Neon Genesis Evangelion was my first ‘adult’s anime,’ so to speak (Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z in middle school I didn’t really KNOW were anime). My high school friends, sisters Caitlin and Erin, were collecting them. So they’d buy one out of the 12 videos (Genesis 1, 2, 3 etc), watch it, and lend it to the rest of our lunch-table friend group. I remember one day you came in and was like “omg genesis 9….” and I was like, “What what what?” Went home and watched it. OH MY GOD ;___; The horror! And then they came in and were like “omg Genesis 10!” and I made sure I watched it at night, instead of just before sports practice. lol OMG!
See, I’m sensitive and really get into stuff and take it to heart.
Fun times. I don’t really like any of the main characters! Shinji, while I feel sorry for him, is SUCH a wuss, Rei acts empty-ish (you can argue there), Asuka is a bully, I dislike her a lot. 🙁 Misato is such a bad role-model, but now that I’m rewatching it as an adult, rather than teen, I like her the best. So at the time, I said my favorite character was Eva Unit 01.
One day, Jared threw a plastic fork at me at across the lunch table and said, “Die 15th Angel!” It startled the hell out of me and I jumped, just in time to see a plastic broken fork bounce off my chest. We all laughed SO HARD. omfg For the rest of our 3-4 years of high school, I was constantly getting forks thrown at me. Why?! I never said I was Arael. lol Ah, high school days!
Then the 26-episode series ended, and we were all like “WTF” with the rest of the Eva fan community. Everyone complained to the director, and he was like, “oh yeah?! OKAY THEN, I’ll give you an ending!!” and made the movie “The End of Evangelion.” Fans were all like “OMFG ;_;?!?!”
And it was over.
UNTIL NOW. Which means 2007. It was announced that Hideaki Anno and Gainax were making a series of 4 movies. The first three would be a remake (and condensation) of the anime episodes, with all new scenes! It’s FANTASTIC! They even managed to add a new Eva pilot, but it’s SO obvious that they wanted to have another bishoji beautiful skinny girl to sell merchandise for, other than Asuka and Rei. lol Mari is cool, though, if not a little nuts. I think she’s American? BUT THEN the LAST MOVIE is going to be ALL NEW! Another ending! OMG OMG OMG!!
Heh there’ll probably be a saying, like “That has more endings than the Evangelion series!” or something.
So I’ve been going to see these in the theater, and obviously there are no subtitles! The vocabulary is really hard, because it’s a futuristic mecha science/abstract theory show. Of course, I’ve watched the series a bajillion times, so I knew the plot when I saw the remakes. But Gendo speaks in “Kanji,” meaning everything he says is not conversational simple Japanese, but complicated technical terms. I can barely understand what he says in the English version.
And in the last movie there was this new scene with Kaoru on the moon and I was like “OMG NEW SCENE!” and Kaoru said “It’s time for blah blah blah!” and something looked really ominous and then the movie ended……. WHAT DID HE SAY! It must have been really important! But I had no clue ;__; SO FRUSTRATING. I had to wait a full year for it to come out on DVD and someone to stick subtitles to it.
Well, that was 2007 and my Japanese got better by 2009. The second movie then came out, and the third one got delayed a YEAR. When the hell was it going to come out? ;___; Come oooooooooon. So needless to say that I nearly leapt out of my skin when I saw a poster saying that the third movie is coming out NOVEMBER 17th!!
I’m sure my Japanese got better by then, but still! I’m studying. Yes. I’m rewatching the movies and taking notes on the vocabulary, because it’s just HARD vocab I don’t hear every day. shirei= commander. jinrui hokan keikaku= human instrumentality project. whatever the F that means. lol The original Japanese makes just as little sense. Shogouki = unit 1. They don’t say “tenshi” for angel, they say “Shito” which means ‘messenger.’ Which is interesting. The word “angel” sounds peace-loving, which makes for an interesting contrast, since the ‘shito’ have been coming to destroy us. However, ‘messenger’ doesn’t really mean that, but “Angel” is much easier to say then “omg here comes “the-messenger-of-god” every time.
Interesting. VERY INTERESTING. I love studying Japanese so so much. I’ve taken pages of notes so far.
I’m sooooo excited for this new movie. SO EXCITED! I wonder if I can watch it on Sunday night after my meeting, or Monday!! 😀 😀 😀 I wonder if it’ll be sold out?! omg omg omg