more manageable. Here is where our luck runs out. The next
parameter of the URL is "f=33"; it's reasonable to assume this means
something like "forum = #33". But the IA goes 15, 16, 17 - *34*! 1
off!

Worse still, this really seemed like the source. If you look at
<http://web.archive.org/web/20030527195736/www.productionig.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=34&t=1142&>,
you see that these are entries in "Sakurai's Online Journal", and he
pontificates in much the same vein as the quote:
     " Today is the visual editing for the 17th episode. I really get
frightened about the fact that we are being caught up gradually by the
monthly releases. We are airing 9th and 10th this month and 17th will
be released in...... June? My goodness!! I don't want to think about
it. I've watched the 17th episode materials today. It's all white.
Just the drawings, no colours. In some shots, drawings are not
finished either."

(Some of the forum threads are interesting. #34 records the travails
of a quasi-intern 'dwight':
<http://web.archive.org/web/20021205100619/www.productionig.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=17&t=657&s=>.
I really find myself wondering - how did dwight turn out? Did he ever
become a director? He would be 37 now; not so old that he couldn't yet
achieve his dream, but old enough that he's running out of time.)

But this is as far as I can get. So, I'm throwing the hunt open!
Fabulous no-prizes await the being who can find a copy of the missing
forum thread, or in some other way settle the genesis of that quote
once and for all.

* AFAIK
** 2004-2005 apparently

-- 
gwern