Category Archives: giant robots

Random Robot Doodles

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Believe in the Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance that Believes in You

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I watched Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance over the weekend and I have a whole smattering of thoughts to put down on the subject. It’ll be part-review, part-editorial, and it will contain a ton of spoilers, so watch out.

Evangelion 2.22: You Can (Not) Advance is the second of four movies whose purpose is to retell the story of Studio Gainax’s Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the most influential works ever in anime history. Fueled by hindsight and merchandise profits, Rebuild brings it all back while taking into account changes that have occurred in the world and in anime since the original series ended back in the 90s.

The basic premise of Evangelion is that a cataclysm in the early 21st century has left most of the world unpopulated. Ikari Shinji, a quiet, passive teenager, is tasked  with defeating otherworldly monsters known as “Angels” through the use of unusually organic-looking robots called “Evangelions.” However, his nature and personality make him perhaps the least qualified person in the world to be engaging in battle, let alone defending the Earth. He is supported by the organization NERV, which houses the Evangelions as well as his fellow pilots, the mysterious, stoic Ayanami Rei and the aggressive and competitive Sohryu Asuka Langley.

The idea seems fairly simple, but Evangelion would eventually become a whirling dervish of emotional trauma and introspection that sucks you into the characters’ thoughts and fears, and that characteristic of the series is by far its main strength, and according to some, also its main weakness.

Shinji especially is a pile of neuroses and doubts, which can make him an aggravating main character but also establishes him as quite a bit of an “anti-protagonist.” In watching the first Rebuild of Evangelion movie I found myself unable to engage Shinji, as they tried to build him up to have just an ounce more confidence and determination, but failed to spend enough time on his inner thoughts. His change of heart at the end of the movie comes so suddenly that it rings false to some extent as a result. Luckily, You Can (Not) Advance solves this problem with grace and artistry, which is to say, I liked this second movie. Now on to why.

While the movie opens with a fight between brand new character Makinami Mari Illustrious and an equally brand new Angel, I feel like the movie truly “begins” with the scene immediately after. Here, Shinji and his father Gendou, who is also the head of NERV, are at the grave of Shinji’s mother. Prior to the first movie, father and son had not seen each other in years, and so their relationship is justifiably awkward. Walls have been erected towards each other. However, here at the grave of Ikari Yui, both show that the walls are not absolute, that they are willing to express their feelings towards each other, if only briefly.

While Evangelion has always been about humans relating to one another, this idea of taking just that one tiny step towards trying to connect with others is what really sets apart the Rebuild of Evangelion from the original TV series. The characters aren’t significantly different from who they were in previous incarnations, but by attempting to reach out to others they encourage others to do the same as well, which keeps everyone from retreating into the comforting shell of personal insecurity. Ayanami Rei is seemingly without personality in the first film, and could have very well remained that way, but Shinji is able to reach out to her. In turn, in this film when Asuka (now sporting the surname “Shikinami”) confronts Rei and accuses her of being a “doll,” Rei is able to reply that she is not, but more importantly tries to help Asuka, who she sees as being much more human than herself and thus able to foster relationships outside of their “work.”

I really became aware of this element when Rei invites Shinji and Gendou to dinner to try and have them grow closer (or perhaps less distant). Amidst all of the talk of Angels and Human Instrumentality, I began to care a little more about this dinner, as I felt it skirted closer to the heart of the movie than anything else. The film follows a minor variation of the motto for success from another Gainax work, Gurren-Lagann, “Believe in me who believes in you.” Everyone is portrayed as a thinking and feeling being, even the Angels, who are not one-trick ponies but instead contain backup plans which are augmented by contingencies, hinting at the idea that they have brains underneath those monstrous facades.

The dinner ends up being canceled, as a disaster leads to Asuka and her new experimental Evangelion being possessed by an Angel. Shinji is sent out to fight the compromised EVA, but cannot act out of fear of hurting Asuka. Despite Shinji’s protests however, Gendou is able to override his controls, causing Shinji’s unit to go on auto-pilot and crush the Angel, with Asuka still inside. Shinji is justifiably upset at the whole ordeal, but what he curses most is that he ended up doing nothing. When Shinji is faced with a similar situation again, this time with Rei being the one at risk, Shinji is determined to not repeat the same mistake. Even if something terrible happens as a result, it’s better than having stayed on the sidelines.

The final scene of the movie mirrors one of the most famous scenes in Evangelion, that of Shinji falling unconscious and the EVA rampaging out of control, ultimately leading to it consuming the Angel in an orgy of violence and “evolving.” In this instance however, Shinji does not fall by the wayside and instead is fully in control. His desire to do something and make a difference where he once could not causes the EVA to transcend into a god-like state, visually captured by the movement and posture of the EVA. Neither hunched like normal, nor craven like when berserk, this divine manifestation stands with shoulders apart and head raised, as if to say that it has transcended into another level of existence. Its movements are steady and deliberate, with a clearly conscious mind behind them. In the end, Shinji is able to succeed because he has grown as a person with the help of those around them, who were themselves made better by knowing Shinji.

Whether or not I like this more than the original TV series is still up in the air, but seeing as there is so much to this film, so much to discuss and address, I am quite surprised that so much of the discussion going on about You Can (Not) Advance tends to be rather lacking. Instead of exploring the characters in-depth or talking about themes and story, the conversation revolves around talking about whether or not Asuka is tsundere, the levels of fanservice in the film, and how much merchandise the whole thing generates, as if to say that the movies do not contain any merit beyond being cash grabs. Why is that? I understand that Evangelion, being the classic it is, has been discussed to high heaven by anime fans the world over, but I don’t think any of us are too cool for school that we cannot bring about that fervor again.

Actually, a better way to put it would be to say that people seemingly do not allow the discussion to move beyond the idea that Rebuild of Evangelion is tapping into that pool of devoted fans. It is doing that of course, but no one ever said that they cannot still put heart and effort into the whole project.

So let’s talk!

(And if you’ve talked already, kudos to you.)

TSUZUKU

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I don’t know if it’s just from the media I’ve watched, but over the past four years or so I feel like there’s been this steady increase in a certain kind of nostalgic sequel/remake. These are different from your A-Teams and your Transformers movies and such, where the works are designed to tap into fond childhood memories and bring them screaming into the modern age; they’re more about addressing the previous work more directly, whether as a sequel or as a remake or in some hybrid form.

The first example that pops into my mind is Rocky Balboa, the sixth movie in the classic series about an underdog boxer, while more recently Toy Story 3 gives off a similar vibe. Anime is no exception, either. The Rebuild of Evangelion movies, while acting as a story reboot, also feel like direct responses to what came before them.

In all of these cases, it is as if there was some unfinished business left by the previous work which the original creators felt needed addressing, something simply beyond “the last thing made some mistakes.” For Rocky Balboa, it was a combination of Rocky V being a terrible way to end the saga of the Italian Stallion and Stallone himself realizing how old he was getting. With Toy Story 3, it seems like Pixar realized just how many years it’s been since the original Toy Story came out and wanted to bring it back one more time and use it to address both the people who grew up on those movies and Pixar itself and talk about growth and change and passing things on to a new generation. And the new Evangelion movies take the raw material of the original series, puts it through the lens of a decade and a half of anime post-Evangelion, and uses it to try to more deeply explore  the relationships between the characters, to talk about all of the new concerns that have cropped up in Japanese society since then.

Again, I don’t know if it’s just that I’m at the age to really notice this sort of thing, or if it’s that this generation of adults is especially keen on discussing the topic of change and resolution, but I can’t help but feel that it could be a defining feature of this time period in creative entertainment.

The Feminine Touch to the Manly Spirit

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Whenever I listen to the full version of the opening to Brave of the Sun Fighbird, a particular lyric gets my attention. Not present in the TV version, the line says, “Kanashimi o kudake, taiyou no tsubasa,” or “Crush sadness, oh wings of the sun.” The way the singer Yasuko Kamoshita emphasizes each syllable of “kanashimi o kudake” sends a jolt of excitement through me.

I think the reason why I notice it so much is because it’s a super robot theme sung by a woman. However, it’s not just because it’s a female vocalist, but because I feel like given the exact same song with the exact same fiery lyrics, male singers and female singers for super robot anime produce different results. Music’s not my strong suit, but if I had to describe the difference, it’s that the male singers tend to sound more passionate while the female singers tend to sound more heartfelt. When Kamoshita tells Fighbird to “crush sadness,” you can hear a twinge of sadness in her voice too.

You might be thinking, “But wait a second, it might just be because this is a 90s anime and at that point anime songs were changing!” And you’d be right on both points, but I think that this feeling extends back towards previous decades as well. Let’s not forget that female singers for super robot anime have been around for quite a while. I get the same impression from Horie Mitsuko’s work on Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V and Space Demon Daikengo, as well as MIO/MIQ’s Aura Battler Dunbine and Heavy Metal L-Gaim openings, though those two  are real robot shows so that genre shift factors in as well.

“Men and women sound different!” seems like such an obvious thing, but it really makes me aware of how the same song or piece of art can take on varying emotions once you change certain pieces.

For a fun comparison, let’s look at various openings throughout the decades featuring duets between Horie Mitsuko and anime song legend Mizuki Ichirou.

Heroman, 1/Progression

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As I watch Heroman, I simultaneously get two conflicting messages.

1) “Whoa, this plot is moving blindingly fast!”

2) “Man, this plot is dragging its feet like crazy.”

It doesn’t make sense at first, but then I realize it’s because the things that you expect to happen quickly seem to take forever, and the things you expect to not occur until much later happen immediately. It’s like Heroman has some sort of “inverse pacing” that defies all conventions of storytelling, especially something you’d expect from the minds of Stan Lee + Studio Bones.

The love interest finding out that the main character is really the hero is something you’d expect to happen towards the end of the series, or at least a season. In Heroman, it happens in episode 2.

Then the rival/bully character to get brought over to the side of evil somehow and become some kind of rival. In most other series, this would be a mid-point “twist,” but here it happens in episode 5.

So all these reveals and events that you’d think would be saved for much later in the series are happening in the single-digit episodes, but somehow giant rolling balls is a strong enough opponent for multiple episodes to the point that we may be looking back one day and referring to this as the “Giant Rolling Balls Arc of Heroman.”

I’m enjoying the series well enough, but this can be kind of disorienting.

Bonus Video Gallery of Total Relevance:

Good Ol’ Rock Fighter, Nuthin’ Beats That!

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I was thinking about my early experiences with the Super Robot Wars series when I remembered the first SRW game I bought, Super Robot Wars R for the Game Boy Advance. The animations at this point were still very much “paper cutouts sliding against a background,” but I was stoked whenever I could land a finishing move on a boss, especially one of the crossover attacks. However, I think what characterized my play experience for R more than anything else was the fact that I could not read Japanese too well at the time, and so for the first 70% of the game I did not realize that your units had the option to “defend” or to “dodge,” rather than just trading hits with the enemy.

I think it’s very possible that if that game were more difficult, I would have gotten fed up with it a lot more quickly, trying to wonder how I could overcome those seemingly insurmountable odds. Perhaps ignorance was bliss for just the right amount of time.

I Have the Answer. What’s the Solution?

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Do we really know why anything is popular?

Whenever an anime or manga is super popular, be it with “casual” fans or super hardcore 4channers or die-hard bloggers or anywhere in between, someone eventually decides to ask, “Why is this popular?” The question can be interpreted positively, encouraging people to express why they like that work so much. It can also be interpreted negatively, giving way to sweeping generalizations that categorize a work’s fans in a particularly unattractive light.

As a quick demonstration: Why is Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu so popular?

We can posit why Gundam isn’t popular “here,” or why Captain Tsubasa is popular “there,” but after a while I just have to wonder how often we’re putting the cart before the horse, completely blinded by hindsight and trying to draw conclusions from something most people might have trouble expressing in the first place, even if you asked every Naruto fan why they like Naruto so much. And in a way, when we accumulate more knowledge and experience in anime, we paradoxically move both closer and further away from the truth.

Not saying I don’t enjoy the speculation, nor am I telling people to stop, but popularity (or lack thereof) can be such a difficult entity to grasp and manipulate that I’m sure we’re all wrong more often than not.

Also, I know this doesn’t just apply to anime or manga or even fiction. Asking why stuff is successfully popular is applicable to just about any topic where  group enjoys or uses something.

No, really, why is  Baka Test so popular? I liked it well enough because of the way it embraced the otaku/moe/anime humor and really ran it to some logical extremes, but why is it considered the #1 light novel series of 2009?

There Are Two Kinds of People in This World: Winners and Trolleys

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In Anime World Order’s look back at the previous decade of anime, guest Matt Alt talks about how the true successor to giant robot anime isn’t current giant robot anime, instead bestowing that title to those shows which spawn trading cards and games revolving around collecting. Essentially, the true spirit of super robots lies not in the continuation of the aesthetics of giant robot anime, but rather in their ability to push merchandise.

Considering this point, I can only think about how much more today’s anime for boys fosters a sense of competition, with trading card games and the like being at the center of children’s entertainment. The kids don’t have to be competitive “high-level” players, and they don’t even have to necessarily know the rules, and I still think these games, even if their shows talk about friendship and honor, still push the theme of competition more than anything else. Just the fact that there are  specific rules and stats and points means that, in a given activity, there will be winners and losers, even if it’s just cheap plastic being spun in an enclosed space. In contrast, that’s not really possible when you just have toy robots and the like. You can perhaps beat your friends by collecting more toys than them, or even create arbitrary rules of competition or even create fake competitions between your toys as Cobra Commander attacks with his vicious horde of My Little Ponies, but at the end of the day there’s no definitive way to become King of Make-Believe.


Well, almost no way.

This in turn got me thinking about the anime fandom and how we have figured out ways to compete via anime. The act of watching cartoons is not really an area in which you can determine winners and losers (unless you say that we’re all losers), so the community instead focuses their competitive spirits towards anime-related activities such as making music videos and cosplaying. These competitions are far more subjective in their criteria and human judgment is paramount in determining winners, but all the same we have taken a relatively passive activity and found ways to test our abilities against others.

I don’t really have a grand point I’m trying to reach, as I’m just laying down some thoughts. But be it through subjective judging or concrete goals, I don’t think an increase in competitive spirit is really a bad thing. That said, it can be taken too far.

Robotech Pens, Steaks, Etc.

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What do you know, just as I think it’s over I have another anime-related dream. For now this is the last one, but who knows how the subconscious works?

So I’m standing there in some kind of nerd hobby store where the most prominent display is a giant banner welcoming fans of Robotech. And there the Robotechfans stood, gathered in the same area, talking about Mospeada or possibly Southern Cross, I don’t remember exactly, and which arc it correlates to.

A nice, roughly middle-aged lady asks if I speak Japanese and I respond in Japanese and we have a good laugh. I look for something to purchase, and I spot some Robotech-themed pens. I don’t know, apparently I really wanted to buy something Robotech-related. But I don’t pick them up quite yet.

I also spot some Nintendo keychains, grabbing a Wario one, and then decide to grab seven Robotech pens, only to realize that if I’m going to the steakhouse(?!) I’d better watch my wallet and not spend so much. I try to pare it down to get a 3 for $5 deal, but then realize I got rid of 1 too many and only have two pens left. But then I remember I have the Wario keychain and it all evens out, because apparently keychains are part of the deal.

The two Robotech pens are very “nice” in two distinctly different ways. One of them features Lisa Hayes and you can hardly tell it’s a Robotech pen. Why, for all we know that could be Misa instead. The other is very clearly a Robotech product, as the character designs look nothing like the show and it’s apparently merchandise for some novel or comic spinoff. It also has some generic tie-in name you’d expect from Robotech, like “Fortress Chronicles” or something equally generic.

I make my purchase, but then for some reason am given a Giratina keychain instead of the Wario one. I ask the clerk if I can exchange it and she says okay, but I have to give the Giratina box back. I think it’s odd, but agree to do this.

Then I realize I was in the store for so long that I cannot make it to the steakhouse. Resigned in defeat, I pass by a new Pokemon movie starring Mewtwo. Actually I’m not sure if it was supposed to be a movie or if I was actually seeing real Pokemon, but the creatures were being sucked into a chamber to fight Mewtwo (though at first I assumed it was Darkrai). The movie is in Japanese. Mewtwo, actually a victim in all of this, flies around and goes to the other side. A Geodude tries to Rock Throw Mewtwo but Mewtwo reflects the rocks back at Geodude and hits two other Pokemon in the process while also saying, “Tsutometa!” In the context of the dream it’s supposed to mean something like, “I see through you,” but in actual Japanese means, “I worked.” The movie is really, really well-animated and a joy to watch. Though I don’t know how it ends because that’s when I wake up.

Yes I Am Quoting Myself

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For the Reverse Thieves’ second Speakeasy Podcast they compared Gurren-Lagann and Shin Mazinger, discussing why the former has a much more universal appeal among current anime fans than the latter. One of the topics that interested me was the false assumption that if a person likes Gurren-Lagann then the next step is Shin Mazinger, or similarly that if a person likes Gundam W that they will like the original Gundam as well. I thought of an analogous situation which I think sums up this problem quite well, and I wanted to have it on-hand and on-blog.

So consider, if you will, the following hypothetical conversation.

“Hey, what’s your favorite cereal?”

“Frosted Flakes!”

“Well if you like Frosted Flakes, I think you’ll enjoy CORN FLAKES! It’s the ORIGIN of Frosted Flakes!”

The person recommending Corn Flakes has his heart in the right place, but doesn’t realize that the reason why the other person likes Frosted Flakes so much might be mainly because of the sugar frosting, i.e. everything that Frosted Flakes have that Corn Flakes do not.

Reducing things down is not the answer for everyone, and just like Frosted Flakes vs Corn Flakes, I think people enjoy the total package of Gurren-Lagann, making it difficult to sell some fans on the idea of Gurren-Lagann stripped down to its bare essentials.